Cannabis has been around for… well… a long time. Heck, its first documented use recreationally was dated back to ancient Greece in the 5th century BCE. As you can imagine, with how long this plant has been around, people have used it in countless different ways and called it just as many different things. It’s that second part that we want to talk about today because cannabis slang in and of itself is quite a hefty topic to unpack.
A year or so ago, some of us noticed that different age groups called cannabis by different names. We’re not just talking about pot and weed but some truly interesting slang. Mind you, there’s no judgment here. In fact, it’s fascinating to see the diversity of weed slang just across generations let alone cultures and centuries. Moreover, we’ve only taken note of these trends so we can better help and relate to our customers. But being the canna-enthusiast you are, we figured sharing some of these terms might spark your curiosity as well.
Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list (a quick Wikipedia search shows there’s over 1,200 slang terms for cannabis!), but these are trends we’ve noticed in the good ol’ PNW.
Our Gen Z and younger Millennial customers (give or take the 21-30 year olds) prefer terms like bud, kush, or simply weed. Pre-roll is also increasingly common, referring to pre-rolled joints, as well as dabs, shatter, and wax, referring to concentrates.
Older Millennials and early Gen Xers (the 30-40 year olds) seem partial to dub which comes from a dubsack, essentially $20 worth of weed or about a gram. Chronic is also common, having came into use back in the 1990s and popularized by the one and only Snoop Dogg.
The next decade is especially creative with their terms ranging from sensi (short for sensimillia, derived from Spanish sin semilla meaning “without seeds”) to bubonic-chronic which.. May or may not be where Snoop got his idea, now that we think about it. At any rate, green and the devil’s lettuce are also common among today’s 40-50 year old segment.
It gets even more interesting with our 50-60 year old customers who prefer terms like wacky tabacky, eight ball (in reference to an eighth of weed), and Thai sticks — densely packed, high quality weed that’s wrapped around a cannabis stem with hemp rope. And no, contrary to popular belief, they weren’t dipped in opium, though some might have been coated in cannabis oil or kief (the trichomes, or crystals, responsible for the high).
Finally, our 60+ customers’ slang brings us back to the foundations of American slang for all of today’s users: cannabis and cannabis. Smack is another popular one for this group, though it hasn’t seemed to have stuck around with other generations.
No matter what you call it, we can all agree on how wonderful cannabis is. Let us know some other slang for weed the next time you stop in so we can add it to our growing list! We can’t wait to learn more and to see the terms of the next few decades too.
