The History of Rolling Paper Sizes

Tobacco was first introduced to European Civilization in the form of Cigars and later Snus. This goes back to the days of the first Spanish based explorations of America via Christopher Columbus.  Cigars became very popular among Aristocrats and the upper class, especially in Spain.  Street beggars would pick up all cigar butts that they could find and roll them in newspaper in order to smoke them. This nuance took root quickly and in order to enjoy every puff of these paper wrapped cigars, the beggars would inhale the smoke and hold it for as long as possible.  Thus cigarette smoking was born.

Of course burning newspaper had its own problems, especially with the then lead based inks. Spanish merchants began offering plain unprinted paper for this purpose. One factory in Alcoy that was making specialized packing papers offered the first paper designed specifically for cigarette rolling. This paper was later improved and an additional factory in Alcoy opened to compete. Over time additional cigarette paper factories opened near Barcelona, then France, the UK and eventually there were many factories across Europe.  In Alcoy there still is one rolling paper factory left, which can actually trace its roots back to the first rolling paper factory.

In Spain, the size that was developed based on consumer preference was approximately 78mm long by 44mm high.   At first this was the size that dominated the entire European market.  However, King James 1 and his later successors enacted heavy tobacco taxes. This led the British market to move to a smaller size which held about 25% less tobacco. This new small size was about 70mm long by 38mm high.  As the British Empire grew, so did the proliferation of this smaller British sized rolling paper.  In fact, to this date in most of the commonwealth countries the #1 selling size is this small 70mm paper. This paper became known as “Standard Size” or “Single Wide”.   The original Spanish 78mm paper became known as “Spanish Size”, or to the British they referred to it as One and a Quarter, in reference to how it holds about 25% more tobacco then a British Standard Sized paper.

Flash forward about 100 years and the industrial revolution allowed the mass production of machine made cigarettes.  At first, most cigarettes were either 70mm or 78mm long without a filter.  However in the 1950’s filtered cigarettes began to take over.  Consumers were concerned that by purchasing a filtered cigarette they were getting less tobacco as the filter took up some of the cigarette’s space that used to be filled with tobacco.  Thus large tobacco companies responded to this by increasing the length of cigarettes to accommodate the filter.  Cigarette size increased from 70mm or 78mm to a new 84mm size.  This new size became known as “King Size”, named after the King of England who was seen publicly smoking this new cigarette.  Over the next several decades the shorter cigarettes saw their market share shrink dramatically until they were all but replaced by the new 84mm “King Size”.  However rolling paper factories missed the opportunity to change their sizes to suit this new consumer preference and continued producing the legacy sizes of generations past.  It wasn’t until 2009 when HBI finally produced the world’s first 84mm cigarette rolling papers with their launch of DLX brand 84’s as they are called.   While it may appear that rolling paper companies are dramatically behind the times, this is common among rolling paper factories as most companies prefer not to change with the times. However this sort of dinosaur attitude has recently been changing as new and improved forms of cigarette papers have been launched in recent years.  Among them are natural unbleached papers (i.e. RAW), ultra thin rice papers (i.e. Elements), and extra slow burning papers (i.e. DLX).  The previous rolling paper innovation that we can find was the invention of interleaved rolling papers which took place 110 years ago at the 1900 world’s fair, and led to the formation of the Zig Zag brand.  Zig Zag means how the papers are interleaved in a zig-zag format.

In Commonwealth countries the #1 selling size is still the 70mm standard size papers.  However in the rest of the world including the USA, Spanish Size (1 ¼) is by far the better seller. Overall there has been a market trend towards this original 1 ¼ size and sales data has shown that it is increasing in popularity, especially in the UK and Canada.  Now that there is finally an 84mm rolling paper available, sales of that size are increasing steadily and will likely become one of the most popular sizes, mirroring the extreme popularity of 84mm King Size Cigarettes.

Now we’d like to address so called “King Size rolling papers” which are actually miss-named.  These date back to 1984 when Rizla launched their 100mm rolling papers catered towards women that preferred the 100mm cigarette size. People first referred to this as “Queen Size”.  Another firm tried to outdo Rizla and launched a 110mm paper, and named it “King Size’.  However this is a misnomer.  King Size cigarettes are all 84mm long.  A 110mm paper is actually a longer “Queen Size” and is much longer then the preferred 84mm standard King Size.  The aforementioned “King Size” rolling papers were typically 110mm long and 52mm high.  However the newer format of this “King Size” is 110mm long and 44mm high (sometimes called King Size, sometimes called King Size Slim).  This has become one of the most popular sizes in Europe and is growing while the older King Size is decreasing.  The difference is the 8mm in paper height.  The 44mm height is the original “Spanish Sized” or 1 ¼ sized height, and seems to be the preferred height by most smokers for all rolling papers (regardless of length).

Special Note about China:  While China did invent paper; they did not invent cigarette paper with good cause. The Chinese Emperor Chongzhen banned tobacco and ordered that anyone who smoked it should be beheaded. Tobacco was completely forbidden in China for hundreds of years and thus no cigarette paper was ever developed there. It is only quite recently that China has begun producing any cigarette rolling paper.  Much of the rolling papers now coming out of china are actually shoe paper (the crinkly paper that you find stuffed into the toe of a new pair of shoes) being marketed as rolling paper.  While the two look similar, shoe paper burns fast and tears easily.  The Europeans have a long head start over the Chinese when it comes to cigarette rolling papers, and have mastered their craft over many generations and hundreds of years.