Hand Pipes or Papers?

There are all kinds of smokers with various preferences toward the way they smoke. As a business, it’s essential to understand the pros and cons of smoking methods such as hand pipes and papers so you can make recommendations for customers that might have trouble deciding. 

The objective of this blog is to provide the benefits and drawbacks of each method and make suggestions toward high-quality products within each way of smoking. 

Let’s start out discussing the history of hand pipes before we dive into the pros and cons. 

Hand Pipes 

Hand pipes are no new invention. While glass blowing as an art form didn’t arise until 30 B.C., stone, clay, and wood pipes were more commonly manufactured before glass was introduced. It took some time before glass pipes were more frequently used as pipe materials other than glass were more common and less expensive. 

Fast forward to 1977, and the first glass pipe was patented. Head shops began to feature glass pipes due to consumer demand for higher quality products. Since around 2010, glass-blowing techniques have rapidly advanced to meet the public’s demand for high-quality hand pipes. 

Since 2018 glass hand pipes have been a piece of the marijuana industry’s foundation. A fun element associated with glass hand pipes that you don’t get with papers is the extra room for creative design. Many glass pipes vary in their design while offering consistent quality. 

Visitors of head shops and dispensaries can find plenty of variety nowadays when it comes to selecting hand pipes. While glass hand pipes are the most popular, items such as wood pipes are viewed as a fun novelty. 

Let’s access some of the pros and cons of using hand pipes. 

Hand Pipes: Pros 

One of the best parts about using a hand pipe is how convenient the devices are for smoking. Rolling a quality joint takes practice while packing a hand pipe with flower requires no real skill or form to prepare for smoking. 

Hand pipes can fit in your pocket or bag for easy, on-the-go travel while still staying discreet. Specific smoking devices, such as bongs, can contain multiple pieces. Hand pipes tend to be one piece for less maintenance. 

The last significant benefit we will touch on with hand pipes is health. When you burn papers, you’re inhaling extra smoke from the burning paper, especially if you utilize double-wide rolling papers that give the smoker more paper than they might need. Hand pipes allow you to be more direct in smoking flower and are easier on your lungs as a result. 

M.J. Wholesale Pipes 

MJ Wholesale is proud to offer an extensive selection of hand pipes in a wide variety of styles for your business to feature. 

Whether you’re going for something clean and simple such as our assorted styles and colors pipes or something more novel like our Cheech and Chong hand pipes, you’re bound to find something that will appeal to customers visiting your head shop or dispensary. 

Through our assessment of hand pipes, it appears there are more pros than cons associated with this style of smoking. But the question of how hand pipes compare to rolling papers remains. 

Hand Pipes: Cons 

While hand pipes present a lot of benefits, there are some drawbacks as well. If you own a glass or even a pipe made or a different material such as wood, you will have to regularly clean the hand pipe to maintain the device’s integrity. Neglecting to clean your pipes can lead to a decreased airflow and create a lousy resin smell that will affect the discrete nature of the product. 

While maintenance on a hand pipe can be seen as a con, if a pipe is well maintained, it can last several years. 

When owning a hand pipe, you have to be careful not to break the device. Glass hand pipes are especially vulnerable to being broken as one drop can result in a damaged product. 

Papers

Rolling papers have been on the market since the 1700s and are known to have been invented in Spain. Today, rolling using papers has established itself as one of the most popular smoking methods. 

Let’s talk about why that is. 

Pros of Papers 

Using papers to roll creates a biodegradable product. You can’t just toss a hand pipe on the ground and not consider it as littering. 

Smoking papers allow for a longer smoke than hand pipes do. Instead of having to relight your hand pipe every time you want to draw smoke, rolling with papers and smoking more significant amounts of flower is as simple as one or a couple of lights. 

Earlier, when touching on the drawbacks of hand pipes, we mentioned that hand pipes made out of materials such as glass run a risk of breaking. If you break or tear the rolling paper, it’s not as big of a deal as you can pull out another to re-roll your flower. 

Papers are considered to be a bit more social than hand pipes are. While both smoking methods can be used in smoke circles, passing a rolled joint is more convenient than passing both a hand pipe and a lighter/going through the process of repacking the hand pipe. 

M.J. Wholesale Papers 

M.J. Wholesale is proud to offer an extensive supply of papers. Including top name paper brands in your business, such as Raw, Elements, and Futurola, is an easy task when utilizing our low wholesale prices. 

Papers Cons 

Even though a pack of papers is less expensive than purchasing a hand pipe, if you’re a regular smoker, you’ll eventually run out of papers where a pipe is reusable for long periods if well maintained. 

Frequent smokers might prefer a hand pipe to save money, while more moderate smokers might prefer the lower cost of a pack of papers. 

When consuming papers, the smoker is consuming more smoke than they would through a pipe due to the burning paper. While there are plenty of companies such as Raw that offer organic, chemical-free hemp papers, the smoker is still inhaling more smoke than they would with a pipe.  

Glass pipes allow the user to conserve their supply of flower more than papers due to the constant burning nature of joints. 

We’ve given a rundown of the pros and cons that both hand pipes and papers provide. Now it’s time to give our final verdict on which method we think is better. 

While both are popular methods, hand pipes, if well maintained, present a smoker with more pros than cons due to their reusability, reduced amounts of smoke, and the ability to conserve product.