Pubdate: Sun, 24 May 2015
Source: New York Times Magazine (NY)
Copyright: 2015 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/index.html
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/297
Note: The New York Times Magazine is a section of the Sunday edition 
of the New York Times
Author: Malia Wollan

HOW TO ROLL A JOINT

After he sold his cable-television firm for $18 million in 1999, 
Bruce Nassau was a wealthy man looking for a new industry.

He wanted to invest in a product with broad consumer appeal.

Eventually, he settled on marijuana. "I'm an old guy in this 
business," says Nassau, 62, the chief executive of Tru Cannabis, a 
company with five marijuana dispensaries in the Denver area and plans 
to expand within Colorado and to four other states.

Last year, the company's sales reached $10 million.

Nassau started smoking joints as a teenager in Chicago, and he 
figured he knew the ins and outs of weed consumption. But joints, it 
turned out, were a bit old--fashioned - the meatloaf of marijuana - 
and young people had all sorts of newfangled ways to ingest the 
stuff. Chief among them are "dabbing" (a means of inhaling smoke from 
resinous hash oil) and "vaping" (heating marijuana and breathing in 
vapor rather than smoke, often done with so--called vape pens). When 
more youthful smokers did roll joints, they tended to roll 
unfamiliarly large ones, often in cigar wrappers, and call them 
blunts. "I had to learn a whole new vocabulary," Nassau says.

While he understands the appeal of these methods ("They get you real 
stoned real quick"), Nassau, like many of his baby--boomer customers, 
prefers an old--school joint.

Making one is "ritualistic and relaxing," and you don't need 
specialized gear. He also likes handling plant material, rather than 
resinous concentrate. Tru Cannabis sells individual joints for $6, $8 
or $9 in its shops, but Nassau says rolling is an easy skill to acquire.

"Go back to basics," he says. Crush your marijuana buds into uniform 
bits with your fingers or in a grinder device, which Nassau says 
works "like a pepper mill." Take one sheet of rolling paper and fold 
it in half with the gum strip facing up. Sprinkle the marijuana 
evenly into the paper's crease, avoiding the edges.

Begin rolling back and forth with your thumbs and index fingers until 
you have a cylindrical shape.

Wet the sugar gum with your tongue, and seal it tight. "Don't overdo 
it with the licking," warns Nassau, as too much saliva dissolves the paper.

At first, your joints will be lumpy and crude. Nassau says to keep 
practicing until you can roll one effortlessly in about a minute.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom