You're paying too much for Cigarettes!
Are you sick and tired of paying too much for the cigarettes you smoke? Tired of constantly trying to find the best price for cheap generic cigarettes which don't even satisfy, to reduce the cost of your smoking habit?
Have you purchased cigarettes online or driven across state lines to try to save a few bucks?
Did you know that 13 States have issued subpoena's to online cigarette sellers and many of them have, or will soon be, sending tax bills to those customers to pay the owed back-taxes, often with the threat of extreme penalties (up to 500%) if they aren't paid within 30 days?
Are you fed up with the rising costs of cigarettes and the constant increases in 'sin-taxes' that are forced onto smokers to help the states balance their budgets?
Did you know that in 1998 the average price for a pack of cigarettes was $2.18, in less than 2 years the average cost had jumped to $3.12, and in 2007 the national average price for a pack was at $4.63. The average will likely top $5/pack in 2008 with at least 10 states taxing cigarettes at $2 per pack or more!
There is an easy solution to avoid the outrageous taxes and price hikes smokers have been subjected to (besides quitting).
Join the RYO Revolution and Start Rolling Your Own!
Now I don't mean rolling a cigarette in the traditional sense, not like you've seen in the movies where a cowboy takes a pinch of tobacco and drops it into the paper and twists it up into something resembling a lumpy toothpick with tobacco hanging out of it.
What I'm talking about is a newer method that is often referred to as Making Your Own (MYO) or Stuffing Your Own (SYO) cigarettes, and it doesn't use a paper and hand roller, this method results in cigarettes which look like factory made premium filtered cigarettes, yet taste better are a fraction of the cost!
To start you need 3 things:
Tobacco 
-
Start with a pouch (about $2 for less than an ounce - enough for about 1 pack)
or small can (5 or 6 ounces - about $12, enough for about 1 carton) of "fine cut" cigarette
rolling tobacco, which you can find at your local tobacconist's or smoke shop. Even your
local convenience stores, supermarkets, and gas stations likely carry a few brands of rolling
tobacco. Please BEWARE of the most "popular" and bargain priced brands, we want your initial RYO
experience to be a good one!
(In other words, avoid best selling Top and Gambler brands as they tend to be rather harsh - no offense intended to any of their fans - but there are Much Better Tobaccos available to choose from). In fact there are over 150 Brands of RYO tobacco available, refer to my List of RYO Tobacco Brands to get an idea of just how many brands and varieties are available. One American Company is a favorite of our forum members D & R Tobacco now has it's own page here describing their 34 premium roll your own cigarette tobacco blends.
Injector 
-
When you buy the tobacco you'll also want to get a handheld injection
machine, trust me this isn't nearly as scary as it sounds, it has nothing to do with needles!
Sometimes these devices are called "shooters", "stuffers", or simply "cigarette making" or "tube
filling" machines. The Handheld Injector should cost under $10. (Again if you're buying locally
you will likely have a limited choice, avoid the Top and Zig-Zag Precision Pro.) Good handheld units
from Premier, Gizeh, El-Rey, Maiker, Zen and a few others, work much better, especially for
newcomers.
NOTE: There are also tabletop injector machines which cost from $22 (Premier Excel & Simron EXP1000) to $45 (Premier Supermatic, Republic Top-O-Matic and various clones), these machines are even easier and faster to operate and are ideal for making dozens of cigarettes at a sitting. There are also electric machines available from $120 and up which promise even greater convenience). Visit the Forums for more information about the variety of handheld, crank style and electric injectors available.
Cigarette Filter Tubes 
-
Cigarette tubes come in a box that vaguely resembles a cigarette carton. Inside the box is
200-250 "tubes". The tubes (or blanks as they are called in Europe) resemble a factory made filtered cigarette with
the tobacco missing, in other words it's a hollow tube with the filter already attached. The brand you choose doesn't
matter much when you are starting out, there are only a few companies who actually make the tubes and the quality
is pretty consistent these days. Your primary choice will be whether to buy the "Full Flavor" or "Light" stick with a
King Size unflavored tube for starters. The box of filtered tubes should cost about $2.
NOTE: There are actually dozens of brands and tube variations available; King Size, 100mm, "Cigarette Size", Ultra Slim, Menthol tip and even unfiltered. They are also manufactured with various filter lengths, paper porosity, filter density, etc. but you needn't concern yourself with those details when first starting.
Looking for advice on Tobacco, Tubes and Injectors?
Visit the Forums
to ask questions & share your opinions.
Ready to Roll!
Ok so you've got your tobacco, tubes and injector. The injector should have easy to follow instructions but I'll walk you through the process and share a couple tips to help get you started.
Getting Started
- You're likely to make a big mess when you first attempt to make a Custom Cigarette
so clear off a workspace area on your desk or kitchen table or wherever before you get started.
Maybe lay down an opened page from the newspaper and set down your cigarette making supplies on it.
Set the injector in the center of your work area, open the box of tubes and break the seal on the tobacco
pouch or can. Then STOP!
Go Wash Your Hands! Seriously, you're going to be handling and smoking this stuff, whatever bacteria, viruses, hamburger dribbling's, etc. you might be carrying around Will Be Transferred to the tobacco. Do you really want a bacterial colony multiplying in the pouch or can and getting sucked deeply into your lungs?
Ok, thoroughly clean hands? Good, let's continue. Now, open your tobacco pouch or can and take out a few grams (several pinches) and put it in a small pile near your injector, then seal the container back up again. You want to keep the tobacco in an airtight container to retain it's moisture and freshness, if it gets too dry it will crumble to dust, become harsh and could jam your injection machine. Likewise, if the tobacco is too moist it can also jam the injector, you will need to let it dry out a little before you pack it into the injector.
Tobacco with the right moisture content for injecting will not feel moist, and if you squeeze a small quantity into a ball it should slowly spring back, not crumble to powder. Maintaining the proper moisture content of your tobacco is The Most Critical Consideration for successfully injecting cigarettes with consistency and ease.
- Now, drop a pinch of the tobacco into both ends of the slot and press it into the corners, then take another pinch and drop it into the center of the slot. Many handheld injectors include a "tamper", press the tobacco down evenly with your finger tips or the tamper, you want the tobacco to be somewhat compressed into the slot, it should be firmly packed but still springy.
- Next, place a filtered cigarette tube onto the nozzle of the machine, be careful not
to crush the end of the tube. It should slide on easily, if you have trouble, put that tube aside and try
another one. With the tube over the nozzle and the tobacco packed into the chamber, clear off any bits of tobacco
that are on the rails before closing the cover.
- Next, close the lid and press the lock grip closed (if so equipped) and while pressing down, slide the cover all the way to the opposite end. (You should feel some resistance, but if it is very hard to slide you have overfilled the chamber, if there is very little or no resistance then you underfilled it.)
- After sliding the cover all the way to the other end, return it to the start position and open the cover. Then gently remove the filled tube from the injector's nozzle in a straight line motion (try not to dislodge any tobacco that is extending beyond the end of the tube). Then hold the filled tube lightly near the filter and give it several sharp taps (filter side down) onto the table or other hard surface. This will "pack" down the tobacco tightly against the filter and should eliminate the overhanging tobacco, if there is still a little tobacco extending past the end of the tube you can either push it into the tube or pinch/cut it off.
Voila! Congratulations, you are now holding a fresh cigarette that You Made, and it only cost you a few cents and less than a minute of your time. Now go ahead and make another one, it's typical for the first few you make to either be underfilled or overpacked.
- If the cigarettes are Underfilled;
Add more tobacco to the slot and tamp it down a little more before injecting. - If the cigarettes are Overfilled;
Use less tobacco or don't pack it as firmly in the chamber if the cigarettes have too much tobacco overhanging after packing & tapping it down, or if you find them to tightly packed to get a good draw from.
The more you make, the more proficient you will become, and soon you will know exactly how much
tobacco to use for each cigarette to come out perfectly.
But don't get carried away and make too many at once, just as the tobacco can dry out, so too will the cigarettes.
If you do decide to make more than a few at a time, put them into a tupperware type container, ziploc baggie or
humidor to keep them fresh. The rolling tobacco is much more sensitive to humidity levels than pre-made cigarettes
because of the fewer humectants and chemicals, they will become harsh if allowed to dry out. Also, don't put them
in the refrigerator or freezer as the sudden changes in temperature affects the relative humidity of the air
surrounding the cigarettes/tobacco and does more harm than good.
When you light-up that fresh, custom made cigarette the first thing you'll notice is that it doesn't taste like the factory made cigarettes you're used to.
That's because you're likely tasting something you haven't in a long time, if ever. That's right, you're tasting the tobacco instead of the hundreds of chemicals that the big companies put into their cigarettes to hide the fact that it's made up of reconstituted "sheet" tobacco and "expanded" tobacco and stems. They also add chemicals to the tobacco and paper to make it burn faster so that you'll smoke (and buy) more.
The Truth about pre-made Cigarettes
The sad truth is that most of the Premium, Class A cigarettes sold by the Big Tobacco Companies in the U.S. are actually composed of a combination of BL (Blended Leaf), RL (Reconstituted Leaf), ES (Expanded Stems), and EL (Expanded Leaf).
I'm not making this up!
In fact the Lights and Ultra Lights contain more nontobacco components than the comparable full flavor varieties because one of the ways the tobacco companies reduce the amount of nicotine is by increasing the percentage of stems and low grade tobacco, then they increase the chemicals and artificial flavorings to prevent them from tasting too unpleasant or harsh.
Tobacco leaves are very fragile after being dried, and if they are stored with too much moisture they will develop mold and the whole batch has to be thrown away. So the leaves tend to crumble to dust during each step in the process of making a cigarette; from removing the stems, to cutting the leaves into strips, to blending the various varieties of tobacco, each step would result in bits and pieces of tobacco dust that would tend to fall through or jam the machines, so these bits and pieces of leaf and stem were filtered off and discarded before the 1970's.
But during the 1960's the Phillip Morris Company figured out how to make even more profits by taking all the bits and pieces and dust that they used to throw away, then put it into a big vat to blend the tobacco materials with water, ammonia compounds, flavors, humectants and preservatives to form a slurry. This slurry is then cast onto a stainless steel belt, where it is dried and forms a sheet. Finally, they cut it into pieces that they call band-cast or Blended Leaf (BL) tobacco.
Reconstituted Leaf (RL) process is similar but even more devious since it involves physically separating the soluble components of the leaf, stem bits and dust. Then they add flavors, humectants and preservatives to make up what is called the 'size'. The fibers that were filtered off are mixed with cellulose (waste paper and other tobacco stem fibers) to make up a sheet called the 'base'. Then the size and the base are recombined to form the finished RL tobacco sheet which then gets cut up into square pieces.
Since Marlboro was the number one selling cigarette in the world (and still is), the other big tobacco companies started copying the methods Phillip Morris was using, because they were all trying to make a cigarette that would be as popular as Marlboro.
Later they found a way to use the whole previously discarded stems in addition to just using the bits and pieces that went into the RL process by expanding them with a Dry Ice process that would literally puff them up due to the sudden exposure to subfreezing temperatures, then they treat them with flavors and other chemicals and cut them up to add to the blends as a separate component. In fact the Expanded Stem (ES) program was so successful that they started to apply the same procedure to low quality tobacco leaves (Expanded Leaf or EL) and started buying stems, stalks and low quality leaf from tobacco processors at bargain prices. In fact they've become so reliant on these techniques to reduce costs and increase profits, they now IMPORT TONS of stems and stalks (112 Million Pounds in 2005) to add to their cigarette "tobacco" blends.
And that's why today up to 50% of the "tobacco" in the factory made cigarettes you normally smoke isn't really tobacco, but a factory made derivative of stems and other tobacco processing waste, all mixed up in a chemical bath and sweetened and flavored to fool you!
If you smoke, you owe it to yourself to try RYO or the MYO method mentioned above, once your body adjusts to smoking tobacco instead of factory made chemical cocktail sticks, you will likely find yourself craving cigarettes less, and quite possibly you'll gain the advantage you need to quit smoking entirely (if you're so inclined).
RYO Today, Quitting Tomorrow?
Many people have used the RYO method as a steppingstone to quitting, since it's likely that the chemical additives in factory made cigarettes are at least as addicting (if not more so) than the naturally occurring nicotine in real tobacco. Because of the higher quality tobacco and fewer chemicals, most RYO smokers who continue to smoke consume less than when they smoked factory made cigarettes, and they certainly enjoy the cigarettes they smoke a lot more.
Other
RYO converts continue to smoke their custom made cigarettes and enjoy
the unprecedented flavor that comes from their choice of fine quality
tobaccos and wide variety of filtered tubes to suit their mood. One
thing is for certain, those who continue to smoke RYO cigarettes are
saving money every time they light-up.
So go ahead, stuff another tube using your new found skill, pour yourself a drink, then light-up that homemade custom cigarette and enjoy the fact that you're smoking something a lot closer to that which smokers historically enjoyed, LESS chemically altered factory produced quasi-tobacco, MORE real tobacco flavor like our forefathers smoked.
You don't need to limit yourself to the 2 or 3
Rolling Tobacco brands that you find on the shelf at your local
supermarket or convenience store. There are over 150 Brands of RYO
Tobacco to choose from! Please consult my
Master List of RYO Tobacco Brands
to understand the choices available to you.
