57. Betting Odds: Why People Began Smoking Weed in Cigarettes in the USA, Part I

Some longshots

Dear Readers,

Everybody knows that vice works best in pairs. You know what I’m talking about: Coffee and cigarettes; booze and gambling; Fritos and weed. I get a warm feeling just thinking about it. So today we’re going to get wild and add some gambling odds to our ongoing weed inquiries.

Now, as a reminder, many moons ago I asked why it took so long for recreational cannabis use to catch on in the United States, and I suggested that perhaps the emergence of the marijuana cigarette was a key to this development.

Smoking cannabis, rather than swallowing it, makes it easier to measure your dose and avoid getting WAY TOO STONED. It’s of course still possible to get WAY TOO STONED when you smoke weed, as I demonstrated when we discussed makeshift coke-can bongs behind the YMCA in the 1980s, but it’s well known that edibles tend to result in accidental incidents of WAY TOO STONED-ness more often than smoking.

But why did people start smoking their weed in cigarettes? I’ve been dancing around …