Taco Bell, Del Taco smoking hot over marijuana ads

Glass water pipes, or bongs, are displayed at the HempCon, a medical marijuana expo held at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

By Anh Do

June 27, 2013 7:49 PM PT

Officials at two Orange County-based fast-food chains are asking that their names be removed from ads for a marijuana expo scheduled next week in Anaheim.

Organizers for the Kush Expo, coming to the Anaheim Convention Center on July 6-7, highlighted Del Taco and Taco Bell in its promotional materials. A similar expo, HempCon, is held each year at the L.A. Convention Center

The Kush Expo, billed as “the world’s biggest medical marijuana mega show,” features hundreds of booths, glass bong giveaways, seed companies, grow experts and an annual Hot Kush Girl contest with $2,000 in prizes.

Dispensaries and doctors will be on site providing evaluations and medical recommendations, according to the expo’s Web page. But restaurant representatives said expo organizers never contacted them about using their names.

“It’s unacceptable for companies to use our logo without permission and they didn’t have permission,” said Barbara Caruso, spokeswoman for Del Taco, based in Lake Forest.

“We have a longstanding policy that prohibits other businesses from using our trademarks, and we did not give them permission to do this,” added Rob Poetsch, spokesman for Taco Bell, based in Irvine.

“We were in the process of contacting them to take down our trademarks from their website, but it appears that they have already taken them down.”

The company logos appeared to have been removed from the Kush Expo Web page late Thursday.

Expo organizers did not respond to calls.

More than 14,000 people swarmed its gathering last summer, celebrating pot culture while learning the latest in medical trends.

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E-mail: anh.do@latimes.com
Twitter: @newsterrier

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Anh Do

Anh Do, the community engagement editor at the Los Angeles Times, works across the newsroom to spotlight our journalists and journalism, bringing our diverse talent closer to the audiences they serve via virtual and live events. She’s a member of the recruiting team and also represents the paper in communicating with the public who have questions about The Times’ journalistic standards and practices. Before this job, she spent 11 years in Metro covering Asian American issues and general assignments. A second-generation journalist, she has reported for the Seattle Times, the Orange County Register and Nguoi Viet Daily News. Do, born in Saigon, is a graduate of USC with degrees in journalism and English. Her writing on culture and trauma has won awards from Columbia University and the Asian American Journalists Assn. She received Yale’s Poynter Fellowship in Journalism and, in 2016, was part of The Times team that won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the San Bernardino terrorist attacks. Apart from words, she’s passionate about all things canine, spending nearly three decades supporting dog rescue around the globe.

Taco Bell, Del Taco smoking hot over marijuana ads

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