I tested Pacific Roots CBD cigarettes alongside 11 other brands in the market. I conducted research into all 12 companies, looked at lab reports, cut them open to look inside, had them independently tested for potency, poked, prodded, and squeezed, and finally… I smoked them.
Keep reading for my honest review of Pacific Roots cigarettes as I share what I did and didn’t like about this brand, to help you decide if they might be the right hemp cigarettes for you.
See all the best CBD cigarettes of 2022 here
Pros
- Could be ideal for people who like stronger “hits”
- Reputable company that makes honest and accurate claims
- Comprehensive purity/safety testing
Cons
- Smoke draws through too fast for me
- Contents didn’t look very high quality
Read about our testing process here
Intro
Pacific Roots draw their name and ethos from the culture and spirit of the Pacific Coast, where they say wellness is a lifestyle. They have a unique product offering that includes some CBD products that you don’t see very often.
For example, it’s not everyday I come across a CBD pleasure line (that includes suppositories and personal lubricant) alongside the more common CBD wellness line (including patches, oils, and creams). But we’re here to review their smokes, so I’ll get on with it.
For their All Natural Blend (ANB) cigarettes, VG uses hemp flower mixed with a small amount of lavender, in order to create a smoking blend that claims to contain around 100mg of CBD in each cigarette (their Pure blend is said to contain a massive 150mg of CBD).
They have comprehensive full panel lab tests completed on all their products, verifying that their products are free from harmful contaminants and their potency test actually shows the ANB’s testing at 123mg (23mg higher than their advertised 100mg).
They’re available in packs of 10 for just $10 (or $15 for the Pure brand).
Pacific Roots Cigarettes Review
On their website, Pacific Roots appears to take quality control very seriously, adhering to over 25 self-imposed restrictions to ensure they maintain the highest industry standards,
The company doesn’t make any specific claims on their website with regards to the general CBD content in their cigarettes. Instead they point out that the content is likely to change slightly from batch to batch depending on the flower they use (true), so you just have to pull up their latest lab report to check the strength of the current batch.
The batch I am testing is called Pineapple Express, which weighs in at 46mg of CBD per cigarette.
Alongside the CBD potency and cannabinoid profiling, you’ll also be able to view third party laboratory results for their purity testing, which verifies that their smokes have been approved for pesticides, microbials, mycotoxins, and heavy metals.
Purity testing is not compulsory across the industry, so the fact that Pacific Roots conduct purity testing at all is obviously fantastic, but it should also be noted that I’ve seen other lab reports that test for many, many more analytes than this (meaning that they test for a wider variety of pesticides, microbials, etc, within each test).
First impressions
The cigarette box is strong and sturdy and the cigarettes are well rolled, although they don’t smell much like hemp. They have an interesting looking filter that has a star-shaped, cut-out in the middle of it, presumably to let more smoke through.
Experience
The cigarettes burn evenly and fairly quickly, but the filter just lets too much smoke through for me, making it super harsh on my throat (two other testers also commented on this). I had to take teeny-tiny draws to finish smoking it and, unfortunately, my mind was just too fixated on the harshness to notice the taste.
After smoking a few more, I still haven’t detected any Pineapple Express flavors, but maybe it’s because I’m having to take such small hits?
When I was a tobacco smoker I smoked lights, so perhaps if you smoke (or smoked) reds and are more used to the harshness of prerolls, you might like these a lot. Obviously I’m not qualified to say either way, but I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
A casual observer also once mentioned that these cigarettes smelled nothing like hemp and actually smelled more like a cigarette when I was smoking it near them, which was weird. But it made me think that it could be a good thing if you’re paranoid about wafting about that unmistakable cannabis smell!
What’s really inside?
After smoking the cigarettes, I wondered what the quality looked like from the inside out, so I sliced open a cigarette (from each of the 12 brands) to take a look.
After dissecting all of the cigarettes, Pacific Roots was at the lower end of the quality scale as it didn’t really look like flower, but more like dried leaves and stalks. But having said that, Pacific Roots is also one of the only companies that doesn’t claim to be 100% hemp flower on its website, so I do feel like they are extremely honest and transparent about what they’re selling.
Next up I sent all of the cigarettes off to a third party laboratory of my choosing, to have them retested for potency, as I wanted to see if you actually get what you pay for in terms of CBD content.
Pacific Roots really shone when it came to this lab testing as my results showed that they contained exactly what the company claims.
Final word
If this company introduced a second version of this cigarette that was a bit easier for us “light” smokers to consume, I’d be all over it. But, unfortunately, this cigarette’s filter just made the smoking experience too harsh for me to enjoy.
That’s not to say that you won’t enjoy it though! I had lots of fun experimenting with different brands over the last couple of months and highly recommend trying a few different options to find what you like best. You can check out my recommendations for best CBD cigarettes here.