The 5 Best Pre-Rolls in Massachusetts

Pre-rolls are great because they make smoking weed easier. Whether you’re a beginner who doesn’t know how to roll a joint or a seasoned user on the go, pre-rolls take the legwork out of preparing the flower for your smoking experience, a time-consuming ritual that often occurs in between the possibilities are user and always high.

On the national market stage as well as in the Massachusetts market that we will be discussing here, this accessible revenue method is gaining ground. According to data from Headset, pre-rolls account for 12% of the US market, with their popularity growing 13% in the US and 28% in Canada in 2022. When it comes to Massachusetts specifically, pre-rolls make up 17% of the market.

Despite these dazzling numbers, the pre-roll industry has a dark side that often ends up tricking consumers into buying really, really bad weed.

The problem is that you can’t see what’s in a joint, nor have any indication of its quality other than the packaging and the brand you’re buying it from. For this reason, dishonest manufacturers often fill pre-rolls with trimmings, stalks, and other by-products of cannabis cultivation that won’t get you high and pass them off as ground nuggets.

Even honest brands that pack premium bud in their pre-rolls still fall victim to the reality that once weed is ground, the trichomes, which contain the terpenes and cannabinoids, are also ground. Ground weed immediately becomes less potent and continues to lose potency faster than whole nuggets because it’s more susceptible to dryness, exposure to light, and other elements that break down the trichomes that house the terpenes and cannabinoids that get you high.

The problem is so bad I even had an Instagram show called “The Unrolling Series” where cannabis journalist Jackie Bryant and I unrolled popular pre-rolls and smoked their contents from a bong to see how what was really inside. The results were very disappointing to say the least.

The point of all this is not to say that all pre-rolls are bad, but to clarify that this is a treacherous space with many hidden landmines.

How to navigate the Massachusetts pre-roll market, you ask? Fear not, Weedmaps is here with a comprehensive list of the best pre-rolls in Massachusetts in (almost) every category.

Find top-notch pre-rolls near you on the Weedmaps app

How I compiled this list

I took many factors into account when compiling this list.

Personal experience

I’ve been writing about cannabis for almost a decade, so I’m very familiar with what’s going on in the pre-roll world.

It’s also important to remember that Massachusetts is the most consolidated cannabis market in the US, meaning that most of the bulk weed comes from a few companies.

According to Headset, “More than two-thirds of total sales go to the top 10 brands. This is due to the high proportion of sales that comes from the “house brand”. Massachusetts is one of the most vertically integrated cannabis markets in the US, and most retail businesses in the state also have some level of manufacturing capacity.”

Due to the high level of consolidation in the mass market, many of the brands available there are considered MSO (Multiple State Operators), so there is a good overlap in the CA and MA markets at this point in the game. I have tried some of the products and brands mentioned here. However, I live in California, not Massachusetts, so I haven’t tried them all, hence the next point.

expert interviews

To ensure this portrait of the Massachusetts pre-roll market is as accurate and up-to-date as possible, I polled a number of industry experts, budtenders, dispensary owners, and journalists about their favorite pre-rolls in each category, and compiled the results.

Quality and sensory factors

Quality is obviously an important factor when it comes to quantifying a term like best, especially in the pre-roll space where you have products ranging from $5 trim-filled boof sticks to high-end ones Whole flower joints will do. We considered the sensory aspects of each pre-roll such as flavor, effect, smokeability, and dry hit (rolling the joint without lighting to taste the terpenes).

brand reputation

In my opinion, good brands don’t make bad products. For the purposes of this list, I’ve only included established brands with solid reputations, loved by consumers and respected by industry insiders.

My top 5 Massachusetts pre-rolls

So here it is! My top picks for best pre-rolls in Massachusetts, broken down into a few categories, are as follows:

Overall popular MA pre-roll brands

Below are a few brands that produce great pre-rolls in Massachusetts. To be clear, they don’t just do pre-rolls, but the pre-rolls they do are pretty damn good.

cloud cover

Cloud Cover is a premium brand whose experienced cultivation team specializes in products from seed to sale in small batches that are widely recognized by experts. With everything from flower to concentrates and vapes, this is a trusted brand that consistently makes quality pre-rolls that you can trust.

happy valley

Happy Valley is Massachusetts’ most award-winning brand and has a ton of great deals that aren’t too expensive. They have regular pre-rolls as well as Moon Rockets which are bubble hash and kief infused pre-rolls.

Abundant farms

Bountiful Farms was mentioned by almost every expert I spoke to. Bountiful Farms’ attention to detail alone is worth a mention in this list. They hand-trim their buds (which are huge), use no pesticides, and overall have established a trusted presence in the industry, which is especially important in the pre-roll space.

Favorite budget pre-roll

Cheap pre-rolls almost always suck, but here’s one that doesn’t.

End Game Cookies by Happy Valley

This budget-friendly pre-roll was chosen by expert Brit Smith, podcast host for Massachusetts cannabis magazine Different Leaf. “The best value Massachusetts pre-rolls come from Happy Valley, which has packs of 7 half-gram pre-rolls for $40,” she said. “I’ve tried a lot of HV flowers in eighths and they always grow smelly, bouncy, juicy buds, so I figured I could trust their pre-rolls too.”

Smith continued, “My favorites so far are the End Game Cookies Pre-Rolls because they smoke smoothly and hit fast with an uplifting giggle effect that’s fun to watch movies and enjoy the extreme gob. Not only is that $40 for a 7-pack of half a gram, they come with a little matchbox and I just love those extras.”

Favorite Infused Pre-Roll

Here’s a pre-roll to try that has been infused with different forms of concentrate.

M-80 from Pioneer Valley

I’ll be honest, Pioneer Valley raised some red flags for me in terms of flower quality because they specialize in flower by-products like extracts, vapes, edibles, and pre-rolls without actually selling eighths. This sometimes means that the flower a brand uses to create these by-products isn’t good enough to sell in nugget form. However, these types of brands also tend to make really strong infused pre-rolls as they literally roll them in distillate.

Pioneer Valley’s new M-80 pre-rolls are recommended by our experts for potency alone, which is really what most smokers of infused pre-rolls are looking for in the first place. To make an M-80, they take a gram of flower, add distillate and “extra terpenes,” which means synthetic terpenes that aren’t derived from cannabis, then roll it up, roll it up in distillate, and then roll that thing up in kief. If you’re in the market for potency (and there’s nothing wrong with that if you are, to each his own!) then these are the pre-rolls for you.