RAW Dawg: Josh Kesselman Rolling Towards a Better World with Cannabis, Creativity, and Compassion
Five minutes into my interview with Josh Kesselman, he gives me an impromptu, one-on-one lesson on the art of rolling joints using a highlighter and one of his signature RAW rolling papers.
“Use your thumb to push it down, and then gently roll it over, roll it over, tip it, push down gently, gently, gently, and then roll,” he instructs, explaining that a way to train your brain and fine motor skills is to practice rolling with pens. “This is a very easy technique I’ve developed. My goal was like if I wanted to create a technique that even my grandma could learn.”
Kesselman is a patient and encouraging teacher. For the first time, I actually feel eager to hone this new skill.
“I love teaching people how to roll joints and all the different smoking techniques and methods and new tricks that are in the universe,” he says. “I really like all the knowledge to be shared, you know?”
He laughingly admits that he was “younger than he’s allowed to say” when a friend first taught him how to roll a joint.
“His technique is not one that I would use ever again,” he says. “By the time I was in college, I was pretty damn good at rolling. But I feel like I’m always learning new techniques, or I’ll bring back something I used to do a decade ago.”
Kesselman entered the canna industry in 1993, starting with his smoke shop Knuckleheads in Gainesville, Florida, and then his wholesale smoking accessory company called HBI in 1996. In 2005, he launched the now-iconic rolling paper brand RAW, known for its unbleached, vegan-friendly products.
“We used to use ridiculously wide papers [when I was younger]. It was thick and full of chalk and things like that. We don’t use that in our RAW papers,” he says, also recalling times when he’s rolled joints with pages from the dictionary and textbooks… and even toilet paper, which he doesn’t recommend.
Kesselman shares that he smokes pretty much every day, and that he tries to use smoking as a reward system to either motivate himself to finish projects, like videos, or to unwind after a tough day. Unsurprisingly, he prefers joints over other consumption methods.
“For the most part, I don’t really dab or use vape pens because the experience is different. In a pipe, I notice that I get more ash because the ash comes through the pipe. And there was a study I read a zillion years ago that I think said the water in water pipes filtered out more THC than it did tar and other bad stuff; I really can’t remember the last time I used a water pipe. My favorite way to go is beautiful, pure flower, as fresh as fresh can be while still being properly cured.”
But what if he finds himself in the dreaded (but all-too-familiar) situation of having some beautiful weed at home… but no rolling papers or any other smoking apparatus? What would he do?
“I can smoke out of anything!” He says. “I’ll have fun with it. I can make an apple pipe, a banana pipe…I have made so many funny pipes out of fruit and things like that. And it makes for a fun experience. I'm not gonna use a fucking soda can, though. No fucking way. That's not gonna happen. I'm not making a tinfoil pipe again, like I did when I was young and new. I’ve learned crazy ways to make pipes out of stuff and make it where it's not a bad way to smoke. It'll never stop. I can look around this room and find ways to smoke!”
RAW has been on the scene for nearly twenty years. In that time, the brand’s popularity has surged astronomically, with write-ups in High Times Magazine and Esquire, and endorsements from artists like 2 Chainz and Wiz Khalifa. The company is so successful that it’s able to commit to multiple philanthropic endeavors, such as supporting water wells and hospitals in Ethiopia, where Kesselman has traveled several times, as well as animal shelters and sanctuaries.
“We just reached a BIG milestone because we have donated over three-million bucks to charities,” Kesselman says. “That sounds like a lot, but I wish we could give back more. At the moment, we’ve been trying to help the community that built us, so we’re shifting our focus towards helping people that have been negatively impacted by cannabis laws. We’ve been giving a lot of donations to organizations like the Last Prisoner Project and the Weldon Project, and doing some work with Steve DeAngelo.”
Advocacy for those who have been affected by cannabis prohibition is personal for Kesselman. In 1996, feds raided his smoke shop and indicted him for selling cannabis paraphernalia. It was a felony charge that remains on his record to this day.
“[Cannabis culture] was much more underground,” he says. “I remember in the late 90s, when my neighbor found out what I did, he, like, took his kids and he was, like, pushing them back. Now [society is] becoming more and more accepting. The level of hate I used to receive was quite extreme. And now I get a lot more love than hate. Which is nice!”
In addition to his cannabis-focused activism, Kesselman is deeply passionate about animal rights and welfare. He has a rescue horse and donkey named Jagger and Elvis, respectively (“There's nothing cuter than getting stoned and cuddling a donkey. I gotta tell you, it's amazing.”), created what he calls a quail sanctuary on his property in Arizona, and has fostered about ten dogs; he also has his own dog named Chloe.
Kesselman has been vegan for over twenty years (thus the plant-based gum in RAW rolling papers) and does his best to educate others about the sentience of non-human animals.
“I try to teach them from a place of love,” he says. “I think the hardest thing about getting people to become vegan is not what any of us think it is. It's the recognition that maybe some of what you did in the past was wrong. And then there’s the guilt associated with that. You don't want to think that you were hurting all these animals. So it's hard for you to let go of that and recognize that you didn't know, it wasn't your fault. It's okay. I ate animals before I really understood and now that I understand, I won't do it anymore. I can picture the cow’s eyes. I understand that creature is as alive as I am and has the same desires and wants. It loves its kids and does not want to be separated from them. It wants to be happy and free. So let’s leave them the fuck alone.
“I'm hoping that the plant will bring more people over to our side. I really hope it'll make them kinder and gentler. I really do. I believe that weed, in its own way, can help save the world because cannabis makes us more empathetic and makes us feel for each other. It makes us more inventive and creative. So if the world smoked more, on just that one premise alone, we would have more peace. We would connect with each other more deeply. We would have new solutions to problems because we become more inventive.”
“Weed, I believe, opens our minds and expands us, and that changes who we are,” he says. “We’ve got to let it talk to us. Let it inspire us.”
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