Song of the Day 4/20: Tom Petty, “You Don’t Know How It Feels”

Today is the first 4/20 when recreational cannabis is legal in Delaware, and I’m gonna say I told you so: It’s been far from the financial windfall for the state that a lot of people were anticipating.

WHYY checked the figures last month and they’re far short of expectations.

The bottom line for now is that tiny Delaware is averaging $4.2 million a month in retail sales over seven months. Projected over a full year, that would amount to a little more than $50 million in sales and $7.5 million in tax revenue.
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Delaware’s first marijuana commissioner, Robert Coupe, had predicted in 2023 that the state would have $281 million in annual sales that would generate $42 million in taxes.

The article details several reasons for the difference – the slow rollout that let New Jersey and Maryland get the jump on Delaware, the restrictions many jurisdictions have placed on outlets – but perhaps the biggest one is price: Legal marijuana in Maryland costs almost 50 percent less than in Delaware.

Nonetheless, it’s an improvement over the days when toking up was illegal. Back in the day musicians got pushback if they seemed to endorse it.

Case in point: When Tom Petty released this song in 1994, radio stations and MTV wouldn’t play the line “let’s roll another joint.” Petty’s new record company, Warner Brothers, didn’t like the drug reference, so radio stations received a version that changed the line to “let’s hit another joint.”

They only shot one version of the video, though, so MTV took matters into its own hands by editing it so the word came out backwards – without telling Petty.

“I wrote this song not thinking that it was controversial in any way,” he said later. “Imagine my surprise when this song comes on television and they say, ‘Let’s roll another noojh,’ which sounded worse to me than joint. Because, I don’t know if you’ve ever had a noojh, but it sounds really wicked.”