Why I haven’t created a tomato-cannabis hybrid

Jean-Louis was leaning out of his second-floor window. “Bonsoir, Dan!”

I could hear the rumblings of a social gathering behind him – no music, just a cacophony of French voices battling for supremacy. I bonsoired him back and that would have been that, only my dog took the opportunity to evacuate by his front gate.

“Montes boire un verre!”

Jean-Louis was clearly drunk, but after 12 years of cordial nods, I momentarily allowed myself to believe I’d cracked the inner circle of village winemakers. And so, poop bag in hand, I politely accepted.

Right away, it was clear that the vibe was off. Everyone had stopped talking and was looking at me as I stepped into the kitchen. As I dutifully did the rounds with individual greetings, the penny dropped that I hadn’t been spontaneously invited to join a convivial apéro. I’d been summoned to an agricultural tribunal. There were ten villagers sitting around the table and one empty seat at the head, presumably made vacant by Jean-Louis, who gestured to me to take it.

Marie-Caroline was the first to speak. She had the clipped authority of a minor bureaucrat. “Alors, Dan. T’as créé un hybride tomate-cannabis?”

I sat back heavily in my seat. Had I created a cannabis-tomato hybrid? Was she for real? I’m known as a “budding plant scientist” in the village, but homemade GMOs? Apparently there were rumors circulating concerning my generously distributed tomato seedlings. Some had produced fruits that allegedly caused… side effects. Headaches. Strange dreams. One elderly lady claimed a cherry tomato had sent her into an existential spiral. Another said colors seemed “too sharp” for days. Marie-Caroline herself had experienced visions followed by nausea.

“You ’ave a reputation,” Marie-Caroline declared graciously, in English.

I looked up at Jean-Louis for support but he was just smirking, somewhat delighted with himself for spontaneously organizing the evening’s free entertainment. My “reputation” wasn’t completely unfounded. Several months before, I had indeed given out some tomato plants that I’d raised in my basement. It’s no secret that this space sometimes hosts other exotic botanical projects. Perhaps the run-off nutrient from one set of plants may have been repurposed for another. But hybridization? Impossible. I tried to explain that tomatoes and cannabis belonged to entirely distinct plant families. Hybridizing the two species would involve some serious genetic manipulation in a multimillion dollar laboratory and was, in any case, considerably beyond my ken – and the boundaries of modern science.

Normally, I might have found my fellow villagers’ overestimation of my capabilities flattering – but something else was on my mind. I hadn’t touched any weed for six months. But, on this particular evening, just 90 minutes beforehand, I’d swallowed a homemade gelatin capsule stuffed with 120mg of decarboxylated, finely ground cannabis flower – a particularly potent strain ominously named “Kerosene Krash.” My wife and I, in a bid to approach cannabis with a modicum of middle-aged maturity, had recently begun making our own “herbal supplements” and I had decided, in my wisdom, to get the evening dog walk out of the way before it kicked in.

I had assumed that I’d be safely back home by the time it hit. Instead, I was now sitting at a table of stern French vignerons being accused of pioneering psychedelic horticulture and testing it on an unsuspecting population as wave after wave of cannabinoid began crashing into my brain.

The lights were too bright. The perfume was too strong. Everyone was talking at once. I was a freshly landed Martian hearing French for the first time – marveling at the way they suffixed an extra vowel at the end of each sentence-zuhhh, elongating it as a verbal defence against interruption.

“Mais… c’est impossible,” I said – or thought – my mouth newly upholstered with dusty velvet. My grasp of French was rapidly disintegrating. I declined wine and asked for some water instead.

“Comment tu expliques ça, alors?” asked Marie-Caroline, eyes narrowed.

I searched my brain for plausible explanations, but none were forthcoming, other than the tendency for wild superstitions to fill the void of poor scientific education.

The capsule was in full bloom. I began to wonder if I was about to be arrested.

“Je dois partir,” I croaked. “Ma femme m’attend.” I stood up carefully and looked around for my dog who was busy scouring the floor for crumbs.

The group watched me go, disappointed, and chattering. As I reached the door, someone said, not unkindly, “Bon courage.”

I floated home, a man accused of inadvertently dosing the village with rogue nightshades, wrestling with the abrupt end of a six-month tolerance break. I still don’t know what happened to that poop bag.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 27, 2025 World edition.