A closer look at the past, present, and future of that tiny thing at the end of the joint you’re either totally ignoring or celebrating as high art.
There was a time when the business end of your joint — the part that touched your lips — consisted of nothing more than rolling paper material wrapped around the weed, tapered and twisted off. If (but only if) you’d had enough practice, you’d manage to smoke that hand-rolled number all the way down to its roach without inhaling little bits of errant herb or burning your lips or fingers or both. Then things changed.
Somewhere along the joint’s evolutionary timeline, the tip — aka the crutch, but not a filter, that’s a different beast altogether — a tiny, stiff piece of paper tucked between plant and pout emerged from the primordial pot-party ooze and went on to profoundly change the joint game forever.
The 1980s: The Murky Origins of the Paper Tip
Nobody knows precisely when and where the Scooby-snack-stopping, burnt-lip-preventing piece of paper came on the scene, but a dip into the High Times archives finds that this magazine was running print ads for joint tips as far back as the 1980s. And RAW Rolling Papers founder, joint historian (and High Times owner) Josh Kesselman remembers trying to problem-solve his own joint issue somewhere in that same decade.
“I naturally have big lips,” Kesselman recalls, “and, even with a roach clip, I kept burning my lips and my friends used to call me ‘Kessel Lips’ and make fun of me.… After getting made fun of enough times, I had the idea to create a spacer as I was rolling up a joint, and I grabbed some piece of paper that I had [on hand], and I made a spacer …
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Author: Adam Tschorn / High Times
