I am writing this article to help prove to you that not every person you assumes smokes weed because of their appearance, does not actually in fact. It is your stereotypical mind that creates the assumption that they do.

Why is it that every skater kid is stereotypically looked upon as a weed smokers? I mean yeah they spend a lot of time hanging out in sketchy bushes and they always stink of weed but who knows they may just be doing their homework in those bushes, and gardening in the moms garden for all we know.

About a year ago, my best friend Grant Shambo and I were on the road travelling, when we pulled up to a motel in the middle of California somewhere and all we wanted to do was sleep. Now, Grant is not your typical looking guy. He has long dreadlocks, a crooked nose resulted from multiple snowboard crashes and an array of funny outfits and glasses. All in all, he stands out in a crowd. How ever, Grant is a dedicated clean cut athlete that doesn’t drink, smoke or put a toe out of line. After we had checked in to the motel and the young man at the front desk had given us our key, we headed up to our room with the only plan in our head was to unpack and hit the hay. No less than five minutes after entering we heard a soft knock on the door, to my unbelief because I had no clue who it could be. Shambo begrudgingly got up and opened the door only to find the scrawny desk boy asking Shambo if he had any ‘fiddy bags’ he would want to sell. Although I had no clue what to say or knew what was going on, Shambo laughed, told the boy no and shut the door on him. To my disbelief he informed me that it had not been the firs time this has happend. “Yeah dawg for sum reason because of my ‘locks’ everybody thinks I keep bags of pot in my back pocket.’ He didn’t think much of it as we went to sleep, I lay awake thinking of how bizarre that moment in time had played out. I came to the conclusion that that young desk boy should learn that just because every other person he has bought pot off coincidentally has dreadlocks, does not mean that every dreadlocked human sells pot.

Stereotypes create assumption which clouds the human brain as seen from this story. Its the same assumption you make when you see an asian driver in a rental go past you, no matter who you are your mind creates the assumption based on the stereotype that Asians are bad drivers. Its the same perception you get when you see a person with dreadlocks, or a skater with not the best sense of hygiene, your brain creates an assumption that they smoke weed. I hope this article and my personal experience with these steortypes have helped changed your mind on this.