Smoke shop v.s. Head shop
Today’s blog will be a little bit of history for some of the readers who may not know certain aspects of the industry that we are working out of. By this, we mean, our title “Sessions Smoke Shop.” Now despite our title as a smoke shop, it becomes an aspect of debate as more people are finding us as their local head shop, so to clear up any misnomers, we are going to clarify the true difference between the two phrases.
First, to get this out of the way, the correct spelling and phrasing for both of these terms are ‘phrase’ ‘shop.’ They are not compound words in the same way that workshop is a compound word. It is a smoke shop or head shop.
Next, the term smoke shop is completely self-explanatory, a smoke shop is a shop where you go to buy things to help you smoke. Clear as day, and that is exactly what we offer. We offer pipes and bowls, hookahs and shisha, as well as incense to help clear the air, everything that we provide revolves around the process of smoking.
The only thing that we do sell here that would be classified as ‘non-smoking’ would be the kratom, which we only supply due to popular demand. While kratom doesn’t belong in a smoke shop, it most definitely belongs in a head shop.
Now the definition of head shop goes back to the original phrase back in the early 1900’s. This is where the usage of the word ‘head’ to describe an addict began. Common terms back then were Opiumhead and Boozehead for a very long time.
Then when the 60’s came around and popularized the concept of psychedelic shops, it became known that these stores were places that were head shops. As in if you were an ‘acid-head’ you could purchase your ‘head’ from these shops. It was popularized at the time in music and parts of the trends of that era and became a nondescript way to tell people they could get their fix from these local stores.
We believe that over time head shops will die away from mainstream usage, and we hope so. There are a lot of times where we have been described as head shops and misled customers, but the fact is that if you’ve ever been to our store, we’re very upfront with what we provide. Many people smoke shisha and tobacco, and we provide the finest products for those people who enjoy those vices.
As the drug world is becoming more legitimized over time, it’s becoming apparent that there will be an influx of what shops provide and for what purpose. There’s a reason why we don’t call liquor stores head shops anymore.
