Can You Smoke Weed With Bible Paper?

The first time I smoked weed back in college, my friends and I had gotten half an ounce, a grinder, and nothing to smoke weed with. As beginner stoners, the fact that we needed rolling papers or a pipe didn’t occur to us. It was a rookie mistake, I admit, but in our defense, we were young, stupid, broke and really eager to try cannabis out.

We got to my friend’s house, and the realization hit us. What were we supposed to smoke our precious weed out of? We tried making a pipe out of an apple (we failed), tried rolling a very crooked joint with regular printer paper (we failed), and were just about to give up when my friend pulled out an old Bible from his shelf, looked at the thin textured paper and said, “Maybe this can work?”

We all thought this was a revolutionary idea. We ripped a page out of the Holy Book, cut it into a joint sized rectangle and got to rolling. We tried to make the ends of the paper stick to the joint, but without any adhesive, it was hard to get it to stick. One of my friends suggested we could use honey to get it to stick, so we dipped a toothpick into some honey and dripped it over the edge of our crooked Bible paper joint. It did the trick… sort of.

Later, I realized that we have not been the first ones to get creative and smoke some weed like this. Snoop Dogg admitted to trying this out with his friends, back in London in 1996. In an interview at The Breakfast Club Radio Show, Snoop told the interviewer of how he and his friends were dying to smoke some weed, but were out of papers. They grabbed the Bible off the hotel room, ripped the first empty page out of it and made around 5 joints with it.

In the Portland Pride March in 2016, two Portland artists rolled some joints out of Bible, picking out the pages that had verses that are considered homophobic. Artists Jennifer Rabin and Ross Lee went to some local dispensaries and bought the strain called God’s Gift, and rolled 7 types of joints, each representing a day of Creation as recounted by the Book of Genesis. The only way the joints differed was by the Bible verse contained, so they offered their menu to pride goers, and were met with much enthusiasm by protesters at Pride. Pride goers could have their pick between Leviticus 20:13 or 18:7, Romans 1:27, and more. In the end, the artists compiled pictures of their joints being smoked by members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Bible Paper is oftentimes called “scritta”. It is a thin grade paper used for books that contain many many pages, such as the Scriptures or a dictionary. It is a type of woodfree uncoated paper, and it is usually reinforced with cotton or linen to maintain its strength despite its thinness. Despite the fact that it says it’s “woodfree”, it is made out of trees. The wood is just processed into a pulp that removes polymers from the wood itself. 

Usually, rolling papers are made out of different materials, such as hemp, flax or rice straw. These materials are called “rag fibers”, or nonwood plant fibers, since they do not come from trees. If you want to learn more about what rolling papers are made out of, you can check out this other article. 

The thing about pages in the Bible is that they also have ink, especially in those that have words printed on them. Modern ink created for printers is made out of multiple ingredients, including varnish, resin, solvents, pigments, and additives including waxes and lubricants. Black ink is made using carbon black pigments, and white pigments like titanium dioxide can be used to lighten other ink colors. 

I mean, technically, you can. I did it, and I’m also not here to tell anyone else what to do with their lives, lungs and weed. Nobody is stopping you. The question is… should you?

I wouldn’t recommend it, personally. I know I wouldn’t do it again. The joint my friends and I managed to make was sticky because of the honey, so it was messy to pass around, and the paper from the Bible burned too quickly for us to enjoy the herb properly or make the most of our small stash. On top of that, the taste was terrible, and I’m attributing that to the many chemicals on the ink. I don’t think it’s safe to smoke papers with ink and its many chemicals. We don’t really know what that kind of thing can do to our lungs in the long run. 

Some people might also find the fact that you’re smoking out of the Bible really offensive, as illustrated by the backlash to Snoop Dogg’s confession. The Bible is a Holy Book for many people, and it can be deemed sacrilegious and disrespectful to the Word of God. Most Christian denominations also consider smoking weed a sin, so smoking it from the Bible is doubly wrong for them. However, if you’re not a Christian, this might not be important to you in your decision making.

Snoop Dogg defended himself by saying that he and his friends only used the first page, without any Scripture on it. Snoop is a follower of the Rastafarian religion, which also believes in the Bible and Christ, but smoking marijuana is considered a sacrament and it is an important cornerstone of their beliefs. 

I would honestly just advise you to go buy some rolling paper, especially one made out of safer materials such as hemp (and if you’re lucky, your HAMP pack might include one 24k Gold paper for your joints!) But if you’re really desperate, I would suggest you try out different DIY alternatives before you resort to smoking from a Bible page. You could try to make a bottle bong, or a banana pipe, or a pear pipe, and with these well-written instructions you might have better luck than my friends and I with our failed apple pipe attempts.