The highs and lows the marijuana industry will face with flavored weed

Pot is about to become more than just the garden variety. Even Cheech and Chong won’t be able to recognize it before long.

And depending on your point of view, soon-to-be-introduced flavored marijuana — as well as pot that allegedly gives different kinds of far-out sensations — is either going to be the greatest thing since legalization began in some states or utter reefer madness.

“Flavored weed is already starting to happen,” says John Darwin, founder and president of One Cannabis, which sells marijuana in Colorado and has five franchisees in that state.

Darwin told me the other day that the evolution of marijuana “will only get better.”

But that won’t be a view shared by all. With vaping firms like Juul already coming under intense attack because of health risks and the fact that their flavored vaping pods attract young smokers, the marijuana business can probably see what’s in its future very clearly.

Manufacturers can certainly add flavor to the marijuana leaf after it is grown. But scientists also think they can grow plants that already have flavor embedded in them.

And then there’s this: Pot scientists are fiddling with the genetic makeup of marijuana so that the plant can do things once inside a person’s body.

One is — and please shoo the kids away while you read this — female orgasm enhancement. Other variations being developed? Marijuana plants that give the smoker more energy, a better night sleep or pain relief — or don’t saddle the user with the munchies.

Darwin says that, when “toked in moderation,” a strain of marijuana called Ghost Train Haze “can make users feel uplifted and creative, motivating them to do anything from write a poem to climb a fourteener.”

(A fourteener is a mountain peak with an elevation of more than 14,000 feet.)

Groovy, man. Let the battles begin.