Cannabis
How Many Joints in an Eighth? About 11, Confirms Science
How many joints in a lid?
Cheech and Chong couldn’t answer that quandary, and in the meantime, nobody knows what a “lid” is anymore. A better question: How many joints are in an eighth? That is, a 3.5-gram eighth? About 11, according to science — which is “much smaller” than previously thought, according to Science Daily.
That’s almost one-third the size of the free pre-rolls occasionally on offer at your local dispensary — but a much bigger and more important issue than you may think.
Previous “official” estimates used by government agencies declared that joints contained 0.5 grams of cannabis. That’s the number used by the U.S. drug czar at the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, and it’s also an estimate also hit upon by an earlier RAND Corporation study — meaning, if states that legalized cannabis were planning on tax revenue based on any consumption estimates, those estimates could be off by nearly 50 percent.
There are also consumption estimates to consider when determining things like possession laws.
“Major policy decisions depend on the answer,” observed University of Pennsylvania criminology professor Greg Ridgeway, the co-author of the now-definitive joint study.
To come up with the 0.32 gram-joint, Ridgeway and colleague Beau Kilmer of RAND Corporation — the same RAND that issued and then retracted a study declaring that medical cannabis dispensaries do not cause crime — took a look at data from 10,628 marijuana-related drug transactions over an 11-year period, details from which were available via the U.S. Justice Department’s Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring program.
From this, they received anecdotal statements like, “‘I bought four joints and paid $20,'” Ridgeway told Science Daily.
Those declarations were then coupled with an “economic model… to untangle weight and price” — and it “all boils down to about 0.3 grams, which is much less than previously thought,” he said.
Not to say that all 0.3-gram joints are created equal. The study, published in the August issue of Drug and Alcohol Dependence, does not account for potency of the 0.3 grams in question. And since it’s analyzing data from incarcerated cannabis users, it’s data based entirely on the black market — and not modern-day cannabis industry trends.
Nonetheless, it’s first-of-its-kind data which means if your average eighth disappears after twisting up just a few, you may have been rolling really big joints all along.
Now if only someone can figure out the size of an average dab, we’ll have all the answers to the big questions.
TELL US, have you ever smoked an eighth in one massive joint?
Emily
February 4, 2020 at 10:57 am
Wow. LOL. Those are some tiny joints. I use a standard cigarette roller making my joints and they are around .7g’s each. So I get around 5 joints from an eighth. And those are small relative to the cones you get as pre-rolls in dispensaries… This is some weird science… How is it that we can’t get good medical research done on cannabis but we have funding to study BS questions like how many joints are in an eighth?.. Of course we’d fund studying a question that has no real answer since people roll different sized joints.
ThaShezNit
November 16, 2016 at 11:53 am
I’m an old fart that still smokes and back in the 60’s, my early days of smoking, a lid was half a bag or 2 fingers which was about a half of an ounce. I’d get about 28 to 30 joints out of a lid. I figure 2 small joints per gram of weed unless it was real fluffy weed, you’d get 3 maybe 4 per gram… We rolled a Cheech & Chong’s joint and used a quarter of a pound to make it… Wish I lived in a legal state, where we could have those unspoken times back again and pricing wasn’t as bad as it is today. I hope they curb their profits and let the people that can’t grow it , enjoy it and not go broke trying to get it…
Levi Michaelson
November 16, 2016 at 7:46 am
Its 2 days of smoking for one person if the bud is good.
Cdv
July 16, 2016 at 10:23 am
Ok kids I will tell you what a lid is way back in 60s early 70s probably the first generation of sandwich Baggies you packed a lunch you put a peanut and jelly sandwich in a Baggie and you tucked the lid in the Baggie. well they would stuff weed in the Baggie and flipped the lid over and tuck it in is was about all the Baggie could hold so they didn’t weigh it. you guessed it to be approximately a oz and it was between $20 to $40 depending on the grade of weed and you could probably on a good guess you could roll any where from 70 to 85 joints depending on the fatty and that my friends is a lid
Moose
July 15, 2016 at 9:46 am
Hey that’s me in the pic. I’m the fat guy. Well not as big anymore. I’ve lost some weight and feeling good.
I don’t remember where that was smoked at. I’ve rolled a few of those. The great Jack H. once told me….”Moose, your not smoking it right. You have to hold it in for as long as you can.”
Peace my fellow smokers…..
Adam
July 14, 2016 at 11:43 am
I’d be lucky to get 4 joints outta an eighth. A lid costs 300-320, and a 2 finger bag you’d be lucky to pay less than 160
kevin
June 16, 2017 at 9:30 am
Jees ohh that’s fkin dear a lid cost £20 where I’m from n you get about 12 healthy joints
cindy
July 14, 2016 at 10:51 am
Back in the day,lol, a lid was a baggie full and the lid flapped over to close it, don’t see the names of weed that was going around back in the day either
daniel camerino
July 14, 2016 at 10:31 am
3.5 grams = 2 joints
Michael
October 16, 2017 at 4:07 pm
That’s two big ass wasteful joints