What began as a small venture in 2005 has become a huge business that calls Arizona one of its homes. RAW, which won Best Rolling Paper at the 2024 International Cannabis Awards, does about $120 million in annual domestic sales, according to MarketWatch. Kesselman said the brand does more business outside of the country, selling just about everywhere but China and North Korea. As RAW blew up — thanks in large part to the cascade of legal weed measures across the country and pop culture allusions to the brand — so did Kesselman.
With 2.1 million Instagram followers, he’s now one of the most recognizable faces (and set of bangs) in the world of marijuana. He’s not Snoop Dogg or Seth Rogen, the stoners that even your parents know about. If you don’t smoke, you probably wouldn’t recognize Kesselman on the street. But your stoner friend certainly would. RAW rolling papers get name-dropped in rap lyrics. Wiz Khalifa wrote a whole song about them.
His success — and his squeaky, hyper, fairy-on-laughing-gas online persona — have earned him a moniker: “The Willy Wonka of Weed.” He’s a character of intrigue, a guy who spends his time reinventing household items or rolling 3-foot-long joints. Unlike some of his competitors in the rolling papers market, which last year was valued globally at almost $4 billion, Kesselman’s company is not publicly traded. RAW and its parent company, HBI Innovations, are his fiefdom and playground all in one.
Now, like the Roald Dahl character who inspired his nickname, Kesselman finds himself pondering what to do with the proverbial chocolate factory. He is 54. His goatee is speckled with gray. He doesn’t need the money, nor is he particularly concerned with making as much of it as he can — and he never was. He never expected his papers to become a behemoth.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he said. “It was supposed to be a few head shops — a small papers company making some cool stuff.” RAW was supposed to be like Jones Cola, a beloved niche brand that never aimed for anything more than a devoted cult following.
But now that he has an empire, he wants it to outlive him. Whether that means finding his Charlie Bucket or giving it all to the Oompa Loompas, he hasn’t decided. It will go somewhere, just not into the hands of some hedge fund or any other group of capitalist sharks that Kesselman — himself an undeniably rich and successful businessman — holds in disdain.
“I can’t be doing this forever,” he said.
For decades, Phoenix’s crown prince of weed has enjoyed one long, glorifying toke of the good life. He’s puffed and he’s puffed. At some point, Kesselman knows, it’s his turn to pass.
RAW founder Josh Kesselman puts a pound of marijuana into a grinder in preparation for rolling a 3-foot-long joint.
TJ L'Heureux
Rolling one for Timmy
Kesselman’s love affair with weed began at a Bar Mitzvah in New York, where he grew up.Other kids were passing around a joint in the corner, and little Josh rushed over to see what the commotion was all about. As he arrived, the doobie was gone and he searched the ground in vain for the source of attraction. He finally got a puff when he was “way too young” at a Grateful Dead show. At the University of Florida, weed became his chosen career. While in college, he opened a smoke shop in Gainesville, sleeping in a friend’s shed to save money on rent. He had to hop over a lawnmower to get into bed. After getting busted for selling a bong to the daughter of a federal law enforcement officer — for which he was fined $150,000 and sentenced to house arrest and probation — he decided to relocate to the wide-open climes of Arizona.
Once settled in the Grand Canyon State, Kesselman founded HBI in 1997 and began producing and selling rolling papers. RAW officially debuted in 2005 as a “vegan” dye-free rolling paper made with plant-based gum. But RAW was actually conceived in 1993 — Kesselman said it took a decade of making other papers and tinkering with the RAW formula to finally nail his masterpiece.
“Back in 1997, the world was an ocean of bleached white papers,” Kesselman said. He was dead-set on creating a brown, translucent paper. “The little nuances of RAW were based on knowledge of other papers I made before it," he said. "RAW is my opus, and you can't have an opus until you've made a bunch of mistakes and had successes — sometimes by accident.”
Social media, and Kesselman’s prolific presence on it, fueled the brand. In 2014, Wiz Khalifa released his song “Raw,” dedicated to the brand. RAW and the rapper later collaborated on his own line of rolling papers.
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 assistant. 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 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, some 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 chemicals, 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.”
Josh Kesselman brought the "Tuberator," which allows hits off seven joints at once, to Buds-A-Palooza in April.
Grace Monos
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, carefully adjusting along the way to pack it tight.At the festival the next day, Kesselman is 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 — sometimes 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 counterclaim that Republic committed copyright 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 treatment 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 significant 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.
“He genuinely wanted to leave as big of an impact on peoples’ lives around the world with what he had,” said Don Hendley, the founder of Wine to Water. “And it’s just really refreshing to meet people like that.”
Kesselman has also given more than $3 million to other nonprofit organizations, according to data provided to New Times. That included the Last Prisoner Project, which advocates for cannabis reform. In Phoenix, he donated $162,500 to the Valley homelessness organization Central Arizona Shelter Services since 2021. Lesie Zschokke, a CASS employee who works with donors, said Kesselman “has such a big heart.”
It was on behalf of CASS, Kesselman said, that he pissed off Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego. Kesselman said Gallego “flipped out” on him when he suggested that CASS be given the use of an old St. Luke’s facility that Gallego wanted to give to a developer. “She just lost it, like lost it,” Kesselman said. “I got like five apology calls from her afterward.”
When reached by New Times, a spokesperson for Gallego offered only this statement on the record: “Mayor Gallego is pleased that the city has recognized Josh for his work on employing diverse populations, including people with disabilities.” A day after New Times contacted the mayor’s office, Kesselman sent an email walking back many of his comments.
“It’s inaccurate to say that she ‘flipped out on me’ or that ‘she just lost it, like lost it.’ It’s also inaccurate to say that I got ‘like 5 apology calls afterwards,’” Kesselman wrote. “Gallego did not talk to me about giving (the property) to a developer.”
He added that while he is a staunch supporter of CASS, he was not officially lobbying on its behalf.
In messages texted to New Times before his clarification email, he expressed concern that his Gallego comments would harm his relationship with the mayor and negatively affect RAW.
“We’ve worked so hard to build up this business and this incredible life,” Kesselman wrote in a text, “and I hope you aren’t going to hurt it.”
Josh Kesselman is a constant tinkerer, a personality trait to which he attributes the success of his rolling papers.
Carl Schultz/Courtesy of RAW
Succession questions
The publication of Kate Gallego anecdotes notwithstanding, it’s the future of his business that seems to occupy Kesselman’s life the most these days. Securing the ultimate payout is not Kesselman’s goal. He is deeply skeptical of megacorporations and doubts the narrative, instilled in him decades ago by his grandfather, that unfettered capitalism necessitates innovation.“What we run into instead is corruption — extreme corruption,” Kesselman said. Instead of making a better product, big corporations often just make cheaper products, resort to predatory practices or simply try to drive competitors out of business. “This capitalism thing ain’t working,” he said. “The way our society is going right now — it’s not the right direction. We need new ideas, we need a different way of thinking.”
The extent to which that viewpoint is surprising probably depends on how much emphasis anyone puts on the “weed” and “business” aspects of the weed business. He’s aimed to create the best possible products for his customers — and undoubtedly, to have fun and enjoy life while doing it.
“We’re trying to compete with ourselves,” he noted. “People should live a life that they truly enjoy instead of trying to be the next Elon Musk.”
Kesselman said he’s dealt with Musk and wasn’t impressed. The two met when the now-billionaire Musk was first creating electric cars. Enthralled by environmentalism, Kesselman ordered a custom Tesla before the two met. After the two talked, Kesselman canceled his order.
Kesselman said Musk revealed that the new car would be flown from its factory in England to California on a 747 jet, using more carbon in the process “than I would have used if I bought a Hummer and drove it for eight years.” When Kesselman suggested that the cars be shipped by boat instead, he said Musk made him feel like “he didn’t give a rat’s ass about the environment or about humans.”
“It was so cold,” Kesselman said. “Clearly, it was a means to an end."
Kesselman is not particularly ideological and describes himself as “apolitical,” though Federal Elections Commission data shows he has donated more than $50,000 to Democratic politicians in Arizona. He said when donating, his focus has been on giving to candidates who align with him on cannabis policy. During an interview at his warehouse earlier this year, he bashed President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the idea of “making America great” while trying to move all manufacturing back to the United States. “With these tariffs, you can’t make cool shit,” Kesselman said.
Making cool shit is what he cares about, Kesselman said, which is why he purchased the legendary counterculture magazine High Times for $3.5 million in June. Kesselman is currently in the process of laying out a vision for the magazine and writing mission statements. He’s already enlisted Forbes senior contributor Javier Hasse to serve as acting editor-in-chief.
He got High Times for a steal — in 2017, the paper was sold for around $70 million — but says he’s not interested in trying to profit off of it. He wants to revive its cultural relevance.
“I’m not buying it for business,” he said. “I want to bring it back. It’s about community. It’s all going to come back to that one word. High Times was never about making money — it was always a hippie rag.”
He wants to secure the future of RAW with a similar ethos. His preference would be to bequeath the business to his daughter, Coco, who is a rising junior at Arizona State University. But Coco — who through her father declined to be interviewed — is more about politics than weed, he said. If she doesn’t “catch the bug,” Kesselman is unsure about handing off the keys to anyone else.
Two alternatives remain: sell the company or take it public. He doesn’t like either. “I can’t bring the company public in a traditional fashion, because the same people we hate are the same ones who will own it,” he said. As for unloading for what he says would be “more money than I could realistically spend in multiple lifetimes” — Kesselman is hesitant to throw out a dollar figure — he said he “didn’t do all of this to get that big check.”
In a perfect world, RAW’s most dedicated customers would be able to purchase some equity in the company they’ve so loyally supported. He floated such an arrangement in an interview with MarketWatch last year, but told New Times that he’s yet to find a banker who could figure out how to do it. He’s not counting on such an arrangement coming to pass.
Perhaps, in keeping with his Willy Wonka reputation, he could hide golden tickets inside packages of RAW papers (he’s already held golden ticket social media contests and brought fans to tour the RAW factory in Spain). Someone has to inherit the kingdom, so why not a contest to vet a successor? Except, of course, no kids and no murderous child comeuppances. Maybe singing orange men, depending on what you’re smoking.
Someone’s got to take it, though. Still firmly in middle age, Kesselman has time to figure that out. His zeal for weed and RAW is undiminished. His weed celebrity star hasn’t dimmed a single lumen. He still dresses and sometimes acts like he’s still in his 20s. There’s plenty more hits in his joint; no need to hand it off just yet.
But that time will come.
“All you can do is be the best link in the chain,” he said. “There were so many before me. There’s going to be so many after me.”
