Not long ago, smoking weed was almost entirely a DIY endeavor. In a world without vapes, coring apples and cleaving soda bottles were basically prerequisites to getting epicly blazed with your friends, and many of those skills can still come in handy from time to time.
In case of emergency — say, I forget my weed stash somewhere — I combed through endless cannabis videos on YouTube for DIY advice. Here’s everything I found, accompanied by my take on their usefulness, as a proud stoner.
The DIY Hack, According to Cannabis Videos: If you forget your grinder somewhere, you can easily break up nugs by placing them in a pill bottle, adding in BBs or a penny, securing the lid and shaking vigorously.
Is This Useful? Kinda! This method can certainly make quick work of grinding weed without a grinder. However, loose change is filthy, and BBs are sometimes made of lead. So instead, skip the BBs, wash your penny beforehand or use a cleaner hard object to pulverize your weed.
The DIY Hack, According to Cannabis Videos: If you run out of rolling papers, use an onion skin!
Is This Useful? If you’re well-versed in the delicate art of rolling joints, sure! In fact, you could probably roll a joint with almost anything somewhat malleable. However, if you’re not much of a joint roller (raises hand), trying to roll one with a flimsy onion skin will almost certainly take longer and be much more frustrating than simply heading down to your local corner store. Go for a walk, man.
The DIY Hack, According to Cannabis Videos: If you don’t have one of those fancy weed gas masks, you can make one with a joint and a two-liter soda bottle.
Is This Useful? This truly is one of those classic, innovative DIY stoner hacks — and it works! Do you need to make a weed gas mask for any reason at all? Not really. You could smoke the joint normally and get just as high, because holding in weed smoke for longer doesn’t necessarily make you more high. Still, in a world where vapes and pre-rolled joints are so accessible, sometimes working for your weed by building some kind of contraption makes the high all the more satisfying.
The DIY Hack, According to Cannabis Videos: Using a paper towel roll, paper towels and some fragrant herbs (not weed, though), you can make a sploof, a handy device that disguises the odor of weed while you smoke.
Is This Useful? I could see this sploof coming in handy if you want to, say, sneakily smoke around your weed-averse parents over the holidays, or if you want to smoke in public without attracting hordes of ravenous stoners. That said, the sploof itself is pretty large and would likely draw attention if you weren’t already hiding somewhere. It’s probably worth a try, though. But I recommend testing it — and increasing your fragrant herb usage where necessary — before using it for real.
The DIY Hack, According to Cannabis Videos: If you’re handy, you can make an electric grinder out of a cheap table fan.
Is This Useful? While creative, I question the efficacy of this contraption, and I can’t help but wonder whether dismantling your fan is worth building a clunky electric grinder that you can’t even reasonably carry around with you. I like the effort, but simply pulling apart your nugs would be a better alternative.
The DIY Hack, According to Cannabis Videos: You can make a pipe out of pretty much anything, including soda cans, Pringles tubes and more.
Is This Useful? Being able to whip up a pipe from virtually anything is always useful. There are some concerns about smoking from aluminum cans and using aluminum foil to form bowls for your weed, although science suggests that these are mostly overblown. So if you need to smoke out of a can here and there, you can feel all right about it.
The DIY Hack, According to Cannabis Videos: In a pinch, you can use gum wrappers as rolling papers.
Is This Useful? Um, maybe? If you’re able to separate the aluminum foil laminate from the wax paper, as directed in the video, it should work okay. However, gum wrappers may be made of other materials that you’d probably be wise not to smoke. You may be better off using an onion skin.
The DIY Hack, According to Cannabis Videos: You can make “DIY weed” using ingredients in your kitchen.
Is This Useful? This video is cursed.
Ian Lecklitner
Ian Lecklitner is a staff writer at MEL Magazine. He mostly writes about everyone's favorite things: Sex, drugs and food.
