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S
idarta Medina with SM100i Olfactometer in Toronto's Kensington Market (Photo-Cole Burston)
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Sniffing out the divisive smell of weed in Toronto
with Scentroid SM100i olfactometer
With public pot smoking on the rise-along with complaints about the smell- MacLeans Magazine works with Scentroid Odour Expert to find the science behind that aroma.
Sidarta Medina's nose explores Toronto's Christie Pits Park. It inhales a hint of vanilla soft serve, a trace of chlorine, and a waft of a clammy jogger. The nostrils flutter at the scent of a mango smoothie, a California roll with soy sauce, and green peppers on a warm slice of pizza. A twister of tobacco fumes enter his nose, but he's searching for a different drug, for the earthy, bitter funk of
marijuana.
With more than 100 pot dispensaries in the Greater Toronto Area, the city recently overtook Vancouver as the cannabis capital of Canada. While tobacco sales have plummeted since the 1990s, giving non-smokers years of nasal liberty, Ottawa's promise to legalize marijuana means public smoke is back, and in communities across Canada parents and other residents complain about the stench of grow-ops or the smell of pot in the streets. To test the prevalence and pungency of the odour in public hubs downtown, Maclean's enlisted Medina, an odour measurement expert.
The starting site, Christie Pits, is a greenspace in a traditionally NDP riding, where little leagues trot across baseball diamonds and couples lie braided together in the grass. On a Friday evening in July, the park is peppered with picnickers wearing tank tops, kids wearing bathing suits, and Medina, wearing a $6,000 olfactometry apparatus-a backpack strapped with a pylon-orange canister and a hissing scuba tank, feeding a respirator mask through tubes. "They are going to think we are the Ghostbusters," he says.
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