When a new smoker hears the term, "cannabis," he may picture the weed from which the famed pot of today's popular culture is derived. In reality, a large number of the world's most popular varieties are actually cannabis plants that have been re-purposed to make the more familiar variety of cigars. The process used by modern growers is called crossbreeding. Crossbreeding is a method of breeding one plant with another, so that both can have a desired trait. The resulting offspring of crossbreeding are the plants that we use on a daily basis to make cigar, marijuana, or marijuana products such as capsules, pipes, and smoking accessories.
One of the earliest known examples of crossbreeding is marijuana. It was cultivated during the late 1800s in Mexico and has only recently been reintroduced into the United States. There, farmers began crossbreeding cannabis with other plants for different properties and eventually marijuana was introduced as a viable crop. The hybridization process used today on hemp, or marijuana, is similar but not identical to the crossbreeding which was done on marijuana. Marijuana is crossbred with tobacco and with plants that have high levels of fatty acids. The fatty acids that are found in the cannabis flowers contain compounds that make the buds of marijuana highly perishable. Therefore, when farmers crossbred marijuana with tobacco to produce an extremely perishable product, they were able to use it multiple times in their cigar production process.
While the crossbreeding used on marijuana is the oldest, it is one of the most well-known in the cigar industry. Today, the majority of cigar makers in the United States are using marijuana for their cigars. In fact, many tobacco manufacturers in Mexico and Central America still grow marijuana in order to use the flowers for their cigars. This is because of the high level of fat content in marijuana.
Marijuana itself does not have much flavor. It is mostly a bitter green or grey color, and it lacks the distinctive aroma that is often associated with tobacco. To add the desirable aroma of tobacco, cigar producers in Mexico and Central America will typically add tobacco flowers to marijuana, in order to give the cigar a sweet and pleasant taste. The resulting cigar is called a "marija" or "honey cigar." Marisas are typically a medium to full bodied cigar, often weighing between a half and two pounds.
As the demand for marijuana grew, so did the demand for crossbreeding. Marijuana was crossbred with other strains to create new blends that have ever increasing levels of flavor and aroma. At some point, the process became so well known that the name "crossbreeding" came about. Today, when a new strain of marijuana is created, it is often referred to as a cross, or crossbred weed.
In addition to the popularity of crossbreeding, another reason for its continued growth in the cigar industry is the fact that it is an inexpensive part to produce, and it can be mass-produced very quickly. In fact, because of the lack of equipment and other expenses involved with growing marijuana, many cigar manufacturers use the same process for making their cigars as they use for growing tobacco. Because of this, it is fairly easy to create thousands of cigar cigars in a short amount of time.
