Cannagars: The Cannabis Cigar Explained

A cannagar looks like a cigar from across the room, but there is no tobacco inside. It is a dense roll of cannabis flower, pressed around a stick that is pulled out to leave an airway, wrapped in leaf or paper and smoked slowly, often by a group, for an hour or more.

The idea is old, since Thai farmers tied buds to bamboo sticks long before legal dispensaries existed. The modern version is a luxury item with prices to match, and it holds far more THC than a joint.

Key takeaways

• A cannagar is a cigar-shaped roll of tightly packed cannabis flower, molded around a skewer that leaves an airway down the center.
• Cannagars contain no tobacco, while most blunts are rolled in cigar wraps that carry nicotine.
• The design goes back to the Thai stick, buds tied to bamboo sticks in northeast Thailand.
• A commercial cannagar can hold 4 to 10 grams of flower or more, plus rosin or concentrate, against 1 gram in a typical pre-roll.
• Smoke one like a cigar, with an even light and gentle puffs, or the hot smoke may burn your lips.
• A 10-gram cannagar holds about as much THC as 30 average-size joints of the same flower, so share it and pace yourself.
• Cannagar smoke is still smoke, with many of the same harmful compounds as tobacco smoke.

Anatomy of a cannabis cigar

A cannagar, short for cannabis cigar, is built differently from a joint. Flower is packed into a mold around a skewer and pressed until it holds the shape of a cigar, and the skewer comes out to leave a hollow channel for air. Most share the same parts:

• Tightly packed cannabis flower
• A hollow center left by the skewer
• A wrap of cannabis leaf, hemp, palm leaf or paper
• Often rosin, hash oil or another concentrate
• Sometimes a wooden mouthpiece

Commercial cannagars

Unlike cigars, cannagars contain no tobacco, just cannabis, Retail Brew noted in a 2024 story about The Godfather, a cannagar from the Colorado maker Xiaolin. It was almost four inches long, held 10 grams of cannabis and 2 grams of concentrate, burned for up to three hours and retailed for $660 at one New York dispensary. A typical dispensary pre-roll, by comparison, holds 1 gram.

Smaller weed cigars cost less, and bigger ones cost much more. Willamette Week reported in 2017 that Leira, a Seattle maker, sold a small 4-gram cannagar called a cannarillo, coated with half a gram of rosin and wrapped in cannabis leaves, for $110 in Washington shops. In 2018, Newsweek reported that a 24-gram cannagar wrapped in hemp and 24-karat gold leaf sold for $11,000 at a Las Vegas dispensary.

Home molds and kits

Home kits work the same way. In a 2019 Willamette Week test of a $44 mold kit, a small bamboo skewer threaded through the mold formed the core of the cigar, and the writer left 5 grams of flower in the mold for two days. The kit's instructions called for at least a few hours in the mold to set the cigar shape, and a few days was better.

Thai sticks, the first weed cigar

The cannagar's ancestor is the Thai stick. After the harvest, farmers in northeast Thailand dried the buds, then tied them to small bamboo sticks and secured them with threads of hemp fiber, Peter Maguire wrote in The Diplomat. Other accounts describe a hemp stalk in place of bamboo, buds treated with hash oil before wrapping, and sticks cured underground.

American soldiers met Thai sticks during the Vietnam War years. After the US built military bases in Thailand in the 1960s, Maguire wrote, cheap, powerful pot became as easy to find as beer, and one Vietnam veteran remembered that a cheap bottle of gin from the base store could be traded for a pack of twenty Thai sticks.

When Thai sticks were popular, dealers sold any buds bound in string or to a stick under the name. Most of the original Thai bud was destroyed in the 1970s, when the Thai government began its war on drugs, but Thai stick-style cannacigars made from other strains kept spreading around the world. The modern cannagar grew up in legal US markets, with makers in Washington and Colorado selling them by the late 2010s.

Flower for a homemade cannagar

In our experience, the flower decides whether a cannagar burns evenly or goes out halfway. Dense, resinous buds pack into a solid roll that holds together when the skewer comes out, while airy buds leave gaps that burn unevenly. Flower that is too wet will not stay lit, and flower that is too dry crumbles in the mold, so a slow, full cure matters. These two pack especially well:

• GMO Cookies, a Chemdawg and Girl Scout Cookies cross with up to 30% THC, forms dense flowers with heavy resin and smells of coffee, diesel and garlic.
• Gary Payton, a Y Griega and Snowman cross at 27% THC, grows compact, sticky buds with notes of diesel, spicy herbs and sweet berries.

Check your state's home-grow rules first, since not every legal state allows it.

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Cannagar vs. blunt, from wrapper to smoke

The cannagar vs. blunt difference starts with the wrapper. A blunt is cannabis rolled in a cigar wrapper, usually tobacco leaf, and one analysis of five cigar wrappers often used for blunts found 1.2 to 6 mg of nicotine per cigar, similar to the 1.1 to 1.8 mg in an average cigarette, Inverse reported in 2019. The tobacco link shows up in behavior too. A 2023 study based on a large national US tobacco survey found that people who smoke blunts are more likely to start cigarettes, e-cigarettes and cigars than people who do not use cannabis.

Cannagars skip the tobacco, and so do blunts rolled in hemp wraps, which contain no nicotine. California's rules go further for licensed products, since inhaled cannabis products there may contain only cannabis, concentrate, terpenes, rolling paper, leaf, filter tips and inactive ingredients the FDA lists as acceptable for inhalation, which leaves no room for tobacco. Smokers who like the slow burn of a blunt can also skip the leaf with a reusable glass blunt.

Leaving out tobacco does not make the smoke clean. A 2020 study that compared the two kinds of smoke in detail found 2,575 compounds in marijuana smoke, 110 of them known to harm health, and the authors wrote that this study demonstrates striking similarities between marijuana and tobacco smoke in terms of their physical and chemical properties.

How to smoke a cannagar

Learning how to smoke a cannagar mostly means unlearning joint habits. The hollow center lets air through even though the roll is dense, and Xiaolin's co-founder told Retail Brew that if you hit one like a joint, it might burn your lips. Lighting borrows from cigar practice, where the cigar should be held at a 45-degree angle and rotated during lighting to achieve an even burn. A simple routine works:

1. Hold the end just above the flame of a torch or lighter, so the flame barely touches it.
2. Turn the cannagar slowly until the whole end glows evenly.
3. Draw gently through the mouthpiece if it has one, since the hollow center can carry hot smoke straight to your lips.
4. Take small, slow puffs, with a rest between each one.
5. Pass it around, since one cannagar can last a group an hour or more.

Expect a few rough puffs at first. In the 2019 Willamette Week test, perfecting the puff took some practice, a classic Bic lighter did the job, and a group passed the 5-gram cannagar around for just over 48 minutes.

Doses, joints and sharing

The size is the real risk. Researchers who studied US drug-arrest data estimated in 2016 that the average joint holds 0.32 grams of cannabis, and NPR reported in 2019 that one study of pot products seized by the US Drug Enforcement Administration found the potency increased from about 4% THC in 1995 to about 12% in 2014. Modern strains often run above 20%. Using 20% THC flower, the math looks like this:

Not all of that THC reaches the body, but a 10-gram cannagar still holds about as much as 30 average joints before counting any rosin or concentrate, and hash and hash oil can reach 80% to 90% THC. Staci Gruber, a cannabis researcher at McLean Hospital, told NPR that the old advice to start low and go slow still holds. "You can always add, but you can never take it away," she said. Pass it to friends, rest between rounds and put it out early if you have had enough.

Pressed flower, no tobacco and a slow burn

A cannagar is cannabis flower pressed around a skewer into a cigar shape and wrapped in leaf, hemp or paper, with an airway down the middle. It descends from the Thai stick, it carries no tobacco, unlike most blunts, and its smoke still shares many harmful compounds with tobacco smoke. Light it evenly, puff gently, pass it around, and remember that one cannagar can hold as much THC as dozens of joints.

The best cannagars start with dense, home-grown buds. Barney's Farm has been developing premium cannabis genetics since the 1980s, with over 40 Cannabis Cup wins. Explore our full seed catalog and find strains bred for every climate and skill level.