A Campus Up In Smoke

[Ganjarden]

In the last article I let you into my own world of smoking. Now, as promised, I will introduce you to the other types of smokers I’ve observed on campus.

There is a lot of overlap between the groups, and people often belong to more than one group. Some groups will be familiar, and others you may not know existed. What separates people amongst the different groups is their understanding of “potetiquette,” the etiquette of smoking weed. But those unwritten rules are another article.

The first group is the beginners. Picking up the habit can come at any time, but for most it comes freshman year. This group, the beginners, did not smoke in high school, and they try it for the first time in college. If they continue to smoke, they can work their way into many different social smoker groups.

If a beginner doesn’t smoke habitually, he or she becomes the occasional smoker. This group is the one in which most Tufts students fall. They’ll smoke if the weed is accessible and the time is right, but won’t make a great effort to procure some green on their own.

Occasional smokers are not to be confused with the third type of user, which is also the worse type—the smoke-em-if-you-got-em smoker. These are the ones who have developed a hearty habit but never see fit to buy for themselves. They hang around parties into the twilight hours of the night, hoping that someone, anyone, will pull out a baggy. The smoke-em-if-you-got-em smoker will then, and almost always awkwardly, weasel his or her way into the smoking group.

On the opposite end of the spectrum sits a group of smokers who enable the smoke-em-if-you-got-em users. They are the reefer jockeys, people who blaze early and often. (I call them jockeys because they are always sitting on a bag.) They might forget their keys or wallet, but they always have their weed on them.

It is important to note that reefer jockeys are not drug dealers, though they may occasionally sling a bag to a friend. It is only when they begin doing this consistently that they become dope mules.

Dope mules are the workhorses of any smoking community. They disseminate an illegal good throughout the community, but on a small, under-the-radar scale that affords casual smokers a sense of comfort and safety that sketchy townie dealers cannot provide.

There exists a group of smokers that enjoy the act of smoking as much, if not more, than the feeling it causes. Whereas some view joints and blunts as function of utility—something to smoke with—this group has refined the practice of rolling. They are marijuana artisans, crafting perfect-burning spliffs and jibs. In this group, there also exists an odd offshoot, the bong fetishists. These people worship glass creations and spend hours drooling over pictures online of gorgeous bongs, bubblers, pipes, and other paraphanalia.

Some users care less for the method of smoking and more for what’s actually being smoked. They are the weed connoisseurs.

Much like a foodie might discern between the taste and texture of a cheese, or a wine snob the body and bouquet of a Merlot, weed connoisseurs savor the flavor of what their smoking. They can describe the taste of “The Purp” as a coffee ground meets lavender flavor. They can also highlights the sleep-inducing effects common to the purple strains with indica plants, as a connoisseur actually just recently told me.

The connoisseur smokes a lot, and so does the following group: the who-are-you-kidding smoker. This group is nonexistent on some campuses, but alive and well at Tufts. They are the wealthy, want-to-be hippie stoners who champion peace and free love (and, as of a year and a half ago, Obama). They wear hemp and rug sweaters and have pins on their backpacks supporting social causes only college students care about. They embody the look and demeanor of stereotypical stoners, and extol a 60s mentality that Hunter S. Thompson proved was never real in the first place. The who-are-you-kidding users are the most social of smokers, often sitting around chastising the evils of the American government and our capitalistic economy, or agreeing with one another over the “obvious” appeals of socialism and Che Guevara.

I call them the who-are-you-kidding smokers because when one of them is done smoking with the group, he retreats to his room and calls mommy and daddy back home in Greenwich or New York City or Orange County and asks for more money. There is a beautiful underlying irony: these faux-hippies’ smoke sessions are funded by money earned though the economic system most of them vilify.

The who-are-you-kidding smokers aren’t bad people. They are fun to puff with, and are often also reefer jockeys. They are not marijuana pariahs, but such a group does exists.

The pariahs are the smokers other users avoid. A good example of one can be found at any frat party past midnight—a drunk girl stumbling around, hollering, “I’m so ’effin’ drunk I just need to smoke…do you have any weed…do you have any weed?” Why one would avoid this person is obvious. Another good example of a pariah is the flat out drug user, the person who adds a grave sense of reality to any situation when he or she whips out pills and powders.

I saved this group of smokers for last because I feel all Tufts’ smokers should aspire to be like them. They are the do-everything smokers. For them, weed is just another thing to do in a full day of things to do, and they are aware of what they can and cannot do stoned.

They are intelligent and academically active, sometimes branching out into responsible use of otherwise irresponsible drugs. The do-everythings show the world that smokers can be productive, and hopefully they will one day bring about legalization.


I’ve talked a lot about the bad groups of smokers, and this is the good group. If you’re reading this during a lecture, look around. There is probably a stoned kid in there with you—and she’s probably doing better in the class.

I did not cover every group in this article, and I’m sure some of the readers have their own groups of which I’m not aware. So, there you have it—my take on the smoking groups of our own Tufts University. Now, if you feel like it, please go and smoke some pot. And if you’re already high, smoke some more.


News Hawk- Ganjarden http://www.420Magazine.com
Source: Tufts Observer
Contact: Tufts Observer
Copyright: 2008 Tufts Observer
Website: A Campus Up In Smoke