Ahh, the blunt! It burns slow, it tastes good, and it’s Mike Tyson’s favorite way to smoke. Whether you’re a joint or a bong person, chances are you’ve smoked a blunt a time or two. Elon Musk even famously puffed on one with Joe Rogan. The tobacco leaf and weed combination has become a symbol of the culture. And someone, somewhere was responsible for rolling the first one. So, let’s find out who and how the weed-infused cigar changed the game.
The Birth of the Blunt
Blunts didn’t originate in New York City or Philadelphia. Instead, they originated from the Caribbean, the birthplace of cannabis slang. Indian workers sent to the islands in the 19th century brought heaps of pot with them. Why did they start rolling weed into tobacco leaves? Well, there are three theories to consider.
Theory #1: On the Caribbean Islands, pipes and rolling papers just weren’t accessible. So, our stoner brethren turned to the most prevalent crop in the area: tobacco leaves.
Theory #2: Others suggest that the Indian workers used tobacco leaves to conceal the smell. Hiding your cannabis consumption from employers may have been as relatable then as it is now.
Theory #3: The last possibility, which likely rings true for all scenarios, is they simply liked it. Taking the heady edge off the cannabis high via tobacco would have been a whole new experience.
The Modern Blunt
The blunts in the Caribbean weren’t like the ones we smoke today. They were rolled with actual tobacco leaves, not pre-rolled cigars or tailor-made wraps. So, when immigrants from the Caribbean brought the smoking method to New York City, Americans started cutting cigars down the middle and loading up the ganja.
Around the same time, the tobacco company Phillies started producing a smaller cigar with a rounded tip called a blunt. Their low price tag and convenient size made them a popular smoking option. And it just so happened they were the perfect vessel to gut and fill with weed. So, thank Phillies for giving us the name blunt.
The First Blunt Reference in Hip Hop
It didn’t take long for blunts and hip-hop to become synonymous in New York City. The first New York rapper to reference blunts in a song was Big Daddy Kane in his 1988 track “Raw.”
“I relieve rappers just like Tylenol. And they know it, so I don’t see why you all try to front, perpetrating a stunt. When you know that I’ll smoke you up like a blunt.”
By the time Big Daddy Kane was rapping about blunts, they had already become a nationwide phenomenon, especially in the African-American community.
Who Rolled the First Blunt?
So, who rolled the first blunt? Well, that fact likely got lost after the first one was smoked. But we do know it happened somewhere on an island in the Caribbean. Although the inventor will never get his claim to fame, we can still point at individuals who popularized blunts, like Big Daddy Kane, The Notorious B.I.G., and Snoop Dogg. Today, we have all sorts of smoking vessels and even tobacco-free wraps, but nothing can ever take away the blunt’s impact on marijuana history.
