Vaping & Hash Oil Pens - Are Weed Smokers the Tobacco Chewers of the Future?

What will the North American cannabis market look like in 2050? Joints packed up like cigarettes? Here at Stoner Living, we doubt it. We love the completely natural aspect of marijuana, and the virtually non-existent processing. Some cannabis devotees will surely stick with tradition and demand minimally processed flowers for smoking, but that probably won't dominate the market.

XL Vape Cartridges - visible (left) and 'stealth' (right)

A standardization-friendly, non-smoked version of weed seems most likely to reign supreme by the time cannabis is sold like cigarettes. To control dosage and minimize the number of producers (the US has 3 major tobacco companies right now - and two are talking about merging), a highly standardized, expensive to start up system is what the mature marijuana industry will look like.


Future cannabis connoisseurs who are non-cigarette smokers will be likely to enjoy 'vaping' their cannabis, and will be a lot less likely to fall into the "nothing works like smoking my bong/pipe/blunt" group. I understand the sentiment of this group, as I fall into it myself. But product development is driven by the wants and needs of the young - few market research agents include participants over the age of 36 in their research unless they have a demographic specific reason to do so. It's one of Marketing's dirty little secrets.

XLVape w/ Visible Cartridge

As I discussed in an earlier article, vape pens "fix" a lot of the problems consumer's have with cannabis- - no smoke, no smell, no lingering odor. The trade off is that the vape pen experience is not exactly the same - and for many, it is not as satisfying.

It's no big secret: smoking is bad for you, is increasingly taboo and it is a dying part of our culture. But it is a legal part of our culture, and despite cigarette volume declines, cigarettes will never completely go away.

Joint 10 Pack from Urban Roots Collective

Smoking is the norm for marijuana these days. And many pot smokers also smoke cigarettes. But that doesn't mean it will always be that way. Think about tobacco: first it was smoked in pipes, then rolled in tobacco leaves and smoked, and it is chewed in a variety of cultures.

Tennessee Twist

Trends wax and wane but few (if any) habits truly go away. Nasal snuff is nasty stuff, but it is still manufactured and sold. And there is a stronghold of Tennessee twist tobacco users, mostly old holdouts from the tobacco growing regions down where Tennesee meets the North Carolina.Today's joint smoking pot farmers from Cascadia may be doomed to be tomorrow's Tennessee twist holdouts.

Here in the United States, smoking was originally promoted by public health campaigns due to the risk of typhoid and other spit borne diseases that were so deadly in the early 1900s. When cigarette filters were introduced in the 50s, one of the first was the Kent Micronite filter, made from Asbestos.

So let's proceed with caution as we march into the future of legal marijuana. It would be wise to learn some lessons from the tobacco industry. Better yet, the nascent world of legal marijuana  could develop a marketing model that would put consumer 'wellbeing' paramount to profit. 

(c) 2014 Stoner Living Blog