Smoking handrolls offers another advantage, in addition to its cost effectiveness and a few of the other advantages cited by my fellow noders. When one handrolls a
cigarette, it is inherently more enjoyable because of one's more intimate connection with the production of a
material good. The more one is involved at any and every level of this production, the greater the satisfaction derived from the end product. The same is true of a
rocking chair, a
guitar, a
car, or
food.
The reason for this, as I see it, is that every moment of one's life is a part of one's history, and thus an event in one's spiritual development. When we are closely involved with the production of the things we use, they are valuable to us in ways other than (but not exclusive of) monetary value.
For example, if I were to grow and cure my own tobacco, in a field I tilled by hand, and produce my own rolling papers, and even sew a tobacco pouch with leather tanned by me gotten from a cow I raised and slaughtered, the satisfaction derived from the cigarettes I smoke would be greater than that derived from the Camel Filter I'm smoking right now. In theory, anyway.
This might be why materialism gets such a bad rap these days--our culture has made a point of making stuff so damned fast that our intimacy with the things we consume has been reduced to the same old trip to Wal-Mart for the same old shit that everyone else has. The end result being that no one cares a lick about their mass produced stuff because they don't know where it came from (some factory somewhere), don't know where it's going (some landfill somewhere), and are required to use no imagination to get it. So handroll 'em if'n you got 'em, kids.