Stoner

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The jam band Phish is often seen as a staple of stoner culture.

A stoner is slang for a member of the subculture of those who habitually use marijuana. They may or may not identify themselves with other drug related cultures and may even see use of other drugs, especially hard drugs, as dangerous or morally wrong. Many stoners may identify with the hippie culture but this is less common than Rastafarian identification.

It is important to understand the subtle changes in the public's image of the stoner that occured as a result of changing drug-use patterns in the United States. While most marijuana users are typically in high school, there is a growing proportion of college students who use the drug.

More noteably, as the population of marijuana users has increased over the past two decades, the stoner's image has become one of less oddity and more annoyance. This trend is an outgrowth of several changes in the patterns of marijuana use in the US. First, THC levels have increased markedly across North America, while access to the drug has also increased. The setting of the stoner has evolved with this, where once they were associated with isolated "hippie" culture (Woodstock, Grateful Dead etc), they are now increasingly regarded as deviant individuals from academia or spoilt surburbanites. It is this intersection between suburban life and drug culture which so defines the "updated" icon of the stoner.

Some towns, especially those with colleges, are plagued by the conflicts occuring from a larger population of marijuana-using college students with access to unprecedented quality of cannabis. Their appearance during odd hours at convenient stores and twenty-four hour establishments, often in the presence of other non-users who are occasionally keen enough to notice the stoner's bleary estrangement is an established cliche. It is this confrontation between sobriety and being stoned which defines the contemporary image of the stoner. Indeed, it is this explicit tension between the stoner and society which is the essence of the difference between marijuana users of today and yesterday.

The label of stoner may also be used as a slur against marijuana users. Such a usage describes a person who is constantly high throughout the day with the attributes of being unproductive and forgetful of important tasks. It should be noted that this description is not true of most marijuana users.

Stoner culture is built around the effects of marijuana usage and a self described stoner usually has a relaxed attitude. However, most stoners do not let their marijuana usage interfere with the rest of their lives and stoners are usually indistinguishable from non-users.

Other drugs sometimes associated with stoners are shrooms, nitrous oxide, and other soft drugs.

disambiguation-stoner is also a term used to describe fans and practitioners of rock music, although rock musicians and rock music fans rarely use the term themselves and consider it offensive ("dumb stoner").

Stoner

See also