32 MAY 23-29, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | REAL ESTATE | RENTALS | HEALTH WELLNESS | SERVICES | EMPLOYMENT | ADULT | MUSIC | CLASSIFIED | A S K A S T O N E R BY HERBERT FUEGO Dear Stoner: I smoke weed in my home often and rarely notice the smell of burnt weed or that skunky sticky icky. But when someone smokes weed on the street corner or in their front yard, the smell is potent and I notice immediately. What’s going on there? Polly Dear Polly: Noticing the stank of good weed in public is like smelling barbecue when you don’t have dinner plans. It’ll grab you. Getting used to your own brand is easy, too, whether it’s layers of weed smoke or post- dinner fl atulence — and this is all by your body’s design. To protect the nervous system, temporary olfactory fatigue occurs as powerful smells linger. Receptors stop telling your brain about the smell within minutes, and you go back to noticing new aromas. So after open- ing a dank stash, rolling and lighting up a joint, the nostrils will probably stop noticing hot leaf about halfway through the session — but if you step outside and return an hour later, prepare to be blasted by a gust of ganja. Dear Stoner: I (a 36-year-old male) just hosted my 23-year-old niece for a week. We both like cannabis, but it was interesting to see how she hated smoking but loved vaping herb, dabbing, pens, all of it. But no smoking, not even joints. Hanks Dear Hanks: This looks like a generational divide between millennials and Generation Z. Smoking and drinking get less popular with successive generations, and Z’ers are walking away from both...so far. (Let’s see how they handle life after college.) Accord- ing to 2023 data from the CDC, 85 percent of teenage nicotine users vape instead of smoke, while the most recent state survey in Colorado showed that 18- to 24-year-olds who regularly vape increased from 15 per- cent in 2020 to almost 25 percent in 2022. Most U.S. data is connected to nicotine, not cannabis, but national surveys in Canada have shown that younger generations prefer vaping and dabbing concentrates over smoking, and dispensary sales tracker Headset predicts “continued growth in the future” for vape pens “as a younger generation of consumers ages into the market.” All of this is to say that your niece thinks smoking is gross and bad — which isn’t necessarily wrong, so consider her dry herb vape next time — but it’s not like vape pens are healthy, either. Different tokes for different folks, I suppose. Send questions to [email protected]. WARNING: Use of Marijuana Concentrate may lead to: 1. Psychotic symptoms and/or Psychotic disorder (delusions, hallucinations, or difficulty distinguishing reality); 2. Mental Health Symptoms/Problems; 3. Cannabis Hyperemesis Syndrome (CHS) (uncontrolled and repetitive vomiting); Cannabis use disorder/ dependence, including physical and psychological dependence Programmatic Cannabis Network Organic & Local SEO • Website Design Social Media Management • Print Media Get started today with a FREE Digital Audit. marijuanamarketingxperts.com
