Rolling with a rap icon: an exploration of the Backwoods × TICAL collaboration

Backwoods, one of the most popular 1 and inexpensive cigar brands widely used for making blunts (i.e., hollowed-out cigars or cigarillos filled with cannabis), 2-4 has launched a cobranded product line in the United States with popular hip-hop artist Method Man (Wu-Tang Clan and rapper), called TICAL (Figure 1).Backwoods prides itself on "all natural" leaf wrappers, suggesting its identity lies in natural, authentic, and culturally grounded experiences that may resonate with consumers who smoke blunts.Notably, TICAL is both the name of the artist's 1994 debut solo album and his cannabis brand, launched in 2020 in California.The collaboration reinforces Backwoods' intentional and longstanding association with cannabis and may further encourage blunt use among its consumer base. 5his advertisement is not an isolated branding choice, but part of a broader pattern of tobacco and cannabis co-use marketing 6 that raises significant public health concerns about co-use promotion and regulatory gaps.