Dugout (smoking)

:"This article is about the smoking apparatus. For other meanings of dugout, see dugout."

The dugout, a type of smoking apparatus, is a device used to facilitate discreet personal use of marijuana or tobacco. The original system was issued patent number 4214658. It is sometimes called a one-hitter, hitter box, pinch hitter, a pinchey, a tote-a-smoke, or a pinger (because it makes a "ping" sound when opened),

The dugout is a rectangular (or sometimes cylindrical) wooden object with two compartments. The larger compartment stores the marijuana or tobacco and a cylindrical compartment is used to store the pipe used to smoke the marijuana or tobacco.

The pipe which the "dugout" stores is a specialized chillum (bat) that closely resembles a cigarette in size and appearance. It may be painted gold/yellow on the stem and white down the length to mimic the coloring of a cigarette. Metal, ceramic, or glass in construction, it has a shallow recess into which the marijuana or tobacco is loaded. A narrow artery, through which the smoke from the marijuana or tobacco is channeled, extends from the recess to the opposite end of the pipe.

The "dugout" has a swiveling or sliding door which caps the two compartments. A spring at the bottom of the cylindrical compartment pushes the end of the pipe out of the box when the door is opened so that it can be extracted from the box. The sharp edge of the recessed end of the pipe allows the pipe to be loaded by burrowing it into the marijuana or tobacco compartment. The marijuana or tobacco can then be smoked by lighting it with a flame as one would light a tobacco cigarette. Often the metal of a lighter is held in front of the pipe to reflect the light emitted from the burning marijuana or tobacco, allowing the user to monitor the burn while inhaling the smoke.

The "dugout" and "bat" metaphor alludes to the athletic sport baseball. This is an elaborate metaphor which can be easily explained. The pipe is often called a "one-hitter" because the recess holds only enough marijuana or tobacco for one "hit", the term used for a single inhalation of marijuana or tobacco. Baseball bats are used to "hit" baseballs, and "one-hitter" pipe is cylindrical in shape like a baseball bat. Additionally, because to load the pipe, it is burrowed, or "dug", into the marijuana or tobacco compartment, this explains the term "dugout"—the marijuana or tobacco is "dug out" of the container. In baseball, the "dugout" is the box in which the players sit when not on the playing field. In this context, it is the box in which the marijuana or tobacco sits.

To further the baseball metaphor, the one-hitter pipe or bat is also called a pinch hitter, because it loads just a pinch at a time. While the primary use may be for marijuana, a dugout system can also be used for smoking tobacco. It is sometimes marketed under the name "Tobacco Traveler".

Because the process of smoking marijuana with such a device so closely resembles the process of smoking a cigarette, it is often applied when the user wishes to smoke marijuana in public. To this end, many one-hitters are even shaped and painted to resemble a cigarette. The ease and speed with which the process is able to be performed makes it an ideal way in which to smoke marijuana while out in public.