Willie Nelson may be a legendary country musician, but he is first and foremost the world’s most famous joint ambassador. Legend has it that he once smoked a joint — what he referred to in his 1988 autobiography as an “Austin Torpedo” — on the roof of the White House with Jimmy Carter’s middle son. Snoop Dogg, another self-appointed sticky-icky spokesman, says that when the two met for an Amsterdam stoner summit in 2008, Nelson showed up with not one but three smoking devices, and promptly puffed him to the floor. (“I had to hit the timeout button,” Snoop later said of smoking with Nelson.) A quick Google search will turn up an entire genre of Nelson portraiture in which the singer is framed by the haze of a freshly lit jay.

All that to say, you might be surprised to hear that Nelson is no longer much of a joint guy. “I use a vaporizer these days,” he told the British magazine Uncut in 2015. “Even though marijuana smoke is not as dangerous as cigarette smoke, any time you put any kind of smoke in your lungs it takes a toll of some kind.” GQ investigated Nelson’s claims later that year, uncovering that, while joints were still very much part of his rotation, a good portion of his pot consumption had shifted to vape pens so as to be more discreet. “And he eats candy or has oil at night for sleeping,” Nelson’s wife, Annie, added.

That the most famous stoner in the world is now exploring more healthful avenues for pot consumption is a sign of the times. According to the cannabis consumer insights firm BDS Analytics, which has logged more than 800 million transactions at dispensaries across Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and California, legal sales of concentrates (vape pen cartridges and dabs), topicals (patches, salves, lotions), and edibles are rapidly outgrowing those of loose-leaf weed product — what cannabis industry types refer to as “flower.” In 2014, the year that Colorado first began selling legal pot, 65 percent of sales revenue came from flower, while only 13 percent came from concentrates. Last year, flower made up only 47 percent of total sales in the state. The new majority of the market is distributed to concentrates at 29 percent and edibles — which barely existed at the dawn of the legal pot movement — at 15 percent. “There’s more choices available to people, and in that respect we’re seeing a lot of evolution in terms of consumption methods,” Linda Gilbert, the managing director of BDS Analytics’ consumer research division, told me. “There is an evolution of looking at marijuana in the consumer’s mind, from being about getting stoned to actually thinking of it as a wellness product.”

And also as a part of everyday life. Where there were once bowls, grinders, and rolling papers, there are now myriad sleek contraptions: dainty plastic oil pens and weed walkie-talkies and smokable iPhone cases. These days, the consumption method of choice may not even be inhalable. Maybe it’s a canister of Auntie Dolores’s vegan, sugar-free pretzels. Or a $6 bottle of Washington state’s Happy Apple cider. Perhaps you go the transdermal route and slather on some $90 Papa & Barkley THC-and-CBD-infused Releaf Balm. No matter the product, the packaging has traded the psychedelic pot leafs of yore for clean lines and Helvetica fonts.

For the last decade and a half, the joint has been the U.S.’s preferred vehicle of pot consumption. Its origins are rooted in 1800s Mexico, where a pharmacist at the University of Guadalajara first noted that laborers were smoking a blend of tobacco and marijuana in their cigarettes. As Mexicans migrated to the United States to find work and escape the tumult of their country’s 1910 revolution, they brought spliffs with them. “Limited but clear evidence shows that people in the United States first began to smoke marijuana cigarettes on the eve of World War I,” writes John Charles Chasteen in Getting High: Marijuana Through the Ages. A 1917 investigation by the Department of Agriculture noted that the drug was popular in Texas, and was either homegrown, brought in by Mexican companies, or purchased in one-ounce packages at pharmacies or grocery stores. It wasn’t until the Great Depression — when massive unemployment inspired resentful, xenophobic sentiments about immigrants and minorities — that the government moved to ban the “evil weed” and, by proxy, the joint. (The classic 1936 propaganda film Reefer Madness features menacing close-ups of anonymous hands stuffing the plant into rolling papers.) Over its 200-odd-year journey into popular culture, the joint has been demonized and lionized, comically enlarged, and anthropomorphized. It was passed like a baton among the Rastafarians, 1920s jazz musicians, and the flower children of the 1960s, functioning as a symbolic, community-building accessory to cultural, social, and political movements. In the past 20 years, it has become a benevolent mascot to stoners, the spiritual totem of many an epic stoner film, and the only way to properly enjoy a jam band.

As smoking accessories have modernized in the past 10 years, and as more states have legalized sales, grinding and rolling up bud has gradually become a more obscure ritual. And the era of the hastily rolled marijuana cigarette — crystallized by everyone from Cheech and Chong to Barack Obama — is slowly coming to a close. “If you fast-forward 10 years and look back at the cannabis market, I’ll take a guess that in some ways we’ll think about consuming cannabis flower like we think about consuming a cigar now,” said Alan Gertner, the CEO of Hiku, a Canadian cannabis producer and retailer that aims to make pot consumption more mainstream. “It’s a ritual, it’s a heritage moment, it’s about celebration. But ultimately cannabis flower for any individual is somewhat hard to interact with. The idea that a 20-year-old is going to learn to roll a joint is sort of ludicrous.”

Though humans have been consuming cannabis since prehistoric times, the recent legalization of recreational weed in states including Washington and Colorado presented, among many things, tantalizing business opportunities. Almost immediately, Silicon Valley caught the downwind scent of pot and money from its Western neighbors and set to work disrupting an industry then largely strung together by off-the-grid dealers and enthusiasts. (Leave it to the tech industry to charge full speed into a market fraught with complex social and legal issues.) “The entire tech-industrial complex is getting in on the action,” Wired wrote in 2014. “Investors, entrepreneurs, biotechnologists, scientists, industrial designers, electrical engineers, data analysts, software developers. Industry types with experience at Apple and Juniper and Silicon Valley Bank and Zynga and all manner of other companies are flocking to cannabis with the hopes of creating a breakout product for a burgeoning legitimate industry.”

That breakout product came in the form of the modern-day vape. Vaporizing contraptions have technically existed in various forms since as early as the fifth century B.C. Scythians constructed makeshift booths out of sticks and woolen felt, into which they would place hot stones and hemp seed. (“Immediately it smokes, and gives out such a vapor as no Grecian vapor-bath can exceed; the Scyths, delighted, shout for joy,” wrote the Greek historian Herodotus.) But it wasn’t until last century that personal, portable vaporizing devices arrived on the market. The first viable “fake” and “smokeless” cigarettes were introduced in the 1960s and ’70s as a more healthful alternative to traditional tobacco products. One iteration was called “Favor,” paired with the tagline “Do yourself a favor.” (It bombed.)

In 2003, a Chinese pharmacist named Hon Lik developed a device that would become the basis for the modern-day e-cigarette, and the market for them quickly exploded. Cannabis vaporizers disguised as tobacco vaporizers followed. With the help of generous Silicon Valley investments, Bay Area–based companies like Firefly and Ploom (now Pax Labs) reimagined cumbersome devices like the Volcano to resemble the industry’s sleek, fetishized gadgets. Not only were vaporizers attractive and easier to carry around, but studies eventually found that they were safer than combustible smoking accessories. “It tastes really nice, soft, not too harsh,” one YouTuber said in a 2012 video review of the first Pax. “A nice clean vapor … no combustion, no second-hand smoke.” The first iterations resembled pipes, and they cradled loose-leaf pot in a chamber of insulated air while a hot lithium-ion battery warmed the goods at a highly controlled temperature. Eventually battery-warmed THC oil cartridges — which were less flavorful and nearly odorless — arrived on the market as an even more discreet option.

“Cannabis is a very complex plant,” Pax vice president JJ O’Brien told me. “Being able to pull out different compounds that define so many different aspects of that experience — whether that be an oil product or an edible or a tincture — is really what we’re seeing in the market as more states open up. More consumers want to get the benefits of cannabis in a way that doesn’t necessarily revolve around rolling a joint.”

As wellness-mania swept the nation, pot-trepreneurs saw a chance to capitalize on a portion of the estimated $3.7 trillion market worldwide. Over the past few years, cannabis and its nonpsychoactive byproducts have taken the form of medicine: inhalers designed to dole out exact dosages, supplements, patches, and tinctures. Though state laws still prohibit pot-related companies from advertising on any mainstream platform, many of them now see the value of building recognizable, commercially viable brands. The idea is that to encourage more first-time pot consumers, the point of entry must be significantly less complicated than it used to be. That can mean anything from offering a prerolled joint to a pill you take before going to bed. “Right now the market is still dominated by hardcore stoners,” Micah Tapman, a cofounder and managing director at the Colorado investment firm CanopyVentures said. “If they’re hitting something they want 50 milligrams. Whereas the new consumer that is coming up will be a much lighter-weight consumption. The soccer mom demographic is probably going to gravitate toward the very discreet vaporizers or topicals. They’re not typically going to want a bong sitting on their coffee table.”

In other words, less horticulture, more convenience. Gertner, who previously worked as a head of sales at Google before starting his own coffee, cannabis, and clothing brand, likens the current weed consumption landscape to that of the North American coffee market in the last 30 years. People smoke joints for the same reason they used to drink only plain black coffee: potency. “It was basically like: How quickly can I get caffeine into my system?” Gertner said. As companies like Starbucks introduced new nomenclature around coffee and a reworked guidebook for how to consume it, people began to see the beverage differently. “The coffee experience is now grounded in community, as opposed to grounded in the idea in just straight-up caffeine consumption,” Gertner said. “You went from a world where we optimized for potency to a world where we started to optimize for brand, convenience, and taste. You’re not necessarily drinking a Frappuccino because of caffeine content, you’re drinking a Frappuccino for other reasons.” The cannabis market is on a similar path of mass consumption. The earthy taste, smell, and delivery of weed smoke are being muted and manipulated. Just like drinking Frappuccinos, that means customers are sometimes ingesting extra calories or unsavory fillers in the process. And like most artisanal coffee brands, these professionalized cannabis brands can also charge a premium. The joint will always have a place in weed culture, but advanced technology has made it functionally outdated. “You start to think of this future where you say, I can have a cannabis drink, why would I smoke a joint?” Gertner said.

Even if the physical joint is slowly fading from the zeitgeist, its aesthetic influence on successors is clear. Products like Dosist, a thin concentrate vaporizer encased in AirPod-white medical-grade plastic, are essentially more conspicuous plastic joints. Rather than busy itself with rechargeable batteries or the option to switch out cartridges, the Dosist pen exists as a single unit, good for 50 or 200 “doses,” at $40 or $100, respectively. It’s designed to measure approximately how much vapor a person takes in. Just stick the little plastic inhaler in your mouth, breath in, and wait for a vibration. When you receive that haptic feedback, it means you’ve consumed 2.25 milligrams of cannabis concentrate. Time magazine named Dosist (formerly known as Hmbldt) one of the top-25 inventions of 2016. Fast Company ranked it as one of the most innovative health companies of 2018.

Dosist’s products come in six separate (intentionally lowercase) moods: bliss, sleep, calm, relief, arouse, and passion. At first glance, this labeling system appears to have all the meaning of lip gloss flavors, but according to CEO Gunner Winston they’re intended to address basic human ailments like depression, anxiety, and sex drive. “You don’t hear us talk about OG Kush, Luke Skywalker, different strains,” Winston told me. “We’re strain agnostic.”

Dosist is part of a cabal of all-in-one vape companies that have stormed the market as of late. Beboe, a Los Angeles–based vaporizer company founded by a celebrity tattoo artist and a fashion retail executive, sells disposable rose gold sativa and indica vaporizers at $60 a pop. Its packaging recalls the kind of desert-wanderer aesthetic you might see on display at Coachella: Each box is embossed with an intricate company logo, each pen delicately placed in a glass test tube and sealed with a cork. This attention to detail has helped the company amass a set of A-list customers and inspired The New York Times to deem it the “Hèrmes of Marijuana.” (Others have taken note. San Francisco–based Lola Lola, which has traditionally sold pre-rolled joints, cartridges, batteries, and flower, will follow suit with similar sparkly “Joie de Vape” disposable pens this spring.) On the medical end of the spectrum, one vaporizer technology company, Gram, recently partnered with researchers at UC San Francisco to explore the effects of vapor exposure on various cell cultures. Later this year, a new company named Resolve Digital Health will debut a “smart inhaler” aimed at chronic pain patients. After popping a “Smart Pod” into the device and sucking in, users can log how they feel on an accompanying smartphone app. Eventually, the company will be able to amass anonymized data about what people experience each time they consume a certain amount of a concentrate, which it can then provide to growers to inform their own businesses.

All of this gadgetry is very advanced and generally impressive, but doesn’t always make for the most thrilling user experience. Old-school keyboards have a cult following among nostalgic tech nerds because their buttons are infinitely more satisfying to push than the shallow grooves of today’s modern gadgets. The same sentiment came to mind when I first sampled a Dosist pen. Placing your lips on the circular plastic tip feels lackluster, a little bit like you’re sucking on a stray antenna. When I inhaled, there was no burning ember (or bright light) to guide my toke, just a slight vibration and a small cloud of vapor leaving my breath. There is something tragically vanilla about a Dosist pen. But clearly I, a child of the Bay Area, am not the company’s target audience. Traditionally raw flower includes far more terpenes, the elements cannabis that contribute to its flavor. While companies like Pax are interested in evolving the science to preserve terpenes in its concentrates, Dosist’s pens are purposefully flavorless. The company doesn’t really even want to get you high. “We try to minimize the intoxicating effects of cannabis,” Winston said. “You never see images of people blowing huge clouds of smoke in the sky.”

Still, people use weed for a reason. Concentrates known as dabs — a waxy substance that can be flash vaporized in a glass pipe — offer a more powerful high than any flower could, and are becoming popular among classic stoner types. One California grower I spoke to said that even if younger clientele are looking to get nice and stoned, loose-leaf pot is no longer the coolest way to do that.

“Hip-hop has a big pull in the cannabis industry,” the grower, who previously worked at the Los Angeles–based dispensary chain MedMen, told me. “Growers will grow specific strains because they’re in hip-hop songs. And now that concentrates like dabs are more powerful, those are showing up, too. Joints are more of a popular motif in older shit, like Sublime.”

Colorado-based dispensary Lightshade has all of those customers: the newcomer who would like a controlled and conspicuous introduction to pot, the experienced connoisseur who’s seeking a more intense high, the health-conscious hiker who wants a portable way to enhance a stroll through the woods. The store, which opened eight years ago, has seen a shift in buying habits similar to the national trend, where concentrates and edibles are quickly outselling flower. But if you, too, are ancient enough to possess (or envy) rolling techniques, worry not. Joanne Madrid, the store’s marketing promotions manager, assured me that joints still hold a special place in people’s hearts — at least the prerolled cones.

“A lot of people will come in and, if they don’t smoke flower, they don’t know how to roll a joint, or they don’t want to purchase a pipe or a bong, they will just opt for prerolls,” she told me. “It’s just so much easier.”

The future of pot consumption is filled with gadgets, food, and waxy, goopy substances. It’s one where the vape cartridges and artisanal chocolates from Willie Nelson’s line of cannabis products sell better than the flower. Like hailing a cab or reading a map, smoking a joint has become a casualty of convenience. It might not altogether die, per se, but it won’t be the centerpiece of the culture.

“I don’t think I’ll miss [joints] that much,” the aforementioned Los Angeles–based grower told me. “It doesn’t really have an emotional connection to me. Maybe our parents will.”

An earlier version of this story misstated the Dosist pen’s pricing. Fifty and 200 doses would cost $40 and $100, respectively, not $50 and $200.

Alyssa Bereznak