“N o matter what you might do,” Ben Folds once sang, “there’s always someone out there cooler than you.”
How true. Every week I scrap together a sense of my own hipness, and every week the world lobs a curveball that busts right through my armor. It happened this past week as I was flipping through the paper and found myself reading ads for The Enthusiast, a premium smoke and vape shop on Federal Street in Greenfield.
“500 Flavors of E-Juice!” one ad proclaimed. Another boasted G-Slim vaporizers, glass heady art, CBD oil, and various new ways to burn, dab, and blow smoke.
Whatever happened to good ol’ cancer sticks and rolled joints? Clearly I’m late to the party, I thought. Is dabbing like dapping? What does CBD stand for? And what is this mysterious e-juice? It sounds like a knock-off portable phone charger, or maybe a fruit drink you’d get handed at a rave.
Vaping — the act of inhaling vaporized liquid nicotine mixtures through a refillable handheld cartridge — has taken off, especially on the West Coast. Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that California now has 1,836 vape shops, the majority of which opened in the past three years.
And, of course, one can also use much of this new hardware to ingest marijuana, which Massachusetts decriminalized in small amounts in Massachusetts in 2008 and then, in 2012, legalized for medical use, becoming the eighteenth state to do so.
I decided to stop by the store, which opened in April, and catch up on what’s on the market right now, during a time when new smoke shops are capitalizing on a rapidly-growing industry.
When I push open the door of The Enthusiast, employees Elisha MacMahon and Seth Herzig are behind the counter, chatting and munching on french fries from a carry-out box. MacMahon, 31, is chatty and assertive, with a teasing wit and a loud laugh. Herzig, 21, is the lanky, sauntering type, nodding quietly as he peers into the middle distance.
MacMahon gestures around the clean, open room, waving her hand between the glass cases and inviting me to browse. I walk over to a case filled with bowls and pipes to examine some impressive pieces of blown glassware. Translucent pipes made by JAG Glass are patterned with the American flag. Glassblower Niko Gray fashions his pipes as skateboards with rainbow wheels. Another, made by Hoobs Glass in the shape of a neon basketball shoe, sells for $8,500. Its partner shoe, MacMahon says, is currently on display in southern California.
These are works of art, intricate and expensive, which makes this well-lit room feels more like a museum gallery than a store. But there’s also plenty for the non-collector, with pipes selling for as little as $5 or $10. The cases hold a wide array of metal, glass, and plastic equipment, from hookahs to dry herb vaporizers to what Herzig calls extraction kits, which are used to concentrate marijuana down into extracts packed full of THC, often called “dabs.”
One glass case looks like it’s been hijacked from the Body Shop: it’s full of soaps, scrubs, waxes, and washes. Herzig explains that these are all made with cannabidiol, or CBD, a cannabinoid derived from marijuana that provides many of the plant’s medical effects without any of its psychological effects. “It’s not dangerous, and you don’t need a prescription for it,” he says. “As long as you have a specialty tobacco license, you can sell it.”
But most sales come from the wall of e-juice selections, Herzig says. He puts his own vaporizer to his lips and breathes in, then tips his head back and expels a thick white cloud. It smells like Gushers, that throwback playground fruit snack.
This is one of those 500 flavors on display on the wall behind him, arrayed in rows of eyedropper bottles. Most flavors lean sweet, like Fruit Roll-Ups and sugary breakfast cereals. One set, by the California company Ripe Vapes, comes in flavors like Pear Almond, Coconut Thai, and Honeysuckle Apple Crisp.
Most new customers are already smokers in some capacity, McMahon says, and the majority of those who want to try vaping are hoping to quit their traditional smoking habit. Most e-juice has four ingredients, says Herzig: vegetable glycerin, a synthetic sweetener called propylene glycol, food flavoring, and nicotine. Some e-juice contains no nicotine at all, MacMahon says, “for people who just want to chuck some clouds.”
Since e-juice doesn’t carry the tar and other ingredients of a cigarette, vaping enthusiasts often describe it as a healthier alternative. It’s how Herzig and his girlfriend stopped smoking cigarettes. MacMahon got into vaping while working here “just for the fun of it,” although she didn’t smoke cigarettes before.
When it comes to vaping, consumer safety claims have yet to be confirmed. The FDA does not currently regulate liquid nicotine as a tobacco product, although this looks likely to change within a year or two. For now, liquid nicotine producers are not required to publish ingredients, manufacturing details, or potential health effects. In other words, caveat vaper.
I ask them whether they think the arrival of the Northampton medical marijuana dispensary this fall will affect their store. MacMahon suspects that business at the Enthusiast will increase as more patients seek out quality products.
Herzig concurs. “When a 78-year-old needs to use medical marijuana, she’s not going to want to be packing bowls, smoking burnt plant matter and getting resin in her lungs. Better to use concentrate and vaporize it. One or two puffs from a vaporizer pen, and she’s all set.”
That’s as far as they’ll go in discussing weed with me. Non-medical marijuana, after all, is illegal statewide, although a survey taken in 2010 by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that nearly one in ten Massachusetts residents had used it recreationally within the past month.
That’s the tricky position the Enthusiast finds itself in right now, says store manager Kaeli Wickline. Their products, she says, are supposed to be used with tobacco and other legal substances — which, for some, means medical marijuana.
“It’s still a grey area for us, to be perfectly honest,” she says. “We don’t want to cross any lines, but we’re very aware that we have all different kinds of people coming in, some with personal medical needs. We want everyone to feel comfortable here.”
I do feel comfortable — mainly because I don’t have to discern between high-end vaporizers, or carry around that $8,500 glass sneaker without dropping it. For a chill hour or so, I’m happy to just hang out, ask questions of these young, laid-back vape nerds, and not mind the fact that they’re blowing a lot of smoke.•
Contact Hunter Styles at hstyles@valleyadvocate.com
