A wise sage once quipped: “Smoking won’t make you go to hell, but it sure makes it smell like you’ve been there!” Smoke odor is considered to be an inevitable part of the cannabis experience, and also a dead giveaway to your immediate vicinity that somebody is smoking the devil’s lettuce. Some of us (like me, with a cottage in the country where I could sacrifice goats to Ba’al without attracting too much attention) don’t need to worry about being found out, but for those of you living in, shall we say, busier circumstances, you could use something to contain the smoke.
So, to YOCAN, certainly no stranger to our regular review readers, and their new Yocan Green personal air filter series. We have two kinds: The Invisibility Cloak filter, and the Yocan Green Personal Air Filters, which come in a range of five fun shapes and have replaceable filters. Both the personal air filters and the Invisibility Cloak are $19.99 each, with replacement air filters running $5.99.
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Fun shapes
- 100% decomposable materials
- Eco-friendly
- Economical
Cons:
- Niche use
Recommendations: How about a way to filter smoke from the joint, blunt, or bong, too? Some kind of “smokeless ashtray” for stoners?
With Yocan Green, Your Smoke is Clean
Let it never be said that Yocan doesn’t go all-in. We have a large Invisibility Cloak filter here and then a series of five personal air filters in different shapes. All of them have the same general purpose: blow smoke into them and the smoke disappears. We’re calling this an “introduction” and not a review because we’re not going to rip through this whole batch they sent us puffing into each one. We’ve seen smoke filters before and have no reason to doubt Yocan’s personal air filters strain out the smoke as well as any other brand.
The Invisibility Cloak is larger
A big fist-sized handful, the Invisibility Cloak boasts a 4-stage HEPA filter, promising “thousands of uses.” It has a rubber stopper over the mouthpiece; remove it and blow in there, then replace. There doesn’t seem to be a replaceable filter unit inside. The Invisibility Cloak promises not only to filter the smell from smoke or vapor, but to screen out minor contaminants from the gaseous output of your exhale. It seems to be the more heavy-duty offering.
The Personal Air Filters are cute and replaceable
They come in a range of five designs:
- pinecone
- penguin
- flying saucer
- mushroom
- whale
You can get the idea from the photo. All five are identical in function, with a mouthpiece at the top being the main form factor difference. The black rubber casing slides right off the filter body, which can then be replaced after the prescribed number of uses.
The Personal Air Filters are roughly palm-sized, discreet, and easy to store in pocket or purse right along with your other smoking / vaping gear.
100% Eco-Friendly
Yocan Green, as the name suggests, is a branch of Yocan’s products made with an eco-friendly design. The materials in these filters, rubber and all, will naturally biodegrade within ten years, less than the average life of a cigarette butt filter. This is important, because let’s face it, if you use these regularly, you’ll probably go through a lot of filters. You can use Yocan Green filters with confidence that you’re not hurting the environment.
What About the Smoke You Don’t Inhale?
The only downside to using an exhale-activated air filter is that your joint/ preroll/ blunt/ pipe/ etc. is still smoking away while you’re exhaling into the filter. Which means that, if you don’t have a way to contain that smoke, you go to all this trouble and still have the odor and particles. I even polled the Reddit /r/weed forum and got very mild responses from a few people who find filters useful.
But with that being said:
- You can always smoke near a window, hold the joint outside, and use the filter so no smoke stays inside the building
- Vaping is 100% clean into the filter since vapes don’t keep puffing when you’re not inhaling
- A technique of careful lighting and chamber-clearing with each hit virtually eliminates the waste smoke from a bong
But even with vaping, vapor does not hang in the air nearly as long as smoke, so that might be a bit of overkill.
With that being said, even in a shut-up room with a blunt, exhaling into the filter still removes that much smoke, which is better than removing no smoke. Besides the practical matter of keeping your session a bit more secret, straining out the smoke helps prevent indoor spaces from becoming polluted. As any veteran stoner or smoker can tell you, smoking indoors makes for a residue buildup on surfaces, and over time the smell saturates the room and furnishings in a stale, greasy odor that sticks to your nose even when you leave.
So with Yocan Green filters, you can exorcise the ghosts of your past sessions by containing the smoke as much as possible.
Works for tobacco and other smoke too!
No matter WHAT you’re smoking, if it makes odor or smoke particles, a HEPA filter will help keep those smells and stains from becoming permanent fixtures of your home. So, while not all of you use filters (and maybe you should consider it if you’re tired of your house, car, clothes, hair, pet, etc. smelling like a barbecue), those who do will no doubt be satisfied with Yocan Green’s innovative and imaginative design.
Find Yocan Green’s entire line here.
Readers, tell us whether you use filters and why or why not here in the comments or in our densely clouded, unfiltered forum.