I’ve loved the culture of cannabis for a long time now. Not long after I first started smoking weed back in 1977, I started collecting rolling paper packs, and kept adding to the collection for roughly the first decade of my stonerdom.

Wonder of wonders, it turns out the collection survived for 25 years and, thanks to my sister Lynda to mailing it from Alabama, it now returns to the light of day. It was very much like opening a time capsule to again see these little relics of a bygone era.

Upon viewing the collection of 50-plus varieties of rolling papers — many of which are no longer available, or at least no longer being manufactured — I thought about how the tides of social change, i.e. weed culture, rolled across America in the late 70s, only to be turned back in the early 80s during the “Just Say No” Reagan years.

The change was very pronounced. It the late 70s it became perfectly fine to have brands of rolling papers called “Joint Wides” and “Reefer Rollers;” nobody thought twice about naming a brand of wraps “Insta Roach” or “4:20,” or calling them “Leaves” and putting a big ol’ cannabis plant on the pack.