Key Takeaways
- British tennis players at the US Open often complain about the smell of cannabis, a recurring issue at the tournament.
- Unlike alcohol, cannabis aroma receives negative attention, raising questions about cultural biases and public perception.
- Cannabis smokers face stricter societal judgment compared to alcohol consumers, despite similar health risks associated with both.
- Policies should treat smoke from both substances equally, focusing on location rather than the type of aroma.
- The US Open cannabis conversation reflects broader issues of infrastructure and normalization in public spaces for cannabis use.
Every summer, the US Open returns to Queens with elite tennis, packed stands, expensive cocktails and, apparently, the same cannabis conversation drifting near the outer courts.
Recently, several British tennis players complained that the smell of cannabis around practice courts and some match courts at Flushing Meadows caught their attention. British No. 1 Katie Boulter said the aroma affected her concentration. Fran Jones joked about how consistently it appears, while Harriet Dart treated it as another familiar feature of New York.
The story was framed as fresh news, but the observation is becoming nearly as traditional as the tournament itself.
Players mentioned the same thing in 2025. Novak Djokovic said the smell could be detected from training courts to match courts. Casper Ruud brought it up as a memorable part of visiting New York. Go back further and the same script appears again. Nick Kyrgios raised it in 2022, citing his asthma. Maria Sakkari mentioned it in 2023. Alexander Zverev famously compared Court 17 to Snoop Dogg’s living room.
At this point, the annual cannabis-smell story deserves more than another round of shocked headlines. It deserves a real cultural question.
Why is the smell of cannabis singled out as uniquely offensive in a sports environment where cigarette smoke has existed for generations and alcohol is not merely accepted, but marketed as the centerpiece of the experience?
Sure, Everyone Is Entitled to Their Preferences
Let us get one thing straight before the culture-war machinery starts grinding.
Professional athletes are welcome to want fresh air while competing, and that is a reasonable ask for anyone in any workplace. It is worth noting, though, that smelling cannabis is not the same as being affected by it. An outdoor aroma drifting across a court does not mean athletes are receiving any meaningful dose of THC. Scent travels far beyond the concentration needed to have any effect at all. The nose is picking up a smell, not conducting a toxicology test.
It is also worth keeping perspective on the health conversation. Research into secondhand cannabis exposure remains limited and far from settled, and an outdoor whiff on a breezy day is a world away from sitting in a smoke-filled room. Comparisons to tobacco are often made reflexively, but cannabis and tobacco are different plants with very different risk profiles, and stacking them together tends to say more about old assumptions than actual science.
The reasonable position is simple. Venues can set whatever air-quality rules they like, and consumers should respect posted policies whether they are holding a joint, a cigarette or a vape. But cannabis should never be treated as a special moral contamination when the evidence does not support that framing.
The US Open Has Heard This Before
The repeated observations make clear that this is not an isolated 2026 incident.
In 2025, Ruud and Djokovic both publicly noted the cannabis aroma at Flushing Meadows. In 2023, the United States Tennis Association looked into comments around Court 17 and reportedly found no evidence that anyone was smoking inside the stands. The likely explanation was scent traveling from outside the venue.
The geography helps explain why outer courts get the most attention. The Billie Jean King National Tennis Center sits inside Flushing Meadows Corona Park, with some courts more exposed to the life of the surrounding neighborhood.
New York law also requires more precision than many stories provide. Adults 21 and older may generally consume cannabis where tobacco smoking is allowed, though that does not mean cannabis can legally be smoked everywhere in public. New York City parks, beaches and pedestrian plazas are smoke-free, and the city’s rules cover both tobacco and cannabis. The tennis center itself is smoke-free as well.
If someone is smoking either cannabis or tobacco in a prohibited section of the park, enforcement should be substance-neutral. The rule should be about smoke and location, not whether the aroma reminds someone of a bar patio or a Grateful Dead parking lot.
Cannabis Smell Versus Cigarette Smell
Here is where the conversation usually reveals its baggage.
Cigarette smoke is widely recognized as dangerous. The CDC estimates that smoking and secondhand smoke exposure cause more than 480,000 deaths in the United States each year. More than 16 million Americans live with a smoking-related disease. Secondhand tobacco smoke alone contributes to tens of thousands of adult deaths annually.
Yet cigarette smell rarely receives the same breathless cultural framing. People may dislike it, avoid it or ask a smoker to move, but it is generally understood as a familiar public nuisance governed by smoking rules.
Cannabis aroma is often treated very differently. It gets spun into evidence that a neighborhood is declining, a city has lost control or legalization has gone too far. A simple smell becomes a referendum on an entire plant, industry and community.
Some of that reaction is just personal preference. Cannabis has a distinct aroma, and not everybody loves it. Fair enough. Nobody is required to love the smell of a joint any more than they are required to enjoy cigar smoke, hot garbage, diesel exhaust or the cologne cloud rolling out of an airport duty-free shop.
But preference is not policy, and disgust is not a scientific measurement of harm.
For decades, cannabis aroma was also treated as evidence that could attract police attention, justify searches and expose people to arrest. That history gives today’s smell comments a cultural weight that cigarette complaints do not usually carry. When cannabis is described as invading respectable public space, the language often echoes an older belief that cannabis consumers themselves do not belong there.
Legalization was supposed to change more than who collects the tax revenue. It was supposed to retire the assumption that the mere presence of cannabis signals disorder.
Meanwhile, Alcohol Gets a Courtside Seat
The most obvious double standard is sitting inside the gates with a commemorative cup.
The US Open does not merely tolerate alcohol. It packages alcohol as part of the tournament’s identity. Heineken and Grey Goose are official partners. Champagne, tequila, spritzes and beer are woven into the food-and-beverage experience. The Honey Deuce, a vodka, lemonade and raspberry liqueur cocktail, has become nearly as recognizable as some of the tennis.
Reports indicate that the tournament sold roughly 738,000 Honey Deuces in 2025, generating close to $17 million in sales from that cocktail alone. For 2026, tournament food executives reportedly planned to sell even more.
There is nothing inherently wrong with adults enjoying a cocktail at a tennis match. The contradiction is the cultural hierarchy.
Cannabis aroma is framed as an intrusion. Alcohol is framed as hospitality.
Cannabis consumers outside the venue get treated as a public problem. Alcohol brands inside the venue get treated as sponsors.
That distinction cannot be explained by health risk alone. Excessive alcohol use is associated with disease, injury, violence, impaired driving and death. Newly published CDC data show that the alcohol-induced death rate among Americans 45 and older was substantially higher in 2024 than it had been a decade earlier. Those figures exclude several indirect alcohol-related deaths, including some injuries and homicides.
Again, this is not an argument to ban the Honey Deuce. It is an argument for intellectual honesty.
A person quietly enjoying cannabis might create an aroma some people dislike. A person drinking excessively can create noise, aggression, sickness, harassment, unsafe driving and medical emergencies. Yet society routinely judges the cannabis consumer on smell alone while waiting for the heavy drinker to demonstrate an actual behavioral problem.
That is not neutral risk assessment. It is inherited stigma wearing a polo shirt.
Public Consumption Is Really an Infrastructure Problem
Here is the part that too often gets pinned on consumers when it belongs squarely on policymakers. Legal states created this situation by authorizing possession and sales without building enough lawful, practical places for adults to enjoy what they legally purchased.
Many people cannot smoke in apartments because of leases or building rules. Hotels commonly prohibit it. Public housing is smoke-free. Cars are off limits, as they should be. Parks and many public spaces prohibit smoking. Legal consumption lounges remain scarce.
That leaves responsible adults with a legal product and almost nowhere legal to use it.
The result is entirely predictable. Consumption moves to sidewalks and other outdoor areas, and then the same government that legalized the product acts surprised when someone catches a whiff. The gap is a policy failure, not a personal one.
The better answer is not renewed criminalization. It is better infrastructure. Cities need well-regulated consumption lounges. Events need rules that apply consistently to tobacco and cannabis. And states need to finish the job they started by giving consumers legal, comfortable spaces to gather.
Noncombustible options can add even more flexibility, from vapes to edibles and beverages, giving consumers plenty of ways to enjoy cannabis on their own terms. A mature cannabis culture has always been able to advocate for adult use while also building the spaces that make it welcome.
Normalize Cannabis and Build the Spaces to Match
The annual US Open cannabis story presents a choice between two lazy extremes.
One side treats a passing aroma as proof that legalization has turned New York into an open-air dispensary with a tennis tournament trapped inside it. That reaction says far more about lingering stigma than about any real problem.
The more useful conversation is honest about the double standard. Smoke-free courts can stay smoke-free, and rules in the surrounding park can be enforced consistently and fairly across cannabis and tobacco alike. At the same time, the public should stop pretending cannabis aroma is uniquely corrupting while alcohol is sold, sponsored and celebrated by the cupful. Apply health standards honestly. When it comes to impairment, measure behavior rather than aroma. And for courtesy, make sure the same rules apply to everyone.
Cannabis does not need special permission to exist in public culture, and it certainly does not deserve to carry stigma that alcohol never has to.
The smell at the US Open may catch some noses off guard. But the larger odor hanging over this debate is hypocrisy, and that one has been lingering far longer than any weed smoke in Queens.
