Rolling Your Own

For years, sales of loose tobacco for hand-rolled cigarettes have zigzagged downward, perhaps because Americans find rolling inconvenient when tailor-made cigarettes are so easily available. Prices for those tailor-mades, however, have zoomed. (In New York, a pack now sells for 55-c- to 65-c-, in San Francisco, 40-c- to 50-c-.) To fight that rise, the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. has now hit the streets with Laredo, a kit that might be called the Rolls-Royce of cigarette-rolling machines. Fast, efficient and all but completely foolproof, it turns out a filter cigarette in less than a minute. Included in the outfit are tobacco, specially made papers and filters, the rolling machine and even 20-butt packets (which, curiously, do not bear the compulsory warning that smoking may be injurious to health). The cost? About 20-c- per pack--a boon to the heavy smoker and an apparent setback for American Cancer Society and other anti-smoking campaigners.

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