What’s really inside the pre-rolls Michiganders are smoking

I tore open three Michigan pre-rolls to see what was inside. One looked more like yard clippings than weed.

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MICHIGAN—Pre-rolled joints are the gas station hot dogs of Michigan weed.

Everyone’s bought one. Everyone’s had a bad one. Sometimes they hit the spot. But nobody wants to think about what’s actually inside them because the whole point is convenience.

That’s the thing about gas station hot dogs: you don’t ask too many questions. You just hope for the best. 

That’s the energy most people bring to pre-rolls. But after one too many disappointing joints, I got curious enough to open them up.

My test was simple. I bought three pre-rolled joints from the same dispensary at three very different price points—a 99-cent budget joint, a $9.99 mid-tier option, and a $19.99 “premium” hand-roll. And I gutted each one on my rolling tray to see what was actually inside them. 

Good pre-rolls should generally look like what you’d pull from your own grinder: coarsely ground flower with a consistent texture and no leafy or dusty trim or stem chunks.

And once I opened them up, the contrast was obvious. 

Dragonfly

Let’s start with the one that made me do this whole piece in the first place.

Dragonfly is one of those brands you see everywhere because it’s cheap. It also bills itself as a best-seller by unit count, which is honestly the most depressing statistic in Michigan cannabis.

I’ve accidentally smoked a full Dragonfly joint before—back when I didn’t know what was up—and it gave me a massive headache. At the time I chalked it up to bad luck or dehydration.

Now, I’m pretty sure I found the real reason.

Kyle Kaminski/The ‘Gander Newsroom

When I cracked this thing open, it looked more like oregano than cannabis. It was loaded with loose trim, visible stem fragments, and uneven plant material that didn’t even resemble weed.

It’s the kind of cheap material that burns hot, tastes harsh, and ruins your afternoon. It was only a 99-cent joint, so my expectations were already subterranean. But gutting it open didn’t just confirm why Dragonfly has such a poor reputation in the Michigan market; it made it worse.

I didn’t even bother smoking this stuff. I dumped it straight in the trash. 

Pressure Pack

The mid-tier joint—a $9.99 pre-roll from Pressure Pack—told a very different story.

Instead of leafy trim and stem bits, this one was clearly ground, whole flower. The texture was consistent, the color looked right, and there were no seeds or mystery filler mixed inside.

Kyle Kaminski/The ‘Gander Newsroom

It also came rolled in a barrel shape instead of a cone—a small detail, but one I appreciate. Barrel rolls tend to burn more evenly and feel closer to something you’d roll yourself.

I re-rolled this one and smoked it, and the flower did exactly what flower is supposed to do: tasted like weed, hit clean, and didn’t make me feel like I had to apologize to my lungs. The strain, Orange Bomb, had a citrusy nose and an easygoing, uplifting high that lasted for hours.

I always check the harvest dates on my products and I’ll never buy anything more than 8 months old to ensure freshness. Still, this joint still leaned a touch dry for my preferences. 

But for the price, it still felt fair. And more importantly, it was a smooth smoke from start to finish. This is real, mid-tier cannabis done right—and the kind of pre-roll I’d happily buy again. 

Peninsula Gardens

Finally, the top-shelf joint.

Peninsula Gardens is a smaller Michigan grow based in Lake Orion that talks a big game about big flavor. I’ll give them this: The flower inside their pre-rolled joints backs up that energy.

This $19.99 hand-rolled cannon looked like the real deal the moment I opened it. The material was clearly whole flower. No trim, seeds, stems, or filler—just properly ground-up buds.

Kyle Kaminski/The ‘Gander Newsroom

But the bigger difference was freshness. The flower felt stickier, springier, and better cured than the others. You could tell it hadn’t been sitting around drying out in a tube for several weeks.

The strain, Super Zmash, leaned into that candy-gas territory Peninsula is known for, with frosty, trichome-heavy purple buds that definitely boosted the presentation factor. When I re-rolled it, it smoked like something I’d just ground up for myself. It was smooth, flavorful, and clean.

The bottom line

So, what did this experiment prove?

First, the obvious one: Ultra-cheap pre-rolls are usually cheap for a reason. If you’re only paying a dollar for a one-gram joint, you’re probably not getting anything worth smoking.

Second: Premium isn’t always magical. The Peninsula Gardens pre-roll was excellent but not twice as good as the mid-tier option. It felt more like a “treat yourself” joint than an everyday buy. 

The final takeaway: Shop by brand reputation—not just price. A company known for quality weed is far more likely to pack a decent pre-roll than one focused on volume. Convenience is great. But as with gas station hot dogs, it always helps to know who’s doing the cooking.

READ MORE: Information Entropy might be Michigan’s most trusted weed brand

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