E-Z Wider is a brand of
rolling paper
Rolling paper is a specialty paper used for making cigarettes (commercially manufactured filter cigarettes and individually made roll-your-own cigarettes). Rolling papers are packs of several cigarette-size sheets, often folded inside a cardbo ...
s introduced in 1972 by
Bob Stiller and Burton Rubin. The name is derived from the 1969 film ''
Easy Rider
''Easy Rider'' is a 1969 American road drama film written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern. It was produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. Fonda and Hopper play two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and the S ...
''. The rolling papers were initially designed to be used for smoking
marijuana
Cannabis (), commonly known as marijuana (), weed, pot, and ganja, List of slang names for cannabis, among other names, is a non-chemically uniform psychoactive drug from the ''Cannabis'' plant. Native to Central or South Asia, cannabis has ...
.
History
Burton Rubin came up with the idea for E-Z Wider in 1969 while attending Law School in Miami. Rubin noticed his "smoking" classmates were putting two leaves together to make double wide papers. Some time later Rubin met Bob Stiller through Rubin's then wife. In 1971, Rubin wrote to over 11 European companies in hopes of beginning production. Manufactures Jean, a company located in Santander, Spain responded. Bob Stiller invested the required funds for inventory with a loan from his father. Rubin completed negotiations with French company, ,
to buy an interleaving machine. This allowed the company to be less dependent on one source. Stiller became responsible for accounting and manufacturing.
Initial production began in
Spain
Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...
and used
gum arabic
Gum arabic (gum acacia, gum sudani, Senegal gum and by other names) () is a tree gum exuded by two species of '' Acacia sensu lato:'' '' Senegalia senegal,'' and '' Vachellia seyal.'' However, the term "gum arabic" does not indicate a partic ...
which contains no artificial ingredients.
After 6 years of operation E-Z Wider had annual turnover of $7 million.
Robert Stiller
Robert Reuven Stiller (25 January 1928 – 10 December 2016) was a Polish polyglot, writer, poet, translator, and editor.
Life
Robert Stiller was born in Warsaw, Poland, to Polish parents and spent his early childhood in what is now Belarus. His f ...
, a founder of E-Z Wider rolling paper company, told Forbes magazine
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The c ...
last year (1978) that a booklet of the papers cost 6 cents.
See also
*
Roll-your-own
A roll-your-own (RYO) cigarette, also called a handrolled cigarette, is a cigarette made from loose tobacco (usually a ''shag'' cut) and rolling paper. Factory-made cigarettes are called industrial or tailor-made cigarettes.
Rolling tobacco
R ...
*
List of rolling papers
Rolling papers are small sheets, rolls, or leaves of paper which are sold for Roll-your-own, rolling cigarettes either by hand or with a rolling machine. When rolling a cigarette, one fills the rolling paper with tobacco, Cannabis (drug), cannabi ...
References
Cigarette rolling papers
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