An Ode to the Humble Joint, the Best Way to Get Stoned

Last week, we asked our readers to vote on the best way to get high. We created a March Madness-style bracket with 32 ways to ingest weedeverything from suppositories to bongsand we have a winner.

Bongs are fun, dabbing is a wild ride, vaping is classy and scentless, and weed capsules are the future. But nothing could beat the iconic joint.

As somebody who enjoys weed on occasion, I couldn't be more pleased with the outcome. This is further evidence for my theory that VICE has the smartest readers of all the websites.

There's something comforting about the warm feeling in your lungs right after you hit a J. Unlike spliffs, which people who don't smoke cigarettes tend to detest, you can share a joint with whomstever. Unlike blunts, there is no thick taste of flavored cigar papers. (Something I kinda enjoy, but I know isn't everyone's cup of tea.) A bowl has to be constantly repacked. Bongs are big and imposing and intimidating to non-stoners. Also, there's no graceful way to take a bong hit. You can look sexy while hitting a J, or you can have a disaster of a coughing fit. The joint is beautiful in its versatility.

The joint, unlike the edible, does not give you an anxiety-filled couple hours of wondering if you took too much or not enough. Take a hit and the high hits you immediatelyyou know what you're getting as soon as you smoke itand maybe it's my millennial attention span, but the instant results are a key reason the joint reigns supreme over edibles.

Unlike dabbing, which also involves an incredible amount of work and expensive materials, joints can get you high without getting you too high. But then again, everyone has a different experience. A friend of mine recently told me, "A joint is like getting hit in the head with a baseball bat and that's what I like about it."

You can roll a small joint for the Stoner's Nightcap (trademarked by me, right now), or a big, fat J for a group hang. If you're one of those extremely fancy rolling experts you can turn joints into flowers or crosses or airplanes or Starbucks cups or a fish or a giraffe or a shark. If you are 17 and looking to impress, you can roll a joint out of a Bible page because you think it's edgy.

But most of us are happy to roll simple joints that require no introduction, even to the absolute weed newbie. A teenager can smoke a joint; so can a grandmother. You can smoke one walking down the street and toss it on the ground and leave no trace beyond a smell.

"You can smoke a whole joint and still have a hit or two for later," VICE staff writer Emerson Rosenthal said when I asked people to talk about joints to me. "Also, it's a great way for ...