When most people think about cannabis, they think about joints. A joint is the classic way to use cannabis, after all.
As iconic as the joint is, it can also seem intimidating — if you’ve gone through the trouble of rolling a joint, the risk of it falling apart and wasting your flower is worrying. Knowing how to roll a joint properly is key to a great smoking experience.
Whether you’ve never rolled a joint in your life or you’re worried your joints just aren’t very good, don’t worry. Rolling a great joint isn’t as hard as it seems. With the poke and twist technique, you’ll be rolling even, tidy joints in no time.
Before You Start Rolling
Before you can begin rolling your first joint, you need to make sure you have everything together. There’s more to rolling a great joint than simply having flower and some paper. Here’s what you need:
Ingredients
- Up to a gram of your favorite VidaCann flower
- Rolling papers
- Paper for a filter or crutch (optional)
Tools
- A cannabis grinder
- A pen or other packing tool
How to Pack and Roll a Joint
Once you have all your tools and ingredients together, you can actually start to put your joint together. The most important part of rolling a perfect joint is patience. When you first start out, you’ll need to pay attention to each step to make sure you’re doing it correctly.
As you start to understand the motions, you’ll get faster, but only if you take the time to learn how to roll a joint well in the first place.
Step One: Grind the Flower
Cannabis is sold in bud form in most cases, and for good reason. Cannabis flowers are covered in crystals known as trichomes, and these are where most of the important compounds are found. Pre-ground cannabis loses these trichomes, and most of the flower’s potency goes with them.
So, the first step to rolling a perfect joint is to grind your own flower. A cannabis grinder is designed to properly break up buds into the perfect size for smoking, but in a pinch, you can also use scissors or your fingers. You can grind as much flower as you want, but for your first joint, you only need half a gram. If you grind more, you can store it in an air-tight container for your next joint.
Step Two: Make a Crutch/Filter (Optional)
Once your flower is broken down, you can make a crutch for your joint. A crutch is also called a filter because it helps filter out the material as you inhale. It doesn’t affect the smoke, but it does keep cannabis from falling out of the joint and into your mouth. A good crutch can also help keep your joint a little more stable and a little less floppy.
Making a crutch is simple. Some rolling papers come with crutch material, but you can also make your own. All you need is some thin, stiff cardboard; a business card works perfectly.
Cut the cardboard down into a strip about half an inch wide and a few inches long. At one narrow end, make a few small “accordion” folds. Then, starting at the last fold, roll up the crutch into a thin tube. You should end up with a tube with a few bars of paper zig-zagging in the center.
Step Three: Fill the Paper
Now you can actually start to make the joint itself. Take a rolling paper and place it crease-side down. It’s easiest to position it between two fingers to help it stay in shape. Put your crutch at one end if you made one, then sprinkle in your cannabis. Try to spread it evenly along the paper, then gently shake it so it settles and condenses.
Step Four: Shape and Roll It
This is the most critical part of the joint-rolling process. Carefully fold the rolling paper in half and then start rolling the flower inside up and down. The goal is to shape the ground flower into a tube shape so it sticks together better. Do this before you roll up the paper!
Once your cannabis is shaped, you can finally, officially roll the joint. Take the non-sticky side of your rolling paper and wrap it around the flower so it’s tucked underneath it. The flower should be completely surrounded by the paper now. If that’s the case, lick the sticky side of the rolling paper, then roll it from the non-sticky side up.
Step Five: Pack the Joint
Before you seal your joint, you should pack it. A pen works perfectly. Tip your joint so the end you light is facing up, then gently use a pen to tap the flower down into the joint. This helps the joint burn more evenly and gives you a better smoking experience. This is the “poke” part of “poke and twist.”
Sealing a Joint for Safety (Optional, but Recommended)
The final step is sealing the joint properly. This is the “twist” part of “poke and twist,” and it’s the step that keeps the end of the joint from falling apart and spilling flower onto you or the floor.
After packing the joint, there should be some extra paper at the end. This is what you twist. You should twist it firmly so you wind up with something that looks like a wick. You can light this wick to start smoking.
The Final Step: Smoke and Enjoy
Congratulations! You’ve rolled a great, smokable joint. Now you’re ready to smoke your preferred VidaCann flower whenever and wherever you want. Since VidaCann has online options and dispensaries around the state, you can practice your joint-rolling technique with a wide variety of Florida cannabis.
If you decide that joints aren’t for you, VidaCann still has what you need. There is a wide variety of cannabis products available through VidaCann’s dispensaries that don’t require you to roll anything. Whether you love joints or prefer to leave them alone, there’s still a medical cannabis method that will work for you.
