The Death of the Dime Bag

From brick weed and pager dealers to QR codes, lab results and loyalty points, buying cannabis has changed almost beyond recognition. 

There was a time when buying weed didn't involve a menu. 

There were no terpene profiles. No QR codes. No rewards points. Nobody asked whether you wanted flower that was uplifting, relaxing, creative, euphoric or good for watching four hours of nature documentaries. 

You called a guy. 

And if you were buying cannabis in the 1980s or '90s, there was a decent chance that guy didn't even have a cell phone. 

I’m 45 now, which means my early cannabis-buying years landed squarely in the 1990s. Back then, the process wasn't exactly what anyone would call convenient. 

You called somebody's house. You paged somebody. You found somebody who knew somebody. Once you finally made contact, you picked a meeting spot—usually somewhere public enough that two cars sitting near each other wouldn't look suspicious. A grocery store parking lot, a shopping plaza, somewhere with plenty of other cars around. 

There weren't cameras everywhere back then, and nobody was texting, “I'm here.” You agreed on a place and a time and hoped everybody showed up. 

Then came four of the most historically inaccurate words in cannabis culture: “I'll be there in 20.” 

Twenty minutes could actually mean twenty minutes. 

It could also mean three hours. 

And once you left the house, you couldn't exactly call and ask where the hell they were. Cell phones weren't sitting in everyone's pockets yet. If you got tired of waiting, you might find a pay phone and send another page. If things were getting desperate, you added 911 to the number—the universal pager language among our crowd for hurry up, this is important. 

Then you waited some more.

Eventually, the right car would roll into the parking lot. You'd pull alongside it or park nearby, somebody would reach through a window, money went one direction and a sandwich bag went the other. 

No receipt. 

No label. 

No loyalty points. 

Just two cars in a crowded parking lot trying very hard to look like absolutely nothing was happening. 

Welcome to the age of the dime bag. 

WHEN TEN BUCKS WAS AN ACTUAL CATEGORY

For younger cannabis consumers, “dime bag” probably sounds like terminology from a movie. For everybody else, you already know. 

You weren't always ordering cannabis by beautifully weighed eighths with the weight printed on a government-required label. 

Sometimes you had ten dollars. 

Therefore, you bought ten dollars' worth of weed. 

That was the measurement system. 

A dime. 

A dub. 

An eighth. 

A quarter. 

A bag. 

How accurately any of those descriptions reflected the weight depended heavily upon who was holding the scale—assuming there was a scale. 

And the packaging? 

Usually whatever was available.

Sandwich bags. Folded plastic. The corner of a baggie twisted into a knot. Occasionally something even less sophisticated. 

There was no strain information because half the time nobody knew what strain it was. Ask what it was and you might get: 

“It's good.” 

That was the Certificate of Analysis. 

Sometimes somebody would tell you it was “hydro,” “kind bud,” “Christmas bud,” “skunk” or whatever name had made its way down the supply chain. Whether that name had any relationship to the plant's actual genetics was another matter entirely. 

Most consumers weren't choosing between twelve cultivars. 

You were choosing between weed and no weed. 

THE BRICK WEED YEARS 

Then there was brick weed. 

If you were around cannabis during the '80s or '90s, you probably encountered compressed commercial marijuana somewhere along the way. A significant amount of cannabis entering the United States during that era came through Mexico, and federal drug reports from the period document major quantities crossing the southwestern border. 

The stuff often arrived compressed hard enough that individual buds had seemingly forgotten they were once part of a plant. 

You'd peel off a chunk and begin the ritual. 

Stem. 

Seed. 

Stem. 

Seed. 

Maybe some actual smokable material. 

Every once in a while you'd miss a seed while breaking it up, pack a bowl, take a hit and— POP.

Anybody who smoked back then knows that sound. 

Today's younger consumer might think something exploded. 

The rest of us would just look down at the bowl and think, “Damn it. Missed one.” 

And despite the occasional claims from someone reminiscing that “weed was stronger back then,” available federal testing data show the opposite for typical seized cannabis. DEA-seized samples averaged about 3.96% delta-9 THC in 1995; by 2022, that average had risen to 16.14%. Those numbers don't describe every product available in either era—high-quality cannabis absolutely existed decades ago—but they do show how dramatically the broader market changed. 

Back then, really good flower was something you remembered. 

Today, consumers complain because their 24% THC flower only has 1.8% terpenes. We've come a long way. 

THE RIDE HOME 

Here's the part nostalgia sometimes edits out. 

Buying weed could be stressful as hell. 

I remember driving home after picking some up and suddenly becoming the most law-abiding driver in America. 

Full stop at every stop sign. 

Turn signal activated approximately nine minutes before the turn. 

Hands at ten and two. 

Speed limit: 45? 

We're doing 44. 

And God forbid headlights stayed behind you for more than three turns. You'd glance in the rearview mirror. 

Still there. 

Another turn. 

Still there.

Your brain immediately began preparing for federal prison. 

It didn't matter that you might have had a small bag of cannabis tucked away. In your mind, law enforcement was assembling a multi-agency task force behind the Taco Bell. 

Then the car turned. 

Instant relief. 

That's one of the biggest differences between cannabis then and cannabis now. 

The old buying experience contained an anxiety younger consumers in legal markets may never fully understand. 

For much of modern American history, cannabis possession carried the possibility of criminal consequences. Marijuana was placed in Schedule I when the federal Controlled Substances Act was enacted in 1970, and prohibition shaped cannabis culture for decades afterward. 

The fear wasn't imaginary. 

People were arrested. 

People received criminal records. 

People lost jobs. 

Families worried about what neighbors, employers, teachers and relatives might think if someone discovered they smoked weed. 

Which brings us to another relic of the era. 

THE “LAZY STONER” 

Cannabis didn't just have a legal problem. 

It had a reputation problem. 

If you smoked weed, there was a cultural stereotype waiting for you. 

Lazy. 

Unmotivated. 

Burnout. 

Pothead.

Stoner. 

Someone who would spend his entire adult life melted into a couch watching cartoons while eating cereal directly from the box. 

There were certainly lazy people smoking cannabis. 

There were also lazy people who didn't. 

But nuance wasn't exactly cannabis culture's greatest luxury during prohibition. For years, many consumers learned to keep cannabis in a separate compartment of their lives. You could have a job. 

Raise children. 

Own a home. 

Run a company. 

Coach Little League. 

Serve in the military. 

Write books. 

Build things. 

Create things. 

And still understand that there were people who would reevaluate everything they thought about you if they learned you smoked marijuana. 

That's difficult to explain to someone who can now walk into a bright dispensary, show an ID and ask a budtender whether Gelato 41 or Gary Payton has the better terpene profile. 

The stigma hasn't disappeared. 

But the conversation has undeniably changed. 

THEN EVERYTHING STARTED MOVING 

The modern cannabis marketplace didn't appear overnight. 

California voters approved Proposition 215 in 1996, becoming the first state to allow medicinal cannabis use under state law.

That happened right in the middle of the era I'm talking about. 

Think about that. 

While some of us were still paging somebody and waiting beside a pay phone, an American state had begun creating legal protections for patients using cannabis. 

Then Colorado and Washington voters approved adult-use legalization measures in 2012. 

From there, cannabis culture started changing at a speed that would have sounded absurd to a smoker in 1988. 

Legal cultivation. 

Licensed dispensaries. 

Commercial brands. 

Cannabis expos. 

Extraction labs. 

Professional packaging. 

Online menus. 

Delivery in some markets. 

Seed-to-sale tracking. 

Professional photographers shooting flower like it's jewelry. 

Cannabis chefs. 

Cannabis magazines. 

Entire companies devoted to making sure your weed comes in a container your kid can't open. The dime bag never stood a chance. 

FROM “WHAT DO YOU HAVE?” TO 87 CHOICES 

Walk into a modern licensed dispensary in a regulated state and compare it with the old transaction. 

Instead of:

“What do you have?” 

You might encounter flower arranged by cultivar, brand, potency and price. 

There may be pre-rolls, concentrates, vape cartridges, chocolates, gummies, drinks, tinctures, topicals and products that would've required a thirty-minute explanation in 1995. 

Regulated cannabis markets commonly include requirements involving testing, labeling, packaging and keeping products away from children, although the exact rules differ considerably from state to state. 

Some packages include batch information and scannable codes connecting consumers with product or testing information. 

Then the cashier asks: 

“Do you have a rewards account with us?” 

A rewards account. 

For weed. 

Somewhere, the guy who made us wait three hours in 1996 just felt a disturbance in the universe. 

There are dispensaries sending birthday discounts. 

Text-message specials. 

First-time-customer deals. 

Happy hours. 

Points. 

Online ordering. 

Order-ahead pickup. 

We've gone from hoping our dealer answers the pager to getting irritated because our 20% discount code won't apply at checkout. 

SOMETHING WAS GAINED 

It's easy to make fun of commercialization.

Cannabis culture absolutely lost some of its outlaw weirdness when weed became a retail product. 

But let's not pretend everything about the old days was better. 

Today's regulated market can give consumers information we simply didn't have. What's in it? 

How strong is it? 

Who grew it? 

When was it tested? 

What batch did it come from? 

Depending on the jurisdiction and product, regulated cannabis can be subject to contaminant testing and labeling requirements intended to provide consumers information and improve product safety. 

Compare that with buying a bag in 1993. 

“Is this good?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Where'd it come from?” 

“My cousin.” 

Case closed. 

BUT SOMETHING WAS LOST, TOO 

The old cannabis world had community built into it because it had to. 

You knew people. 

Someone introduced you to someone. 

Information traveled by word of mouth. 

A really good batch would develop a reputation. 

You'd hear about it before you ever saw it.

“Man, Dave has some crazy stuff right now.” 

That sentence could mobilize six people across town. 

Cannabis existed in a kind of underground social network long before anybody used the phrase social network. 

There was excitement when something exceptional appeared because you knew it might disappear. 

There were characters. 

Stories. 

Rituals. 

Half the people you bought cannabis from seemed to operate according to a concept of time completely detached from the rest of human civilization. 

Today's transaction is unquestionably easier. 

But “Order #4817 is ready for pickup” doesn't quite have the same personality.

GOODBYE TO THE DIME BAG 

I don't actually miss wondering whether the flashing lights behind me were coming for my sandwich bag. 

I don't miss picking seeds out of compressed weed. 

I definitely don't miss waiting three hours for someone who was “five minutes away.” 

But I do look at today's cannabis industry occasionally and laugh at how impossible all of this would have seemed back then. 

The kid buying weed in the '90s would never have believed that one day people would walk into legitimate stores and complain that the menu didn't have enough live rosin options. 

He wouldn't have believed cannabis companies would sponsor events. 

Or that people would build careers around cannabis marketing, cooking, journalism, photography, compliance and cultivation. 

He definitely wouldn't have believed I'd someday put my own name on an article in a national cannabis magazine talking about those dime bags. 

That might be the biggest middle finger of all to the old “lazy stoner” stereotype.

The dime bag is mostly a relic now. 

The pager is gone. 

The sandwich bag has been replaced by child-resistant containers. 

The mystery weed has increasingly given way to batch numbers and testing information. The dealer's “20 minutes” has been replaced by an online pickup window. 

And cannabis consumers who once kept their use hidden now live in an America where legal cannabis businesses operate openly across much of the country, even while the legal landscape remains complicated and uneven. 

Some of that change is better. 

Some of it is stranger. 

And some of us will forever remember the first version. 

A ten-dollar bill. 

A little plastic bag. 

A few seeds rolling across the table. 

And absolutely no idea what strain we just bought.