Fear of a White Lighter | Hacker News Reader

Fear of a White Lighter

atlasobscura.com

22 pointssamclemens10 comments

From article: "So when marijuana smokers would use white lighters to pack down their bowls, the lighter would get stained with ash and resin, which the cops could then use to bust them"

Yea I'll buy that. I smoked cigarettes but not weed for a few years and the MJ smokers I knew didn't like white lighters for that reason. They didn't say they were unlucky though.

Black bic lighters have white bottoms that get resinated and ashy too. Most, if not all, bics have the white endcaps.

Source: looking at a white bic, a lime green bic, and a brown bic on my desk right now

I don't get that, "You're under arrest for having smoked weed in the past even though you have nothing on you!"

Makes no sense.

'You're under arrest for having murdered in the past even though you have no murder weapon on you!'

I'm not at all in favor of criminalising recreational drugs, But arresting someone for having done something illegal without them currently doing said illegal thing makes sense.

Murder is a (mostly) provable thing though, you can't prove someone smokes weed because their lighter is a little charred.

I'm also pretty sure it's not even the act of smoking weed that's illegal, it's the possession (at least that's the case in the UK) - you can't nab someone for possession because they possessed at some point in the past, because that is - by definition - no longer possession.

the actions of police officers are not rational. many cops are willing to arrest people they don't like just to give them a hard time, even when they know the charges won't stick. cops NEVER get punished for this kind of thing. some cops just like making a hippy spend a night in jail because of the discomfort and inconvenience it causes to the detained person. don't be surprised when a job that grants authoritarian privileges attracts authoritarians with a sadistic streak.

This superstition is the reason I only buy white lighters :) other colors seem to disappear when someone borrows one and forgets to return it. But no one forgets to return the white lighter, because they think it's unlucky! Their bad luck is my good luck.

My unscientific theory is that white lighters are less likely to work. The bic lighters that have all the cool designs on them are actually a plastic wrap, and as they get older the wrap tends to peel away and eventually reveals a white lighter. So, it stands to reason that if you have a white lighter it is probably older, and older lighters are more likely to be low on fuel.

I think it's people building stories and rituals related to their addiction. Other drug users do it, gamblers do it...

Or maybe to put it less negatively, the more people think about something they enjoy, the more likely they are to create folklore about it.

I always just figured it was a filtering/signaling mechanism. People who have the habit are more likely 'down', white lighter = narc, etc.

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