Are Pre-roll the hotdogs of Cannabis?

Sometimes they're premium flower in a convenient package. Sometimes you might be better off not asking what's inside. 

I've never really been a pre-roll guy. 

Give me flower and I'll roll my own, or better yet, pack a glass pipe. Part of that is habit, but part of it is that I like seeing what I'm about to smoke. 

A pre-roll requires a little faith. 

I've bought cheap ones that seemed like a great deal right up until I lit them. They burned unevenly, needed to be relit constantly and tasted like the cannabis equivalent of the bottom of a lawn mower bag. After fighting with one for ten minutes, you start wondering whether the convenience was really all that convenient. 

Which raises a question I've heard more than once around the cannabis industry: Are pre-rolls the hot dogs of weed? 

You know what I mean. 

Everybody loves a hot dog until somebody starts asking what's actually in it. 

The comparison is funny, but it's also a little unfair. I've toured cannabis facilities where pre-rolls were being produced, and one thing becomes obvious pretty quickly: there is no single answer to what's inside a pre-roll. Production methods, starting material and quality standards can differ tremendously from one company to another. 

Some pre-rolls contain good flower. 

Some use small buds. 

Some use shake. 

Some can contain trim. 

And infused pre-rolls may add kief, hash or cannabis concentrates.

Those aren't rumors whispered by suspicious smokers. Michigan cannabis regulators, for example, specifically recognize buds, shake and trim within flower used in pre-roll production, while California separately recognizes traditional flower pre-rolls and infused pre-rolls. California defines an infused pre-roll as one containing cannabis concentrate or other permitted ingredients. 

So maybe the question isn't whether pre-rolls are hot dogs. 

It's what kind of hot dog you're buying. 

WHOLE FLOWER, SMALLS, SHAKE AND TRIM Let's start with whole flower. 

A producer can take the same quality buds you'd expect to see in a jar, grind them and put that flower into cones. That's basically somebody doing the rolling for you. 

Then there are smalls—smaller buds from the plant that may not have the visual appeal necessary to command premium shelf prices. Small does not automatically mean bad. A smaller bud from quality cannabis is still cannabis flower, and using it in a pre-roll can make perfect sense because nobody is going to admire the nug structure after it's ground up anyway. 

Shake is different. It's the loose cannabis material that accumulates as flower is handled. Depending on its origin and freshness, shake can still make a perfectly serviceable joint. 

Then we get to trim. 

Trim generally includes the leafy material removed while preparing cannabis flowers for sale. Cannabis produces its greatest concentration of glandular trichomes—the resin structures where cannabinoids and many aromatic compounds accumulate—on flower tissues, while leaves generally contain fewer. 

That doesn't mean trim is poisonous, fake cannabis or automatically garbage. 

It does mean that a pre-roll made primarily from lower-value plant material isn't necessarily the same product as one made from ground premium flower—even if both arrive in very similar tubes. 

And from the outside, you can't always tell. 

That's the part that makes me prefer rolling my own. 

When I buy flower, I can see it. I can smell it. I can break it apart. I know what just went into my paper or pipe. 

With a pre-roll, somebody else already made that decision for me.

THEN CAME THE INFUSED JOINT 

Of course, cannabis couldn't leave the humble joint alone. 

Now we have infused pre-rolls. 

Kief. Hash. Concentrate. Distillate. Various combinations designed to turn a regular joint into something considerably stronger. 

California regulators actually treat infused pre-rolls as a distinct product category, and the state's market reporting lists infused pre-rolls among its major retail cannabis products. 

These can be excellent products. 

They can also mask mediocre flower. 

That's why the giant THC number on the package shouldn't be the only thing you examine. Adding concentrate can make a pre-roll more potent, but potency doesn't automatically tell you whether the underlying flower was high quality or whether the thing is going to burn well. 

A rocket engine doesn't improve a car with square tires. 

WHAT I SAW BEHIND THE CURTAIN 

Touring cannabis production facilities changed the way I look at pre-rolls. Not because I walked away thinking they're all filled with scraps. They aren't. 

What stood out was how much goes into producing something consumers often treat as one of the simplest products in the dispensary. 

Cannabis has to be prepared to the right consistency. Material has to make it into cones. The fill needs to be reasonably consistent. The product has to be finished, packaged and, in regulated markets, handled within that state's testing and tracking requirements. 

Massachusetts occupational-health investigators have even documented commercial pre-roll production using machinery that shakes ground cannabis into cones, which gives you some idea of how far we've come from somebody sitting at a kitchen table with a grinder. 

And legal-market testing matters. Requirements differ from state to state, but California, for example, requires cannabis batches to undergo compliance testing before retail sale, including testing for cannabinoids and contaminants. Pre-rolls must be in final form for regulatory compliance testing.

That's a substantial improvement over the mystery joint somebody handed you at a party twenty years ago. 

But testing still doesn't tell you whether you'll enjoy smoking it. 

That's where the consumer has to pay attention. 

HOW DO YOU SPOT A GOOD ONE? 

Start with transparency. 

Does the company tell you whether it's whole flower? Does it identify the cultivar? Is it infused, and if so, with what? Is there meaningful batch information rather than nothing but a giant THC percentage screaming from the package? 

Then smoke it. 

A good pre-roll shouldn't require a relationship counselor. 

It should draw without feeling like you're trying to suck a milkshake through a coffee stirrer. It shouldn't constantly go out. It shouldn't immediately canoe down one side while the other remains untouched. And it should actually taste and smell like cannabis you'd willingly buy as flower. 

One bad joint doesn't condemn an entire brand, either. Cannabis is agricultural material, and pre-roll production introduces additional variables involving grind, fill and storage. 

But if every pre-roll in the pack tastes like burnt hay and requires a Zippo every 30 seconds, maybe stop blaming yourself. 

SO...ARE THEY HOT DOGS? 

Sometimes. 

There are absolutely bargain pre-rolls designed to turn less marketable cannabis material into an inexpensive, convenient product. 

But there are also companies grinding quality flower specifically for pre-rolls and others producing premium infused joints that people genuinely love. 

The category is simply too broad to dismiss. 

I'm probably still going to roll my own.

Maybe I'm a control freak. Maybe I've smoked one too many cheap pre-rolls that burned sideways while tasting like something swept off a greenhouse floor. 

Either way, I like knowing what's going into my joint. 

So the next time you see five pre-rolls for a price that seems almost impossibly cheap, don't automatically assume you've discovered the greatest bargain in cannabis. 

Ask what's inside. 

Because just like the hot dog, sometimes the answer is perfectly respectable. And sometimes you might enjoy it more if you don't ask.