Tobacco-Free Blunt Wraps Are Popular Among Young Marijuana Smokers, Study Finds

Man rolling cananbis blunt or joint close-up top view.

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High school teens enjoy smoking weed with blunt wraps that are nicotine-free rather than those that have nicotine in them, according to a new study.

The study recently published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence reveals that high school students who use blunt wraps to smoke marijuana like them better without tobacco than with nicotine.

Smoking is the most common way to consume marijuana, and there are different methods to do it. Some of them are joints, which are rolling papers filled with marijuana; spliffs, which are rolling papers with a mix of marijuana and tobacco; and blunts, which are tobacco wraps that may or may not have nicotine, stuffed with marijuana.

Researchers from the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine surveyed 8,855 students from eight Connecticut high schools. Of those students, 475 reported smoking marijuana blunts.

Of the 475 students who reported ever using blunts in this study, 73.1% knew what type of blunt they used.

Of the 347 students who knew what product they used to make blunts, 89.9% said they used blunt wraps (tobacco or tobacco-free).

The most popular type of blunt wrap was tobacco-free (72.6%), followed by cigarillos (56.5%), which are defined as cigars emptied of their tobacco and replaced with marijuana, tobacco blunt wraps (49.2%), and large cigars (13.0%). Overall, 67.7% of students said they used a tobacco product to make a blunt. Furthermore, 40.3% of students said they used both tobacco products and tobacco-free blunt wraps, 32.3% said they exclusively used tobacco-free blunt wraps, and 27.4% said they exclusively used tobacco products to make blunts.

Although the rate of students adding tobacco to tobacco-free blunts was likely low, it is possible that some students who reported exclusively using tobacco-free blunt wraps may have added tobacco to their blunts, according to the study. This would alter the reported percentages of blunt use constituting tobacco-marijuana co-use versus exclusive marijuana use.

The authors of this study concluded that blunt wraps, especially tobacco-free blunt wraps, are very popular among young people who smoke marijuana blunts. They also found that many people use both tobacco-free and tobacco blunt wraps. This suggests that the current definition of the term “blunt” may not be accurate and that it is necessary to ask about the specific products used to make blunts in order to accurately classify marijuana blunt use as tobacco-marijuana co-use or exclusive marijuana use.

This study suggests that classifying blunt use is critical. For example, if blunt use were automatically classified as tobacco co-use, 32.3% of students in this study who reported exclusively using tobacco-free blunt wraps would have been misclassified as using tobacco blunts. Moreover, 13.4% of students who reported exclusive tobacco-free blunt use didn’t endorse any tobacco use, so their tobacco use status would be inaccurately reflected, and estimates of tobacco use would be inflated by assuming that they use tobacco products.

The study has several limitations. The data came from a specific sample, so the results may not apply to the entire population. Also, the study relied on self-report, so there is a risk of misreporting. Moreover, the study only assessed the lifetime use of different products for making blunts, not regular use. Finally, the authors of this study defined blunt as a “cigar, cigarillo, little cigar, or blunt wrap filled with marijuana,” but they did not assess whether students added any other substances, including tobacco, to their blunts. However, as explained in the study, the terms “spliff” or “joint” are used for mixing marijuana and tobacco together.

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