Roll-up cigarettes: Do you use a filter?

December 1, 2004 3:55 AM

Roll-up cigarettes: Do you use a filter? I'm just learning to add a filter to my roll-ups. It's a bit fiddly. And I'm wondering what your experiences with it are and whether it's worthwhile learning. I've been told that by adding a filter, the smoke will be less carcinogenic. To me, at least. Thanks for the input!
posted by timyang to Health & Fitness (12 answers total)

I buy can’s of American Spirit for ~$12 once every month or 2. I just roll them myself, without a filter. It’s much cheaper to roll your own.

I've seen a few tools (I think Zig Zag or Bugler makes them) that make it quite simple to add a filter in, but it’s not that important to me

*cough* I really need to quit.
posted by hex1848 at 4:35 AM on December 1, 2004

this study suggests that a filter will reduce risk of lung cancer only if your unfiltered cigarette was "high tar" (which i guess is likely), but that it's much safer to quit altogther.
posted by andrew cooke at 4:44 AM on December 1, 2004

It's not too fiddly once you get used to it, in fact it's easier if anything. You just have to get used to rolling a bit fatter and less conical. I don't smoke any more, but when I did, I migrated from unfiltered to filtered roll-ups, and greatly preferred it for a number of reasons: not least no longer having to spit out scrotey bits of tobacco after every drag. In the UK at least there were two different sizes of filter - one was laughably fat (the same size as straights), and the other was much thinner (Swans), and much better to use.
posted by bifter at 5:06 AM on December 1, 2004

Well I smoked roll-ups for years, and I never really liked using filters. I was probably just used to smoking without them. I did buy one of those machines at one point (this one), but you had to use a lot of tobacco for it to work so it made huge cigarettes, more than I could handle (although it did work great). When I was in Europe though, everyone seemed to be using these, maybe they are better. Looked like a pain in the ass to me, but since you're willing to roll your own in the first place you might not mind.
posted by Who_Am_I at 5:26 AM on December 1, 2004

I've been smoking handrolls for years, and I don't use filters. I dislike them immensely. I think the trick is that you have to cinch/pinch down the end properly, and to teach yourself not to flick it incessently like people who smoke filters tend to do. (Seriously, look at the butts when some folks are done with them. They literally wear the paper off the ends of them with their fiddling.) I only get tobacco in my mouth when I'm smoking the dregs of a can or bag, the "shake" as some call it.

The rare moments when I'm out of my tobacco and I bum some floor-sweeping and reconstituted sheet tobacco infested manufactured smoke off someone I find myself tearing off the filter. Unless it's like a Nat Sherman or something equally tasty.

My only real complaint is that nasty tobacco stain on my smokin' finger. That's just kinda gross.

As for it being less carcinogenic, I find that dubious. Bleached paper, god knows what kind of fibers in it. Manufactured smokes seem to use some kind of meltable synthetic crap, and almost everyone I know that smokes filters smokes it right down to the filter, giving them lungfuls of melty who knows what.

I even wrote a How To on rolling over at everything2. Enjoy. Now, if I could only figure out how to roll 'em one handed, I'd triple my writing output, impress girls with my ninja skills and save Ferris all in one go. Heh, I could even enjoy a smoke while cruising on my bike without having to stop and twist one up.
posted by loquacious at 6:11 AM on December 1, 2004 [1 favorite]

I use one of those little machines linked above and love it... the tubes with the filters run about a buck a hundred. Throw in the tobacco, affix the tube and yank on the slide.

I do it more for aesthetic reasons than health reasons, I don't much care for the stained fingers that come from smoking unfiltered cigarettes. It also seems a little more convenient. Ten minutes in the morning makes up a days supply that I can put in a case and have handy while driving, climbing, sking or other times you don't have two hands available. An added bonus is that I'm such a bad hand roller the filters keep them from looking like joints.
posted by cedar at 6:43 AM on December 1, 2004

Do you really think that using a filter will matter in the long run? [This is naive.]
posted by Plinko at 6:49 AM on December 1, 2004

I tried the filter thing years ago. I stuck with it for maybe half a bag of filters and then gave it up. The filters were a pain and made me roll at a much wider gauge, wasting some tobacco (and probably making me smoke more). Additionally, the filter dilutes the harshness of the smoke. This causes me to hit the cigarette harder and "box" (burn) the filter, which I'm sure is not good for you. Then again, you're smoking, so that doesn't matter much. I'd say the health benefits of filtering your rollies are minimal.
posted by maniactown at 6:58 AM on December 1, 2004

i found that the only thing the filter did for me was stop me from eating tobacco, but maybe that's because I never quite perfected rolling the ends (which I suppose would have the same effect).

it's a little annoying to have the filters around -- you can just stick them in your pouch, but they seem to manage to fall out everywhere (of course, I'm a habitually unorganized person).
posted by fishfucker at 9:31 AM on December 1, 2004

Plinko: Nope. But I'll save the mortician from having to bleach my fingers and pick tobacco from between my nicotine stained teeth :)
posted by cedar at 9:54 AM on December 1, 2004

FilterFilter
posted by ism at 12:46 PM on December 1, 2004

Response by poster: Thanks for the input everyone! I'll definitely be trying a bag of filters.

Thanks for pointing out the problems of finger staining and the tobacco eating.
posted by timyang at 10:17 PM on December 1, 2004