by Dan Ketchum

By nature, stoners love two things: weed and jargon. And hot Cheetos, and skating, and shower thoughts, and vinyl and…alright, never mind about the “two things” part, stoners like lots of stuff, because we’re all unique human beings. But the jargon part is true.

In stoner culture, you’ve got atomizers, bubblers, dabs, zongs, and hotboxes, and that’s just the tip of the slang grass-berg. But just like stoners are distinct and special human-shaped snowflakes, so are our smokeables. Given the number of options out there, it can be tough to cut through the word salad to separate your joints from your blunts (and the lines do get blurry sometimes), but knowing a few key features will inform both your brain and your smoke sesh. 

Where We’re At

Before diving into, uh, blunt definitions and the joint vs. blunt wars, it’s important to clarify something up front: there’s no manual on this stuff. Weed culture has always been a grassroots (no pun intended), countercultural thing, so there is no officiating body, no United Nations of Weed telling us the exact specifications of a blunt or a joint. And that’s especially true here in the absolute weed renaissance we’re living in, where the options are just about endless.

So that said, most of our blunt definitions and joint definitions come from tradition, whether that’s pre-legalization street wisdom, post-legalization product trends, or just Urban Dictionary. We can certainly identify basic characteristics that make a joint a joint and a blunt a blunt, but keep in mind that the cornucopia of cannabis companies out there are ultimately going to identify their products in their own unique ways.

What Makes a Joint a Joint

In the Year of Our Matron Gorilla 2022, you can smoke, vape, eat, drink, dab, drop or rub your weed, you can swish CBD in your mouthwash or get greasy with cannabis-infused personal lube. Whatever gets you going. But still, just plain smoking weed in what Reefer Madness called a “marijuana cigarette” has never gone out of style.

And that’s basically what a joint is: cannabis rolled up in a little tube of paper for a convenient, smokeable format. The papers are usually made from rice, straw, wood pulp, flax, or even hemp, often bleached to a white-ish color. You can roll them yourselves with a flower, a weed grinder, and rolling papers, or get them all fancy-like from your local dispensary as singles or in packages, where they may include a filter. They come in all sorts of sizes but are generally smaller than blunts.

And that’s an important distinction. When it comes to the issue of joint vs. blunt, a lot of what makes a joint a joint comes down to what it lacks – basically, a blunt is a type of joint with some extra features. 

TL, DR: Joint Basics

• It’s weed.
• It’s usually smaller than a blunt.
• The average American joint contains about 0.3 grams of cannabis.
• It doesn’t contain tobacco.
• It usually features lighter-colored or thinner rolling paper (but some unbleached rolling papers may still be a little earthy).
• Those lighter rolling papers also make for a lighter-tasting smoke than a blunt.

How Blunts Hit Different

So here’s that blunt definition: it’s a bigger joint that’s rolled with paper, usually brownish in color, that used to feature tobacco content – nowadays, those papers are commonly made with hemp, (which is what you’ll find in most dispensaries) or other plant content. Back in the day, a blunt was a cigar that was hollowed out and had its tobacco leaf replaced with cannabis, but that’s not gonna be the case when you walk into a dispensary today. Mostly because we don’t need to do that anymore. 

That blunt rolling paper is usually going to be thicker and more textured, too, so the roll may be rougher or appear “veinier” than a joint). Blunts – like Tough Mama’s live resin-infused Hemp Cone blunts – can be conical in shape sometimes, to pack more leaf in. If a joint is a “marijuana cigarette,” think of a blunt sort of like a marijuana cigarillo or cigar.

TL, DR: Blunt Definition

• It’s weed.
• It’s usually bigger than a joint.
• It usually contains about 1 to 2 grams of cannabis (ours have a gram of weed, 0.25 grams of oil, plus terps for 1.6 overall grams of heft).
• The rolling papers are thicker “wraps” made with plants such as hemp, or even more creative stuff like banana leaves.
• That rolling paper can also lend blunts an earthy, sometimes robust, flavor profile.

A Word on Spliffs

Quick note, things can get confusing here because blunts used to primarily combine tobacco papers and weed, and spliffs also combine tobacco and weed. Here’s the key difference: spliffs actually mix tobacco leaf, like the kind you’d find in a cigarette, with the cannabis flower contained in the roll. So unlike a blunt, it’s not just a rolling paper thing. Make sure you clarify when smoking casually, as some people use the term “spliff” and “blunt” interchangeably (Mama’s note: they shouldn’t). 

Joints vs. Blunts 

This isn’t World War III, or Twitter. We don’t need to dunk on each other in the great blunt vs. joint debate. But here’s how they can each affect your session in different ways.

 For one, the different rolling papers can affect the flavor profile of your sesh, lending blunts an earthier, smokier taste. At the end of the day, the strain, or the flower itself, will likely have a more noticeable effect on the way your body and mind respond to the weed, but the question of joint vs. blunt is often a choice of experience. 

Ultimately, because blunts simply contain more flower than joints, they pack more THC content – and they’re going to burn for longer than a joint (the thicker paper contributes to this, too), making them well suited to smoking over time or sharing with bigger groups of friends. It’s a slow-burn kinda high, while a joint is more personal, a little quicker, and best shared with a friend or two (though you can get joints with slow-burning, tobacco-free papers to split the difference). 

And because both of those situations are legit experiences and both suit valid moods and preferences, we offer a simple reminder – there’s always room for both.

Dan Ketchum splits his time between Dallas and LA as a freelance lifestyle, fashion, health, and food writer with more than a decade of experience. In cannabis, been fortunate enough to collaborate with Cannabis & Tech Today, FOCL, Vitagenne, Reign Together, Mistifi, and more.

The 2020s are full of all kinds of things Mama would rather not talk about, but on the bright side, they’re also full of things Mama loves: choice, variety, bananas, and all kinds of personalized options. Even better, that breadth of choice goes doubly for smoking weed. Or eating weed, or drinking weed, or vaping weed – which is kinda the point, here.  

Among all the edibles, vapes, tinctures, and lotions, pre-rolls are just one option for consuming cannabis these days. Basically, the pre-roll is a pre-packaged joint that someone has already rolled for you before selling it to you at the dispensary. But even in this singular weed-smoking category, you have tons and tons of sub-types and options to choose from. And Mama likes that. 

Pre-Rolls: The Basics

The joint – a rolled marijuana cigarette, in case you need a refresher or you’re new to all this – is an icon of canna-culture, and easily the most recognizable way to use weed. You can still roll joints and plenty of people do. All you need is about a half gram or a gram of ground-up weed, rolling paper, and an optional filter. Alternatively – maybe if you like convenience or you’re not an extra in Rebel Without a Cause – you can get a pre-roll.

When a dispensary, retailer, cultivator, producer, or otherwise any other officialized cannabis-selling group pre-rolls weed into a ready-made joint (and usually packages it all pretty) for sale, that’s a pre-roll. Most have filters, some don’t. You can get ‘em individually, or you can get ‘em in multi-packs. And there are many, many, oh-so-many varieties. We’ll get into that later.

It’s like when Mama makes PB n’ J sammies for you. You can do it yourself, but it tastes better when someone else makes it.

So Why Pre-Rolls?

Well, first there’s that variety thing, then there’s that convenience thing. Pre-rolls are not only an easier proposition than rolling your own joints, they get you high faster and offer an easily shareable, super sociable solution. Plus, they’re pretty inexpensive compared to other options for getting high. And if you love the green jungles like Mama does, it feels good to know that lots of ‘em come in eco-friendly, recycled, or recyclable packaging. 

Also, now’s a really damn good time for pre-rolls. Not only can you get any strain, size, flavor, potency, or style you want, we’re living in a quality renaissance, baby. Used to be that pre-rolls were full of shake, stems, and other plant part filler that had less to do with getting you high and more to do with saving rich people money. But with increased competition and more canna-educated customers than ever (Mama’s proud of you), quality has come up while prices have gone down.

Know Your Roll

There are many colors of the pre-roll weed rainbow. Probably more colors than there are in an actual rainbow. Wait, Mama just Googled it and there are definitely way more types of pre-rolls than colors in the rainbow:

• The doobie or just standard variety pre-roll is what your dad calls a joint, and it’s pretty much the classic in pre-roll form. It usually packs up to1.5 grams of weed rolled up twisty-like in hemp or rice paper.
• Dog walkers or mini products (more on those later) are like regular pre-rolls, but usually contain around .75 grams or less. 
• You can probably guess what a king-sized pre-roll is (please tell me you can, my sweet summer child). It’s a pre-roll, but big. Usually up to 1.75 grams, and often with a wide filter for big ol’ hits and a funneled shape to get more weed in there. Cones fall into this – they’re wider at the tip than the mouthpiece because they pack in a lot of weed.
• Imagine, if you will, a cigarette but it’s weed instead of tobacco. That, my sweet peas, is a cannabis cigarette. These are like tobacco cigs in size, shape, and smoothness, come with a filter, and usually sell in packs of five to a dozen.
• Cannagars, a.k.a. Thai sticks are like if a pre-roll and a cigar had a beautiful baby. These monsters pack 4-to-8 grams of cannabis in the size and shape of a stogie. They’re meant to be shared or to last you a lot longer than a single sesh (please — Mama doesn’t want to see you green out).
• There’s some overlap in the definition of blunts and cannagars, cuz there’s no official rule book on this stuff. Pre-legalization, a blunt usually meant a hollowed-out cigar paper filled with weed. Nowadays, with off-the-shelf pre-rolls, it probably just means it’s rolled in hemp leaf papers, or is bigger than the average bear.
• Unlike blunts, the meaning of spliff hasn’t really changed much since Mama was young. Young-er! This is just a pre-roll or joint that has tobacco mixed in with the marijuana.
• Infused pre-rolls usually contain some sort of cannabis oil, rosin, or distillate in addition to the flower – they may even be rolled in powdered cannabis isolate on top of that. Some infused pre-rolls also feature kief, the tiny trichomes that cover the surface of cannabis plants, in a concentrated powder form (not to be confused with Keith, he’s your uncle and he owes me money).

Now keep in mind that these are just some of the physical styles of pre-rolls. You’ll get waaaaaaaay more variety in the mix when you take into account that pre-rolls feature all kinds of different strains – from clear-eyed sativas to mellow indicas to balanced hybrids and beyond – but that’s a whole other story. If you’re just dipping your toes in, ask your budtender to guide you through the weeds of weed strains, just to start with.

Mama’s Own Prerolls

Mama loves making you two things: banana bread and those good good Mary Jane products. Just because Mama wants to see you happy, we’ve got:

• Tough Mama’s Infused Hemp Cone Blunts. Hey, now you know what all those words mean! These come in euphoric citrusy sativa, relaxing flowery, diesel-y indica, and grassy, just-right hybrid varieties. They’ve got a gram of weed, plus 0.25 grams of Live Resin infused directly into the hemp cone. That oil infusion and hemp cone combo make for an even, balanced burn (but you may need some friends to help you finish).
• Tough Mama’s Mini Mofoz. Mama almost named you Mini Mofo, but decided on these blunts instead. They come in the same strain options as the big boys, but at .85 grams, they’re adorable mini-cone blunts infused with cured resin and made with Hi-Phi, solventless extraction, so they’ll still knock your ass over. Plus, they come in 4-packs that encourage sharing, though Mama won’t judge you for bogarting.

Just like Tough Mama’s tough love, none of these pre-rolls f*** around one little bit. But you know what? You deserve to let Mama roll one for you after this hardcore education session – and yes, Mama does have a light.

by Dan Ketchum

No, 710 Day is not 420 multiplied by two, mostly because that would be 840 (you’re supposed to share that hemp cone blunt). It is kinda similar in that it does celebrate everybody’s favorite plant, but just like oil and flower, each celebration has its own distinct vibes. 

The (very) unofficial holiday has some pretty interesting online origins, which’ll mostly make for great convo starters as you party in 710-friendly ways that would make Mama herself proud.

OK, What Is 710 Day? 

OK, first up, we gotta talk about that whole 710 meaning. Similar to how “420” went from a certain time of day that a few California teenagers chose to smoke it up to a universal code word for weed, 710 is a (slightly more clever) code – it’s just “OIL” turned upside down. If you know, you know.

With that code in mind, celebrating the wonders of cannabis oil on July 10th has been catching on for more than a few years now. Leafly notes that there have been recorded 710 Day celebrations, like the 7/10 Cup in Colorado, since at least 2012. Weedmaps claims that the term “710” showed up on Urban Dictionary as early as 2010, while the indie hip-hop album “The Movement” was released in 2011 by Task & Linus with tracks like “7:10” and “Boil That Oil.” Album creator TaskRok perfectly nails the current mantra, though – he says 710 “belongs to the community now.” 

How to Celebrate 710 Day (Hint: Smoke It Up)

710 Day also goes by the name Dab Day, so feel free to celebrate with a dab, which is using a highly concentrated, uh, dab of hash oil by rapidly extracting its THC with high heat, usually a torch or dab rig. But if you’d rather not deal with the mess and fuss of a dab rig, portable dab vapes and vape pens offer a more easygoing solution. Our live resin cannabis oil vape carts pack plenty of punch with over 70 percent THC and our cone blunt pre-rolls come infused with live or cured resin oil, too. And that’s 710-friendly AF.

In any case, pack your vape, tincture, wax, shatter, or whatever other type of concentrate you like (gotta stay on theme, you know) and appreciate the oil nature gave us with one or two of these Tough Mama-vetted festivities:

Rise and Shine

Some people pray or meditate on holidays – we make party-friendly weed, but even we know that not everything’s a party. Whether it’s all you do to observe 710 Day or it’s just the start of your festivities, load up a fresh cart and take a symbolic pull at 7:10 AM on 7/10. Pairs great with a little meditation, coffee in the yard or just listening to the birds sing.

Mix Oil and Water 

As a date, 7/10 isn’t just “OIL” upside down, it’s also most likely going to be hot as hell. Good thing stoners and beaches (or lakes, we see you land-locked lovers) are like chocolate and peanut butter. Surfing, boogie boarding, sand volleyball, those weird little hot dog hibachis, bocce ball, or just zoning out to the sound of waves – they’re all legit ways to appreciate 710 that go oh-so-well with a dab or a pull. 

Picnic With (Two Kinds of) Edibles

Usually, edibles are made with odorless, flavorless oil called cannabis distillate – in Tough Mama’s case, our YOLO SHOTZ are infused with the same cured resin oil as our prerolls – which means that they totally count for 710 Day. Pack your 710-friendly pick-a-nic basket, lead up to the event with a little hike if you’re feeling outdoorsy, and enjoy a warm breeze under the gentle sway of your favorite gummy, cookie, brownie, or beverage. We recommend euphoric sativa for this one. 

Host the OILympics

OK, smoking weed does have some pretty verifiable health perks, but no one’s saying it’s going to turn you into an Olympian. You can totally host the Summer OILympics, though, which is a little bit more low-key and friendlier to people whose reps only involve lifting pens. 

Cornhole? Check. Cup pong? The game of champions. A $20 badminton set? That’s more money left for hot chips. Bocce ball? Still leaves you one hand to smoke. 

If you’re feeling extra generous, your OILympians can pool a few bucks together for gold, silver, and bronze medal prizes in the spirit of the holiday. Which is, you know, oil that gets you real high.

Dance Party to the OG    

Whether it’s serendipity, truth, or just the internet being weird, TaskRock got all wrapped up in the origins of 710 Day, and now he’s like the spirit of Dab Day, the Santa Claus of 7/10. As it turns out, “The Movement” is still readily and cheaply available in full on Bandcamp. It’s the perfect, thematically apt backdrop to slam Yolo Shotz and start a dance party to. Maybe pop it off at 7:10 PM? 

Here’s what we know about cannabis oil: it’s smooth, it’s easy to handle, and it facilitates having fun without a bunch of gatekeeping or stress. Bring that vibe to your 710 Day celebrations, big or small, and you’ll do just fine. 

Dan Ketchum splits his time between Dallas and LA as a freelance lifestyle, fashion, health, and food writer with more than a decade of experience. In cannabis, been fortunate enough to collaborate with Cannabis & Tech Today, FOCL, Vitagenne, Reign Together, Mistifi, and more.