Roach clip

A roach clip is a clip, or holder, that is attached to a cigarette (usually a marijuana cigarette). Its purpose is to let the smoker smoke the last piece of the cigarette ("roach", derived from the Mexican Spanish slang term for marijuana, cucaracha, "cockroach") without burning his or her lips or fingers, and to facilitate passing around the roach without dropping it.

The "classic" or most familiar roach clip is the surgical hemostat, essentially a lightweight needle nose plier with loop handles and an ability to lock closed, originally designed to clamp closed blood vessels during surgery. Their size (usually four or six inches in length) and shape (available with straight or bent tip) makes them ideal for holding the burning end of a joint -- a marijuana cigarette -- to the lips without burning them. They are popular enough as "roach clips" to be sold at "head shops", or purveyors of drug paraphernalia.

Another popular type of roach clip is the alligator clip. Alligator clips are generally smaller in size (from one to three inches) than hemostats, but like hemostats they have the feature (in this case provided by the force of a spring) of being able to clamp onto the roach without any sustained effort on the part of the smoker.

Some choose to go the makeshift route, and use very common household items such as paperclips and keys, often when the better alternatives listed above are unavailable. Most people now use a filter made from a piece of cardboard or hard paper, in sort of a mock attempt at a cigarette filter.

Most naturally fitting the bill as a roach "clip" is the cigarette holder.

Copyrights

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Roach clip.