It's the growers. Most people don't know how to grow weed with a weed flavor.
I haven't been to a dispensary in years, but every time, the bud smelled like either fake terps, biofungicides, moldy basement hydro res, or plastic toxins from excess Phosphorus.
Anything grown without additional carbon input will be Diet Lite weed at best. But instead of using nutes that make sense for growing flavor and medicinal compounds the industry has simply redefined quality to exclude those compounds.
Almost every strain in my state was described as "sweet gas" by marketers (shills on social media) and all of it smelled like plastics, not gas, not sweet.
Hell half the famous breeders can't grow. Subcool couldn't grow. His weed you would go smell blind to. DNA genetics had a branded line at a local dispo and every single strain smelled like plasticine fishing lures, spot on. If I ever smell that again, I know they used the same bullshit nutrient regime, whatever it is, too much phosphorus, and the weird little kids call it "sweet sativa gas". Everyone in my state thinks Haze/sativa smells like plastic, because sativa plants are even more sensitive to P overdose.
I can't imagine cropping our every two weeks and deciding you're just going to grow some bullshit forever. I've overdosed on Part A, bat guano, bird guano, rock phosphate, phosphorus acid, phosphoric acid, bone meal. It's an instant "God dammit". Takes two hours for a house full of Sour Diesel to stop smelling like Sour Diesel and start smelling like vinyl seats, after an excess phosphorus application.
Yet, theres no such thing as an off flavor out west (except hay). I would rather smoke hay all day than plastic weed. All the gross Phos boosted off smelling weed does not get anyone high, ain't no way. I can smell a dispo bud and tell you every other strain I've smelled that smelled the exact same, and shouldn't. All because of the premixed nute packages with way too much phosphorus. (And the biofungicides and mold terroir of course)
It's a West coast thing. Smoking literal vinyl nitrile acrylic nylon benzene polyester cycloalkane toxins, while worrying about solventless extracts... Fucking mental..
Now they are trying to normalize it, that fucking Ganjier program telling every Curaleaf shopper that Sour Diesel actually smells like tennis balls, Skunk actually smells like tennis shoes, Shoreline smells like a shoe store, Chem dawg smells like a shoe factory, etc etc. All because Cali grows disgusting weed. I have smelled 4 unrelated strains in the past month from locals, that all have the exact same smell: Synthetic polyester toothpastes muffin. No idea what bottles product causes that but it's pretty damn obvious all those strains that smell nothing like weed (Dutch Treat, Double Cup, OG Kush and some trellis fuzz weed a bum gave me while skateboarding) are being ruined by the growers utter lack of ability, not the genetics.
Even the good growers I've met over the last decade are accidental good growers and don't understand curing so their bud turns out pretty shitty after being sealed up damp and cold for weeks/months with no oxygen.
People still blame them "dry and cure" for shit weed. The shit I've seen is not even in that discussion. I can get high off poorly harvested cannabis. I can't get high off a shelf of 12 different strains that all smell like the same roll of flooring material.
It's been the nutes as long as I've been alive, as long as my parents were alive. Since my grandparents were teens, and according to literature from the 1800s it's been known a long time what ruins Cannabis crops; bad fertilizer profiles. Every bit of hay I've grown has actually tasted good, smelled good when busted up.
Not sure why people despise hay terps while smoking plastic poison soaked in bacterial fungicides but they do. They've been told to hate hay, and to love fake terps, mold terps, P booster terps, and fungicide terps..