High Times Publisher Josh Kesselman Just Made the Forbes Cannabis List. It Started With a Magazine Smuggled Under His Jacket at 16.
Josh Kesselman bought his first copy of High Times at 16, smuggled it under his jacket out of a New York City shop and read it cover to cover twice. Forty years later, he owns it, and Forbes just named him one of the 42 people shaping the legal cannabis industry. You can tell the…
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Jimmy Kimmel Made a Hulu Doc About High Times, But It’s Really About Free Speech, Its Director Says
Hulu’s new 4/20 anthology series includes a documentary on High Times and its founder. Director Kyle Thrash tells High Times why he came looking for a human story, not a nostalgia piece, and found one that still feels unresolved. Dana Beal is 78 years old, standing in a courtroom in Gooding County, Idaho, facing a…
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This 4/20, Remember The Cannabis Prisoners Legalization Left Behind
By Stephanie Shepard, Executive Director, Last Prisoner Project As legal cannabis becomes a multibillion-dollar industry, people are still serving decades, even life, in prison for the same plant. That is not progress. It is unfinished business. Every year on 4/20, millions of people celebrate cannabis culture. Legalization expands, new markets open, and the industry keeps…
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Smoke Odor Exterminator: 25 Years of Clearing the Air
Walk into almost any smoke shop in America, and you’ll likely find it. Sitting near the register or burning quietly in the background, Smoke Odor Exterminator has become a subtle but consistent presence in the culture. From rental cars to hotel rooms to apartments, it’s the kind of product people rely on when it actually…
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Why Most Cannabis Brands Fail to Scale
Scaling cannabis production isn’t just about output. It’s about process, consistency, and building systems that actually hold up under pressure. In cannabis, scaling sounds simple: grow more, produce more, sell more. For a while, that works. Then it doesn’t. Most operators don’t hit a ceiling because of demand or even product quality. They hit it because…
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It Took a Text From Joe Rogan. Now Psychedelics Are a Federal Research Priority.
President Trump signed an executive order on April 18 directing the FDA to fast-track review of psychedelic therapies and committing $50 million to ibogaine research. The psychedelics community is cautiously optimistic, and watching closely. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Saturday directing federal agencies to accelerate research into psychedelic therapies and allocating $50…
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Kratom Crackdown Signals New Drug Policy Shift
As federal cannabis rescheduling looms on the horizon and more states across the country begin rolling out regulations for legal psychedelic therapy, health officials have increasingly been targeting a centuries-old psychoactive plant from Southeast Asia with newly introduced measures of prohibition. Kratom is a leafy green botanical native to Southeast Asia that acts on the…
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Rosin, Raids and Risk: Spain’s New Cannabis Frontier
From home labs and deadly butane blasts to solventless rosin, police raids, and a legal gray zone, Spain is entering a more potent and more volatile phase of cannabis culture. On a cold night in late January 2025, a home lab in Espinardo (Murcia) ended in tragedy. Two young men were killed when a butane-based…
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Cheech Marin Is Talking to Sandwiches in a Jimmy John’s Ad. Cannabis Culture Has Officially Gone Mainstream.
Jimmy John’s Dream Rotation campaign doesn’t wink at cannabis culture. It hires Cheech Marin, lets him argue with a sandwich and makes Kal Penn’s ideal 4/20 a gym session and a book. The wall is down. Cheech Marin is sitting, holding a sandwich. He looks at it the way a man looks at something he…
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You Went Legal. The Federal Government Rewarded You With a 70% Tax Rate.
Legal cannabis operators paid $2.24 billion in excess federal taxes in 2025. The illicit market paid zero. That is not a coincidence. That is policy. If you run a legal cannabis business and you feel like the system is working against you, the numbers back you up. A refreshed analysis from Whitney Economics, released this…
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