It’s an open but distressing secret; glass sales are suffering. It’s an issue everyone in the industry sees, but few want to discuss openly. While we’ve touched on this topic in previous issues, we’ve only scratched the surface.
To delve deeper, we spoke with veteran glass blower Fred Scorsch, who had so much to say that he gave us a full article instead of just a quote. His insights offer a comprehensive look at the challenges facing the pipe market today, from economic pressures to changing consumer behaviors. We hope this article sheds light on the complexities of the situation and highlights the importance of supporting skilled artisans and preserving the cultural heritage within the cannabis community.
The big picture is always composed of its individual threads woven together through time. We can follow the decline of American manufacturing from the creation of an international plan. These reactionary economic policies ushered in by Nixon, along with his drug war, created wage and price controls on the US economy and abolished the fixed exchange rate system. This agenda was codified with Reagan and then NAFTA under Clinton. This betrayal of the working class was the mold used to funnel profits to capital as the US market’s exposure to globalism intensified the downward pressure on wages, benefits, and living standards. This allowed corporations to escape laws to protect workers and the environment while opening the way to regulate finance, destroy trade unions, and privatize public services.
Pipe culture is one of those threads woven into this fabric of the American dream. We were lucky because the Drug War, with its cannabis prohibition, created a bubble in time. The hysteria in Congress against drugs resulted in laws banning the importation of paraphernalia, giving us years to live the dream before American glass blowers were buried by the global market like the rest of America’s workers have been for sixty years. While my design ideas have had a global impact, I’ve never considered myself an artist. My entry into glass was inspired by the fire itself as a hobby of passion that became a business of necessity in the goal to provide for a growing family. This protection from low-wage workers in the global economy because of this prohibition had allowed our little company to provide benefits, paid holidays, and vacation, along with health insurance to our workers for decades. Their dedication made our dream possible.
Skilled labor takes years to create and needs to be valued. This disinvestment in American workers is evident by the disruption in the supply chains we have just witnessed. We are squeezed by inflation and the glut of foreign imports while corporations have been making record profits and spending it to override democracy. Our designs are often knocked off for a fraction of the cost that we can produce them for in the United States. Artists and production blowers selling direct have undercut the stores—and by abandoning them, they have also abandoned us.
The market pressures of competition thinned out the pie. The amount of gas stations, convenience stores, and vape shops have made it difficult for quality stores to survive; I have seen some of the very best close their doors. This once insular culture, now commodified, has lost its soul, and its young have lost any sense of ritual as vapes have become habitual. This trend means many have never smoked pure flower—just concentrated garbage full of food-grade terpenes and chemical cocktails destined for landfills. Thirty-six years in the smoke shop industry, and I’ve seen several bubbles bringing people in for the green rush and then taking some out when they pop. This one hit really hard. Some will find the way. With conscious intent, we can educate and create culture where it has been lost. We are smoke eaters born from those echoes of time. Our weaving is done in the fire.
