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The spread of legalization across the country has led to a revolution in cannabis products as they’ve moved from the underground to store shelves.
Common, hand-rolled joints have grown into the vast and fast-growing pre-roll segment. The concentrate category has exploded from simple pressed hashish to all sorts of resins, rosins and distillates. The once homemade pot brownie has birthed an entire category of cookies, cakes, gummies and beverages.
But no product has experienced a rebirth quite like the blunt. Thanks to regulations in every legal state that prevent selling tobacco and cannabis together, the blunt has had to be completely reinvented, opening up a golden era of innovation and giving us a whole New Age of Blunts.
Blunt Evolution
The joint’s transition from handmade goodie passed around among friends into the modern, machine-packed and consumer-packaged pre-roll is an easy evolution. It’s the same product as before – flower wrapped in rolling paper – but made with a consistency and quality that your older brother’s friend could never even hope to master.
But the blunt is different.
Traditionally rolled using a cigar leaf or tobacco wrap instead of rolling papers, blunts are the joint’s more flavorful, slower-burning cousin, growing to prominence on urban street corners and gaining their legendary status with the help of 90s hip-hop stars, among others.
But those regulations against combining tobacco and cannabis meant that in order to be sold alongside the flower, edibles and pre-rolls in dispensaries and retail stores, the blunt wrap was going to have to be reinvented for a new generation, resulting in a wide array of choices in wraps, shapes and even filter tips for blunt afficionados to choose from.
Because smokers still love blunts.
The Blunt Opportunity
Cannabis data mongers New Frontier Data recently published a detailed look at cannabis consumers and their preferences. One of the notable things it revealed is that while the joint is still the favorite way for people to consumer, the blunt comes in at a very respectable third.
But a quick look at the blunt category in point-of-sale data collected by analytics firm Headset shows the cannagar/blunt segment falling all the way to sixth among the pre-roll category. How do we explain this discrepancy?
Well, Headset classifies infused blunts in the “infused” category, suppressing the segment’s overall numbers. A pull of the Top 200 products that feature the word “blunt” in their name totals sales of $67,047,817 on 3,494,703 units sold, just among those 200 products.
The New Age of Blunts
But the question then becomes, if you legally can’t wrap your blunts in a tobacco leaf, what non-tobacco alternatives are available for modern pre-rolled blunt brands?
Hemp Wrap
The most common non-tobacco wrap used for pre-rolled blunts and pre-rolled tubes is the hemp wrap. Unlike hemp paper, which is made using the fibers of the plant, hemp wraps are made from grinding the entire plant into a powder and mixing it with other natural ingredients to form into a thick sheet that is pressed, dried and cured.
It’s a very similar process to how most cigarillos are made, though those wraps use the tobacco plant instead of hemp.
However, hemp wraps rely on the water bonds – the literal chemical bonds between the water molecules – to give it its strength and when the hemp wraps dry out, those bonds can break, leaving a brittle and crumbling wrap.
Hybrid Hemp Wraps
Hybrid hemp wraps solve this problem by using a different mixture with a larger percentage of hemp fibers in the mix. We call them “hybrid hemp wraps” because the process is a mix of how hemp paper and hemp wraps are made.
They burn very similar to hemp wraps and have the same earthy flavor notes, but hybrid hemp wrap products will not dry out and crumble.
Tea Leaf
Made with tea leaves, chamomile and traces of cocoa and vanilla, tea leaf wraps offer a slow-burning smoking experience with a unique flavor profile. The combination of flavors creates a light sweetness, and the tea leaves provide a richer smoke than some other alternatives, all without being overpowering.
They have a distinctive appearance that makes them stand out while still feeling familiar to traditional blunt smokers. The understated flavor profile is designed to complement rather than mask the taste of the cannabis flower inside.
Goji Berry
Easily the most striking of the non-tobacco alternatives, goji berry pre-rolled blunt cones and wraps feature a vibrant orange hue and deliver subtle fruity notes when smoked, making them stand-out on shelves and stick in people’s memories.
Lemongrass
Lemongrass wraps utilize the familiar elongated leaves of the lemongrass plant as their pulp foundation, resulting in a lighter-weight wrap compared to heavier alternatives.
The natural properties of the plant bring a delicate, citrus-herbal essence to the smoking experience without making the wrap taste artificially flavored.
Cocoa
Sourced from the cocoa plant, these wraps present a deep, dark appearance with an aromatic richness that brings expected chocolate undertones.
The cocoa wraps have a slightly increased thickness and weight compared to other options resulting in what some users describe as producing a fuller, more substantial smoke.
Lavender
Created from the fibers of one of the world’s most recognizable and aromatic flowers, lavender wraps offer a different experience than you might anticipate.
Since the manufacturing process uses actual plant fibers rather than adding concentrated lavender oil, the resulting lavender scent and taste is more subtle than expected. However, when matched with cannabis strains rich in linalool, the combination creates an exceptional sensory experience that resonates with some consumers.
Chamomile
While we previously discussed chamomile as a flavoring component or ingredient in tea leaf wrap fiber blends, the chamomile flower itself can serve as the primary material for wrap production.
Using the flower directly as the base material produces a chamomile blunt wrap with gentle flavor characteristics, contrasting with the approach of infusing hemp or other materials with chamomile oil.
Natural Plant Products
Some pre-roll producers pack their blunts into natural plant products like rose petals, banana leaves or palm leaves.
However, while these options each offer their own distinct smoking experiences and aromas, natural materials can often contain unsafe levels of heavy metals, pesticides and/or mold. Often, the heavy metals are absorbed from the soil while pesticides can be sprayed directly on these crops (which are designed to be looked at, not smoked) or drift in from nearby farms, making it difficult to consistently source clean materials to make these wraps and cones.
The Modern Blunt
Whatever you choose to wrap your blunts with, be it standard tobacco or a modern alternative such as hemp, there’s no doubt that it is a mainstay of the modern cannabis scene and industry.
And as the industry grows, so will demand for pre-rolled blunts. It’s a whole new age. Don’t get left behind.
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