This past weekend I attended the 10th annual Cleveland Pinball & Arcade Show in Independence, Ohio. With over 100 games all set to free play, this is an event I try to attend each year. This time I came equipped with a Certified FL Sunrise sativa pre-roll to get me in the zone.
When I popped open the opaque black plastic tube I was greeted with a light citrusy scent. The joint had no branding or logos on the tip. The unbleached paper was made from wood pulp.
The densely-packed bat weighed 1.28 grams with crutch included. The plant material looked good, with no visible stems or unwanted matter.
Certified FL Sunrise Sativa Pre-Roll 21.5% THC
Upon sparking the single serve unit, I was glad to see that the ash color was very light.
The ash wasn’t dark, which was nice.
The harshness was low and the flavor was large. Although Limonene was listed as the fourth terpene, I still detected a predominantly citrusy taste. There was 2.36 mg/g of Ocimene, which is also known to be a citrusy terpene, and 4.49 mg/g of Myrcene, which is the terpene that helps give mangoes their taste.
I did not have to re-light the joint at all during the ten-minute session. The unit burned evenly and produced a nice oil ring around the cherry.
Oil ring around the FL Sunrise pre-rollI used a torch lighter to spark the jib.All good things must come to an end.
The medical effects from the FL Sunrise pre-roll were undoubtedly strong. The combination of myrcene, caryophyllene, ocimene and limonene along with the respectable THC percentage put me where I needed to be when it came time to play pinball. I was able to focus on the fun while feeling pain-free and at ease.
Grippin’ the flippersFrank was on hand for photo ops
I would definitely buy another Certified pre-roll if given the opportunity. The FL Sunrise joint burned slow and even, had a nice taste and packed an effective medical punch. Hopefully I get to try one of their infused pre-rolls at some point.
I gave the Certified FL Sunrise sativa pre-roll an 8/10 for taste, 3/10 for harshness, 7/10 for strength, 6/10 for smell strength and 60 to 75 minutes for length of medical effects.
Ingredients: Ground cannabis flower, brown cone (unbleached wood pulp and organic arabic gum), paper filter/crutch.
Total THC 21.5%, Delta-9 THC 0.71%, Delta-9 THCa 23.7%. Total CBD 0.05%, CBDa 0.06%.
In regards to pre-rolls, I keep hearing the question “When will Ohio be like Michigan?” The amount of pre-rolls available in any Michigan dispensary is seemingly infinite. There are so many options it can be overwhelming.
If I had to guess, I would say it will be a while before Ohio gets a pre-roll selection similar to Michigan’s. We have a long way to go. By design, there aren’t nearly as many growers, processors, or dispensaries in Ohio. It is much easier and less expensive in Michigan to grow and sell marijuana legally than it is here.
In 2008, medical marijuana became legal in Michigan. Dispensaries were not allowed. Home cultivation was the only legal option. Despite this, by 2013, around 100 dispensaries had opened in the state, operating in a grey area. It wasn’t until 2016 that Gov. Rick Snyder signed a bill allowing the operation of medical marijuana dispensaries. In 2018 the state legalized recreational marijuana, and December 2019 saw the first legal dispensaries open in Michigan.
By comparison, Ohio medical dispensaries opened in January 2019 and we’ve had recreational sales since August/September 2024. We have also dealt with stricter regulations and greater limitations. So it’s safe to say Michigan had a good head start on Ohio’s legal cannabis market. I am confident we will catch up in a few years.
With that in mind, we are making great progress in this state with pre-rolls. It’s been a long time coming but they are finally hitting dispensary shelves. Right now a 5-pack of infused pre-rolls in Ohio costs around $50 before tax. In Michigan you can find something like that for as low as $20, maybe less if you find a good sale.
Our selection of pre-rolls isn’t anywhere like Michigan yet, but I am going to try as many Ohio pre-rolls as I can and compare them to the ones I’ve smoked from Michigan. Slowly but surely we will get a larger variety of pre-rolls to choose from.
The Ohio Division of Cannabis Control calls joints “Raw Single Serve Units” or “Raw Single Serving Units”.
Not called a joint, so don’t ever confuse it. This product’s called a Raw Single Serve Unit. Yes, it’s convenient, just don’t abuse it. …Smoke a single serve unit.
The other day I bought a 1-gram Aura Lemon Royal hybrid raw (non-infused) pre-roll from Bloom in Akron. The recreational price was $15 before tax. The joint came packaged in a clear glass tube with a white plastic screw-on lid.
Aura Lemon Royal Pre Roll
As soon as I sparked it up I realized I didn’t weight it, but it seemed like a full gram. It wasn’t rolled loose or anything like that. The hemp paper was white in color, so I wonder if it had been bleached. There was no logo on the crutch.
When I opened the tube, the bud had a light, lemony scent. It wasn’t very skunky or strong-smelling, but as I looked through the paper I didn’t see any stems or sticks. Some of those free and low-priced pre-rolls from Michigan can contain some real harsh bud, but that wasn’t the case here.
I had actually never tried any Aura flower before this session. I’ve loved their mind-enhancing vape carts fortified with the nootropics CBC and THCV.
I traveled to my local cornfield to make for a serene environment to burn the joint. The only things surrounding me were corn, grass, birds and a light breeze.
Consume cannabis in a cornfield.
I used a portable torch lighter to engulf the joint with dragon’s breath. The first few puffs were pleasant. The taste wasn’t strong or skunky or anything too distinct but I enjoyed it. Along with the lemony flavor I picked up on some peppery notes and a little floral earthiness.
Despite the slight outdoor breeze, the joint burned wonderfully. I didn’t have to relight at all, not even once. As you can see from the pictures below, the ash color was light, indicating clean bud with a proper flush.
The joint burned evenly and cleanly.It also burned pretty slow.
The Aura Lemon Royal pre-roll had excellent airflow. Only towards the end was there an issue with clogging. The bud became so resinous that I had to give the joint a squeeze/roll to loosen up the plant material. This gave me the ability to burn the unit down to the crutch.
Upon completing the joint, as I stood amongst the corn, I felt different than I did before smoking. I felt a little fuzzier and friendlier with the nature surrounding me. I started to better absorb and perceive the life teeming everywhere, like the bugs that would fly and the birds in the sky.
I cackled with the corn as I realized the things that caused me stress were not as important as I made them out to be. The true measure of a person is how they react to a situation, and I realized my reactions hadn’t been what they needed to be. It was time for a change in thought, behavior, attitude and intention.
While it did get me medicated, the Aura Lemon Royal joint was not as strong as the Buckeye Sour Larry Cross pre-roll I smoked the other day. I enjoyed the taste and effects but I can’t see myself paying $15 plus tax for another one of these. At that price I’ll just go the traditional route and roll my own.
I gave the Aura Lemon Royal Hybrid 15.1% THC One Gram Pre-Roll a 6/10 for taste, 6/10 for strength, 3/10 for harshness, 6/10 for taste, 5/10 for smell strength and 30 minutes for length of medical effects.
Ingredients: Raw cannabis flower (Lemon Royal), 100% hemp paper and crutch.
Total THC 15.1%, Delta-9 THC 2.57%, THCA 14.3%, Total CBD .0404%, CBDA .0461%, CBG .0390%, CBGA .291%.
Manufactured by Hundred Percent Labs on 08/20/2025, tested 08/25/2025 by North Coast Testing Labs, packaged 08/25/2025, consumed 08/27/2025, expires 08/20/2026.
The Landing was one of the first Northeast Ohio dispensaries to sell pre-rolls.
I was informed that The Landing’s one-gram pre-rolls were $7.50 for non-infused and $16 for infused. I told the employee I’d call in a week or so to see if they were back in stock.
I contacted Amplify in Bedford to check their pre-roll situation. They had two types of pre-rolls in stock: Sour Larry Cross and Fastbreak Frost. They were $13.00 a piece for recreational customers and $9.75 for medical patients. I was told they only had raw, non-infused pre-rolls in stock. Infused joints were supposed to be hitting the shelves two days from then on Wednesday, 08/27/2025.
I I got to the dispensary, checked in and bought two raw, non-infused pre-rolls, one Sour Larry Cross and one Fastbreak Frost.
Buckeye’s dispensary product sticker called them pre-rolls. The Division of Cannabis Control insists on calling them Raw Single Serving Units and Infused Single Serving Units.
The Landing’s (Firelands Scientific’s) website referred to the joints as pre-rolls and so did Amplify’s (Buckeye’s). Amplify’s in-store menu and internal product stickers also called the products pre-rolls.
Buckeye’s actual packaging didn’t say the word joint or pre-roll anywhere. The word pre-roll only appeared on the sticker that the dispensary used to scan the product. The Division of Cannabis Control product ID stickers on the tubes themselves said the products were Raw Single Serving Units. I thought this was what the budtenders at the dispensary were supposed to call the joints, but thankfully they were using the word pre-roll.
In Ohio’s legal cannabis market, the DCC says “Raw” means a non-infused joint without any bubble hash, rosin, resin, THCA crystals or distillate. It is a joint with only cannabis flower inside of the rolling paper. “Infused” refers to a joint that contains not only flower but also bubble hash, rosin, resin, THCA crystals or distillate. Essentially, infused joints contain additional hash to make them burn slower and hit harder.
Ohio medical patients can buy raw, non-infused joints with their medical day supply. One pre-roll counts as one day supply, even though it is only one gram. If a medical patient walks into a dispensary with 45 days on their supply and buys 5 raw pre-rolls, they will leave the store with 40 days left until their next refill.
For now, Ohio medical patients cannot buy infused joints with their medical supply. If an Ohio medical patient wants to buy an infused pre-roll along with their medical order, they will have to complete their medical purchase, collect their change and start a second transactionfor the infused joint as arecreational customer. The first medical purchase would count towards their medical day supply and the second recreational purchase would count towards their adult use daily purchase limit.
Will infused pre-rolls count towards both a recreational customer’s flower and extract daily limits? For example, if an infused pre-roll had 1 gram of flower and a half gram of extract, would the state remove a gram from their flower daily limit and a half gram from their extract/edible/liquid/tincture/topical daily limit? I would imagine so, but when I get a definitive answer I will update this post. Edit: I got the answer. Even though they have hash in them, infused pre-rolls count only towards an adult-use daily flower limit, not the daily edibles and extracts limit. However, loose, non-rolled pre-ground infused flower, such as Riviera Creek Riv Sticks or Hundred Percent Labs Crumble Infused pre-ground bud, count towards the daily edibles and extracts limit, not the daily flower limit. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, because an infused pre-roll is essentially the same thing as a rolled-up Riv Stick, but that’s the way it is set up in this state.
Joints!
When I opened the Sour Larry Cross tube it smelled like cannabis, not hemp. There have been times I’ve opened those THCA hemp pre-roll tubes and was immediately hit with a whiff of boof. That didn’t happen when I opened this Buckeye pre-roll tube. The weed smelled fresh. It didn’t smell or taste artificial like a lot of those flavor-infused pre-rolls you see from Michigan.
The Sour Larry Cross raw pre-roll weighed 1.39 grams with the paper tip included. When looking at the weed through the paper I didn’t see any stems, sticks, weird-looking chunks or harsh-looking material. It looked like it was supposed to, like some ground up weed rolled within a paper.
I’m not sure what brand of rolling paper they used. The tube’s label says the paper is made from unbleached wood paper and wood pulp kraft paper, not hemp. It didn’t have the RAW checkered watermarks. The watermarks were straight lines. The paper tip had the Buckeye logo on one side and a THC! warning on the other.
Buckeye Sour Larry Cross 1 gram raw pre-rollBuckeye Sour Larry Cross 1 gram raw pre-roll
I sparked my first Ohio dispensary-bought pre-roll and took a few tokes. It was easy to light with a regular BIC lighter, but I did use hemp wick to avoid any butane hitting the flower.
Spark one for Ohio!
I had smoked a few of those artificially flavored joints from Michigan recently, in particular one called Banana Pancakes. It didn’t really taste like weed. It tasted very botanical, like it was infused with foreign flavorings. This Ohio-bought Sour Larry Cross pre-roll tasted completely different. There was no artificial taste whatsoever. It wasn’t harsh and didn’t make me cough.
I was very happy to see that the Sour Larry Cross pre-roll burned evenly, ashed white and tasted good until the end. Despite it being a somewhat windy day outside, the pre-roll did not run and only required one relight when I saw a slight canoe start to form. The airflow was exceptional until the very end when the joint got a bit resinated. The joint didn’t become impossible to hit, but at the very end, the airflow diminished a bit.
With that in mind, the day prior I sparked up a $26 rosin infused pre-roll from Michigan and the airflow was so tight and unhittable that I had to put it out, unroll it and pack it in a bowl. So compared to that, I was very happy with the airflow on this Buckeye Sour Larry Cross pre-roll.
Going…Going…Gone!This is what the bud inside of the joint looked like after it was finished. The weed was resinated but contained no sticks or unwanted bits.
I felt medicated from the Sour Larry Cross pre-roll for well over an hour. I was actually surprised with how long the high lasted from this joint. You could tell that they used only nugs to roll this jib, refraining from bulking it up with sticks and junk matter like a lot of the free and low-priced pre-rolls you see from Michigan.
Overall, I walked away from the experience impressed with my first Ohio store-bought pre-roll. It tasted great, burned slow and even and ashed very light. It got me medicated and creative for well over an hour, probably closer to two. It cost under $10 with the medical discount, which is more or less on par with Michigan prices to a certain extent.
I gave the Sour Larry Cross Hybrid Raw Single Serving Unit an 8/10 for taste, 3/10 for harshness, 8/10 for strength, 7/10 for smell strength and 120 minutes for length of medical effects.
Ingredients: cannabis plant material, cone (unbleached wood paper, wood pulp kraft paper, starch). Net weight 1.00 grams (it weighed 1.37 grams with the tip). Total THC 23.18% by 1 gram weight, Delta-9 THCA 25.34%, Delta-9 THC 0.96%, CBD 0%.
Terpenes: b-Caryophyllene 0.40%, Linalool 0.37%, Limonene 0.21%, a-Humulene 0.12%. Manufactured by Buckeye Relief on 08/14/2025, tested by CP Labs on 08/21/2025, packaged 08/21/2025, blazed on 08/25/2025, expires 08/14/2026.
I got creative after smoking this joint. I painted cat-shaped rocks and fed a stone bird some stone heads.
Cat rocksCat rocksStone bird feeding time
While outside smoking the Sour Larry Cross joint, I took these photos!
A baked butterfly! Or was I the baked one?Progress?
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