Some Indiana smoke shops shift to marijuana-related sales

MUNCIE – The first thing you notice when you walk into Hempnotyx, a smoke shop along ’s busy McGalliard Road, is that it smells like marijuana.

The store’s displays are full of hemp-based products like gummies, so the smell of marijuana – which is not legal in Indiana – might not be surprising. But the smell is so strong that it makes one wonder: Have Hempnotyx’s owners emulated that old practice of baking cookies when you’re trying to sell your house to make the place seem like home to prospective buyers?

One of the store’s owners, Tara Wooten, laughed when asked if the smell was product or marketing.

“It’s 100% the product,” she said in an interview. “That distinctive smell is the terpenes,” she said, referring to naturally occurring chemicals found in plants like cannabis.

Since the days of cigar stores, including the once-famous Spot Cigar and Lunch that operated for decades in downtown Muncie, cities across Indiana have offered for sale virtually every kind of tobacco product, from cigarettes to cigars to loose tobacco, rolling papers and pipes that, when sold in what were once called “head shops,” catered to marijuana enthusiasts.