Perspective
The worst thing about public transit is the public. The ride itself is often delightful. Such was the case on a recent commute, where a train car’s worth of innocent passengers all got to enjoy a contact high.
BART—the Bay Area Rapid Transit light rail—can already stink enough on an unusually hot afternoon. No need to add the skunky notes of a cheap joint to the stench of commuters. Though I agree, some weed might make BART a much better trip, but I’m pretty confident that’s one reason they make gummies.
You can tell the difference between the smell of pot lingering on clothes from an afternoon sesh versus the sharper smell of actual smoke wafting into your nostrils when someone exhales. In this particular moment, it was the latter.
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Puff, puff, pass as a passenger on transit? I looked around like the grumpy old man that I am.
A few kids coming home from school? Double-take. Nope, not them.
Some tech bros with Patagonia quarter zips and man purses. Maybe?
But then my eyes–or rather my nose–spotted the doobie duo. Two dudes sharing a freshly lit joint. I smelled the match first, then the marijuana. We were in the Transbay Tube, and they were smoking. And thus, so was the whole front third of the car.
I don’t care if you want to smoke a joint. In fact, if you’re sharing a laugh and a blunt with a buddy, that may be the best thing possible for your mental health. My only beef is, why do it on BART?
Let’s explore this.
Hotboxing on BART: just say no
For cannabis consumers, number one? Your actions reflect poorly on all users. If you’re lighting up on transit, everyone looks at you as an irresponsible slacker. Even if you’re not.
Number two is secondhand smoke. We really don’t care if you’re high during the commute (as long as you’re quiet), but blowing smoke into the faces of those who didn’t choose to light up? Uncool. And gross.
Number three, and this may just be me, but smoke that has been inside your body and then blown out of your mouth into my mouth just makes me feel icky. I don’t want to breathe your breath.
BART’s Jim Allison, the media relations manager and quickest person to answer my emails, assures us that cars filter out the air every 70 seconds, using an HVAC system “featuring MERV 14 filters.”
He told me, “Overall, the air in BART cars at any given moment is about 70 percent filtered and 30 percent fresh air drawn from outside the car. “
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If you’re a transit geek, air quality geek, or just a geek, BART’s website explains, “Air filters are rated by their ability to block different-sized particles, a rating known as their minimum efficiency reporting value, or MERV, on a scale from 1 to 20.” These are apparently a 14.
Number four: Smoking on BART is illegal. California Penal Code section 640(b)(3) bans smoking anything – tobacco, marijuana, vaping – anywhere from the fare gates, to the platforms, to the train cars. Transit police will enforce it if there is nothing more urgent going on.
Diving deeper into weed etiquette (weediquete?) and the laws, ANY place banning “smoking”, aka tobacco, also automatically bans cannabis smoking. The same law, California Health & Safety Code section 11362.3, also bans cannabis smoking in any public place, regardless of whether tobacco can be smoked there. This one we might take umbrage at, since I’d certainly rather people smoke cannabis than tobacco around me. But California law is only as progressive as the moment the law was enacted, and this one has been around for a while. No cannabis use in public, period. As for when you’re camping “in public”, see our article on that.
So, to my fellow train mates with the weed, please wait next time. I’m not going to be some Karen who calls BART Police, but for the elderly woman near you, someone should have asked you to stop. And for the rest of us? Let us decide whether or not we want to inhale. (And smell like pot.) It’s not your call.
At least it wasn’t a crack pipe this time. I’ll save that incident for another screed.