W elcome to the debut issue of Roll Your Own Magazine. This magazine is, in part, a tribute to the growing number of fine purveyors of high-quality roll your own cigarette tobacco, those who grow it and those who smoke it. It is also a forum for the recognition of the growing number of increasingly reliable and well made accessories for rolling cigarettes, even filtered ones that look and function every bit as well as name brand packaged ones, (and taste immeasurably better). I n these pages you will find information on an ever-increasing number of tobaccos and peripherals. With all due humility, we have tried just about every tobacco and gadget for rolling it that is currently out there. But the number of these keeps growing. So if you have a new roller, injector, paper, or tobacco you would like us to take a look at, go to our contact page and do just that. Contact us. We will be glad to review your items as well as discuss advertising your tobacco related businesses or accessories in these pages. Some RYO Background F or the uninitiated, or for those of you who are just returning to the roll your own (hence referred to in these pages as RYO) concept, some background and updating may be helpful. (For a much more detailed history of smoking in this country we recommend the three links at the at the bottom of column three of this page.) RYO cigarettes are certainly not a new concept. People have been rolling their own tobacco for many centuries. In the early 1900s the first mass manufactured "standard brand" cigarettes appeared in this country, although there had been many regional or foreign attempts at popularizing manufactured (by hand rollers - immigrant workers mostly) cigarettes much earlier. Smoking not only became more popular but individual usage increased, in part due to convenience and in part due to the fact that smoking came indoors. As to the latter, the Roaring 20's saw a surge in the number of women smokers ( who were actually the first group of Americans to favor manufactured European, African, and Turkish cigarettes in the post-civil war era - men preferred rolling, chewing or cigars ) which further encouraged smoking inside the home as men felt less obligated to "go outside for a smoke." What Next-Filtered Cigarettes? F iltered cigarettes did not appear until the 50's. Though initially looked down upon as being for those with weaker constitutions, (In today's vernacular - Wusses!), they were very soon an overwhelming success. In only a few years, while some continued to prefer RYO cigarettes, and many still smoked packaged unfiltered brands, most people who smoked, smoked filtered brand-name manufactured cigarettes. Filters really are the key to the mass appeal in the new wave of RYO smoking. Few would disagree that unfiltered tobacco smoke tends to be harsh. It was 1970 and the world of RYO cigarettes was about to get a real look at the future . . .

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Laredo Cigarette Kits I n the early 70's, a innovative tobacco company, Brown & Williamson, introduced a new product. Laredo Cigarettes, sold in the form of a cigarette making kit, became the new smoking phenom and a mainstream resurgence of RYO cigarettes was nearly launched. Laredo, for the first time, offered the smoker an injection machine that used filtered cigarette tubes (the tobacco is pushed into a pre-manufactured tube with an attached filter) to create a passable lower cost alternative to pre-packaged filtered brands.

We would like to thank one of our readers, Phil Rome, for the picture above of a very early Laredo kit, one which required that a separate filter be added. (it is altogether possible that all Laredo kits required the filter to be added and that, in fact, a pre-manufactured tube was not available.) Working from memory from that long ago has its inherent shortcomings and we appreciate all information we receive from our readers. It is certainly nice to be working in a medium where we can update a current periodical at any time. If any of you have more info on the Laredo, pictures, etc. please send them along. We are planning a special article on the Laredo, as it was truly a pioneering effort. Likewise, it is truly amazing what people choose to save for nearly 30 years and for that we are truly grateful! - truly) U nfortunately, the tobacco supplied in the kit was uni-dimensional if not utterly mediocre in flavor, and the injection machines were not of a quality sufficient to provide quick, easy, and consistent cigarette manufacture. More importantly, however, the price of brand name cigarettes was, at the time, not all that high. (The fact that a large segment of the smoking public, America's young adults, were becoming increasingly adept at rolling almost anything they could get their hands on, sometimes even tobacco, in a cigarette paper probably didn't help the first injectors either) . Consequently, Laredo's initial success was relatively short lived as their product soon slid into a novelty niche market and, subsequently, disappeared. *(This is somewhat speculative as I have been unable to find any information on Laredo cigarettes - anywhere! If you know of any recent history or pertinent facts regarding their demise, please let me know. I bought the kits and even the tobacco in tins so I know/think it was no hallucination. At any rate, they were true pioneers and it would be a shame if their place in history remained as only a few lines, in passing, in this column.) Lawyers, Guns (ATF?) & Money T he 90's brought lawyers and taxes and the stagnant, if not downright struggling, RYO market was literally forced into a favorable climate for a comeback. Tobacco taxes have continued to rise since and there is really no end in sight. As the large tobacco companies (remember, tobacco companies now mean cigarette manufacturing companies, at least for the most part) get hit with more and more litigation, cigarette prices will rise, perhaps even faster than direct taxation would imply and to the smoker this obviously means higher and higher cigarette prices. The price of tobacco itself, when viewed solely as a crop on the other hand, remains fairly consistent and it is unlikely that we will soon see a huge increase in actual tobacco cost. The planters know that it is not all that difficult to grow and cure tobacco and the day will arrive when a large number of people grow and cure their own tobacco.

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