Guide on how to roll the perfect cigarette by…

…the BBC?

Yes it’s true folks, the erstwhile anti smoking BBC has landed itself in deep do do as the medical establishment sharpen their scalpels.
But first a disclaimer from the BBC:

This entry in no way wishes to endorse the smoking of tobacco. Having said that...

There are many ways of rolling a cigarette, but one rule of thumb is that the less paper involved in the construction, the better the taste. This method involves keeping the amount of paper to an absolute minimum.

Ingredients

• Rolling papers - Rolling papers are made of rice or hemp fibre. Good brands are RizLa+ and Smoking Slim and they come in different thicknesses. (With RizLa+, blue is light, green is dark. They also do a brown liquorice paper.)
• One normal filter paperstrip - If you travel to Amsterdam, you can buy these in pads of about 60 papers/small strips of card paper. If you can't get any, use any plain paper card (or of course, the cover of your rolling paper booklet) and tear or cut a strip of about 5cm long and 1cm wide.
• Tobacco - Tobacco is, of course, essential for whichever type of cigarette you might wish to roll. Without tobacco, the exercise is pointless.
• Dry hands - But not too dry…

At the end of this article the BBC thinks that smoking rollups are more debilitating than tailor made ciggies:

'Wise-up to Roll-ups'
It is worth noting that according to recent research there is emerging evidence that roll-ups may actually be more harmful and addicitive than manufactured cigarettes. The NHS has launched a 'Wise-up to Roll-ups' campaign in the South West of England targeting people who smoke roll-ups, providing factual information that debunks some of the myths associated with the smoking of hand-rolling tobacco.

You can read the rest here if you want to learn to roll the perfect cigarette.
Needless to say an eagle eyed anti smoking doctor took up the cudgels and started swinging at the hapless BBC:

Senior doctors have accused the BBC of being "breathtakingly irresponsible" and damaging public health by advising readers on its website how to make roll-up cigarettes.
Medical leaders have protested about an online article, entitled "how to roll a perfect cigarette" which they claim encourages smoking.
Dr Gabriel Scally, regional director of public health for south-west England, came across the page when he was researching roll-up cigarettes for a local NHS anti-smoking campaign. He wrote to Mark Thompson, the BBC's director-general, saying: "By allowing this type of content to be carried under a BBC logo gives an implied level of legitimacy for what is effectively a 'How 2' guide to shortening your life and experiencing chronic, life-altering illness."

Well the BBC are sticking to their guns and are NOT going to remove the article. Here Nick Reynolds, a social media executive at BBC Online retorted:

[…]the article would not be taken down. It is located on a part of the BBC website called H2G2, which is intended "to encourage the community to write about all aspects of human existence for a collaborative guide to life, the universe and everything" and the piece had been written by a member of the public, not a BBC journalist.
"Because the articles are not produced by the BBC they are not subject to the rules around impartiality that would apply to our own output. Smoking is not illegal, H2G2 is not aimed at children and the piece carries a disclaimer which reads: 'This entry in no way wishes to endorse the smoking of tobacco'. For these reasons we do not accept that the article should be removed from H2G2," Reynolds added.

I never thought I’d ever applaud the BBC but must say WELL SAID THAT MAN.
If the BBC’s article still has you baffled on the art of rolling your own then here’s TheBigYin’s ‘must watch’ video on the subject. Enjoy.