“Let’s take a gummy, use my free will and go to the Nehru Planetarium. How about that?”
This is the opening of Instagram creator @IshuDidi’s video, which has over 30k likes and nearly 400 comments. She describes the ethereal feeling of putting on her headphones and gawking at the make-belief sky as 10/10. To be clear, this review is less about her being a science geek and more about the fun candy she popped before her little outing.
PSA: the gummies in question are not your average multicoloured bears or cola bottles; the colourful chewables are full-spectrum CBD candies. It’s now a trend on Instagram and TikTok to get ever so slightly high and head out into the world to giggle and see it anew.
Look at @Mr.Mohindru’s Reel that raked in over 800k views with the caption: “Two 30 year olds, magic gummies and a day at the mall.” The video shows the duo playing at the kids arcade, dining at a restaurant, and indulging in some retail therapy. All wholly ordinary mall acts, only this time a little brighter, a little greener, a little funnier. You will also find posts of people popping gummies and going to the cinema, trying to cook Maggi and, in some hilarious cases, putting on a Baked Shakespeare show.
While the trend kicked off in the West, it has found its feet at home, too. “My feed is filled with these videos. My friends and I stole the idea; we had some gummies and went to a grocery store. It was such a kicker,” says Niranjan, a Bengaluru-based management consultant. “The next plan is to go to a horror house.”
In case your eyes are wide, your mouth agape, and your mind screaming “Isn’t this illegal?!?”, well, yes and no. You’re imagining the ganja buds that people usually crush, roll, and smoke. That is still very much illegal in India. However, the law has a loophole: the psychoactive flowering buds and resin aren’t permitted, but in some cases you can use other parts of the cannabis plant, including the leaves, the stalks, and the seeds. (You know what they say: where there’s a will, there’s a way.)
For decades, Ayurveda has incorporated legalised cannabis in medicines to alleviate pain, anxiety, stress, and insomnia. These tinctures usually require a doctor’s prescription so there’s no messing around. To make things easier, in the early 2020s, hemp got recognised as a low-THC crop; some states even allowed cultivation. Eventually, the FSSAI began allowing hemp-based foods, which opened up a larger market for edible gummies. This candy strictly includes THC below 0.3 per cent to stay on the permissible side.
Most people making magic-gummies content in India are consuming these cheekily legal bites. And honestly, dancing around the grey zone is a big part of the charm. The creators wait for excited narcs to tag the cops on their videos, only to throw the prescription in their face. The reverse gotcha moment feels like soft rebellion. For years, there has been such taboo and chaos around weed. The new-age gummies finally mix up the equation. By still very much carrying THC, they bring the illusion of living life on edge with little else. Imagine all the thrill without any real danger.
This agency feels more covetable in the present day when so much is out of our control. Young people are increasingly wary of governments and people in power; the protests erupting around the country in response to the Trans Rights Amendment Bill 2026 is only the most recent example. The endless wars we have been wading through the last few years is another. Amidst this mood, being able to consume CBD gummies in public is a small but satisfying win. It presents a rare moment when an individual gets to enjoy the pleasure of low-key tricking the system instead of becoming a victim to it.
Watching creators find fame doing something just barely legal is another trip of its own—pun intended, of course. “The idea of being able to enjoy a [public] place on CBD gummies without a worry is what is fun to watch,” agrees Lexi, a Mumbai-based lawyer. “As someone who works in a stressful field, I find the content exuberant.”
Despite being filmed in such nonchalant, everyday settings, this content manages to draw droves of attention. After all, there’s inexplicable humour in watching the ordinary unfold in an altered state. Seeing someone try to order popcorn and overthink it or laugh endlessly at the sight and sound of a mall somehow manages to make bystanders cackle. It’s like the Mr Bean effect.
This content also becomes an easy-to-digest brain break. When AI has made most of our world picture-perfect, watching humans glitch feels silly and funny. As Niranjan adds, “These videos make me feel like we’re all just people who want to have a good time. That feels familiar and safe. I like it.”
