I went to Denver a few months after Colorado legalized recreational cannabis, where at the dispensary the budtender and I openly spoke of THC content, Sativa vs. Indica, the type of high I could expect from this or that, and so on.
But at the head shop down the street, there was a sign warning about the words customers couldn’t use, indicating that, at the time anyway, customers at head shops were still expected to play this game where they pretend that the devices they’re buying aren’t actually for the thing they’re used for. You had to say “water pipe” instead of “bong” because they do not sell bongs because bongs are for cannabis. Cannabis that you can legally buy six blocks down the street.
Is that still the case in Colorado, and indeed, in other states where recreational is legal? Can you buy pot at the dispensary but then at the head shop still have to pretend you’re buying stuff for tobacco? Or have your state’s paraphernalia laws caught up with your cannabis laws?
I don’t visit head shops, but I have never heard of this and can’t imagine it still happens. I haven’t noticed anything in shops that sell paraphernalia alongside other stuff.
I live in a legalized state, though we don’t have retail shops yet. I do have a medical card and you can’t piss into the wind with out getting a dispensary wet. That said, the head shop I frequent just recently sold me a bong. That’s what I asked for and that’s what I got.
Although, a few years ago, before it was recreationally legal, I asked for a bong at a different shop and I was informed that “we call them ‘water pipes’ here.” You can call it a vacuum cleaner for all I care, can I have the red one please?
Huh. Reminds me of the little scene I saw acted out at a Jehovah’s Witnesses Assembly many years ago demonstrating how to talk to your kids about drugs.
Kid: So then, this guy pulls out this joint…
Parent: Hold on son. Joint? Do you mean a marijuana cigarette?
Kid: Yeah.
Parent: Then, don’t you think you should use the term ‘marijuana cigarette’? If you use slang terms like ‘joint’ the way worldly people do, you may start thinking the way worldly people do about marijuana use.
I don’t remember much else of that little scene. I do remember thinking, man, that kid’s gonna get his face smashed in for being an insufferable prig.
More likely, he just never spoke to his dad about toking ever again. Unless the kid got disfellowshipped for toking. Then his dad would never speak to the kid again, maybe.
In California, pot is now legal for recreational use & you can freely use the word bong in any shop that I have visited. But I do remember the days when you had to refer to a bong as a water pipe…
In 5th grade, a JW kid brought in an anti-masturbation tract. We passed it around because we knew masturbation as some weird thing and thought it was funny, until a teacher took it away. If some kids didn’t know what masturbation was before then, they knew after, or at least knew what to look up in the dictionary at home.
Here in Nevada pot is completely legal and the dispensary I go to sells bongs and pipes and other accessories as is, without secret code words or anything.
Buying weed legally for the first time was a strange experience, but a welcome one since dealing with unsavory people was always a downside.