When I was a kid, and when my kids were kids, smoking pot was just that – smoking pot.
The people who used recreational marijuana were called potheads or druggies or just losers. Whether you referred to the activity as trying the Mary Jane, toking the weed, smoking the ganja, or just smoking pot, the stigma was still there. When all the druggie potheads talked about having legal marijuana stores, they were laughed at. Everyone realized, when they would say we should make their wildwood weed legal for medical purposes, that they were just being stupid loser potheads. Then, though, more sophisticated folks started enjoying the use of recreational marijuana, and they insisted that the happy weed must have medicinal value. There began the change in language that has already resulted in legal medical cannabis use. If you have a medical condition such as MS or fibromyalgia or cancer, there is no stigma at all around using medical marijuana. Those same smart people have stopped using the terminology “smoking weed,” and have instead begun to call the act “using recreational marijuana.” This simple change in language has people conjuring up images of men in suits sitting at a conference table and toking ever so delicately on recreational marijuana. That is the polar opposite of the connotation of pulling on the happy weed, which makes me think of a bunch of losers in tie-dyed shirts sitting around a dirty living room enjoying their favorite pastime. Smoking pot has a better reputation now that people are referring to marijuana as medical marijuana and smoking pot as enjoying recreational marijuana.