“Head shop†is a term that’s been around for a while and was popular with the hippie counterculture in the late 60s. A head shop is a store that sells paraphernalia used for the consumption of cannabis and tobacco, whereas a smoke shop focuses strictly on tobacco, although nowadays, it may depend on what state you’re in. A head shop typically carries products such as rolling papers, pipes, one hitters, bongs, heady glass pieces, pipe screens, vaporizers, roach clips, rolling machines, stash boxes, lighters, and incense. Head shops are also known to carry magazines and other media related to the cannabis culture, cultivation, music, tattooing, and other counterculture activities.
Where the term “head shop†came from is not exactly clear, although some guesses are that the slang originated in the early 1900s with the first documentation of pairing the word “head†with someone using drugs. Hence the term “pot head.†If you’ve listened carefully to Jefferson Airplane’s song “White Rabbit,†you’ll hear the last two lines of “feed your head, feed your head.†The head shop is the place to go to feed your head.