Chong’s Choice Review: Flowers, Vaporizer Cartridges, Pre-Rolls & More
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If you’re a weed enthusiast, you might already have an opinion on Tommy Chong. Hell, you probably love the guy, we sure do. He’s as close as conceivably possible to being canonized the official patron saint of stoners. But even if you’re not a weed aficionado, you know him as one-half of the iconic ‘70s & ‘80s stoner comedy duo, Cheech & Chong.
And like many other popular public figures who indulge in the herb, he’s come out with his own line of cannabis products. We gotta say, watching this industry explode with innovation and competition is thrilling, and Tommy’s line of products is a potent addition to the mix.
In this detailed Chong’s Choice review, we’ll examine the who, what’s, when’s, where’s, and why’s of Chong’s products so that you can decide for yourself whether they’re up your alley, or if you should pass on that green.
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Why Did Tommy Chong Start a Cannabis Line?
The only surprising thing about Chong launching his own brand of cannabis products, Chong’s Choice, co-founded with his son, Paris Chong, in 2015, is that he didn’t do it way sooner. With a name as recognizable in the world of cannabis as Tommy Chong, his products have some pretty big shoes to fill.
Perhaps to make up for lost time, Chong Choice’s array of products—flowers (solid in individual eighth jars), pre-rolls, vaporizers, vape cartridges, and edibles—is specialized, diverse, and initially offered in the three classic strain types: sativa, indica and hybrid.
Not only did Tommy Chong inevitably become a pro-cannabis activist due to his pioneering roles in the stoner comedy genre, but also because he has survived two bouts of cancer (prostate and bowel), which cannabis has personally helped him overcome when combined with traditional treatments.
Chong’s come a long way, and in our eyes, has done a lot of good for the industry. But his claim to fame hasn’t been without its hiccups.
In 2003, a government sting that focused on drug paraphernalia targeted a glass pipe and bong company owned by Paris, which ultimately sent his father Tommy to jail for nine months (possibly to make an example out of him since he’s highly visible in the cannabis world), included a fine of $20,000 and the forfeiture of almost $120,000 in assets, not to mention the loss of the domain name, tommychong.com.
Of course today the laws surrounding marijuana and its paraphernalia are far more lax and are growing more so every year, meaning that Chong’s Choice is unlikely to face the same criminal persecution its namesake did more than ten years ago.
Chong’s Choice Product Line
1/8th Flower Jar
Paris has taken an active role in Chong’s Choice strains, selecting the bud varieties used in their products alongside his father. Strangely enough, no official source lists the specific strains utilized in each of Chong’s Choice’s sativa, indica and hybrid offerings.
These eighths are sold in individual, reusable glass containers, which look great and are a far more attractive alternative to the sterile-looking prescription bottles that are the default at most dispensaries.
A SFGate review lists My Friend Jack, Chong Daddy Purple, and Chong’s Choice OG Kush as the strains utilized in each cannabis product; The Cannabist lists Durban Haze, Blue Dream and Grape Stomper; and the Shango line of dispensaries in Nevada, Oregon and Washington seems to sell a sativa called Bruce Banner unmentioned elsewhere.
This variance is probably due to the fact Chong’s products are available in multiple states, and different suppliers provide different strains for the brand.
It could be that they cycle through different strains from harvest to harvest, or simply alternate strains depending on the marketplace, since they’re currently distributing to dispensaries in six different states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Montana, Oregon and Washington).
The only verbiage pointing toward a definitive answer on the official website describes all of their bud as locally grown and sourced; so for now you’ll have to consult your local dispensary for accurate information.
Even still, hopefully we’ll get some clarification sooner or later as to which strains are available where. After all, what we as consumers need is more transparency, not less, about what’s in the products we’re consuming.
Here’s what we do know about Chong’s Choice’s flowers: they get the job done.
Possibly due to the commitment by Tommy and Paris Chong to never charge a premium price for their products, these aren’t quite top shelf buds by our standards, but to most customers this will hardly matter.
Chong’s Choice’s buds are great, and come trimmed and dried to perfection. All signs point toward lots of care being put into building a quality product.
Pre-Rolled Joints
Each Chong’s Choice pre-roll contains 0.75g of cannabis and is individually packaged in its own plastic tube to keep it fresh. Joints are sold in packages of five that resemble a bizarro pack of cigarettes, which may very well become the norm as legalization hits more parts of the country.
Its sleek and attractive design keeps joints from drying out and also makes transportation easier. Chong’s iconic face is even printed on the papers, which you’ll find just above the filter.
The joints hit cleanly and smoothly, possibly at the expense of their strength. They taste light and herbal, and will leave you with a mild and pleasant high. Since they come five to a pack, it puts more power in your hands when it comes to dosing by making it possible to smoke one joint for a milder effect, or hold a multiple joint smoke sesh for increased potency.
SEE ALSO: A Connoisseur’s Guide to Pre-rolled Cannabis
Vaporizer Cartridges
Chong’s Choice CO2 vape cartridges contain half a gram of solvent free oil, and like their other products, is sold in sativa, indica and hybrid varieties.
Though they don’t stand out in a market currently over-saturated with vape products, they get the job done, and come with the same assurance of quality that’s guaranteed by the Chong’s Choice brand. It won’t dethrone your go-to cartridge, but it’s a competent option when buying blindly or on a budget.
SEE ALSO: The Best & Worst Vape Cartridges of 2015 & 2016
THC Breath Strips
This is the only one of Chong’s Choice’s products to not offer its strain variety. The extract used in the breath strips is most likely a hybrid, meaning that this single edible offering covers the most ground possibly by not leaning too heavily into sativa or indica.
The most appealing aspect of this product is, of course, its discreteness. In this regard they’re perhaps unparalleled, due to their small size and ease of consumption, which anyone who’s tried a Listerine strip is familiar with. Each strip contains 40mg of cannabis, so expect a somewhat formidable high unless you’re a seasoned smoker. Strips are available in individual mylar bags and multi-strip cartridges.
We gotta say, this is an incredibly innovative product, and they hit a rome run with it.
Infused Chocolate Bars
The brand has recently teamed up with Défoncé Chocolatier, a stylish boutique edibles company based here in California (défoncé’s French for “high”), to produce a line of five distinct chocolate bars: Cereal Bowls (white chocolate and cinnamon with marshmallow cereal), Crunch Muniches (milk chocolate, caramel and potato chips), Dark Daze (dark chocolate), Mellow Milk (milk chocolate), and Wake ‘N’ Bacon (wafer dark chocolate, bacon, and maple syrup).
For now, these artisanal edibles are only available in California, and can be found at your nearest dispensary by searching on our cannabis marketplace, Nugg, where we’ve helped over 100,000 people get cannabis delivered quickly & easily.
Herbalizer
At first glance the Chong’s Choice herbalizer looks like it’s more suited for aromatherapy (which it can also be used for) than vaping. Unlike the portable TC models, this larger, stylish egg shaped device is best for home use and group 4:20 sessions.
It has easy-to-use buttons and a bright digital screen allows you to accurately adjust the temperature to meet your preferred strength. It also comes with an interchangeable silicon whip and four squeeze valve balloons (just like a Volcano vaporizer).
While we’ve yet to try this product out, we’ve heard good reports on it so far. But at $499, it’s quite the investment. It’s also worth nothing that Chong’s brand simply partnered up with Herbalizer, the company behind the product, to offer a custom-branded version.
TC-3 Vaporizer
This dry herb vape is a more portable version of the herbalizer. Like all Chong’s Choice vaporizers, the TC-3 vaporizer provides clean, healthy hits, adjustable temperature control, a fast heating chamber and long lasting battery ideal for when you’re on the go. Plus it automatically turns itself off after 5 minutes, so you won’t waste the battery.
Unlike some vapes, you don’t need to press anything to take a hit, but you do need to press the power button fives times to activate it, which could be tricky and frustrating for some. Like, why five times? Why not three?
It’s available in three colors: black, green, and pink (for the ladies) and comes with a black case.
At $139, the Tc-3 is much more affordable than the Herbalizer. But then again, this serves for your on-the-go functions as opposed to relaxing at home.
TC-1 Vaporizer
Chong’s Choice TC-1 vaporizer is a slightly cheaper, thinner and sleeker version of the TC-3 that includes the same basic features, except that it has a smaller OLED screen and a picture of the man himself on the device. Just set the temp (Tommy recommends 420°F), wait 10 to 30 seconds for it to heat up, and enjoy. It also comes with a convenient carrying case, along with flat and glass mouthpieces, dab tool, cleaning brush, and charger. Available in black, white, and red.
Compact Herb Grinder
The product line wouldn’t be complete without a solid grinder to break up your Chong’s Choice flowers. This $25, small, durable, 4-piece aluminum grinder contains sharp metal teeth to ensure the finest ground weed that’ll burn evenly and last longer. Plus its mesh bottom piece catches all the kief/pollen to maximize the most out of your eighth.
Where to Buy Chong’s Choice
Where can you find Chong’s Choice nearby? You could go to their website to find retailers in your area, but that’s all you’ll find. Instead visit Nugg, the largest medical marijuana online delivery marketplace in California, to find a variety of their products from dispensaries in your area and compare prices!
Then with just a few taps from any internet-connected device, order Chong’s products straight to your doorstep from whichever dispensary in your area carries them!
Don’t have a rec or med card to legally purchase cannabis in California? No problem, because NuggMD allows you to get one in 15 minutes or less from your mobile device! And if you use NuggMD you’ll automatically receive $20 credit on your first Nugg order!
Final Nugg Rating
Effectiveness: 4/5
These products get the job done with no major fuss.
Strength: 3/5
Smokers looking for extremely high potencies won’t find them in Chong’s Choice, but this means that lower strengths will welcome to a wider range of Cheech & Chong fans or any curious customers.
Flavor: 4/5
Unless you happen to enjoy an overpowering dank, cannabis-heavy flavor, these products are pleasant to consume.
Cost: 3.5/5
While the company remains committed to affordability, their products are still in the upper price range, which may or may not be justified depending on the customer.
Overall
It seems Tommy Chong is of two minds with his products: appeal to seasoned smokers with high quality offerings, and welcome new smokers with simple and unfussy products.Thankfully, no major sacrifices were made on either end, and the final result is ultimately a line of competent and uncomplicated products. As it very well should be, Tommy’s face will now grace the shelves of dispensaries throughout the country as a marker of quality cannabis.
Customer Testimonials
“Let me tell you something: as someone with as high a tolerance as I have, I was shocked at how hard smoking this flower hit me. It was good. If you have a high tolerance I highly recommend [the hybrid and sativa] to get you back to a buzzy place…especially the hybrid. It creeps up on you.” —Arend R.
“This is the real deal…don’t let this little [TC-1 vaporizer] fool you…this son of a bitch puts out some vapor! Tommy Chong isn’t going to put his name on something that ain’t going to deliver” —Derek W.
Pre-Rolled Joints: A Connoisseur’s Guide
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Among the many ways an individual can ingest cannabis – edibles, vapes, capsules, tinctures – the joint has traditionally been the most accessible and most recognizable means of weed consumption.
Symbolically, nothing conveys marijuana culture better than the image of a perfectly rolled joint. It’s easily the most practical option for consumption since it’s cheap, requires no hardware or tools, and can be carried discreetly.
Though cannabis consumption via bongs, topical treatments, oils and edibles haven’t fallen far behind, sparking up a joint usually marks the beginning of cannabis use for most first-time users. As the acceptance of marijuana use continues to evolve due to recent cultural and legislative shifts, convenient pre-rolled joints are rising in popularity.
What you'll learn in this post:
[Click any of the section titles below to jump there]
- What's a Pre-Rolled Joint?
- How Pre-Rolls Are Made
- Where Did the Joint Originate?
- Cones vs. Rolling Papers
- Pre-Rolled Joint vs. Pre-Rolled Blunt
- Are Some Pre-Rolls Better Than Others?
- Pre-Rolls & Cone Brands
- Buy Pre-Rolls Online?
- Where Can I Find Pre-Rolls in My Area?
- How Much Do Pre-Rolled Joints Cost?
What’s a Pre-Rolled Joint?
Joints are easy and quick to prepare for most smokers, but many these days are opting for the convenience of pre-rolled joints.
Pre-rolls (or pre-rolled marijuana cigarettes) are a burgeoning product within the cannabis industry, with more and more dispensaries pre-packaging joints for sale.
Brands entirely devoted to the creation of pre-rolls have even begun to spring up, with their main value proposition to consumers being ease and convenience, since rolling joints yourself requires time, skill, and all the right materials (which are often sold separately).
How Pre-Rolls Are Made
Pre-rolls are typically prepared using the “shake” or leftovers from cannabis nugs that budtenders work with, ensuring that dispensaries maximize every bit of their inventory.
This shake is often collected from the bottom of jars and/or any other areas where small flakes or crumbs can be gathered and loaded into pre-rolled papers or cones.
Once gathered, the shake is funneled into several rolling papers or cones, then rolled by hand or by a pre-roll machine to be sold individually or in packets.
Pre-rolled joints can be a very convenient and time-saving option, since users don’t have to grind their weed, buy their own papers and roll their own joints. Packages of 6 to 20 joints make them easy to share with fellow smokers.
Where Did the Joint Originate?
While cannabis has been used globally for thousands of years, using weed in joint form can be traced back to the Americas in the late 1800s.
Back then, joints allowed recreational users to mix marijuana with tobacco, better known here in the U.S. as a spliff, while also allowing medical practitioners at the time to combine marijuana with other known drugs to treat certain conditions.
Due in part to the joint’s popularity amongst the conquered peoples of the Americas and the Caribbean, propaganda quickly began to spread in the early 1900s, which led to the federal government outlawing of the possession and sale of cannabis in 1937.
The “reefer madness” stigma remained for decades, but as baby boomers came of age in the ‘60s and ‘70s the culture began to shift and experimental drug use rose, resulting in a major surge in cannabis use.
The joint remains intimately connected with counterculture, as the process of passing a joint came to represent sharing, community, freedom, peace, love, and mind expansion.
Cones vs. Rolling Papers
Cones
Pre-rolled cones are a great way to roll a nice, smooth joint. Cones may be a bit more expensive than papers, but they can save lots of time and frustration for those who aren’t comfortable hand-rolling their own joints.
A cone is rolled by evenly packing the bud into the mouth of the cone, then twisting its wide ends to seal it up. Cones are usually made from hemp, organic materials or flax paper. Cone filling machines are also available for commercial or personal use to simplify the process.
Popular pre-rolled cones brands including RAW, Cyclones, and Cones.
Papers
Rolling papers are small, thin sheets that allow individuals to roll their own joints. Most rolling papers come in lengths of 70mm to 110mm with varying widths.
For some, using rolling papers is time consuming and can also be subject to poor roll quality (rolling too tight or too loose), which can interfere with the consistency of the joint. For others, rolling can be preferable due to control over the amount of cannabis they’d like to use.
Popular rolling paper brands are: Zig Zag, Bambu, and Juicy Jay.
Pre-Rolled Joint vs. Pre-Rolled Blunt
A pre-rolled joint contains a thin, light rolling paper that’s been loaded with cannabis and sealed, while blunts are rolled by filling thicker, heavier cigar paper or wraps (usually cigarillos) with cannabis and are often larger than the average joint.
Popular blunt wraps include: Dutch Masters, Phillies, and Swisher Sweets.
What’s the Difference?
While both options will give you a smooth psychoactive experience, keep in mind that pre-rolled blunts are wrapped in cigar paper and contain a bit of nicotine that’ll add to the calming effects of the tobacco leaf it’s wrapped in.
So those looking for a marijuana high only should stick with pre-rolled joints. However, if a bit of nicotine isn’t an issue, a blunt can last much longer than joint (especially when passing it around at a social gathering).
Are Some Pre-Rolls Better Than Others?
While the prospect of more pre-rolled joints on the market can be exciting, not all pre-rolls are made equally.
In fact, many cannabis users take issue with the low quality shake used in pre-rolls offered at dispensaries, especially those who are accustomed to grinding their own nugs and can’t always be sure whether stems, seeds or other debris might be present in a pre-roll.
This unease has led many to doubt the quality of pre-rolls, which has opened up the market for boutique companies to capitalize on the pre-rolled joint market by offering select, high-quality strains and artisanal packaging for more discerning smokers.
Pre-Rolls & Cone Brands
If you’d like to experience the convenience of pre-rolled joint packs without having to worry about quality, and whether you’re looking for machine-rolled options or a brand where every pre-roll comes in hand-rolled cones, these selections offer some of the purest proprietary cannabis strains in pre-rolled form:
Bloom Farms
On a mission to help eradicate the stigma of cannabis use, Bloom Farms works with local California farmers to cultivate the finest cannabis in order to promote a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle.
- Locally grown cannabis? Yes.
- Type of cannabis? 100% full flower containing at least 3/4 grams of high-end cannabis.
- Hand or machine rolled? Each pre-roll comes in hand-rolled cones.
- Additional products? Bloom Farms also sells cannabis oil and portable vape pens.
Chong’s Choice
Actor, cannabis advocate and all around hero, Tommy Chong offers a list of hand-selected, quality cannabis products including pre-rolled joints.
- Locally grown cannabis? Yes.
- Type of cannabis? .75g of cannabis flower per pre-roll in either indica or sativa.
- Hand or machine rolled? Machine rolled into all natural rolling papers.
- Additional products? THC strips, cannabis oil.
Triple J’s Mini-joints
Rolling a small joint is no longer tedious, as Triple J offers five local cannabis blends ranging from hybrid to sativa in pre-rolled form since 2009. 12 joints come in stylish yet handy tins for safekeeping.
- Locally grown? Yes.
- Type of cannabis? 4 grams of high-grade cannabis flower per 12 mini js.
- Hand or machine rolled? Machine rolled.
- Additional products? No.
Buy Pre-Rolls Online?
If you’re searching for a pack of joints in your area, you may come across many foreign or out-of-state retailers who are dubiously selling pre-rolls online.
Be wary of any company that doesn’t require a doctor’s recommendation or a medical marijuana card to purchase pre-rolled joints or blunts.
Though it may seem like a convenient deal from the onset, most of these operations are either outright scams or tend to deliver subpar products.
Where Can I Find Pre-Rolls in My Area?
If you’re looking for marijuana joints for sale, the best way to find who’s got quality pre-rolls in your area is to visit Nugg, which provides a comprehensive database of licensed storefront and delivery-only dispensaries to choose from within California.
In addition to its extensive dispensary listings, NuggMD provides Californians with 420 doctor’s recommendations and state-issued medical marijuana cards legally and affordably via their easy-to-use website.
Whether you need your MMJ card or would like to order pre-rolls online and arrange a quick pickup or delivery, NuggMD and Nugg are convenient, centralized hubs for 420 doctor evaluations and shopping for a range of cannabis products (note rolling papers, cigarillos and cones must still be purchased from smoke shops and convenience stores in-person or online).
How Much Do Pre-Rolled Joints Cost?
Keep in mind that the cost of pre-rolled joints will vary depending on the dispensary, so note you’ll get what you pay for. Cheaper pre-rolls usually contain weaker, lower-grade cannabis while more expensive rolls will have stronger, higher-end strains and might also be coated with wax and/or dusted with kief.
With Nugg’s Marketplace, you can easily compare prices as well as search for special offers and deals on pre-rolls. Find out if delivery is available in your area – enter your address and have your favorite cannabis products delivered to your door!