When you live in a rental dwelling, even in a legal state, unless it’s a freestanding home, you may be in close quarters where curbing your cannabis smells are just common decency. Though everyone should have the freedom to consume cannabis, you don’t want to bring people along for the ride who may not be down. Getting complaints is never fun.
There are a few strategies you can use to prevent excess gas from reaching the other units in your building, but there’s nothing you can do to completely get rid of smoke or cooking smells short of a commercial ventilation system. Keep in mind that some smells may always escape, so you may want to only consume or cook with cannabis during hours when your neighbors are either not home or are fast asleep.
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If you’re committed, getting your apartment in order isn’t quite as difficult as long as you prepare. The first steps are analyzing the systems you’re working with: Do your doors and windows have gaps where scents can escape? Is there fresh weather stripping on your door to seal it up? Light a match or spark a lighter near the door gap to see which way the wind is flowing, if air is being sucked out, this is where you can start.
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Depending on the layout, the best plan for consumption that doesn’t stink up the whole joint with the whole joint is to choose a single room to populate. It should ideally be the most well ventilated room in your living space, but a few fans and an open window will help you out if a home-wide vacuum effect isn’t sucking the smoke into other spaces.
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Controlling where everything goes is key, so first make sure everything is going *out* not in. One way you can ensure this is by securely blocking the door. This can be done with a towel like the rumors say, but you can also get a special strip to block any gap down to the very bottom, which is quite affordable.
As for helping the window take the wind out of your space, sometimes adding an outward pointing fan is a must, even if it’s just a clip on, or you can try holding your joint out the window like a kid in college, which there’s no shame in.
Now onto the other strategies you can deploy to reduce scent: vape or switch to bowls/bongs. When you smoke a joint or blunt, it’s trickier to control where things are going because it’s constantly burning. Smoking less cannabis at once is a solid strategy to reducing the amount of smoke and by default, smell.
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Controlling air flow, deflecting drafts, and reducing the amount of smoke are three solid techniques, and you can improve on them over time, getting as high-tech as you want. Low-tech solutions like candles, sploofs, and other hardware exist, but without the three concepts we went over, you will be fighting an uphill battle.
No one wants to piss off their neighbors, but no one wants to be told not to consume cannabis. Find a happy medium by trying to decrease the amount of exposure you’re passing on from the get go with these techniques.
