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Toke Pure
Cannabis and tobacco

Download UKCIA Tokepure flier

What's the problem?

So why do people mix the herb with this "evil weed"?

Why haven't things changed?

So what can cannabis users do for themselves? - DIY harm reduction

What could the government do?

Anti cannabis campaigners are usually only too eager to warn about the health risks of using cannabis, more often than not making exaggerated claims which later prove to be simply wrong, but they keep very quiet about one very real danger.

While the government with its Talk to Frank anti drugs advertising campaign warns people about the dangers of mixing drugs they keep strangely quiet about the most common drug cocktail the vast majority of cannabis users take.

We're talking about tobacco of course.

To be fair, it's not only the government that doesn't want to talk about the way cannabis is usually smoked with tobacco, most stoners don't want to either. In the UK, most cannabis users roll joints - cannabis mixed with tobacco.

The dangers of tobacco are well known, its addictive and carcinogenic - which means it causes cancer.

Perhaps it's because cannabis is illegal and tobacco is not that this situation has been allowed to continue for so long, in fact, a lot of people don't really think of tobacco as a drug even now, but it is one and in fact it's one of the most dangerous drugs there is, up there with heroin and crack cocaine in terms of the harm it can do.

So the aim of this section of UKCIA is to spread some very important information and to encourage anyone who wants to use cannabis to toke pure and to keep well away from tobacco. The age of the tobacco joint is over, help make it happen.

What's the problem?

In some respects, tobacco is not unlike cannabis. Both are plants and hence totally natural herbs and both are smoked. When the plant material is burned chemicals which affect the brain - which we call drugs - boil off and get sucked into the lungs where they enter the bloodstream and make their way to your brain. Along with the drugs of course comes lots of other smoke which you don't really want. Anyway, this is where the similarity ends. Both plants contain very different drugs which do very different things.

As everyone knows tobacco is a killer, in fact Tobacco is responsible for 140,000 deaths each year in the UK alone and 5.4 million deaths worldwide according the World Health Organisation.

Our big claim for cannabis is that it has never directly killed anyone.

Prohibition campaigners have tried to claim that smoking pure cannabis is something like four times more dangerous than tobacco, but as with so many of these claims they don't stand up to proper study.

For example a big study in the US (read it here) found "that the association of these cancers with marijuana, even long-term or heavy use, is not strong and may be below practically detectable limits" and another study (read it here) found that "Smoking only marijuana was not associated with an increased risk of respiratory symptoms or COPD." - COPD is "chronic obstructive lung disease" - it's not nice and is strongly connected with tobacco smoking.

So the truth seems to be that cannabis smoked alone is far safer than tobacco in terms of what it does to your lungs and that smoking the two together may be the worst of both worlds. This is serious stuff.

Now lets be honest here, we are not saying smoking cannabis is harmless, breathing in any smoke is bad for you and the less you breath in the better, but mixing cannabis and tobacco is adding a level of damage cannabis by itself doesn't seem to do, and it's nasty damage that kills by a slow painful death.

But as if that isn't enough, there's more. Tobacco is a more addictive drug than heroin. Breaking a tobacco habit can be a very agonizing and difficult experience which many people can never manage to do.

Both cannabis and tobacco are psychologically addictive, which means you associate using them with doing things you enjoy and this can be hard to break, but as well as that, tobacco is strongly physically addictive. Physically addictive means your brain needs a constant feed of the drug just to function normally. Cannabis might also do that for some people, especially long term very heavy tokers, but certainly not for the vast majority.

Coming off tobacco involves real "cold turkey" - just like heroin withdrawal (although it's different of course) plus the problems of breaking the psychological addiction.

Some people think tobacco isn't a drug because it doesn't make you stoned or anything like that. Cannabis works on the bit of the brain you're aware of, so when you get stoned you feel intoxicated. Tobacco works on a part of the brain that controls emotions, it makes you feel good about having taken it, which is why smoking tobacco is so enjoyable. It's a real mugs drug.

With thanks to anyoldicon

How cannabis is used

Around 75% of cannabis is smoked in joints mixed with tobacco, 5% in pure cannabis joints, around 15% in pipes, and around 5% eaten - either on its own or mixed in food (e.g. space cakes) or drink (e.g. bhang, cannabis tea), with small numbers smoking using other methods e.g. hot knives - where resin is pressed between red-hot knife blades and the fumes inhaled through a bottomless bottle, or "buckets" where smoke is drawn into a large bottle and inhaled when cooler.
Source: IDMU

Why do people smoke cannabis with tobacco?

It's partly historical.

Tobacco of course is nothing new to us, not so long ago most people smoked (men anyway, women less so), tobacco use was glamorized by Hollywood and it was considered an integral part of socialising to offer cigs around. It was into this tobacco using culture that cannabis use took off.

Also we used to get mostly hash from Morocco or Lebanon. The easiest way to smoke hash is to roll a tobacco joint, especially if you smoke anyway and so already have the tobacco and papers. These days weed is far more normal and less people smoke fags, but the tradition seems to have stuck.

It wasn't helped by stoners who took joint rolling to the level of an art, crafting a fine joint was something people took a great pride in; "Camberwell Carrots", "cones", all sorts of shapes and styles and it all became a part of the ritual of getting stoned.

Add to this the honest fact that a tobacco joint is a very, very enjoyable thing to smoke, we might as well be honest. A joint not only gets you stoned, but gives you one hell of a nicotine hit at the same time.

Because of all this stoners came to associate the tobacco hit with the cannabis experience. This is true for most of northern Europe, but isn't true for everywhere and in many counties cannabis users would never consider mixing the two drugs.

Unfortunately some users become tobacco addicts very quickly, although others take a lot longer most people get there eventually. Thing is tobacco filled joint smokers are experiencing the effect of the two drugs in combination. Taking two drugs together isn't the same as taking them separately at different times. So people who are introduced to tobacco through smoking joints find that just smoking tobacco on its own doesn't give the same experience, so they feel they need a joint not realising that it is the tobacco addiction kicking in.

Many users of cannabis in tobacco joints start to smoke at regular intervals in order to keep up their nicotine levels to satisfy the tobacco craving. For the minority of people who do suffer some negative effects from using cannabis, this is clearly a bad thing, for others it may mean they just get stoned all day.

Using cannabis with tobacco is likely to increase the amount of cannabis you use and to make your cannabis use far more habitual than it would have been

Why haven't things changed?

Things should have changed by now for sure, but they haven't.

Over the past 20 or so years, there's been a lot of health education aimed at tobacco users and as a result far fewer people now smoke tobacco than previously. Not only that but tobacco smoking isn't the socially accepted thing it once was, you can't smoke in buildings anymore, at work or anywhere really.

But none of these restrictions on tobacco use has affected the way people - especially young people - use cannabis

Finally of course, it's been ignored. There hasn't been anything like a "toke pure" campaign from Talk to Frank, if anything the government has been happy to talk of cannabis use and tobacco use as the same thing.

Cannabis is illegal and tobacco has simply joined cannabis in the "underground" culture as it get excluded from the mainstream.

Safer ways of smoking cannabis such as pipes, bongs, water pipes or the very safe (but almost unknown in this country) ‘Vaporiser’ can become incriminating evidence for the authorities, whereas a joint is easy to hide.

Joints are a very social way of using cannabis, people share them, this of course, spreads the tobacco addiction

Myths have grown up, not least of all that it would be more expensive to smoke weed or hash without "diluting" it with tobacco. This is actually totally untrue and cannabis users who smoke pure weed or hash actually use much less than joint smokers, plus they don't have to buy the tobacco.

So what can cannabis users do for themselves?
DIY Harm Reduction

Lets be honest it's also a waste of cannabis if you are smoking joints to satisfy your tobacco addiction. The first thing to understand is that smoking with tobacco isn't saving you money, it isn't diluting the cannabis and isn't making your stash go further.

It's time for some DIY harm reduction. This is the aim of the safer smoking campaign - Toke Pure.

Make a note of how much money you're spending on tobacco, think what you could buy with it, you'll be amazed at how much it is. If you go without for a few

days, chances are you'll feel the addictive craving tobacco causes. If you've not been smoking for very long it's not too hard to stop but If you've been a tobacco head for a few years it's not going to be easy. Bite the bullet and quit the evil weed though, you'll love yourself for it after, promise!

How to smoke cannabis without tobacco
How to use cannabis without smoking anything

Cannabis used without tobacco is a very different experience in some respects, but it is the cannabis experience, it's the real thing.

Check out comments on our forum amd tell us what you think.

The first and most obvious is to legalise and regulate the cannabis supply, then not only will the cannabis itself be of better quality but users can be encouraged to use it in safer ways.

However this may take a while given the blinkered attitude of our government, wedded as it is to its "war on drugs". So while they have this mindless attitude to cannabis and insist it remains illegal, there probably isn't much they will do.

If they were to get real though, there's a hell of a lot they could do to encourage people to use cannabis without tobacco.

Education - the safer smoking campaign

They could tell the truth for a start and educate cannabis users about safer ways to use the herb, as UKCIA is doing. This sort of thing is called "Harm reduction" and is deeply opposed by those idiots who support the war on drugs, the reason for that is hard for law reform campaigners to understand, but basically prohibition depends on drugs being made as dangerous as possible. Yes, it is stupid.

Tobacco free coffeeshops?

One of the big arguments in favour of "coffee shops" - cannabis cafes - is that they separate the cannabis market from that of dangerous drugs. Way back before the smoking ban UKCIA wanted to see cannabis cafes which were tobacco free, where cannabis could be bought and used on the premises without tobacco. That's how it is in Holland now and it's still a good idea. Providing a tobacco free place where people could get stoned would be the best way to break this tobacco connection. We can dream, it's not going to happen any time soon.