Cannabis vapers more welcome in public than nicotine vapers

Vices By Reilly Capps

Use your indoor voice indoors and your cannabis vape pen outdoors.

Sure, you can say Fuck Everybody I'll Do What I Want and rev up your Harley next to the taproom patio and shave your legs at the communal sink at the gym and park your bike in the office break room, but disregarding social norms completely does not make you punk, does not make you metal, it just makes you a social suicide bomber insufficiently mothered by a woman too busy at her job jacking off roughnecks for fivers.

So, then, take note:

Vaping cannabis is crazy well tolerated, even in public.

That's the takeaway from a survey of more than 1,000 people by Detox.net, a for-profit company that helps Little Johnny cure his whippets habit.

While most forms of drug use (except drinking) are mostly shunned and degraded outside Fetty Wap videos, vaping cannabis in real life is getting fairly socially acceptable, by some measures more socially acceptable than vaping nicotine.

Only 28 percent of respondents say it's "unacceptable" to vape marijuana outside a bar. Only slightly more think vaping weed on the street or in a public park is "unacceptable."

That means that about 70 percent of people aren't too bothered with you vaping outside bars, on streets and in parks.

In fact, only 16 percent of non-marijuana users told Detox.net that they would report someone to the authorities if they were vaping marijuana.

This checks out with real life. In places like Denver or Seattle or San Francisco, a dank weed smell lightly perfumes the whole city and nobody bats an eye. Certainly cops aren't called.

A second takeaway from this study is that you can officially tone it down with the paranoia in public; almost no one cares that you're vaping cannabis.

Doing drugs does not exempt you from basic considerations of your fellow human. In fact, you are more beholden to them. Excuse me, you're saying, I'm about to jump to a different plane of consciousness from you, is it alright if I do that here?

Vaping marijuana in public is still illegal nearly everywhere. And the more of a lawbreaker you are, the more considerate you need to be. This is why Al Capone handed out free soup.

There are lots of places survey respondents did find "unacceptable" to vape cannabis; 88 percent said it was unacceptable to vape marijuana in public transportation, and 84 percent in a restaurant.

But vaping cannabis in public has become like showing underboob or pulling out your phone at the dinner table or bringing your dog inside the restaurant. People notice, but they don't freak out. They might even be a little bit into it.

[photos via Shutterstock.]