“Smells good.”
If you smoke weed outside, especially in a city, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve heard that statement of fact from a stranger. It happens to me at least once a week, usually a lot more.
Look in the pages of the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic, watch local news, or listen to politicians, though, and you might be fooled into thinking that weed does not, in fact, smell good. Wild, right?
Under titles like “I Don’t Want To See You Get High” and “NYC’s Disgusting Pot Stench Is Keeping Tourists Away,” those loud voices fed up with loud smells are the last gasps of prohibition’s fading foghorns. Weed won and the world hasn’t fallen into disarray (well… at least not because of weed), so cannabis critics are reaching for anything they can to push back against its growing role in American life. These smell sheriffs might even support legalization, just as long as they can’t see or smell it.
But legalization without the guarantee of safe, free, and open consumption is not legalization at all, and while much of the discussion from inside and outside of the weed industry is about, well, industry, New York has quickly shown us that the right to public consumption should be one of the most important facets of any and every legalization law.
Hellbound and Down 