If you don’t mix tobacco in your weed and none of your friends mix tobacco in their weed, right on, you’re killing it, this one isn’t for you.
The way we smoke weed has gone through some pretty rapid changes over the past few decades—dabs, pre-rolls, vape pens, and plenty of USB-C charged devices that will instantly vaporize your favorite flower or concentrate. So why are you still mixing tobacco into your joints?
Weed is too good to fuck up with a heavy sprinkle of American Spirit and you’re lying to yourself with every attempt to justify the outdated blend. It’s time to move beyond spliffs.
People have been smoking spliffs—joints rolled with a mix of cannabis and tobacco—since the first documented instance of weed being rolled in Guadalajara, Mexico circa 1856. The tradition continued across the globe, with hash frequently mixed with tobacco and rolled for easy consumption. These days, spliffs are still popular across the U.S. Sure, it’s more prevalent in some places than others, but I know heavy stoners from New York to L.A. and plenty in between who keep a pack of cigs or pouch of loose leaf in their smoking kits at all times.
Times change though, and as we barrel headfirst into 2023, the excuses left for spliffing your weed are growing thinner than a king size rice paper.
The most common reason I get when I ask people why they still add tobacco to their weed is that it “burns better,” and to that, I say this: learn how to roll better joints. If your joints are burning unevenly without tobacco, that’s a you problem, not a weed problem. Try packing it a little tighter, try pulling on it a little lighter, roll practice joints over and over until your fingers turn green and every single one looks, lights, and burns perfectly—it will be worth it, I promise.
Next, spliff smokers will say that tobacco helps save them weed and therefore money. But weed is cheaper than it’s ever been and only getting cheaper while tobacco is only getting more expensive, with many cities and states adding higher and higher taxes for cigarettes and loose leaf. It might make some slight economic sense, but unless you’re spliffing top-shelf flower (we’ll get to that) you can probably afford to roll without tobacco; try buying shake or pre-ground weed if you need to make your bag stretch. If you’re really looking to make your favorite strain last, mix in some shake or mids with your exotics—just think of it as spliffing your joint with more weed.
What about the argument that adding tobacco to your weed gets you higher? First, I don’t believe that smoking less of the plant that does get you high and replacing it with the plant that doesn’t get you high will result in you getting higher. You know what will definitely get you higher? More weed. Don’t trust my back of the napkin math? Here’s a peer-reviewed study that says the same thing.
Funny enough, I have also heard the opposite explanation, that weed alone is simply too intoxicating, and that tobacco helps to ease the effects. In that instance, I simply recommend smoking less weed.
Most importantly though, stop spliffing your weed because it completely changes the flavor of your flower.
Decades of arduous, focused, illegal cannabis breeding have created a plant that is potent and flavorful with a constantly evolving menu of unique varieties. Tobacco and weed mixed just fine in the flavorless days of brick weed and densely packed black hash, but the way weed smells, tastes, and smokes in 2023? It’s a thing of art. Why dilute that experience?
I have slightly more patience for blunts, mainly because they do not disguise the presence of tobacco like a spliff does, and because they don’t ruin the flavor of the weed quite as much, but at the end of the day, sacrificing any amount of terp profile for the sake of a nicotine buzz is still kind of a bummer in my book.
I’m not here to judge your tobacco consumption, smoke 10 cigarettes right before we smoke a joint and another half a pack after, all good, I’m just here to defend weed.
You might need tobacco, but weed doesn’t.
Actually screamingggg yes you tell em bestie 🤌✨
Nevermind the signifiganty increased toxic levels of nicotine and tars when combined is legit problem
Ah the snobby pot conessuer, you could, ya know, just let people enjoy what they like.
Word. I don’t, but I also don’t try to tell others how to live.
This guy is a stooge
What about coco puff???
A spliff and I blunt serve the same purpose. The tobacco make the weed burn a certain way. Papers are too light most times and the quality of grass don’t really matter. Putting tobacco in it makes the smoke thicker and robust like coffee almost. Because honestly these days unless you have the good luck of working at high times… most of this shit is all names. Dispensery weed taste like cardboard at all price ranges. So whatever works works. Peace and blessings
Facts 🔥
your local dispensaries must be garbage lol, or you can’t tell the difference between quality flower and mids when you see it.
Who gives a fuck what some hipster who has been smoking for a week says.
When you have bee smoking as long as I have, I’ll ask for your advice. Until then, stfu douchebag.
Big ass eye roll
Totally agree. I’ve been smoking weed since 1974 and have almost never added tobacco. Smoke your joint, then have a cigarette. Enjoy the fact that the joint makes the cigarette taste great.
Also, a lot of you guys are being real dicks. This is no how we roll (SWIDT).
Go cry elsewhere
I mean the author is literally on a “high” horse. Not sure what kind of response you expect.
Try it. It’s a better high. The two highs together are better than either. It’s like mixing lions and tigers to get ligers. And there is some dank tasting tobacco out there. Also, weed swells your lungs but tobacco opens them. It smokes smoother with less coughing. Try it.
Lol I love the internet, haters going to hate and have nothing to add to the conversation. Just a FYI, I won’t be hitting that spliff, so more for y’all that mix, also idgaf what you mix your flower with. Delta -8, Delta-10, etc etc just don’t seem natural to me to consume like Delta-9 . There’s got to be a reason why the plant naturally produces delta-9…..
Not sure who you’re trying to fool, but NEVER in my life, have I nor my friends EVER, said or tried to smoke a joint with tobacco!! I don’t live in a special place either. So sorry you aren’t legitimate pot smoker and not sure how you even got this job.
u tweakin homie
Hell yeah,
Smoking with no tobacco should be the only way to smoke. But you missed two points.
For me the hardest thing to give up was the throat hit tobacco gives you while smoking spliffs. I missed that a lot when I started smoking pure joints out still smoked cigarettes on a daily bases. Once u quit cigarettes completely, you don’t miss it anymore.
And tobacco (or something in the tobacco) makes your high kick in a little bit quicker. It almost feels like you skip to levels of the high so you Peak faster, but of course it drops down faster, too. For me it is now way more enjoyable to have softer start and a longer high.
But I can absolutely understand if somebody is used to get the effect he looked for like 5 seconds after he hits the spliff. It is easier not to get surprised. For example sometimes you smoke a pure joint completely and it starts to kick in 5 min after you finished the whole thing.
You might get higher than you wanted to be before you smoked. Maybe these problems would never accrue if you just never let your weed touch tobacco, but if you are used to it these are the things you have to deal with, if you stop mixing tobacco in.
But in the end everybody would admit that pure is the way to go. I can not even taste any the weed in a spliff these days, no matter how low the amount of tobacco in the mix is.
Wow… I’ve never wanted to defend sacred tobacco to a hipster before.
Dear Zach:
1- Not all tobacco is the same, there is medicinal and organic tobacco which has nothing to do with the comercial stuff.
2- There is indeed scientific evidence of synergetic effect when mixing tobacco and cannabis.
3 – Stop being this based and shallow content producer, who tries so damn hard to influence an opinion instead of factual information.
Tobacco is smells awful, is physically addictive, and makes you look old and withered. It was never appropriate to mix it with cannabis.
I don’t care what any consumer does, but tobacco consumers need to know that even though we are smoking, most cannabis smokers don’t want to be around tobacco smoke. – It kills. – Thanks for your consideration.
Weed is crazy potent nowadays. Spliffs mean you can roll a joint and pass it round and it lasts a while so you and friends can enjoy a (somewhat) slowly growing high before you’re a complete trainwreck, like having a few beers vs downing a bottle of vodka. Your solution – “smoke less” – is dumb and lazy. Putting that in practice means either rolling thin joints, which are rubbish, or rolling a proper joint and stubbing it out after a few knockout drags, after which point it often becomes stale.
I will say, however, the third solution is Honeyblend, a tobacco-free herbal mix which you can use to bulk out joints without baccy. Haven’t seen it in the US though, only the UK.
I can’t help but to notice that while you made an entire article attempting to dismantle some obscure beliefs that a few folks may have about “spliffs”, you neglected to mention the glaringly obvious reason why people still prefer them; because they enjoy it.
I, personally, have never cared for mixing tobacco & marijuana even though I used to enjoy both separately. That said, I’ve never thought to tell folks “you’re doing it wrong” simply because I didn’t care for it.
Dude, there is a simpler explanation: over here in europe, zaza is more costly than it is in america. That’s why many of us prefer spliffs… just to save on
firstly, not the world lives in america.
in europe tobacco is not only cheaper, but also better quality. ive heard from a lot of people who visited america that the cigarettes there taste so bad that they stopped smoking for the time they spent there.
also weed is not cheaper than tobacco here. i pay 10$ for 1 gramm of weed and 5.50$ for 30gramms of tobacco.
and for the final point, it simply tastes better mixed with tobacco and makes it less rough on the throat