How Many Cigarettes Can You Roll With 18,000 Pounds Of Marijuana?

I received an e-mail notification the other day regarding breaking news from the Los Angeles Times.  Of course, I had to open up the notification immediately, what happens if I miss some news -- OMG.  Just kidding...Anyways, I read in the article that around 18,000 pounds of Marijuana had been seized in a gigantic bust in San Bernadino (California, USA).  I forwarded the article to myself and in the process lost the article.  Although I found an excerpt from an ABC news article shown below:

Police in Southern California raided a weed "fortress" on Wednesday, seizing 35,000 marijuana plants and shutting down an operation they believe was bringing in millions of dollars a month.

San Bernardino Police say eight people were detained Wednesday when police and federal agents raided the warehouse that was converted into a multi-level grow house.

The article goes onto say that the equivalent of 35,000 marijuana plants equal 18,000 pounds of marijuana.  Immediately I felt overwhelmed by such an enormous number.  Therefore, I decided to ask the following question which I intend to answer in the blog post below:


How many cigarettes can be rolled with 18,000 pounds of marijuana?



By answering the following questions above, the enormous numbers which were reported would be cast in a different -- more reasonable light.  With this in mind, lets start the dimensional analysis below.

How Many Grams Of Tobacco Per Cigarette?

As I mentioned above, in order to understand the massive amount of marijuana which was removed by law enforcement during the raid in San Bernardino, dimensional analysis can be used.  To start with, the amount of tobacco in a single cigarette needs to be determined.  If the question: How Many Grams Of Tobacco Per Cigarette? -- entered into a search engine (i.e. Google), the following is a result:

The result of the inquiry indicates that the amount of tobacco can vary in each cigarette by 65-100%.  For the purposes of this analysis, the amount per cigarette will be chosen to be 90% -- to take into account the paper and the filter also included in the cigarette weight.  Upon closer inspection of the amount of tobacco per cigarette above, the units are stated in 'grams' rather than 'pounds'.  Why is this important?



In order to determine the number of cigarettes which could be rolled with 18,000 pounds of marijuana, the units of cigarettes and marijuana will need to be converted into the same units of measurement.  Otherwise, a comparison cannot be accomplished.  Since the amount of tobacco per cigarette is stated in units of 'gram', the conversion of 'pound' to 'gram' is in order.  Again, typing the following question into a search engine: How Many Grams In A Pound? -- yields the following result shown below:

In every pound of marijuana, there are 453.592 grams of marijuana.  With this conversion factor in hand, lets start by finding out how many cigarettes are in a pound of marijuana.  If a typical cigarette has (as stated above) around 0.90 gram of tobacco (90% of a gram) per cigarette, then dividing the total amount of marijuana in a pound (expressed in units of grams) by 0.90 gram will yield the total number of cigarettes which could be rolled with a single pound as shown below:

The calculation above shows that if a pound of marijuana was converted into 'rolled cigarettes' would equal 503 cigarettes in total.  WOW.  If that is the total number of cigarettes equal to a single pound of marijuana, then imagine the total amount of cigarettes which could be rolled with 18,000 pounds which was seized in the police raid in the news.



In order to determine the total amount of cigarettes which could be rolled with 18,000 pounds, take 503 cigarettes (equal to a single pound) and multiply the value by 18,000 as shown below:

Wow!  Now that is an enormous amount of cigarettes.  Each of us are probably familiar with the sight of a person standing outside a building or in a park smoking a cigarette.  Considering the total amount of marijuana which was seized, the total amount could be converted to a total of 9,071,840 cigarettes.  The amount is huge and incomprehensible.



As usual, in order to visualize or comprehend the enormous number of cigarettes above which represents 18,000 pounds -- a larger or more representative 'metric' needs to be used.  Below, I have chosen to compile those cigarettes above into larger 'packing units' (i.e. cartons, pallets, etc.) to get a better grasp of that enormous amount of marijuana which was seized in the police raid.

How Many Pallets Are Required For 18,000 Pounds?

The results of the above analysis indicates that 18,000 pounds of marijuana -- if converted into cigarettes is an enormous number of cigarettes -- 9,071,840 to be exact.  How does a person grasp such a large number of cigarettes?  Can a metric be used to frame that number into context?  Most of us have seen a person smoking a cigarette which fits in a 'pack' of cigarettes as shown below:

Source: Stack Exchange

In a typical pack of cigarettes, the number is only 20 or 25 cigarettes.  Therefore, a larger package is needed.  Cigarettes are packaged by 20 (individual cigarettes) into a box or pack as shown above.  On a larger scale for shipping purposes, "cartons" hold 10 cigarette packs as shown below:

Source: Marlboro

Still, that is only 10 packs of cigarettes into a carton which equals 200 cigarettes (individually).  On a shipping scale -- i.e. box. There are boxes shown below which contain 'cartons'.  These boxes are stacked onto a 'pallet' as shown below:

Source - click here

The pallet is the blue wood framed box on the bottom of the image above.  The boxes above hold the 'cartons' of cigarette packs.  In order to find out the number of cigarettes contained on the wood pallet above, the following was typed into a search engine: "How Many Cigarettes On A Pallet?"  The answer is shown below:

A total of 500,000 cigarettes are contained on a single wood pallet as shown above in the previous picture of the forklift with a bunch of boxes.  Now we have a metric which we can use to compare an enormous amount of cigarettes -- the amount equal to 18,000 pounds of marijuana.  In order to determine the number of wood pallets needed to hold 9,071,840 cigarettes, just divide the total number of cigarettes by the number contained on each wood pallet -- 500,000 as shown below:

The answer indicates that 18 pallets of cigarettes would be needed to hold the total number of cigarettes -- 9,071,840 -- which could be rolled in total with 18,000 pounds of marijuana.

Conclusion...

Often when numbers or values are presented in the media (news), readers will just skip over them.  I tend to get stuck on numbers -- especially when the magnitude (value) of the number is extremely large.  In the case of the raid on an illegal marijuana operation which yielded 18,000 pounds of marijuana -- the use of dimensional analysis greatly reduced the difficulty of comprehending such an enormous weight seized.  Now, with the tools shown above, each of you (the readers) will be able to determine the total magnitude of large numbers -- using widely available tools online as I have shown.  The next time you read about a large amount of marijuana which is seized, you will be able to put that number into context using the above calculations.  Until next time, have a wonderful day.




Related blog posts can be found here using dimensional analysis!