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WASHINGTON — The smell near the Columbia Heights Metro station Wednesday night was unmistakable. A lit joint in hand, Tony Lee stood outside a residence talking with friends as the evening bustle passed them by, no one paying the group of men any special attention.

“The community I’m in, everyone engages in smoking,” said Lee, 34, a District of Columbia resident who runs his own small construction firm. Plus, he said, if he’s not smoking, he detects the odor of other people getting high throughout the city on a daily basis anyway.

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“I’ve grown accustomed to it,” he said.

This casual attitude to marijuana — and the distinctive waft that accompanies the smoking of it — seems to be the new norm in the District in the year since the city voted to legalize possession of small amounts of pot.

According to a new Washington Post poll, 57 percent of District residents say they smell marijuana at least once a month. And of those residents, 45 percent say the smell of the once-illicit substance doesn’t bother them at all; 17 percent say it doesn’t bother them “too much.” Fewer than 4 in 10 respondents say the smell irks them at least to a degree.