Kesselman traces RAW’s success to his fanatical devotion to quality control. On social media and in operating RAW, Kesselman said he’s speaking and thinking of an imagined person he has named Timmy, whom he thinks of as his former self. Timmy lives in Idaho, Kesselman said, where he resides in a trailer park and works a minimum-wage fast food job. His life isn’t great on paper; he lives for getting stoned with his friends. Kesselman said he’s determined to make sure that guy has a good time. “If you ever hear me yell, it’s because a product is wrong. I think about all the people we let down,” Kesselman said. “If I fuck up for Timmy — if I ruin his Friday night sesh with his friends — I failed my job as a human being and as a part of this society.” Kesselman is meticulous about the integrity of the gadgets and devices he makes. “I get to see how seriously he takes his papers and his products,” said Jose Barazza, Kesselman’s social media assis- tant. Those products aren’t in short supply. Kesselman said he’s created around 2,000 things, though he’s bothered with patenting only a few dozen because mega tobacco companies “will copy it anyway.” He bounds across his Phoenix office — which is ventilated so he and others can light up inside — to demonstrate products he created. One is an umbrella from which a person can smoke a joint. Kesselman found the prototype lacking, so he delved into the mechanics of umbrellas to create a new one. “I had to learn all kinds of things about umbrella making,” he said. He has a similar story about a glistening RAW belt buckle that is a staple of his outfit. (Like a cartoon character, Kesselman dresses the same nearly every day: black RAW shirt, a red RAW scarf, black pants and red shoes.) He hated the way the first buckle he was provided leaned out to give the impression that Kesselman, who is rather lean, had a beer belly. “I had to teach the belt maker — already a company that makes belts — I had to teach them how to make a proper fucking clasp,” he said. He is similarly fussy about the quality of his rolling papers. He spends copious amounts of time in Benimarfull, Spain, where the papers are manufactured in a centuries-old factory that Kesselman’s family purchased in 2019. The factory contains some of the same machines that made the papers Kesselman’s father used to do magic tricks with, lighting them on fire and flinging them into the air as they disappeared, which fascinated a young Kesselman. He had been visiting Spain since the 1990s and met José Emilio González López, who ran the factory with his late-wife María and later agreed to make RAW papers. After the sale, Emilio retired, but so missed working that after a year, he set up a paper straws factory next door, Kesselman said. “I asked him on this last trip, ‘When will you stop working?’ He just laughed,” Kesselman said. Hundreds of workers with generational knowledge in paper making work at the factory, which also features contraptions specifically designed for making the famed papers — including a machine three stories high that allows gum to be slowly attached to the papers without using harsh chemi- cals, like ammonia. That attention to detail is about his customers. About Timmy. “The difference with us is,” Kesselman said, pausing for a few moments before continuing, “we love this shit.” Celebrity and scrutiny In April, one day before the downtown Phoenix weed festival Buds-A-Palooza, Kesselman and Barraza sat in his office devoted to a critical task: rolling a 3-foot- long joint for the event. Kesselman tossed a pound of marijuana into an industrial grinder, pumping out flower for the mega joint and spreading a lemon scent around the room. Little by little, he shoveled scoop after scoop into the gargantuan cone, care- fully adjusting along the way to pack it tight. At the festival the next day, Kesselman was predictably a popular figure. Even tucked away in a corner by the event’s music stage, stoners of all ilk, skin tones, sartorial choices and backgrounds stopped by to take a hit from the megajoint — some- times double-teaming the joint from either side or from a smoking contraption called the Tuberator that allows seven joints to be puffed at once. He’d soon return to the lab to redesign the megajoints to be easier to hold, but in the moment, Kesselman smiled widely, enjoying the camaraderie of the Arizona weed community. These are his people, though Kesselman gets recognized by stoners everywhere. “I could be in Russia and go downstairs and run into someone who recognizes me,” he said. “I’m never lonely this way. I’ve got friends everywhere — and they like weed too! It’s cool.” The scrutiny that comes with that kind of fame has sometimes fit Kesselman uncomfortably. In 2023, Forbes reported on a number of embellishments Kesselman has made about RAW, dubbing him “the Pinocchio of Pot.” Several were revealed as the result of a lawsuit brought by rival company Republic Technologies. Among them was that RAW’s papers were not handmade in Spain but were manufactured in France and packaged at the company’s Spanish facility. A jury found that HBI violated the Illinois Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act, though it also sided with HBI’s coun- terclaim that Republic committed copy- right infringement and awarded Kesselman’s company $1 million in damages. The story also questioned other claims Kesselman has made about his products. More damningly, the Forbes story raised the possibility that Kesselman lied about having a terminal illness to lessen the penalty he faced for his Florida arrest. The crimes for which Kesselman was charged “usually result in five to six years of prison time,” the article noted, “but the judge, according to a court document, reduced the standard sentence largely because Kesselman told the court that he had a ‘terminal virus.’” Kesselman’s attorney also claimed that the illness “required treat- ment only available in Switzerland and other European countries.” While Kesselman got probation in the case, his wife, who faced the same charge, was sentenced to five months in jail and deported to Canada. Both to Forbes at the time and to Phoenix New Times earlier this year, Kesselman said he had been misdiagnosed. He ultimately learned he had the Epstein- Barr virus for two years, a saga he said was made worse by the medication doctors initially gave him. “For a period of time, I really thought I was a goner,” he said. “The medication got me sick, so they took me off it. It took years and lots of testing to finally be correctly diagnosed.” Kesselman declined to say what the medications were, saying the episode was “too personal and private” and brings up “traumatic experiences.” The Forbes story also raised questions about Kesselman’s charitable giving, particularly regarding an entity RAW promoted called the RAW Foundation that wasn’t actually a charity. Kesselman said the company was still donating money to entities that were charities, but rebranded the effort as “RAW Giving.” Kesselman certainly devotes a signifi- cant amount of resources to charitable endeavors, though, and New Times had no trouble finding nonprofits who say they’ve benefited from his generosity. He has helped build wells in Ethiopia — physically and with his wallet — through a nonprofit called Wine to Water, which works to bring clean water to remote communities in the U.S. and around the world. Over the years, Kesselman has donated more than $232,000 to Wine to Water for projects. He has also traveled to Ethiopia to put wells in the ground and install water filtration devices. >> p 12 Josh Kesselman brought the “Tuberator,” which allows hits off seven joints at once, to Buds-A-Palooza in April. (Grace Monos)
