A roll-your-own (RYO) cigarette, also called a handrolled cigarette, is a cigarette made from loose tobacco (usually a shag cut) and rolling paper. Factory-made cigarettes are called industrial or tailor-made cigarettes.

Rolling tobacco

Rolling tobacco, or cigarette tobacco, is the primary tobacco used for RYO cigarettes. It is generally packaged in pouches. After 2009, the United States federal tax rate on RYO tobacco was raised from $1.0969 per pound to $24.78 per pound. This increase has caused many people to switch to using pipe tobacco to make cigarettes, since the pipe tobacco tax rate was also increased, but only to $2.83 per pound. In Australia, loose tobacco was taxed less than manufactured cigarettes until September 2016.

Cigarette rolling

Cigarette rolling may be done either by hand of with a cigarette roller. It should not be confused with cigarette stuffer. In Russia a special kind of self-rolled cigarette was in use, called "goat's leg". A paper (commonly a newspaper paper) was rolled in a cone, which was bent in half in the middle and the wider part was filled with tobacco. In a way, it resembled a tobacco pipe.

Prevalence

Relatively few smokers in the US, only 6.7%, actually roll their own cigarettes. In contrast, this rate was 17.1% in Canada, 24.2% in Australia, and 28.4% in the UK. Reasons for this difference include the generally lower price of traditional cigarettes in most states in the US compared to Canada and Europe.