Shaman Smokes Review

Summary

I tested Shaman Smokes Hemp Cigarettes alongside 11 other brands on the market to find the best CBD cigarettes for 2022. I researched 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.

In this honest Shaman Smokes review, I’m going to share what I did and didn’t like about this brand of cigarettes, to help you decide if they’re right for you.

See all the best CBD cigarettes of 2022

Pros

• Pleasant taste
• Smooth smoke
• Smoke more slowly than some other brands
• Affordable price
• Responsive customer service

Cons

• No purity/safety testing available
• Contents looked like dried leaves/trim
• No noticeable effects
• Discrepancies in advertised potency
• Missing lab reports (UPDATE: Cigarettes were retested and results received 2/21/22)

Intro

CBD American Shaman was one of the first brands in the CBD market, providing quality CBD products to the masses since 2014. They have a huge selection of products from bath bombs to oils to edibles to teas, as well as a huge following of loyal fans.

There is a lot to like about this company, including affordable prices and a fantastic 45 day money-back guarantee. They also run a compassionate care program that makes their products even more accessible to people in need, such as veterans and low income households.

This is my first experience of the brand, but in other American Shaman CBD reviews I’ve read, Shaman Smokes have always scored highly, which is why I was surprised that they didn’t do much better here. Keep reading to find out why.

Shaman Smokes Review

While I was waiting for all of the contenders for best CBD cigarettes to come in, I did a bit of research on Shaman Smokes. A pack of hemp cigarettes contains 20 smokes and costs $9.99 per pack and the brand claims that they typically contain around 40mg of CBD, 16mg of CBG, and 2mg of CBC, which sounds like a lovely mix and I’m looking forward to trying them.

For the purposes of this review, I tried their original flavor, but they also have a good variety of flavors that contain a crushable flavor ball in the filter that you press to release the cherry, menthol, or grape flavors. 

The American Shaman website usually allows you to access all of their third party lab reports online, as all you have to do is enter your batch number for the product you receive. So, once my cigarettes arrived, I tried to access my results, but nothing came up.

I emailed the company immediately and, once established as missing, they said they’d send them out for testing now and would forward them to me as soon as they had them back from Green Scientific.

Apparently Shaman Smokes are usually tested for potency only, but other American Shaman products are more comprehensively tested for potency and purity (pesticides, heavy metals, etc).

UPDATE: New lab reports were requested by CBD American Shaman to account for these missing reports. The lab reports came back matching our batch number (view SSM335201 here), but were for the grape flavor. Their results indicate that this batch contains just 20mg of CBD per smoke, only half of what is claimed on the website).

First impressions

Apart from the missing lab reports, my first impressions of American Shaman Smokes were good. The cigarettes were packaged in a standard cigarette box that felt firm and sturdy. They don’t smell super hempy, but appear to be well packed, so hopefully they’ll burn well. 

Experience

After lighting up, I thought American Shaman Smokes had a fairly pleasant taste. They pulled through smoothly and evenly and burned evenly all the way until the end.

I didn’t notice any effects from the cigarettes, even when I was really concentrating on “feeling” it. However they did make a great tobacco alternative as I had just recently quit smoking when I started testing all of these hemp cigarettes. They smoked in a very similar way to a normal cigarette so work well at satiating the desire to smoke tobacco.

One of the cigarettes towards the end of the pack turned out to be empty for the first inch, but I soon realized that the contents had just fallen out into the cigarette packet. Not a huge waste though and the rest of the deck was perfectly fine.

What’s really inside?

I was keen to find out what I was really smoking as all the different CBD and hemp cigarettes on the market say they contain the same thing, so why are the effects I experience so different? In order to find out what Shaman Smokes ingredients looked like, I cut one open to have a look.

Unfortunately, what I found inside looked like very poor quality hemp plant material. It didn’t look like hemp flower at all, but more like old, dry hemp leaves and trim. Overall, judging the quality by looks alone, I ranked American Shaman in the bottom three contenders.

Next up I sent samples of the cigarettes (from each of the 12 brands) off to a cannabis testing laboratory to have them independently tested for potency. On their website, American Shaman claim that their smokes typically contain 40mg/16mg/2mg (CBD/CBG/CBC), but they couldn’t produce any third party testing (UPDATE: 3rd party lab results were carried out after I enquired about them and were sent to me on 2/21/22). 

Our independent lab tests came back showing 28mg/17mg/2mg, so the CBG and CBC amounts were almost dead on, but the amount of CBD was under what was claimed by a massive 30%.

What’s even stranger is that this potency test showed a higher amount of CBD than CBDA. This may suggest that the hemp had been compromised in some way, either before or after cigarette production, which caused the CBDA (the acidic precursor to CBD) to decarboxylate into CBD due to age, or exposure to heat or sunlight.

Read more about our testing process and what these results might mean here.

Final word

After completing this review process, I checked out some other Shaman Smokes Hemp Cigarettes reviews and was surprised to find that they all report having great effects. I wonder… Did I get a bad batch, or perhaps I got a pack from an old batch? That would certainly explain their inability to produce lab reports for this batch.

Considering the brand’s great reputation, I hope to try them again at some point and will update this article if anything changes.

Apart from all that, I have to say I still thought that these Shaman Smokes smoked pretty well. I didn’t notice any effects, but they did make an enjoyable alternative to tobacco cigarettes and were a fantastic tool in helping me quit tobacco smoking. 

Where to Buy Shaman Smokes

CBD American Shaman stores can be found in over 130 locations across dozens of states. Check to see if there’s one near you by using their handy store finder online. 

However, due to space restrictions, not all stores are able to carry their full range of products, so if you want to shop their entire range, then head over to their website to shop online.

Check back for more CBD American Shaman reviews coming soon.