Snapz Duo Hemp Cigarettes

CBDA is what the plant makes, CBD is what heat makes

Hemp does not produce cannabidiol. It produces cannabidiolic acid, which is written CBDA, and that is what sits in a living plant and in raw dried material.

CBDA turns into CBD when it is heated, in a reaction called decarboxylation. The acid group breaks away as carbon dioxide and what is left is the compound almost everyone means when they say CBD. That is why an oil maker heats an extract deliberately, and why a raw hemp product and a processed one are described differently.

Burning is heat. So a hemp cigarette described as rich in CBDA does deliver cannabidiol when it is lit, and the conversion is why the product is sold in the CBD aisle at all.

The reason this matters is that the figure on a label and the amount that reaches you are two different numbers. Conversion is not perfect, and combustion destroys some of what it converts. Anyone comparing a hemp cigarette against an oil that publishes milligrams per drop is not comparing like with like, and no page selling this product says so.

The brand also names CBG and CBC, which are separate cannabinoids rather than forms of the same one. CBC in particular is uncommon in UK retail.

Where smokable hemp actually sits in UK law

We would rather set this out plainly than let it sit unaddressed, because it is the single most important thing about the product and nobody selling it mentions it.

Growing hemp in the UK requires a licence, and that licence covers the stalk and the seed. Those are the parts the industrial hemp trade is built around, and they are what the rules were written for. The flower and the leaf are not within it.

A smokable hemp product is made from exactly the material the licence does not cover. That is why smokable hemp occupies an unsettled position here in a way that hemp seed oil, hemp paper and hemp protein do not.

This product is on our shelves as an explicit decision by the owner of this shop, taken with that position in front of them. We are not going to describe it as approved, settled or cleared, because it is not, and any page telling you otherwise is telling you something it cannot support.

Novel Foods, which governs ingestible cannabinoid products, does not apply here, because this is not a food. The rule that does apply is the consumer limit on controlled cannabinoids, covered below.

What the two capsules give you

The Duo in the name is the filter. There are two flavour capsules in it rather than the single one most flavour-capsule cigarettes carry, and each is crushed by pinching the filter.

That gives four combinations. Crush neither and you have plain hemp. Crush the strawberry alone and you get the fruit. Crush the menthol alone and you get the cooling note. Crush both and you get the two together.

In practice most people settle on one or two of the four rather than using all of them, but the arrangement means a single product can suit two different preferences, which is genuinely unusual in this category.

The plain hemp character underneath is grassy and slightly sweet, closer to a herbal cigarette than to tobacco, and it is more noticeable than people expect if no capsule is crushed. The menthol reads as cold rather than minty. The strawberry is confectionery-sweet rather than fruit-like, which is true of nearly every capsule of this type.

One thing worth knowing: the brand makes a second combination, pairing grape with the same menthol. Our listing is the strawberry one.

What is and is not published about the contents

The brand's own claim is qualitative. It says the cigarettes are rich in CBDA, CBG and CBC, and it does not publish a milligram figure anywhere we could find.

Retailers do circulate a figure, generally around fifty milligrams a cigarette, but that comes from shops rather than from the manufacturer. We are repeating it as what retailers say, not as something established, and our own product record carries no figure at all.

On testing, the brand does better than most of this category. It states that batches are independently tested and it publishes certificates of analysis on its own site, which is worth crediting because a great many hemp products publish nothing.

What it does not do is give a number. Its compliance statement says only that THC levels are within the permitted amount, without saying which measure that refers to. The UK consumer test is 1mg of controlled cannabinoids in total per container, counted as an absolute quantity rather than as a percentage of anything, and on a container holding several cigarettes that is demanding.

So we publish no THC figure for this product and make no claim about whether it meets that limit. We do not hold a certificate for the stock we would ship. If the answer matters to you, the brand's own certificate page is the place to look and the batch code is the thing to match.

What we cannot tell you about the pack

The brand packs these in boxes of ten. Our own record describes the line differently, and our distributor's own web address for it suggests a carton rather than a single box.

Since those do not agree, our system flags the quantity for this line as unconfirmed and we are not going to state one in this description.

It is a small thing and an annoying one, and it is the kind of detail that ought to be certain before a product is listed rather than after. We would rather say we do not know than print a number we cannot stand behind.

Who should not buy these

Anyone who wants a measured amount of cannabidiol. There is no reliable figure here, the compound is listed in its acid form, and combustion is the least predictable way of taking anything. Oils publish milligrams per drop and gummies publish milligrams per sweet for exactly this reason.

Anyone who wants a settled regulatory position. Smokable hemp does not have one in the UK, and this page has said so rather than glossing it.

Anyone expecting these to help with anything. We make no claims about that, and we would be sceptical of any page in this category that does, particularly around smoking.

Anyone who dislikes the taste of hemp should know that the plain character underneath the capsules is quite present, and that the capsules cover it rather than remove it.

And anyone who wants grape rather than strawberry, since the brand makes that combination and this listing is not it.