A Shout out to all you smokers out there
As many people already know, I roll my own cigarettes. The reason for this originated when I was out buying cigars and learned that the same tobacco shop had supplies for rolling cigarettes. I was interested due to that scene in Pulp Fiction and decided to give it a try. I soon discovered a more practical application for the use of these cigarettes since they don’t use half the chemicals that are used in conventional cigarettes. Because of this I wondered if it was possible to quit smoking by smoking hand rolled cigarettes instead. The philosophy being that if one can lose the chemical addiction, one may be able to abort smoking altogether.
I tried by rolling my own and smoking with a friend who smokes a pack a day and complains that he can’t quit. He is also 17 and pisses me off when he always asks me to buy him cigarettes at the store. Of course he took an interest in seeing someone roll their own and wanted to try it. A couple of puffs and he put his own cigarette out claiming that the hand rolled had way more flavor.
Now that I knew that a heavy smoker could actually take to the hand rolled I went out a bought everything I needed to make more. I delivered and pack of hand rolled to him the next day and told him to smoke those instead of the Camels. Two weeks later he declared himself clean of smoking. Once the chemical addiction was gone he was able to stop smoking at his leisure.
So far three people have tried my hand rolled cigarettes and 2 have quit. If you know someone who is trying to quit and are 18 I will post instructions a hints to making this technique, which I simply call “Fighting fire with fire,” work.
(Surgeon General Warning: Smoking can lead to heart disease, lung cancer and throat cancer, even if you do not inhale.) For this reason I don’t suggest smoking if you can avoid it. Also my doctor agrees that 1 cigarette a week will not greatly increase your risks of cancer. Use your best judgment. Following instructions are barrowed from www.soyouwanna.com
You'll save some cash, doing it this way
Rolling tobacco varies in price, costing from about $1.00 per ounce up to about $2.50 per ounce for specialty tobaccos (for those of you who speak metric, there are about 28 grams in an ounce). Cigarette papers cost from 50 cents to $1.00 per pack, and you usually get 50 papers in a pack. An ounce of tobacco will usually get you around 20 cigarettes (or more if you like them thinner), so your price range for 20 cigarettes, when you roll your own, is from about $1.25 (for generic brands at the drug store) up to about $3.00 (for specialty brands at a tobacconist). A regular package of 20 cigarettes usually costs between $2.50 and $4.00, so you can save quite a bit by rolling your own.
Mmmm...tobacco
Which tobacco you will use is, of course, a matter of personal taste. Just try out some of the kinds of tobacco that are available to you and when you find one which is appealing, stick with it. Tobacco and rolling papers can be purchased from tobacco shops, drug stores, convenience stores, from catalogues, and online.
It is probably best to buy tobacco in small quantities, because it dries up quickly and it is less pleasant to smoke and very difficult to roll when it is dry. Buy small pouches and keep them sealed up as tightly as possible, preferably in an additional plastic bag (you can keep your papers in there, too). The large tins might seem like a better deal, but they don't keep the tobacco fresh or moist enough. Unless you smoke like an industrial solid waste-burning facility, you will end up fighting your way through half a can of dry, stale tobacco. If your tobacco does become too dry, you can try placing something moist in its container and sealing it until the tobacco becomes moister. We recommend a leaf of lettuce or a piece of apple, although apple can sometimes impart a flavor to the tobacco. You can also try using a small piece of wet cloth or napkin, but make sure to squeeze it out well or some of your tobacco will be too damp.
There are six steps:
1. Set up the paper
2. Measure the tobacco
3. Place the tobacco in the paper
4. Roll the tobacco into a cylinder
5. Roll the paper over the tobacco
6. Seal and complete the cigarette
1. Set up the paper
Get a leaf of cigarette paper and place it on a flat surface or lay it flat on your hand. Cigarette papers are made with folds which create a kind of valley into which you're going to place the tobacco. Therefore, you should place the paper so that the folded parts are sticking upwards, genius. One of the folds will have a little strip of glue right at the top, which you will eventually lick in order to seal the finished cigarette. This strip of glue should be facing you, on the upright fold furthest from you.
2. Measure the tobacco
When you have your paper expertly laid out in front of you, pinch up a small quantity of tobacco. It's difficult to provide exact guidance in this matter; it's something you'll have to get a feel for as you practice. The tobacco companies recommend that you use about a gram and a half (one gram is about one twenty-eighth of an ounce). This might not be too helpful; after all, how many of us purchase quantities of dried plant matter by the gram? Not us law-abiding citizens, we'll tell you that for sure. Anyway…a gram and a half of tobacco is a little less than a tablespoon by volume. So start out with that as a guideline and then experiment as you go and see how much tobacco you like to have in your rollies.
3. Place the tobacco in the paper
Once you have your small quantity of tobacco in your fingers, place it in the cigarette paper. Place it so that it is fairly evenly-distributed along the length of the paper and so that there is about a half-inch of tobacco sticking out at either end. If, as you roll, you find that you are one of those people who is forever squishing the stuff in the middle out to the edges, you should compensate by both: (1) Not doing that so much anymore; and (2) Putting a little bit more tobacco in the middle. If, on the other hand, you are one of those people who squeezes too hard at the edges and forces all the tobacco into the middle, you should place less in the middle and more at the edges. Straightforward enough, no?
4. Roll the tobacco into a cylinder
From this point on it becomes rather less straightforward. For once you have placed the tobacco in the paper you must begin the part which will make you feel like you have all the grace of a blind midget trying to juggle fourteen umbrellas. Gently pick up the cigarette paper in both hands, with the index finger and middle finger of each hand on the far side of the paper and with each thumb on the near side of the paper. The fingers and thumbs should be on a forty-five degree angle, with the fingertips facing toward each other, so that if you touched them together they would form a little tent-like shape. They should not, however, be touching each other, as that would interfere with the rolling. With your fingers in place, begin moving the front fold of the paper up and down with your thumb. Don't pack it too hard.
5. Roll the paper over the tobacco
Once you have as nice a cylinder of tobacco as you think you can get (by the way, if you've been rolling the thing for more than a minute, you've been doing it way too long and it's probably about as smokable as a stick of petrified wood), you are ready to finish the rolling. This last part can be rather tricky, and if it is incorrectly executed, it can wreck an otherwise perfectly-rolled smoke. Here's how you do it: roll your thumbs downward until the edge of the paper is parallel with your cylinder of tobacco. Then, instead of rolling the paper back up, use your thumbs to fold it over the top of the cylinder and then start to roll it up. Only this time, with the edge of the paper tucked right in around the cylinder of tobacco, it really will start to roll up and look like a cigarette. Roll it up fairly tightly until only about the top half-inch of the far fold of paper with its strip of glue is exposed above the rolled paper and tobacco.
6. Seal and complete the cigarette
Quickly run your tongue along the strip of glue - moistening it, NOT slobbering on it-- and roll the cigarette together so that the glue seals it into a wee tube. Voila! A cigarette perfectly ready for you to smoke -- apart from you the fact that you almost certainly did it really badly if it was your first time, and from the fact that there is about a half-inch of hairy-looking tobacco sticking out at either end. The reason we asked you to leave the tobacco sticking out at the ends is so that you won't end up with the all-too-common phenomenon of having the ends be too loose or thinner than the rest of the smoke. Once you are finished rolling, you simply pinch off the loose tobacco with your fingernails or cut it off with scissors (not so cowboy-like) or with the bowie knife you carry in your boot (yeeeehah). The resulting cigarette will have a relatively even amount of tobacco throughout its length, and it will look and smoke better than if you had not left the tobacco sticking out. Trust us.
Now that you have a finished cigarette in front of you, pick the end which looks the best and stick that in your mouth. Then light the other end and pass the cigarette over to Uma Thurman. If she doesn't happen to be around, just smoke it yourself and enjoy the smooth taste of your own industriousness. You're going to get some tobacco in your mouth, but you don't care, do ya now, Tex?
Also available for 7 bucks are machines and filter paper tubes for $2.00. This makes for a more professional cigarette with the same look and feel of a Camel. This is preferable to long time smokers.
I tried by rolling my own and smoking with a friend who smokes a pack a day and complains that he can’t quit. He is also 17 and pisses me off when he always asks me to buy him cigarettes at the store. Of course he took an interest in seeing someone roll their own and wanted to try it. A couple of puffs and he put his own cigarette out claiming that the hand rolled had way more flavor.
Now that I knew that a heavy smoker could actually take to the hand rolled I went out a bought everything I needed to make more. I delivered and pack of hand rolled to him the next day and told him to smoke those instead of the Camels. Two weeks later he declared himself clean of smoking. Once the chemical addiction was gone he was able to stop smoking at his leisure.
So far three people have tried my hand rolled cigarettes and 2 have quit. If you know someone who is trying to quit and are 18 I will post instructions a hints to making this technique, which I simply call “Fighting fire with fire,” work.
(Surgeon General Warning: Smoking can lead to heart disease, lung cancer and throat cancer, even if you do not inhale.) For this reason I don’t suggest smoking if you can avoid it. Also my doctor agrees that 1 cigarette a week will not greatly increase your risks of cancer. Use your best judgment. Following instructions are barrowed from www.soyouwanna.com
You'll save some cash, doing it this way
Rolling tobacco varies in price, costing from about $1.00 per ounce up to about $2.50 per ounce for specialty tobaccos (for those of you who speak metric, there are about 28 grams in an ounce). Cigarette papers cost from 50 cents to $1.00 per pack, and you usually get 50 papers in a pack. An ounce of tobacco will usually get you around 20 cigarettes (or more if you like them thinner), so your price range for 20 cigarettes, when you roll your own, is from about $1.25 (for generic brands at the drug store) up to about $3.00 (for specialty brands at a tobacconist). A regular package of 20 cigarettes usually costs between $2.50 and $4.00, so you can save quite a bit by rolling your own.
Mmmm...tobacco
Which tobacco you will use is, of course, a matter of personal taste. Just try out some of the kinds of tobacco that are available to you and when you find one which is appealing, stick with it. Tobacco and rolling papers can be purchased from tobacco shops, drug stores, convenience stores, from catalogues, and online.
It is probably best to buy tobacco in small quantities, because it dries up quickly and it is less pleasant to smoke and very difficult to roll when it is dry. Buy small pouches and keep them sealed up as tightly as possible, preferably in an additional plastic bag (you can keep your papers in there, too). The large tins might seem like a better deal, but they don't keep the tobacco fresh or moist enough. Unless you smoke like an industrial solid waste-burning facility, you will end up fighting your way through half a can of dry, stale tobacco. If your tobacco does become too dry, you can try placing something moist in its container and sealing it until the tobacco becomes moister. We recommend a leaf of lettuce or a piece of apple, although apple can sometimes impart a flavor to the tobacco. You can also try using a small piece of wet cloth or napkin, but make sure to squeeze it out well or some of your tobacco will be too damp.
There are six steps:
1. Set up the paper
2. Measure the tobacco
3. Place the tobacco in the paper
4. Roll the tobacco into a cylinder
5. Roll the paper over the tobacco
6. Seal and complete the cigarette
1. Set up the paper
Get a leaf of cigarette paper and place it on a flat surface or lay it flat on your hand. Cigarette papers are made with folds which create a kind of valley into which you're going to place the tobacco. Therefore, you should place the paper so that the folded parts are sticking upwards, genius. One of the folds will have a little strip of glue right at the top, which you will eventually lick in order to seal the finished cigarette. This strip of glue should be facing you, on the upright fold furthest from you.
2. Measure the tobacco
When you have your paper expertly laid out in front of you, pinch up a small quantity of tobacco. It's difficult to provide exact guidance in this matter; it's something you'll have to get a feel for as you practice. The tobacco companies recommend that you use about a gram and a half (one gram is about one twenty-eighth of an ounce). This might not be too helpful; after all, how many of us purchase quantities of dried plant matter by the gram? Not us law-abiding citizens, we'll tell you that for sure. Anyway…a gram and a half of tobacco is a little less than a tablespoon by volume. So start out with that as a guideline and then experiment as you go and see how much tobacco you like to have in your rollies.
3. Place the tobacco in the paper
Once you have your small quantity of tobacco in your fingers, place it in the cigarette paper. Place it so that it is fairly evenly-distributed along the length of the paper and so that there is about a half-inch of tobacco sticking out at either end. If, as you roll, you find that you are one of those people who is forever squishing the stuff in the middle out to the edges, you should compensate by both: (1) Not doing that so much anymore; and (2) Putting a little bit more tobacco in the middle. If, on the other hand, you are one of those people who squeezes too hard at the edges and forces all the tobacco into the middle, you should place less in the middle and more at the edges. Straightforward enough, no?
4. Roll the tobacco into a cylinder
From this point on it becomes rather less straightforward. For once you have placed the tobacco in the paper you must begin the part which will make you feel like you have all the grace of a blind midget trying to juggle fourteen umbrellas. Gently pick up the cigarette paper in both hands, with the index finger and middle finger of each hand on the far side of the paper and with each thumb on the near side of the paper. The fingers and thumbs should be on a forty-five degree angle, with the fingertips facing toward each other, so that if you touched them together they would form a little tent-like shape. They should not, however, be touching each other, as that would interfere with the rolling. With your fingers in place, begin moving the front fold of the paper up and down with your thumb. Don't pack it too hard.
5. Roll the paper over the tobacco
Once you have as nice a cylinder of tobacco as you think you can get (by the way, if you've been rolling the thing for more than a minute, you've been doing it way too long and it's probably about as smokable as a stick of petrified wood), you are ready to finish the rolling. This last part can be rather tricky, and if it is incorrectly executed, it can wreck an otherwise perfectly-rolled smoke. Here's how you do it: roll your thumbs downward until the edge of the paper is parallel with your cylinder of tobacco. Then, instead of rolling the paper back up, use your thumbs to fold it over the top of the cylinder and then start to roll it up. Only this time, with the edge of the paper tucked right in around the cylinder of tobacco, it really will start to roll up and look like a cigarette. Roll it up fairly tightly until only about the top half-inch of the far fold of paper with its strip of glue is exposed above the rolled paper and tobacco.
6. Seal and complete the cigarette
Quickly run your tongue along the strip of glue - moistening it, NOT slobbering on it-- and roll the cigarette together so that the glue seals it into a wee tube. Voila! A cigarette perfectly ready for you to smoke -- apart from you the fact that you almost certainly did it really badly if it was your first time, and from the fact that there is about a half-inch of hairy-looking tobacco sticking out at either end. The reason we asked you to leave the tobacco sticking out at the ends is so that you won't end up with the all-too-common phenomenon of having the ends be too loose or thinner than the rest of the smoke. Once you are finished rolling, you simply pinch off the loose tobacco with your fingernails or cut it off with scissors (not so cowboy-like) or with the bowie knife you carry in your boot (yeeeehah). The resulting cigarette will have a relatively even amount of tobacco throughout its length, and it will look and smoke better than if you had not left the tobacco sticking out. Trust us.
Now that you have a finished cigarette in front of you, pick the end which looks the best and stick that in your mouth. Then light the other end and pass the cigarette over to Uma Thurman. If she doesn't happen to be around, just smoke it yourself and enjoy the smooth taste of your own industriousness. You're going to get some tobacco in your mouth, but you don't care, do ya now, Tex?
Also available for 7 bucks are machines and filter paper tubes for $2.00. This makes for a more professional cigarette with the same look and feel of a Camel. This is preferable to long time smokers.