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Head shops in the US, where do they stand?

Locut0s

Locut0s

Lifer
We may have a reputation for being a pot nation up here and some of that is certainly deserved, especially here in Vancouver. By and large though it's a bit overblown, it's not like Amsterdam where you have a head shop every two or three blocks in some places. Having said that I DO know of a couple of head shops in the city. My question is with the US having the opposite stereotype, draconian drug laws and crazy jail sentences, do you see many head shops there? I know they exist and aren't really rare in some places, was in one when I went to Hawaii. So how to they operate in terms of the law? Obviously they really aren't doing anything illegal so long as all they sell is drug paraphernalia and not the drugs themselves but you guys have a reputation for some pretty harsh drug laws. I'm sure this varies a lot by state. Do you see any headshops in say small town America? Alabama etc..?
 
A gas station near me sold bongs and stuff, and of course those retarded blunt wrappers are ubiquitous just about everywhere, but most of the full range head shops are in the cities AFAIK.
 
They're probably all over. I live in SoCal, so there are many straight up headshops. But then every little Tobacco shop, also sell bongs, glass pipes and bubblers, for tobacco use only of course 🙂.
 
lxskllr said:
A gas station near me sold bongs and stuff, and of course those retarded blunt wrappers are ubiquitous just about everywhere, but most of the full range head shops are in the cities AFAIK.
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Are they sold as no name or hippie themed wrapper or do you simply mean cigarette papers? When I worked at 7-11 we sold a lot of cigarette papers and I can tell you most of our customers, lots of cute girls too, were not rolling tobacco 😛

They are the same thing but marketed more subtly.

This:

rolling-papers-zig-zag.jpg


Instead of this:

rolling-papers-bob-marley.jpg
 
I'm talking about the cigar wrappers, sans filler. It's basically a chopped/pressed tobacco leaf like you'd find on a bottom end cigar, but sold separately, and many times with stupid flavors like cherry and grape. It strikes me as being a more "urban" thing, but like rap, it polluted the rest of the culture.

Regular rolling papers have been around for a long time, but usually just the mainstream brands. They don't look like "pot" papers necessarily, but who else is gonna use a double wide paper? :^D
 
I've been in places that sell cigars, lighters, pipes, bongs, hookahs, and questionable looking pipes other questionable stuff. I don't see how you can really outlaw the drug related stuff since it could be used for tobacco use.
 
Leros said:
I've been in places that sell cigars, lighters, pipes, bongs, hookahs, and questionable looking pipes other questionable stuff. I don't see how you can really outlaw the drug related stuff since it could be used for tobacco use.
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I'm not saying it's outlawed or that they try to. What I'm saying is do the shops have to operate more as "tobacco" shops in hiding? The head shops here for example are clearly just head shops and there is no pretence that people going in are buying the stuff for anything but smoking pot. And the police don't care one bit. They have hippie themed music, hippie/drug themed names and stoner employees. they do everything BUT sell the pot. Is this the same in the stores you have been in in the US?
 
Locut0s said:
I'm not saying it's outlawed or that they try to. What I'm saying is do the shops have to operate more as "tobacco" shops in hiding? The head shops here for example are clearly just head shops and there is no pretence that people going in are buying the stuff for anything but smoking pot. And the police don't care one bit. They have hippie themed music, hippie/drug themed names and stoner employees. they do everything BUT sell the pot. Is this the same in the stores you have been in in the US?
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Some of them, sure.
 
Quite a few shops like that in the Denver metro area. Generally in the blue collar areas of town but I suspect that is true just about anywhere.
 
Locut0s said:
I'm not saying it's outlawed or that they try to. What I'm saying is do the shops have to operate more as "tobacco" shops in hiding? The head shops here for example are clearly just head shops and there is no pretence that people going in are buying the stuff for anything but smoking pot. And the police don't care one bit. They have hippie themed music, hippie/drug themed names and stoner employees. they do everything BUT sell the pot. Is this the same in the stores you have been in in the US?
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The ones I'm familiar with yes, but many enforce a stupid terminology standard. If you ask for a "bowl" or a "bong" you'll get kicked out of the store. It's a "pipe" or a "water pipe", and they have stickers that say "for tobacco use only" or something like that on it. This is going back a ways, and things might be different now, but it wasn't that long ago I was hearing similar things from people. I'm sure it varies by state also. I'm in MD which is somewhere in the middle of the scale for repression as near as I can tell.
 
lxskllr said:
The ones I'm familiar with yes, but many enforce a stupid terminology standard. If you ask for a "bowl" or a "bong" you'll get kicked out of the store. It's a "pipe" or a "water pipe", and they have stickers that say "for tobacco use only" or something like that on it. This is going back a ways, and things might be different now, but it wasn't that long ago I was hearing similar things from people. I'm sure it varies by state also. I'm in MD which is somewhere in the middle of the scale for repression as near as I can tell.
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That's what it is here. Everyone knows, and just turns a blind eye.
 
Yeah definitely there are shops. Where I grew up in a small town in the UP of MI there was one or two. Where I went to school in a small town there was at least one. In NY at a tobacco shop it was more stupid weed shit than rolling tobacco. And now back in MI, I stop at a Shell gas station and there are little glass bowls right by the credit card machine.
 
Locut0s said:
I'm not saying it's outlawed or that they try to. What I'm saying is do the shops have to operate more as "tobacco" shops in hiding? The head shops here for example are clearly just head shops and there is no pretence that people going in are buying the stuff for anything but smoking pot. And the police don't care one bit. They have hippie themed music, hippie/drug themed names and stoner employees. they do everything BUT sell the pot. Is this the same in the stores you have been in in the US?
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Naw, none that I've seen are really themed like that but it's obvious the main thing they sell are weed smoking devices.

My friend was telling me long ago in high school that he bought a 2 foot bong from the shop on main street and as he was walking out (with the thing sticking out of the bag) a cop drives right by. Obviously they all knew what people went into the shop for.

I think they had like a sign that said you couldn't even talk about saying the pipes were for anything but tobacco.
 
My only real problem with head shops is every one of them is decorated like a phish concert exploded in there. Have I mentioned how much I hate pot culture before. I think I have. It feels me with incalculable rage. I should clarify I like pot. I just hate the culture holy hell do I.
 
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