A BRAND of rolling paper in which tobacco, marijuana, or a mixture is rolled to make handmade joints and cigarettes is sold in many countries. As cigarette packs are costlier in the West, smokers buy this rolling paper and tobacco separately and make their cigarettes manually to save money.

In Pakistan, we have millions of shops selling cigarettes and then there are these tobacco shops. They are more often seen in metropolitan and cosmopolitan cities where such rolling paper is openly sold in large varieties.

Prices of cigarette packs are reasonable in our country but still there is a huge sale of rolling paper going unnoticed. So, the question arise why is this rolling paper still being sold in large numbers when normal cigarette price is reasonable?

The answer is: young boys, girls and adults are buying this paper only for smoking marijuana and other drugs.

You may enter any tobacco shop and easily buy this rolling paper from dozens of options of different brands and flavours and you would also be able to buy rolling-paper machines and other related accessories legally. Recently the government has raided tobacco shops to ensure a ban on imported cigarettes that are smuggled. This action came despite a giant tobacco-selling corporation winning a case in the Supreme Court, citing they pay billions in taxes annually and their sales are affected immensely owing to smokers being able to buy suuggled foreign cigarettes on which no tax is paid.

The government now needs to take notice of the sale of these special papers because they are solely bought to smoke drugs.

Farooq Azhar Khwaja

Lahore

Published in Dawn, October 8th , 2015

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