![](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ScratchSniffBookWeedcover-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
C<\/span>annabis fans and curious readers are both going to have a lovely time smelling their way through the world\u2019s first \u201cScratch & Sniff Book of Weed.\u201d Released globally right before 420 this year, the 22-page board book is full of silly smells, gorgeous whimsical art and tightly distilled weed facts \u2014 with a secret goal of normalizing the once-stigmatized plant.<\/p>\n What this is not is a big book of different bud smells.<\/p>\n That was the original plan, according to co-author Seth Matlins \u2014 a marketing guru at a powerhouse talent agency in Los Angeles. Matlins said he saw the mouth-watering photos of cannabis buds on Stock Pot Images<\/a> (a stock photo service focusing on the cannabis sector) and wanted to do a book of different strain smells.<\/p>\n But the idea ran into an immediate logistical and technical hurdle: None of those rare scents exist.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we had in mind was the book \u2018Green,\u2019 [but] you\u2019d have to go out and manufacture scents,\u201d Matlins said.<\/p>\n So Matlins and his wife, writer and editor Eve Epstein, pivoted to a second idea: use off-the-shelf scratch and sniff smells to illustrate a cannabis basics book. The world\u2019s library of aromas isn\u2019t very big, Matlins learned.\u00a0There\u2019s about 100 of them, \u201cand one thing we learned is, damn, it\u2019s so random.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s stuff like hamburger, nilla wafer, pizza and cotton candy, but \u201cone of the things that surprised us was there\u2019s not a truer scent of weed.\u201d<\/p>\n The limitations of the world\u2019s scratch and sniff library proved to be a benefit though, because Matlins and Epstein ended up writing a book for a much bigger audience.<\/p>\n Indeed, the \u201cScratch and Sniff Book of Weed<\/a>\u201d could have been a throwaway gag title destined for the Urban Outfitters sale rack. Instead, Matlins and Epstein delve into the 4,000-year history of pot and distill their findings into 22 tight board-book pages professionally printed by global publishing leader Abrams Image.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s not a piece of punctuation or illustration that we didn\u2019t think about in terms of representing the mainstreaming of cannabis culture and the power of this plant,\u201d Matlin said.<\/p>\n The colorful illustrations by Ann Pickard and the playful use of aroma become the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicinal cannabis facts go down. So many weed manifestos these days try to brow-beat readers into joining Team Cannabis. \u201cScratch and Sniff\u201d is content to tickle and tease its way into hearts and minds.<\/p>\n For starters, the book is dedicated to Mary Jane Rathbun a play on \u201cBrownie\u201d Mary Rathbun \u2014 an obscure but elemental figure in medical marijuana history. And 10 percent of all the book\u2019s profits are going to a leading drug law reform advocate, the Drug Policy Alliance.<\/p>\n The book features four recurring characters, and none of them look like \u201cThe Big Lebowski\u201d or Jeff Spicoli. They include a senior Asian-American woman, Masako, a young Black man named Otis, a white dad character called Bob, and a young Latina soccer mom named Rosa. For the section on sex, Masako is depicted with another woman in one drawing and with Otis in another.<\/p>\n Hard-core cannabis heads are going to balk at the lack of actual weed smells in the book. The Sour Diesel<\/a> smells too sweet, the Blueberry Kush smells to candy-like and the OG Kush<\/a> is missing its bite.<\/p>\n But anyone who\u2019s smoked a lot of ganja will find aromatic nods to weed far beyond the literal scents. The \u201cpine\u201d smell works better as Diesel. The \u201cbeer\u201d smell channels the Haze<\/a> lineage of cannabis. The meat, pepper and burger sniffs evoke certain hashy, peppery and savory indicas.<\/p>\n The whole book is a like a playful sleeper agent, befriending readers with pluckiness, then whispering about social justice issues, cannabis\u2019 rich history, science and the medical conditions it can treat.<\/p>\n The silliness continues this year with a Kindle version of the book, as well.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think it\u2019s funny,\u201d Matlins said. \u201cIt\u2019s ridiculous there\u2019s a Kindle version of a scratch and sniff book.\u201d<\/p>\n Originally published in\u00a0Issue 27<\/a>\u00a0of Cannabis Now.\u00a0<\/em>LEARN MORE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, what is your favorite book about cannabis?<\/p>\n The post The \u2018Scratch & Sniff Book of Weed\u2019 Lets the Terps do the Talking<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
This whimsical book is filled with smells alongside tidbits of cannabis history. Cannabis fans and curious readers are both going to have a lovely time smelling their way through the world\u2019s first \u201cScratch & Sniff Book of Weed.\u201d Released globally right before 420 this year, the 22-page board book isContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":23309,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,99,85,2022],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23308"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23308"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23310,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23308\/revisions\/23310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ScratchSniffBookWeedcover.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n
\nRead More: The \u2018Scratch & Sniff Book of Weed\u2019 Lets the Terps do the Talking<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"