Buy RAW in the UK

We stock the editions, not the booklets everyone else sells

No Classic, no standard Organic: the Connoisseur pack, the Gary Payton edition and the Lyrical terpene papers, plus a tray.

Every UK headshop, tobacconist and corner shop in the search results for this brand sells the same two things: RAW Classic and RAW Organic in standard booklets. King size slim, one and a quarter, regular, rolls. They are excellent papers and they are available absolutely everywhere.

We stock none of them. Our RAW paper lines are the editions and collaborations: the Connoisseur pack, which pairs papers with tips in one booklet; the Gary Payton edition king size slim in organic hemp, in a fifty pack; and the RAW x Lyrical terpene-enhanced organic hemp papers in two variants. Organic Hemp Black, the thinnest paper RAW makes, is part of the range but out of stock with our distributor at present.

That is a deliberate position rather than a gap. There is no reason for us to be the four hundredth British website selling a standard booklet, and a curated shelf is worth more than a duplicated one. If a plain pack of Classic king size is what you want, buy it wherever you already buy it. If you want the lines that turn up less often, this is a better shelf.

The other half of the RAW range is hardware, which most CBD sites ignore entirely. The small Classic Hemp rolling tray at eleven by seven inches is in stock. The rolling machines at 70mm, 79mm and 110mm are out of stock with our distributor at the moment, and the hemp wick is no longer carried by either distributor; both are worth knowing about because they are the practical end of this brand and rarely get written about at all.

Organic, Classic and Black: what actually differs

Same watermark, different hemp; Black is the thinnest and tastes cleanest, and is the hardest in the range to roll.

This is the question people genuinely want answered and it usually gets answered as marketing. Here is the practical version.

RAW Classic and RAW Organic share the same proprietary criss-cross watermark, which is the pattern pressed into the paper to stop it running down one side as it burns. The difference is the hemp. On the Organic papers the watermark is much lighter, and its exact shade varies between production runs depending on the colour of the hemp used, so two packs of the same product will not look identical. That is normal and it is not a fault.

Organic Hemp Black is the outlier. It is double pressed and extra fine, the thinnest unbleached paper RAW makes, and the point of it is that you notice the paper least. That is a real advantage if you care about flavour and a real disadvantage otherwise. It is out of stock with our distributor at the moment, so this is background for when it returns rather than a choice you can make today.

The Connoisseur pack solves a different problem entirely: it puts tips in the same booklet as the papers, so you stop discovering you have one and not the other. It is the least glamorous line in the range and probably the most useful.

One word deserves unpacking, because it does a lot of work on this brand's packaging. Organic here refers to how the hemp was farmed, meaning grown without harsh pesticides or non-natural fertilisers. It is a statement about the field. It is not a claim about what happens when you set the paper alight, and nobody should read it as one.

What we will not tell you about rolling papers

Which paper is healthiest to smoke, because no retailer is the party to say, and the rules do not allow it.

The largest page currently ranking above us for this category asks, in its own headings, which rolling papers are healthiest to smoke and what the healthiest thing to roll with is. We are not going to answer that, and we would rather explain why than quietly skip it.

What we can tell you is factual and material. RAW papers are unbleached and processed without chlorine. They contain no additives. They are made from hemp fibre rather than wood pulp or rice. They are vegan. The watermark is there to control the burn. Those are properties of the product, and they are as far as anyone honest can go.

The other thing worth knowing is what RAW does not publish. For the most recognised rolling paper brand in the world, its own website states no manufacturing location and makes no certification claim at all. That is not a scandal, and papers are not a category with certificates of analysis in the way an ingestible is. But it is worth knowing that the transparency you might assume from the packaging is not actually documented anywhere.

RAW, Elements and Juicy Jay's are one company

All three reach the market through HBI International in Arizona, so a claim on one pack is not independent support for another.

Three of the brands on this shelf come from the same place, and no page selling any of them mentions it.

RAW was founded by Josh Kesselman, whose rolling paper business also produced Elements and Juicy Jay's. All three reach the market through HBI International, an Arizona company that trade coverage describes as the manufacturer and master distributor behind the lot of them.

We list them separately because that is how they arrive and how they are labelled. RAW runs to four lines here, Juicy Jay's to four and Elements to two. Ten products, one supply route, three brand pages.

The practical consequence is worth stating. If you are weighing RAW against Elements against Juicy Jay's, you are not comparing three independent companies competing on quality. You are comparing three product families from one house, which is fine, and which also means a claim on one brand's packaging is not independent support for a claim on another's.

That is not abstract in RAW's case. A competitor obtained an injunction and a United States federal court ordered HBI to change the Organic Hemp packaging and promotions, with certain papers ordered off the market. The same company has won other cases, including a substantial copyright judgment, so it is not a one-way story. It is a reason to read a specific claim on a specific pack rather than taking a family reputation on trust, which is the same advice we would give about any brand.

3

Brands on this shelf from one Arizona company

10

Live products across the three

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Manufacturing locations stated on RAW's own site

How RAW compares with the other paper brands we stock

The reference for loose papers, and the wrong brand the moment you want a cone, a wrap or a roll.

Our rolling paper aisle spans eleven brands, and they do genuinely different jobs. RAW is not automatically the answer just because it is the most famous name on the shelf.

RAW is papers, and only papers, plus hardware. If you roll your own from scratch, it is the reference point.

If you would rather not roll at all, King Palm and G-Rollz both lead on pre-rolled cones, which is a different product and a much easier one. King Palm's hemp cones come in flavoured and natural, G-Rollz runs organic hemp cones including terpene-infused ones.

If you want a wrap rather than a paper, Juicy Jay's is the hemp wrap and hemp roll specialist and RAW does not compete there at all. Monkey King spans the widest set of formats of any single brand in the aisle, covering papers, tips, rolls and cones. Elements is the direct like-for-like rival on a slow-burn hemp paper.

So the honest summary is that RAW wins on paper quality and range of editions, and loses to at least three other brands the moment you want a format it does not make.

Where RAW is strong, and where it is not

Strong on the paper itself and the editions; weak on format range, published provenance, and a shelf that is thinner than the brand right now.

The paper itself: unbleached, no additives, hemp fibre, a watermark that does what it claims, and twenty years of people rolling with it as a reasonable proxy for it working. The editions, Connoisseur, the collaborations and Black when it is in stock, are the reason to look at RAW on a curated shelf rather than a supermarket one. And the hardware nobody writes about, a rolling machine in three sizes and a hemp wick, is genuinely useful, even if neither is in stock with us today.

Against that: no cones, no wraps, no filters in our range, so if you do not want to roll a paper by hand this brand has nothing for you and three others here do. The brand publishes no manufacturing location and no certification, which is a strange gap for a name this size. Every live line reaches us through a single distributor. And with Black and the machines out of stock, our RAW shelf is three paper editions and a tray.

Buying RAW in the UK

The easiest brand in the world to buy, so this page earns its place by being useful rather than available.

RAW is one of the easiest brands in the world to buy, so an independent page has to earn its place by being useful rather than by being available.

What we have added: a clear statement that this brand contains no CBD, which no CBD retailer selling it seems to make. A range table that takes the hardware as seriously as the papers. A straight answer on Organic against Black, including the part where Black is harder to roll. An explanation of what the word organic actually certifies here. And a refusal to rank papers by health, with the reason given rather than the question dodged.

We also stock ten other paper brands, so when a cone or a wrap is what you actually want, we can send you to the brand that makes one and say why. That is the point of a curated aisle rather than a wall of the same four booklets.

Everything on this page is 18+ only.

Questions people ask