I’m sorry to inform you that your analogy of two of the three words in the question asking the meaning of the words “joint, roach and stoned”
i have no idea how to define the word stoned other than the feeling one has when under the influnce of cannabis. a joint is the equivalent of a hand-rolled cigarette with an extra ingredient. it is called a joint because the “skins” or cigarette papers join in the middle and usually have a third re-enforcement paper, depending on the individual rolling technique of the roller. a roach is a rolled piece of cardboard which is inserted into the non- twisted end of the forementioned joint to add structure to the end to avoid chrushing in place of a filter
First of all, please give the reference to the original column.
“Is this a statement that I see before me?”
– Lewis Carroll
And your evidence for this is…?
That is not what “roach” means to marijuana users in the US, and you give no evidence that this meaning is the older.
lorna Welcome to the boards.
I don’t think you mean “analogy.” Perhaps “etymology” which tries to find out just what the word comes from. While you may have first-hand knowledge of what you THINK the words may come from, when you go back and look at how they were used historically(50-100 years ago), you might get a different idea.
We really aren’t looking for the meaning of stoned. Most of the readers already know what it means. 
We’re just looking for when it got used, and perhaps some enlightenment on why it got termed as such.
Oh, yeah! Lose the pink. It’s not your color. 
Going to disagree.
A roach is called a roach because it looks JUST LIKE A ROACH. The oil released from cannabis coats and colors the rolling paper givign it the same brown color as a roach. Furthermore, the oils make the paper shiny just like a roach. The shape is also conical with a blunt end, just like a roach and many times the grains of the paper overlap just like the veins on a roaches wing.
When attaching names to something, resemblence is the most common reason for naming.
While your other points are valid, I have actually heard “roach” used to refer to both a cardboard ‘filter replacement’ put in the back end of a joint, as lorna-uk states, and the end of a joint that just has weed in it.
John. Don’t you have a feeling of de ja vu on this one? I have clear recollections of the same question(s) being asked last Fall/Winter, but can’t find a thread. I know it was there as I posted the question in November of 2003 about the etymology over at the American Dialect Society Mailing List. The 1938 cite by Cecil is still the earliest. There was much speculation about the turn of the century song “La Cucaracha” in which one of the verses uses “marijuana que fumar.”
The members over at ADS wisely allowed as how the term “roach” could have come from the visual bug analogy, or it could have gone back to the older song.
Only people who really suck at rolling need two papers, those who need three are beyond reproach.
I think the technique lorna is referring to is a technique I seldom see in the US, but one I learned while attending an institution of higher education, taught to me by a native of a former British colony here in the Western Hemisphere… one historically well associated with the subject matter at hand.
Ahem. well. anyway… it involves using three gummed “skins” in such a manner (that I will not detail /1) as to create a rather impressively large assemblage that includes a sufficiently decadent volume of tar-generating combustable that in order for that interface to remain functional over the operational life of the instrument, one must also incorporate a short tube of rolled-up cardstock at the imbibing interface, inside the rolled paper. Typically this piece of cardstock is salvaged from a matchbook cover, and is variably called a “roach” or “crutch,” or even “wheeze.” (The latter possibly because of the sound it can sometimes make during operation, at least before it gets gummed up with tar.)
So, while I have no cite to corroborate lorna’s claim, I can establish that she is not just making this stuff up…
/1: However, if you bring all of the necessary materials by my house, I will happily demonstrate the techique.
Wow, man, you just blew my mind.
U.K. member chiming in just to say that Lorn UK is certianly not making it up - about the cardboard, I mean.