Smoke Tricks: French Inhales, Smoke Rings and Ghost Hits

A smoke ring drifting across the room, a French inhale curling up into the nose, a hit that seems to vanish: smoke tricks turn a session into a show.

They also come with real physics, a few myths and some risks worth knowing before you try them.

Key takeaways

• Smoke rings are vortex rings, formed when a short puff of smoke is pushed into still air through a narrow opening.
• In a 1998 water-tank study, pushes longer than about four times the opening's width added a trailing jet behind the ring.
• The French inhale means letting smoke roll out of the mouth while breathing it in through the nose.
• Holding a hit for 20 seconds did not consistently change mood in a 1991 study, but it raised carbon monoxide absorption.
• Ghost hit is loose slang for a hit held until little smoke comes out, or a puff pushed out and pulled back in.
• Case reports link cannabis smoking to collapsed lungs, though population studies have not shown that it causes them.

From smoke boxes to cloud chasing

Physicists once took smoke rings seriously. APS News, the American Physical Society's newsletter, says knot theory gained prominence after a Scottish mathematician named Peter Guthrie Tait conducted experiments with smoke rings. Tait cut circles in the fronts of two cardboard boxes, covered the backs with rubber and filled them with smoke made from ammonia, salt and sulfuric acid. A strike on the rubber sent out rings that were remarkably stable, traveling across the room without dissipating. They inspired William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, to suggest that atoms might be knots of swirling vortices, and he published "On Vortex Atoms" in 1867.

Today the tricks run on vapor too. Cloud chasing, blowing big clouds with an e-cigarette, began on the West Coast around 2012, by most competitors' accounts, and in a 2017 RTI International study, 4 in 5 current e-cigarette users had tried vape tricks. Humans are not the only ring blowers either. A 2025 study in Marine Mammal Science documented humpback whales producing large bubble rings during friendly encounters with people, behavior that may be play or communication.

Ghost hits and the breath-holding myth

The ghost hit is the simplest trick and the least clearly defined. Smokers use the name for two things, a hit held until almost no smoke comes back out and a puff of smoke pushed out of the mouth and pulled back in before it drifts away. RTI's 2017 release listed ghost hits among popular vape tricks without defining them.

The long-hold version rests on a common belief that holding smoke in gets you higher, and the research does not support it. In a 1991 study of ten regular smokers, a 20-second hold made no consistent difference to mood compared with exhaling right away, and the authors concluded that prolonged breathholding does not substantially enhance the effects of inhaled marijuana smoke. What the hold did raise was carbon monoxide: the mean boost went from 4.4 ppm with no hold to 6.9 ppm with a 20-second one.

A 1995 study agreed on the high. Holding for 10 or 20 seconds raised THC in the blood but not the subjective effects, and in that study it did not raise carbon monoxide either. Bigger puffs, though, raised THC, carbon monoxide and the high together. A clear exhale is no proof that you absorbed every bit of THC.

So if you want a stronger session, the strain and the size of the hit matter more than the hold. In our experience, a normal, short hit of Biscotti Mintz, a Biscotti and Mintz cross that often exceeds 33% THC, does more than any long hold, with a creamy mint flavor on the exhale.

How to blow smoke rings, step by step

Learning how to blow smoke rings is mostly physics. A smoke ring is a visible vortex ring formed by smoke in a clear atmosphere, and it usually forms when a puff is suddenly pushed into still air through a narrow opening, such as rounded lips. The still air slows the outer edge of the puff while the center keeps moving, which sets the smoke rolling into a doughnut.

Puff length matters. In a 1998 water-tank study, a short push formed a single clean ring, while a push longer than about four times the opening's width formed a ring followed by a trailing jet. Applied to a mouth, that points to short, sharp pulses. In our experience, rings come easiest with a thick mouthful and still air:

1. Draw the smoke into your mouth and hold it there, without inhaling it deep.
2. Shape your lips into a small O and pull your tongue back.
3. Push out one short pulse with a flick of the tongue, a quick snap of the jaw or a tap on the cheek.
4. Close your lips between pulses, so each ring leaves on its own.
5. Practice away from fans, open windows and moving people, since drafts tear rings apart.

The unexamined day is a wasted opportunity. Reflect on what you did, what you learned, and how you can improve.

John Dewey

Joints, bongs and vapes for tricks

In our experience, the gear changes how a trick looks. A bong gives a thick, white mouthful that makes rings easy to see, and a joint gives a lighter smoke that still works for small rings and French inhales. Vape pens make dense clouds that fade fast, which is why cloud chasers favor them, while dry-herb vaporizers give a thin vapor that barely shows a ring. Whatever you use, smaller mouthfuls and slow, relaxed exhales look better than big rips that end in a cough.

French inhale, dragon and waterfall

The French inhale, the dragon and the waterfall move smoke through the mouth and nose, and two ring tricks, the jellyfish and cheerios, build on the basic smoke ring.

The French inhale

The French inhale is exhaling the vapor out of the mouth and inhaling it into the nose at the same time, forming a cloud over the upper lip, Wikipedia's cloud-chasing entry explains. Smoke works the same way, and in our experience this order gets it right:

1. Take a mouthful of smoke and keep it in your mouth.
2. Open your lips slightly and push your lower jaw forward a little, so the smoke starts to roll out.
3. Breathe in slowly through your nose as the smoke curls up over your top lip.
4. Keep the flow going until the smoke runs in a steady stream from your mouth to your nose.

The French inhale is also, in our experience, the best way to smell what you are smoking, since the smoke rolls straight past your nose. A loud strain shows it off. Lemon Tree, a Lemon Skunk and Sour Diesel cross at 28% THC, smells of sour lemon over skunky diesel, and its page calls that sharp lemon nose one of the most distinctive in the catalog.

The dragon, the waterfall and ring tricks

On the same Wikipedia page, the dragon means blowing vapor out of the nose and mouth at once, and the waterfall means exhaling out of the mouth and then breathing it back in through the nose, close to a slow French inhale. Smoke ring tricks build on the basic ring. The same entry describes the jellyfish as smoke rings within smoke rings, and in 2017 Science News Explores described teens blowing tiny vapor rings called cheerios.

Lungs and safer smoke tricks

Tricks tend to mean longer holds, deeper draws or harder pushes, and that is hard on the lungs. The CDC says smoked cannabis, however it is smoked, can harm lung tissues and cause scarring, and that it raises the risk of bronchitis, cough and mucus, though these symptoms generally improve when people quit.

The scarier risk is rare. Several case reports have implicated marijuana smoking in pneumothorax, a collapsed lung, and in bullous lung disease, UCLA lung researcher Donald Tashkin wrote in a 2013 review, though evidence of a causal link from population studies is lacking. The same review found far lower lung risks from even regular heavy marijuana use than from tobacco, and the gap between smoking weed and smoking cigarettes owes a lot to how much people smoke.

In our experience, a few habits keep tricks easier on the body:

• Skip long holds, since they add little to the high.
• Keep puffs small and gentle instead of pulling huge rips for bigger clouds.
• Stop and get medical help for sudden chest pain or shortness of breath.
• Buy vape cartridges from licensed stores, since the CDC linked most cases of EVALI, a severe lung injury from vaping, to THC products from informal sources such as friends or dealers.
• Do your tricks where smoking is legal, such as at home or in a licensed lounge, and away from kids.

Smoke tricks, kept light

Smoke tricks run on simple physics and plenty of practice. Short, sharp puffs through rounded lips make rings, a slow mouth-to-nose flow makes the French inhale, and a ghost hit's long hold adds little to the high. Keep puffs small, skip the long holds and save the show for places where smoking is legal.

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