Archiving New York’s Weed Baggies

For New Yorkers, a drastic visual switch has taken place since the recreational sale of weed was written into law in 2021. As underground dealers have been ousted by corporate outfits, those clear, boring, plastic baggies your weed used to come in have been replaced by phantasmagoric candy-style packets that compete to catch your eye in-store.

It’s a transformation that has been cataloged by Brooklyn-based photographer Vincent Pflieger, who’s spent four years rummaging through New Yorkers’ trash cans and combing the city’s sidewalks to collect over 1,500 post prohibition-era weed baggies. What started out as a mere design curiosity has evolved into a historical documentation of the loosening of New York’s cannabis laws and the commercialization of weed culture.

The project, named ‘0.125oz’ after the typical amount of weed you get in each baggy, has already borne a photo book and magazine, and later this year the Frenchman will be hosting immersive exhibition 0.125oz: A Brooklyn Story on Cannabis Design on the Lower East Side.

To find out more, we spoke to Pflieger and asked him how he turned a load of old trash into a blossoming visual archive. 

VICE: Hi Vincent. How did this project begin?
Vincent Pflieger: I always liked to wander and look at garbage, at the packaging on cans and cereal boxes—very American, flashy things. New York can be a pretty dirty place. A few years ago, I started to notice more and more cannabis pouches popping up. This was two years before the legalization, and I started to collect them. It was underground packaging; I could feel it was temporary in the urban landscape. They were shiny and used very fun iconography, usually inspired by cartoons or street art. I started to pick up more and more, and now I’ve collected more than 1,500 packages. Now, I’m doing the real work of archiving it all.

“It’s like those books about flyers from techno raves in the 80s and 90s… I keep tracking their evolution.”

So prior to legalization, it was all DIY baggies?
Full recreational legalization started in 2022, because there was a year of gray area after it was written into law in 2021. An interesting part of the project is the transition between the old packaging, which was made and designed on a computer by random cannabis dealers from New York, to the newer stuff, when corporate brands started to flood the streets. There were so many different types of packaging, and some brands were changing their style constantly.

These bags are going to be like historical artifacts in 20 to 50 years’ time.
That’s why I’m trying to archive it all. It’s like those books about flyers from techno raves in the 80s and 90s. This will stay in the record for a long time. I keep picking up more bags and tracking their evolution. It’s really important to me.

How has legalization changed New York?
There was a rush when it happened. Everyone was so happy; you could see everyone smoking on the streets, like in Washington Square, which is where kids and young people meet during the summer and smoke all day. 2022 was like the ‘summer of cannabis,’ basically. But now it’s slowed down and been incorporated into everyday life. Those who smoke, keep smoking. But the initial excitement has died down.

I’d forgotten that New York legalized weed. It’s an interesting thing to reckon with.
I’m 34 now, and when I was a kid we had to go to sketchy places to get weed or hash; going to the seventh floor of a big building in a project, and the guy’s wearing a mask and holding a pepper spray can. Now I go downstairs and have all these shiny different varieties of weed packaging. There’s chocolates, candies, flowers, all types of everything. Every fucking form and shape and color you want to imagine. It’s the American Dream for [these companies]. They just make it like it’s fast food—it’s a huge market, and they just go 1000 percent into it.

The 0.125oz book was produced by Studio 3.5Grams and designed by Simon Douaire

Follow Vincent Pflieger and Nick Thompson on Instagram