Innehållsförteckning för 50th Anniversary Issue från High Times

FIFTY YEARS IS A LONG TIME TO KEEP A MATCH LIT. Long enough to watch the smoke drift from outlaw basements to festival stages to the shelves of legal dispensaries. Long enough to see a plant go from whispered about in back rooms to displayed under bright lights in glass jars. High Times was born in the space between rebellion and ritual. Half a century later, we are still here. Still telling the stories that matter. From the visionaries who carried the torch when it was dangerous to the growers and artists shaping the next fifty years. This issue is not nostalgia. It is a reminder that cannabis culture has always been alive, radical, creative, and unafraid. You will find Hunter, Bukowski, Marley, Capote, Warhol. You will also find the…

QUESTIONS: 1. What was your first experience with High Times? 2. How has the magazine impacted cannabis culture in your eyes? 3. What would your love letter to cannabis say? COLE BENNETT OF LYRICAL LEMONADE, ENTREPRENEUR I had heard about the High Times Doobie Awards and thought it was a really cool subculture concept. I was too young to go, but I always wanted to. It made cannabis more mainstream. More digestible and approachable for the general public. I think the magazine helped add a layer of validity to the cannabis industry. Thank you for the memories, the music and the culture. May we continue to roll on! DOPE AS YOLA, CONTENT CREATOR My first experience with High Times magazine… I somehow got into a smoke shop underage and tried…

Merry Christmas… Andy Warhol: So do you know what you want for Xmas? Truman Capote: Well, first of all I don't want anything for myself at Xmas, I think that’s very selfish and what not. I know what I want for other people. For Jackie Kennedy I want a sex-change operation. The reason is that since the American people must have a Kennedy, I'd rather have a Jackie than a Teddy. I want for Timothy Leary justice at last, a ten-year full professorship at Harvard. For Richard Avedon, I hope his portrait of Kate Graham finally makes the cover of Newsweek. You know, they took a picture of him for the cover of Newsweek and then discarded it because I don't know… the Pope died or some thing. For Gore…

The first time I met Hunter Thompson was back in 1970, at the America’s Cup yacht race where Hunter had chartered a huge power yacht and was preparing to sail it full steam right into the middle of the race course. (This was shortly after his spectacular but unsuccessful run for the office of the sheriff of Aspen, Colorado, on a mescaline-eating “Capitalist Freak Power” ticket.) When I arrived on board the huge yacht, I found Thompson ensconced on the command deck, munching on a handful of psilocybin pills and regarding the consternation of the snooty Newport sailing establishment with amusement. We never did manage to cross the path of the cup contenders and Scanlan’s magazine went bankrupt before Hunter wrote up the whole fiasco, but I did learn one…

Cannabis doesn’t belong to one country, one city, or one generation. From the sungrown farms of California to the rolling paper factories of Spain, from Colombian fields to Moroccan mountains, the plant has always found a way to root itself in local soil and culture. This section follows those journeys. You’ll meet the artisans, activists, and communities who shaped regional traditions; and the new voices carrying them into the future. Together, they remind us that cannabis is more than a plant. It’s a passport, a common language, and a culture without borders.…

Golden Jubilee What an honor to contribute to the 50th anniversary issue of the oldest brand in cannabis! I worked almost twenty years as the senior cultivation editor of High Times and I suspect that I got my job in the spring of 2002 in no small part due to the high-quality cannabis I’d bring to the office and share at HT Bonghitter softball games. I’d been growing for nearly a decade at that point and tried every which complicated way to make it happen - building custom hydroponics systems, growing in expanded clay pellets or rockwool, and even experimenting with aeroponics in which roots just dangle in a mist of nutrient solution - until one of my mentors Kyle Kushman convinced me to convert to growing organically in soil.…

In the Rif Mountains of Morocco, the cultivation of kif (the word for cannabis in Arabic, which means “pleasure”) has long sustained thousands of Indigenous Berber farmers and their families—despite colonialism, state repression and ongoing structural inequalities. “We have resisted to preserve the temple of the plant,” says veteran reform activist Abdellatif Adebibe, as he smokes from a wooden pipe filled with Morocco’s endemic Beldiya strain, mixed with tobacco. Adebibe, 70, would like to take his final breath, whenever that day may come, in the simple home where he was born in Morocco’s impoverished High Central Rif, which is, for him, the temple of kif. It’s a remote region where tall cedar trees line the hillsides some 1,600 metres above the nearby Mediterranean sea and, according to a myth popular…

It was late, nine, maybe ten o’clock, when the van nosed up to the Yippie headquarters at #9 Bleeker St. Just shy of the Bowery, the neighborhood was then the heart of New York’s skid row. We hustled boxes inside without asking what was in them; I was there to square up with Dana Beal for the four pounds of Jamaican he’d fronted me after the July 4 smoke-in in D.C. A quick razor, the seam gave; glossy paper flashed, and the room changed. High Times. Cannabis, our deeply beloved, much maligned plant, rendered in a slick, confident magazine alongside stories about the new culture we were building in basements and parks. In 1974, magazines were where America decided what mattered. To see ourselves there, inked, photographed, worthy of attention,…

"MY HOPE IS SIMPLE: THAT THIS MAGAZINE SITS ON YOUR COFFEE TABLE FOREVER. IT WILL MAKE YOU THINK, LAUGH, MAYBE EVEN CHANGE YOUR LIFE A LITTLE, THE WAY IT ONCE DID FOR ME!" Back in the 80s, I sheepishly bought my first copy of High Times out of a smoke shop in New York and hid it under my jacket. The moment I opened those pages, I stepped into another world: free, creative, rebellious, alive. It changed me and I realized there was a whole incredible community of like-minded smokers that I wanted to join. Now here we are, a lifetime later and I still can’t believe I get to be part of bringing this iconic magazine back to life. It feels surreal. Like, eighteen-year-old Josh would be laughing his…

I was sitting on a barstool in the 8-Count, not particularly thinking about anything, like what I was doing there drinking the scotch and waters. Maybe it was because Marie was bitching at me because I wanted to take flying lessons. But she always had something to bitch about. Don't get me wrong, she was more or less a good soul, but the world was full of more or less good souls and look where we were: sitting on the last minute every minute. Well, you know all that. Anyhow, I was sitting next to this old guy who was wearing the orange turtleneck sweater and the walking shorts. Every now and then he glanced over at me and smiled slightly but I ignored it. I really didn't want to…

Strawberry Cough High Times Top Ten Strain of 2005, 2012 SF Cup 1st Place Medical Cannabis, Denver 2015 Cup 2nd Place Sativa and more Lineage: Strawberry Fields x Haze Flowering time: 8-9 weeks Discovered almost 30 years ago and popularized by Kyle Kushman, Strawberry Cough stands the test of time with a unique scent and buzz that keeps us coming back for more. The incense-forward smell and taste evoke cedar, sandalwood and bergamot while the sativa-dominant effects ignite racing thoughts and favor creativity and movement, perfect for a hike in the woods or a walk in the park. Cuban Black Haze Clone from Piff Coast Farms Lineage: Northern Lights #5 x Haze Flowering time: 10-12 weeks This is the classic Haze that made uptown NYC famous. From Amsterdam via Florida,…

There’s a hypothesis that’s been circulating in the science field for some decades that has, in recent years, grown legs: Plants, and trees, are sentient beings. They have consciousness. Perhaps not the same consciousness as humans or animals, but one that exhibits complex behaviours and communicates all the same. The entire plant body has even been likened to a human brain—a network of receptors and cells that uses chemical and electrical signals, which enables the plant to have short and long term memory, sense their environment and communicate not only with each other, but other organisms too. It turns out one of those organisms is me—I talk to plants. There, I said it. When I say talk, I’m not saying I hear voices as such, nor am I often speaking…

It all started with one vintage magazine that changed everything. I was browsing through a local vintage store when I spotted it—the July 1988 Hash Bash issue of High Times magazine. My heart nearly stopped. After searching for so long, I’d finally found a copy of this legendary publication, and it was from the very place where I was born. The excitement was overwhelming. I grabbed that issue and couldn’t wait to get home to dive in. Reading it turned out to be one of the best experiences I’ve ever had with any publication. I found myself cracking up at the vintage advertisements—they were hilarious and such a time capsule of the era. But beyond the humor, I was genuinely fascinated learning about cannabis history and understanding the long journey…

THEN & NOW From outlaw basements to global headlines, High Times has tracked the pulse of cannabis for half a century. What began as a chronicle of the underground has become a record of culture itself. In Then & Now, the legends of our archive meet today’s creators. Bukowski, Burroughs, Marley, Thompson, Cheech & Chong stand alongside voices from California’s sungrown fields, Morocco’s hash valleys, Colombia’s coasts, and beyond. Past and present in one conversation — showing that cannabis culture isn’t history, it’s momentum.…

Kerouac was a writer. That is, he wrote. Many people who call themselves writers and have their names on books are not writers and they can’t write—the difference being, a bullfighter who fights a bull is different from a bullshitter who makes passes with no bull there. The writer has been there or he can’t write about it. And going there he risks being gored. By that I mean what the Germans aptly call the Time Ghost—for example, such a fragile ghost world as Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age—all the sad young men, firefly evenings, winter dreams, fragile, fragile like his picture taken in his 23rd year—Fitzgerald, poet of the Jazz Age. He went there and wrote it and brought it back for a generation—he wrote the Jazz Age. A whole migrant…

This Man Is Seeing God – The Lost Bob Marley Interview (1976) Bob Marley is the fastest-rising, highest-flying star in music today. Like most members of Jamaica’s Rastafarian religion, Bob smokes about a pound of marijuana, or “herb,” a week. High Times visited with Bob on his most recent American tour, and we found a lot of things to talk about. High Times: Have you seen High Times magazine? Marley: Hard Times? Ooo-eee! Oooeee! High Times! Dis supposed to ‘ave de bes’ high in de worl’. High Times; only de bes’. High Times: Some Thai weed? [Pause] High Times: Do you think herb will be legalized? Marley: I don’ know if dis government will, but I know Christ’s government will. High Times: What about the Jamaican government? Mr. Manley, the…

After nine years of uneasy Chinese occupation and socialization, the Dalai Lama fled the Red Army invasion of Tibet in 1959. Since then he has been busily organizing communities for some 80,000 Tibetan refugees who have made their way to India, Nepal, Bhutan and Europe; he has established archives and centers for the study and preservation of lamaistic Buddhism, Tibetan culture and traditional medicine and astrology; and he has continued to work for the peaceful return of his followers to their homeland and for the reestablishment of religious freedom in Tibet. More absorbed in worldly affairs than any of his predecessors, the fourteenth incarnation of the Dalai Lama, now 40, still remains a simple Buddhist monk, living by a strict ascetic routine. Above all, he is the living god of…

Back in the 70s, before cannabis prohibition and the U.S. crackdown turned Latin America’s jungle-green leaves red, there was a time defined by vibrance, transformative power, and cultural surge, fueled by tons of weed money flowing from North American pockets into Colombia’s Sierra Nevada. That period, which saw the Santa Marta region rise as an empire built on cannabis, is known as La Bonanza Marimbera. It is the subject of an upcoming documentary by producer Lucas Nosiglia and director Guido Mignogna. Nosiglia is also working with cannabis legend Sergio Puerta on multiple initiatives to revitalize cannabis culture and production in the region. El Corazón del Mundo, to be presented in 2026, tells the story of those crazy, vibrant years, showcasing how that ever-changing agricultural landscape became the theater of operations…

Illustration by Sunflower Form, concept by HopeLord Sunflower Form is the moniker of an illustrator whose work grows from a love of nature and the radical act of expression. Using traditional methods and the visual language of underground comics, he created Skipping Stoned with Talking Terps co-founder and conceptual artist HopeLord. First released in color as a print in 2020, it is now reimagined in black and white for High Times’ 50th anniversary, symbolizing the idea that what goes around comes around. Talking Terps, which appeared on the cover of High Times’ 2022 Art Issue, has since grown into a cultural force that now extends into cannabis collaborations, including with Alien Labs in California, with Florida on the horizon.…