HomeMy WebLinkAboutA029 - article about pot paraphernalia ` TOW.N AND COUNTRY Magazine, October 1977 Issue)
billion marijuana iceberg. No wonder paraphernalia until an Indianapolis
Pot President Carter's move toward fed- lawyer obtained a restraining order.
eral abolition of criminal penalties for Burt Rubin had so much difficulty ad-
Paraphernalia: personal possession of marijuana ("de- vertising a-z wider on radio that he
criminalization") has revived specula- took to sponsoring racing cars, hang-
A Multimillion tion that the major tobacco companies gliding teams, Frisbee tournaments and
are preparing to capitalize on the drug rock concerts. In the mainstream, the
in the event of its legalization. verdict has often been:
Dollar Industry Essentially, the paraphernalia in- tion guilt by associa-
.
dustry can be divided into two parts: Nowhere is the relationship between
By Abe Peck rolling papers and the myriad acces- paraphernalia and marijuana clearer
sories that supposedly enhance the ex- than in the pages of High Times, Head
perience of getting high, Rolling papers and the other drug-oriented magazines
are small pieces of gummed paper sold that have sprung up over the last
in booklets of 24 to 36 leaves. Smokers three years. These glossy publications
place their marijuana on the papers, feature stories about smugglers, nar-
roll the papers into cigarettes and then cotics agents and the latest develop-
is white shirt open at the collar, seal the joints by licking the glued edge. ments on the legalization and experi-
Burt Rubin,the 30-year-old pres- Costly marijuana ($20 to $60 an mentation fronts. In High Times a
ident of a $4 million-a-year cor- ounce) requires a slow-burning paper, drug-of-the-month gatefold simultane-
poration called Robert Burton most often made from flax fiber. The ously parodies Playboy's and arouses
Associates, Ltd., sat in his mod- new papers offer far more variety than the fantasies of its own readers. And on
ern Manhattan office in a loft building a craftsman named Jean Bardou en- page after page, slick ads proclaim the
and explained his product's place in the visioned when he invented a machine virtues of papers, pipes and other para-
economy.As he spoke,secretaries logged capable of putting cigarette rolling pa- phernalia products.
purchase orders into a computer. On per in booklets back in 1838. Flavors As with rolling papers, the market
a lower floor, factory workers clad in today run from banana to licorice; pa- in accessories continues T-shirts worked the array of machines pers come with monograms, give off to burgeon.
Underneath its romantic antimaterisl-
churning out the company's merchan- pseudo-psychedelic purple smoke and ism, the "Woodstock generation" al-
dise: little pieces of white paper with often bear largely misleading labels «ays had a consumer orientation. The
a gummed edge. claiming that they are fashioned from paraphernalia merchants, themselves
Eventually, Rubin repeated the stale- "rice" or "hemp" fibers. Mentholated amalgams of Woodstock and the Whar-
ment that has become a catch phrase Cooleaf sells well in inner-city areas. tun Graduate School of Business, have
for explaining the contradiction of his In 1972 a-z wider appeared in a succeeded in selling the counterculture
industry. "I'm like a bottlemaker dur- double size. This three-by-three-inch over the counter,
ing prohibition," he deadpanned. "I square shape recognized that marl- Whatever their cultural integrity,the
make something legal to hold something juana's fibers are shorter than those of hole-in-the-wall head shops have been
illegal." tobacco and thus harder to roll. The
Rubin, a former trader on the metals larger size allowed the most ine t mari_ replaced by supermarkets selling rolling
p papers and boutiques displaying elabo-
exchange, and his partner, an ex-data juana smokers to roll joints without rate paraphernalia. "Companies such
processor named Robert Stiller, manu- having to first glue two smaller papers as ourselves had the foresight to know
facture a cigarette rolling paper called together. Competitors have since intro- 'that as the kids got older,they'd be com-
e-z wider, one of the many brands duced papers of one-and-a-half size, ing out of the head shops," said Phil
that America's pot smokers use to roll which allow for easy rolling while mini- Mittleman, a fortyish vice-president of
marijuana cigarettes or joints, as they mining the amount of paper involved. Adam's Apple, the Chicago paper and
are called by the people who smoke Though the sale of roll-your-own to- paraphernalia concern whose $10 mil-
*them. The estimates as to how many bacco has decreased in the past 10 years, lion gross makes it the country's largest.
regular slope smokers there are in the the volume of rolling papers has quad- "Three years ago it was a moral issue.
U.S. range from a low of 13 million to rupled to an annual 100 million book
a high of 20 million, - But cigarette paper's been on the mar-
lets. At 30 to .50 cents each, these leaves
Rolling papers, pipes and other prod- of grass are accordingly worth between int for generations. We just blended
"
ucts connected with the use of mari- $35 million and $50 million retail. 'to them,
juana constitute a 'paraphernalia in- Nevertheless, traditional cigarette pa- Consumers and merchants have col.
dustry." It is entirely legal and it does per manufacturers play down the new la Take
t ed fora festival of consumption.
business in the healthy $100 million-a- use to which their products are Put. Take the case of the "roach clip." High
year range. Once restricted to the back "It's a profitable little sideline," a Marijuana prices and legal and social
rooms of covert "crash para- spokesman for the U.S. Tobacco Com- sanctions against its use discourage
pads," leaving leftovers around the house. En-
phernalia in 1977 is well out of the pany, the conglomerate that does ev- ter the roach clip,which holds the roac
closet in a big way. Gatherings such as erything from making dog food to dis- h,until it's almost
or butt end of the joint
the annual National Fashion and Bou- tributing the French-made Zig-'Lag pa- completely consumed. decade ago, the
tique Show in New York feature a score pers,told The Wall Street Journal. But typical roach holder was a bobby pin
or two of brightly colored booths filled we're not anxious for publicity." Still, or match split in half and divested of
with a phantasmagorical array of prod- Zig-Zag is introducing medium- and the flammable head: price zero. Now
ucts designed to clean, test, roll, store double-width papers into the U.S. mar- gold and sterling silver roach clips are
and weigh a drug that remains more or ket and may reconsider its low profile, bn display in the most elegant jewelry
less illegal in all 50 states. (In nine Setting the pace hasn't always been stores, and the acme of funky chic is
states, certain amounts privately held easy for the younger paraphernalia the use of surgical hemostats.
are subject only to civil fines similar to merchants. Cigarette
parking violations.) K paper manufac- Similarly, pipes now come in space-
turers nal meerschaums
The paraphernalia industry is only them. Bank(1 ansrwerekscarcelet cIn�1975 aes to nd specialty designs like the bird pipe
the multimillion-dollar tip of a $4 the Indiana State Legislature outlawed whose beak opens into a bowl while,its
tail flips up into a stem. Marijuana con- make tobacco cigarettes, we could and Since trademar c cannot be issued for
servationists favor the "grass mask," a would make other sorts," said an It-]. illegal products, the companies are us-
pipe with it mask at the end for c•uptur- Reynolds executive who was too discreet ing them tempo arily on other obscure
ing any escaping fumes. hedonists pre- to give his name. "Ilut considering the tubiweo items. 0 ice marijuana is legal-
fer the. "bong," a long tube with a hole- controversy we've aUetdy got with ju•<t ized, the firms can switch the trade-
and-bowl arrangement. The bong smok- cigarettes, there's no inclination for us marks, say, from cigars to pot."
er inhales via the open top until the to get into it,"
Trade-
chamber is full; then uncovering the "Our own company has no plans for A visit to the ti,S. Patent and Trade-
hole, he creates a carburetor effect that the production of marijuana cigarettes," mark Office in Arlington, Virginia, re
allows for inhalation of prodigious said Dan Provost, director of corporate vealed the foll-cing:
amounts of smoke.'Consummate syba- communications for Liggett Group Inc., Major conglomerates have registered
rites can opt for a two-foot-high gold- "and reliable sources have said that no names common to marijuana slang.
plated bong manufactured by Pennsyl- other company has either." Heublein, Inc., the liquor conglomerate,
vania's Upper Berks County Grain "It's an illegal product, and we don't has registered I the name "Acapulco
Company, available for about $1,000. even discuss it," buffed someone at Gold," which in pot parlance refers to
The evolution of the paraphernalia American Tobacco. a potent strain f marijuana. The Gen-
industry was explained quite well in These spokesmen were responding to eral Cigar and Tobacco Company has
last June's debut editorial of Ocalrr the continuing speculation, fed by Tres- trademarked ijuana Smalls," a less
magazine, which is a High Times spin- ident Carter's backing of federal de- direct evocation of marijuana's Mexican
off aimed at the trade: "A remarkable criminalization, that the tobacco corn- connection. Bu Ileublein's "Acapulco
new marketplace is emerging in America panies are readying themselves to enter Gold" turns oatl to be a chip dip; "Tij-
because the marijuana subculture of the the marijuana market upon its legal- uana Smalls" a, well-known cigar.
1960s has established itself as the center izatiun. Of them, Philip Morris' Tracey According to:Director of the Trade-
of the manor new leisure market of the proved the most vocal: "it's natural to mark Office C.' Morton Wendt, trade-
1970s. think that we would have the cigarette mucks for marijuana are currently un-
"Grass and related highs have be- machines ready for it. But it's against registerable since the drug is not in
come commonplace in American life. De- the law and not a part of our program. lawful use. Furthermore, Wendt maiu-
criminalization of marijuana will con- We are not now cultivating or import- twined, generic names like "Acapulco
tinue with growing speed. A revolution ing it, and we have no plans to do so." (;old,,
woulcwere llegalized. abl for re even -
tinue retailing on all fronts . . . will r"r,- j
tinue as paraphernalia retailers to.N t(, -wrving trademarks, regulations would
capture the imagination of the dope enerally, paraphernalia met•- rule out transferring a name registra-
consumer." chants feel that their volume is tion from one type of goods to another.
For Dealer, though, the revolution insufficient to attract the atten- Legalized marijuana would probably
was premature, and the magazine re- tion of tobacco companies. Burt fall into Class 34, the smoker's articles
cently succumbed for lack of advertising Rubin of a-z wider: "I think they grouping, and this would preclude a
support, could wipe us out, but I don't think chip dip nnanu acturer from reserving
The transition from the hip sixties they're interested in the market. Com- a pot tradelliark.
to the pragmatic seventies may have panies of that size are looking for A researcher for Jack Anderson says
come at the expense of the counter- things that can affect their business that the"choice Southern land"suitable
culture's communal ethos,"The industry even a quarter of a percent. Now, for marijuana cultivation,which the col-
has been very competitive, like any in- a quarter percent of a $5 billion basi- unnn had mentioned, was not known to
dustry with a lot of money and no ness is $50 million. Our total volume is be under current preparation for the
ground rules," says Keith Stroup, the $•I million. We couldn't affect anything." actual growing of marijuana.
national director of NORML., the Na- Bgt conjecture persists that the mari- In summation of "Big Tobacco's" po-
tional Organization for the Reform of juana market —which totals sonne $4 tential should marijuana be legalized,
Marijuana Laws, The lobbyist explain- billion—might be worth the corporate a tradannark lawyer for a presti0ious
ed that "they have always tried to cat while. "Thee have the financing to lose Washington firm and who did not wish
each other alive. They can't stand each money for years if they think the mark- to be named said: "The tobacco com-
other, so naturally they're not going to et is there," Rubin said. NORML Di- panies have iegistered a number of
cooperate in any industrial policy." rector Stroup was even more pointed: names that may be useful in connection
Nevertheless,, Stroup thinks that the "The cigarette industry has all the with marijuana cigarettes if they were
march toward national and state-by- equipment and the land, and it wouldn't ever legalized.i But I don't think that
state decriminalization would mean a cost them anything to change over. If was their intention."
boom situation for the industry."You're I were on a tobacco company board and He added that he believed he would
going to see a whole generation of new I didn't see a report floating around on never smoke a legal joint in his lifetime.
snnoker: who have grown up and never the potential, I would think that some- Outlining how the companies might be-
rolled a joint. They'll be middle-class thing was remiss." come involved in the event of legaliza-
people who have only bought joints pre- This kind of speculation peaked last. Lion, he said tat there would be a fast
rolled or have only smoked them in summer when syndicated colunumist Jack transition froi 1
n tobacco farming illsome
pipes and bongs. Once the morality's Anderson released a column that said: areas to marl uana cultivation: "It's a
removed, it's going to be a growth in- "In the paneled board roonns of some het k of a lot easier to raise; tobacco is
dustry that's like tennis shoes must large corporations, the executives are a pain. And I can see that the big
have been. A lot of fortunes are going casting covetous eyes on the multi- tobacco companies will get into it to
to be made in the marijuana pars- billion-dollar marijuana market. . . . .some extent, but a board of directors
phernalia industry." Tobacco companies have set aside choice of a tobacco company may say, 'We
"We would no sooner market maxi- Southern land for future marijuana don't care if Ws legal or not, we're not
juana than we would toothpaste," was harvests, competent sources report. going to do it' Yet, I have the feeling
how Bob 'Tracey, director of promotion Some firms lurve even registered tilt re's going o be a lot of money to be
management for Philip Morris put it. trademarks on brand names lifted wade, and, like it or not, they'll be
"It's a natural association that if we straight from marijuana street lingo. jumping in." Q