How to Go to a Dispensary if You Grew Up During the War on Drugs

Be discreet. Remember, even though marijuana is now legal in many states, it was recently as illegal and dangerous as crack cocaine and heroin combined. When you go to the dispensary, be sure to park far enough away—like, in front of Planet Fitness or Dollar General Store—that no one will assume you’re there to buy legal drugs from a business that is also in the strip mall with a large sign advertising what it sells. You never know who might be watching.

Wear a disguise. When buying the pot, it’s important to act the part so that you blend in. A disguise is also a great way to prevent dispensary employees from knowing what you really look like, in case they’re later asked to identify you in a lineup. Even though pot may be legal, a lot of the other stuff you do probably isn’t. And a trench coat is a great way to carry the illegally bred meerkats or baby crocodiles that are so popular with eccentric, law-breaking drug users like you.

Use a fake voice. Decide what special voice to assume when ordering your “stash.” Your fake voice could be very high or very low, as long as it’s consistent with your pot-buying disguise. Effective pot-buying accents include California surfer, vegan from Craigslist, eccentric middle-school art teacher, and Cheech.

Know the lingo. Pot sellers love to use code words that the fuzz isn’t hip to. “The fuzz” is an oft-used pothead term for the police. (“The police” here is not a reference to the band fronted by Sting that broke up while your parents were still married.)

Code words that you might hear at the dispensary include the following:

Cannabis: This is a word that pot junkies love to throw around. It also means pot, but its usage is still largely underground, so it’s safer to use in an office setting or at a child’s birthday party.

Full-spectrum: This term refers to the little-known fact that pot seeds glow in the dark. That is why they’re so often harvested at night by pot-hungry pigs with infrared vision and a desperate need to relax. Pot that is not full spectrum is widely considered by the modern stoner to be complete garbage, except that you can still get pretty high from it. But you won’t be high in the same way that say, Donald Glover gets high. It will be an inferior, partial-spectrum high.

T.H.C.: This is a popular abbreviation among potheads that stands for “toking hits carefully,” because sometimes pot users burn their fingers on their joints and they like to remind one another to be cautious.

C.B.D.: C.B.D. are the initials of Carl Biscuits Doyle, the first European to discover this widely used natural resource and name it after himself. He was trying to enjoy the smoke from a forest fire that he’d started as revenge on a raccoon, when he realized how weird the word “raccoon” is and also that he was burning a magic forest.

Know what to ask for. When ordering from the pot menu, remember that pot is measured by volume. Terms from the dark ages of pot smoking (every year up until five years ago), such as “dime bag” and “nickel bag” are no longer in use. Acceptable quantities of pot to now order are ounce, gram, cup, litre, bushel, pallet, thermos, knapsack, mouthful, bathtub, chimney, and hammock.

Choose your method. There are so many ways to do pot now! You can vape it, waft it, rub it on your skin, gaze at it intensely, chew it, drink it, download it, run your fingers through it, or just think about it really hard. It’s totally O.K. to go old school, too, and smoke it if you still have a landline or are feeling nostalgic.

Pay with unmarked bills. Or just use your debit card. After you pay, the dispensary employee is likely to give you your pot in a store-branded bag. As you back away from the counter, you can immediately throw the conspicuous bag in the trash because you are going to smuggle the pot to your car in your underpants. This is the only way to be sure it won’t be confiscated by your dad when you get home.

Know when to leave. Even though there might be a lounge area in your dispensary, it is very important that you never sit on the dispensary couch. The dispensary couch is for display only and is likely rigged with an alarm, like the Mona Lisa is. You might think that because everyone else in the dispensary is also a pot user, you have a lot in common with them. You don’t. They don’t care about you. After making your purchase, walk directly to the exit and get in your car and go home to do your drugs alone.