One of the oldest and most popular ways to smoke cannabis is to combine it with tobacco. Blunts and spliffs are among the most popular and historically popular methods.
Mixing the two herbs into a single rolled joint is known as a “spliff.” Rolling a cannabis joint with a cigar wrap or hollowed out cigarillo makes a “blunt.” So, spliffs have cannabis and tobacco inside and blunts have cannabis on the inside and tobacco on the outside.
Given how popular and traditional blunts and spliffs are you might expect that they would be widely available in recreational cannabis retail stores across the nation…but you would be wrong.
There are no tobacco products sold in any Washington or Oregon cannabis retail shops. So why has this innovative and quickly growing industry failed to bring such a popular product to market? As is too often the answer in this industry, it’s because the state won’t allow it.
Under Washington law, cannabis retailers may not add any substance to smokable cannabis that would change the smell, nor can they combine it with any other “foreign matter” that would be considered an adulteration during quality assurance testing. These regulations could apply to tobacco, but they are vague and would take some pretty creative rule interpretations to apply (not that the WSLCB ever get too creative how they interpret their rules).
The real nail in the coffin under Washington law for combining cannabis and tobacco is that both products are regulated substances that can only be sold by a licensed retailer. However, licensed cannabis retailers are only allowed to sell two types of goods: cannabis products and paraphernalia. Tobacco, similarly, may only be sold by a business licensed and approved by the WSLCB. Therefore, to sell a blunt a retailer would need both a cannabis retail license and a tobacco retail license, however, under the cannabis license they are limited to only selling two product types of products. This limitation necessarily prohibits the third product, tobacco; even if they were combined into one product.
Oregon Law is more straight forward. Oregon considers tobacco to be a “poisonous and deleterious” adulterant that is “injurious to health” and therefore prohibited from being combined with cannabis. Additionally, an OLCC licensed cannabis producers may not add any substance to a cannabis product that would “increase potency, toxicity or addictive potential,” specifically including both nicotine and caffeine.
In summary, cannabis cannot currently be combined and sold with tobacco in Washington or Oregon. Other states that are currently in the process of writing and implementing their recreational cannabis laws will each have to decide for themselves whether allowing blunts, spliffs, and other cross-buzzing products is an acceptable public health risk. My humble guess is that they are unlikely to permit the combo to be sold.
The good news for all those who enjoy mixing their vices is that there is no prohibition in either state for consumers to combine them. Blunt wraps, rolling tobacco, and rolling papers are widely available in every city and there are plenty of how-to videos to teach you to roll your own.