But many more aren’t aware that he was once hired by the U.S. government to discredit cannabis in a political move, as the psychoactive properties within the plant promoted critical thinking at a time in history when the people were rising up.

The year was 1967 and Mikuriya had been hired by the National Institute of Mental Health Center for Narcotics and Drug Abuse Studies to research marijuana for negative outcomes. The National Center for Drug Abuse would be created in 1974, solely funding studies on cannabis and other drugs for abuse, while shelving positive findings.

One such infamous study on pregnancy from the 1970s in Jamaica was slated to last 20 years, but was shut down after the five-year-olds given cannabis tea since birth were shown to excel in every area. This was after their mothers were monitored drinking the tea while pregnant, with positive outcomes noted.

“One of my assignments was to spy on the communes in California because at the height of the fear of the Vietnam War, the year of the Tet Offensive, and the total embroilment in the conflict in the United States, as well as Vietnam,” he shared. “They were fearing the fall of civilization as manifested by certain rebellious behaviors, principally on the West Coast.”

The Tet Offensive was an escalation of military campaigns during the Vietnam War against forces in South Vietnam, at a time when our failure to excel in the conflict was kept from the people, until The Pentagon Papers revealed the deceit.

The powers that be understood that psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin mushrooms, along with cannabis, were being used socially, and became a big part of the anti-war movement. The more Mikuriya learned of the campaigns against what he found to be beneficial and useful compounds, the more he rebelled.

“Frankly I was aghast at being part of this machine back in D.C. that could be so blind and mean-spirited,” he continued. “Their take on marijuana was, ‘how can we suppress it and prevent it,’ because this is something that promotes that dangerous trait of critical thinking. Because it was linked with the rebellion of the anti-war movement against the military machine, the military industrial complex.”

Third Eye Open

Dr. Mikuriya didn’t linger on the theories of demonizing hemp for industry or the plant’s potential competition with big pharma. He was trained in psychology and understood completely the government’s fear of psychedelics opening up the third eye, with critical thinking a threat to being a good soldier, being led into the jungle for a war that was little understood.

The same year Mikuriya was hired by the government to demonize the plant, Timothy Leary shouted out to 30,000 hippies in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” further cementing the theory that psychoactive plants and compounds don’t make good foot soldiers.

Interesting to note, in 1974, alleged MK Ultra survivor, Cathy O’Brien, was asked at a lecture podium what she knew about cannabis and why the government opposes the plant. Without a beat, she responded, “Because it blocks mind control.” This is poignant, as MK Ultra was said to have been a covert government mind control project.

“So, basically, I defected,” he said of his post that lasted less than a year.

At this point in the interview, von Hartman interjected, “Excuse me for interrupting, but you were told not to find any positive result in your research, is that true?”

“Correct,” Mikuriya responded, firmly. “They were interested in finding anything toxic, anything that could be used to dissuade the use of cannabis. But at the same time they recognized, although it couldn’t be admitted, that it was relatively benign. The big problem with dealing within the federal bureaucracy – or I suppose any bureaucracy – is the compartmentalization, that restriction on the flow of information.”

The Doctor’s Journey

There is no mention of Mikuriya’s gig with the federal government in his obituary in the New York Times upon his passing in 2007. They do go into great detail on his advocacy for the plant and subsequent persecution.

Mikuriya was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania on September 20, 1933, to parents who raised him and his two siblings as Quakers.

“The Quakers were proprietors of the Underground Rail[road], I’m proud to say,” he was once quoted, making reference to the underground route to safety for slaves in Colonial America.

His mother, Anna Schwenk, was a German immigrant and a special education teacher. His father, Tadafumi Mikuriya, was the descendant of a Japanese Samurai family, trained as an engineer. 

Mikuriya earned a bachelor’s degree from Reed College in Oregon in 1956, and his MD from Temple University in 1962 – where he stumbled upon a reference in a pharmacology textbook on the uses of medical marijuana.

Intrigued by the many medicinal applications listed, he decided he needed to experience cannabis first hand.

“… I was smitten by an attack of idle curiosity during my sophomore year in medical school during the pharmacology course,” he explained. “I happened to unintentionally read a chapter on cannabis in Goodman & Gilman, which described the medicinal uses and described also, fairly Draconian punishment for its use. This was consistent with what social attitudes existed back then in 1959.”

Reading up what was available at the library, he said that summer he traveled down to Mexico to score some weed. Using some slang words for cannabis on a street dealer that he said approached him upon crossing the border, he succeeded in his quest.

Mikuriya said he took the man up to his hotel room and at random picked one of the 10 hand-rolled marijuana cigarettes laid out, instructing the dealer, “Okay, light it up, take a few puffs.” When the man showed no hesitation to partake, Mikuriya was relieved to see it was not poisonous, and partook himself.

With his curiosity whetted, he said he quickly realized he should keep the experience to himself, and that this was not something he would submit to any department for a research project, because it would surely have been the end of his medical career.

“So, then I embarked upon my personal bioassay experience,” he continued. “I put this down after a while, having no one to communicate with and no source, until 1964. At which time, during my psychiatric practice training up in Oregon I became aware of it.”

After finishing his psychiatric residency at Mendocino State Hospital, he enlisted in the U.S. Army as a medic. Shortly thereafter, ironically, he became Director for a drug addiction treatment center of the New Jersey Neuropsychiatric Institute in Princeton, under the tutelage of Dr. Humphrey Osmond, who was well versed in psychedelic drugs.

“I then was headhunted by the National Institute of Mental Health Center for Narcotics and Drug Abuse Studies, with the specific assignment of research into marijuana,” he said. “Needless to say, this seemed to be right up my area of interest, and left New Jersey for the psychosis inside the Beltway.”

Reefer Madness, Part 2

The psychosis inside the Beltway refers to the Reefer Madness he experienced while working in Washington D.C. researching cannabis, then finding that the laws weren’t exactly copasetic to what he knew to be the plants full potential. 

He also came to the realization that cannabis had been part of the American Pharmacopoeia for at least 200 years prior to it being politicized in the late 1930s. Thankfully, the plant was added back to the list fairly recently in 2016.

“First stop was at the National Library of Medicine, where I ran across many more medicinal and pharmaceutical papers that motivated me to assemble what I felt to be the ‘creme de la creme’ and put it into a book, The Marijuana Medical Papers: 1839 to 1972,” he shared, of the compilation still available today.

Mikuriya became a consultant for the Shafer Commission, formerly known as the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, appointed by then President, Richard Nixon, with the report released in 1972.

The commission’s now infamous report, Marijuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding, called for more research and the decriminalization of cannabis possession. But, Mikuriya said it was “D.O.A.” and ignored by Nixon’s White House, who proceeded to add the plant to its failed War on Drugs.

“This was part of the Nixon administration’s distraction and palliation of the scientific and medical communities, as he put together the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, that classified cannabis as having no medicinal redeeming importance and being Schedule I, highly dangerous, to be avoided – which was a total lie,” he said. “But this is the way it is today. That federal law still is driven by this insanity, put together by the Nixon Justice Department apparatchiks.”

So good was the government’s campaign against the plant, that at the time a mere 12% of Americans supported its legalization, with public sentiment viewing cannabis users as dangerous. In reality, the committee found them to be more “timid, drowsy and passive,” concluding that cannabis did not cause widespread danger to society, further outing the political hoax.

“The use of cannabis goes into antiquity, as probably everybody knows, but what is not known, or what is not appreciated, is the fact that it was clinically available for roughly a hundred years in America and Western Europe for a variety of therapeutic uses. It was called ‘cannabis,’” he explained. “And the term ‘marijuana’ was described as a ‘mongrel word,’ that was applied to the Mexican use of cannabis, that very few agencies within the federal government at the time back in 1937 understood that it was the same as cannabis, so they thought that marijuana was really a separate plant, a separate material. And didn’t connect it with the medicinal uses.”

In the years that followed, Mikuriya would go on to document 200 case studies from his own clinical research from patients successfully using cannabis as a serious medicine for both emotional and physical issues. But, as long as cannabis was listed on the Department of Health’s Schedule 1, showing no medicinal value, he was shouting at the wind.

The Endocannabinoid System (eCS) wouldn’t be discovered until 1988 by researchers Allyn Howlett and William Devane at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, in a government-controlled study that also discovered the body’s CB1 and CB2 receptors; the pathway for plant compounds to distribute themselves throughout all human biological systems.

As they say, timing is everything. Having the knowledge of the eCS during the Shafer Commission’s work might have saved the plant from the crossfire of the failed War on Drugs, but we’ll never know.

California Medicine, Federally Illegal

The disappointment of the Shafer Commission’s report may have had the good doctor fleeing Washington D.C., but it only empowered him as an advocate once back in California, where the LGBTQ+ community had already championed cannabis as medicine for AIDS patients.

By the mid-1990s Mikuriya became one of the architects and co-authors of Proposition 215, with California voters giving a green light for residents to become cannabis patients. Mikuriya was the first physician in the state to write a script, recommending cannabis as medicine for the first cannabis patient.

A collective sigh of relief was heard throughout the world, as California became the leader in compassionate care and education on cannabis as medicine. Mikuriya thought it would be smooth sailing from then on, that the voters had spoken and the people would finally be educated on this powerful plant. But, the celebration was cut short.

“Within a month after we passed the law back in ’96, there was a meeting at McCaffery’s office in the White House,” he said. “The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, where they hatched schemes to nullify the state laws, either directly in court or through other means – and the other means would be to go after both the patients and the physicians.”

Barry McCaffrey was the first “Drug Czar” for the The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), established by President Nixon overseeing his War on Drugs. The position is still just one step down from the Oval Office, with it and its agency’s existence just one executive order away from the president’s pen. 

The State’s Attorney General, he said, opposed the proposition before it passed, and was dedicated to “blocking and suborning it.” With this, the DEA became empowered, embedding themselves into local law enforcement agencies in the state, in fiscally subsidized partnerships, causing a financial dependence that continues today, even in legal states.

Physician, Heal Thyself

Mikuriya became a thorn in the side of the DEA, claiming representatives from the privatized “prison-industrial complex, our version of the military-industrial complex,” were big supporters of the War on Drugs, funding the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (now, Partnership to End Addiction). 

“These are the subversives that are embedded in the civil service system,” he said. “The California Narcotics Officers Association believes that medical marijuana is a hoax, and have sponsored and organized statewide meetings within the criminal justice system for orientation and training, in actuality laying out templates of ways for blocking it.”

An outspoken patient himself, ordinances dictate that doctors aren’t allowed to touch the plant. They aren’t educated in medical school and they can’t prescribe cannabis as medicine, they can only “recommend.”

With the plant still federally prohibited, with no medicinal value admitted, Mikuriya was hotly criticized, with an attempt made to strip him of his medical license.

“In my case, an undercover agent was sent to infiltrate a clinic of mine, not even bothering with the niceties of the Medical Board, filtering and embellishing it, went directly to the AG’s office,” he said. “So, there’s been this clique of opponents who are doing their damndest to hurt the physicians and dissuade participation in the law.”

The incident happened in 2000, with the Medical Board of California giving Mikuriya five years probation and a $75,000 fine for what they called “gross negligence, unprofessional conduct, and incompetence” for failing to conduct proper physical examinations on 16 patients for whom he had written scripts. The truth was, Mikuriya had given out around 9,000 scripts all told.

The fact that they pinned 16 questionable scripts on him with probation and a fine seems to have been a weak attempt to slow him down, as he continued his private psychiatric practice, as a cannabis clinical consultant, until his death.

“I want to see cannabis defined as an easement, which is not a narcotic, not a psycho-stimulant, not a hallucinogen,” he surmised. “One of the things in managing chronic conditions with cannabis is the absence of side-effects as being the critical factor. Cannabis has a remarkable profile compared with any synthetic pharmaceuticals. In fact, it really enhances both the quality of life and rehabilitation from illness. Since cannabis both modulates and activates certain kinds of very positive healing functions of the body.”

Author’s Note: This profile was taken from transcript, The Lost Interview, Berkeley, California, 2004, Interview by Paul J. von Hartman.

The post Higher Profile: Dr. Tod Mikuriya (1933-2007) appeared first on High Times.

This matters to you, dear reader and presumed drug enthusiast, because growing shrooms is really damn hard. Most people can figure out how to grow an ounce or two using Google (or High Times articles) but a majority of people find it far too complicated at first glance and most processes involved with psychedelic production are much easier to understand with visual aids. Being as it were that a lot of people would prefer to consume their drugs without engaging in some sweaty, parking lot exchange with a dude named Indigo, a lot of folks would be shit out of luck if it weren’t for people like Willy and Philly. 

These guys are really putting their money where their mouths are in the sense of taking big legal and personal risks to advance the science of psychedelic production and educating the masses on how to safely replicate the processes for themselves. They both hide their identities in different ways. Willy wears a face mask in his videos and PGT has yet to show his face or reveal what his voice sounds like. Their channels and messages are not associated with one another but they have each amassed an impressive following and each contributed crucial information about psychedelics directly to the people who need it.

High Times caught up with Willy and Philly both together and individually to talk shop about psychedelic culture and their efforts to preserve, promote and advance it.

Willy Myco

Willy is, I shit you not, a Harvard graduate with degrees and qualifications out the wazoo who walked away from a quarter-million dollar salary at a big-name pharmaceutical company to make his educational YouTube and Patreon videos. The videos span from DIY shroom growing techniques to how LSD is synthesized and more. He now pays his bills almost entirely through YouTube and Patreon, thanks to his organically grown community which he refers to as the “trip team family” or TTF. 

“I ain’t shit without you guys,” Willy said. “Without that community behind me, supporting me and being there for me, then I wouldn’t be able to do it.”

The TTF is hard to quantify but according to Willy it ranges anywhere from 70 to 120,000 people. They have a private Discord server that is genuinely a positive place to explore with super friendly people, all of whom are stoked to help other budding mycologists and psychedelic enthusiasts on their individual journeys. 

Not only that, but these cats throw one hell of a party by the sound of things. Willy puts on this big event every year called “Trip-A-Ween” where they basically fry balls on world-class psychedelics and do fun shit like rent out an entire amusement park or live large in Costa Rica for a week. They spare no expense and talk about it like it’s a big family reunion.

As a Patreon supporter and member of the TTF discord, I won’t reveal much of what I’ve seen in there for obvious reasons but I will note that right before I started writing this article, a big member of the TTF community who goes by the alias Watr was arrested and had their children taken away from them for allegedly distributing psychedelics. Inside of a week, Willy had a sweatshirt made up and started an in-house fundraiser to raise money and bring Watr back home to his kids. Willy has also personally given thousands of dollars out of his own pocket to finance medical treatment for some supporters of his who needed help.

Willy is currently in the process of buying a house in Puerto Rico where he will be setting up a cannabis grow to provide employment for the people living there, not to mention hosting a podcast, likely throwing more shroom parties and providing mycology/cannabis cultivation classes to impoverished Puerto Ricans. Willy told High Times his ultimate goal is to preserve the legacy of the people who came before him.

“I want to see people be able to support their families and build their empires off of psychedelics, I want to be able to see people flourish and do well—the people that actually deserve it, and are doing it for the right reasons,” Willy said. “I don’t want that culture to be gone. I don’t want it just to become a machine like cannabis has become. It’s an industry now. It’s a big thing. Before, when it was underground, it was about the members of the community and the people who actually put in the work to preserve it. And then once it became an industry, it just became about money. It was no longer about community.” 

Philly Golden Teacher

Philly is a bit more elusive than Willy but his videos are very detailed and dive deep into the art of shroom growing. Whereas Willy’s videos encompass all psychedelics, Philly strictly focuses on mycology and mushroom cultivation. He’s a prolifically paranoid man (for VERY good reason) who used a voice modulator when speaking to High Times. 

“I’m scared. I’m scared to put myself out there,” Philly said. “That fear really puts me into anxiety mode.”

Philly didn’t tell me many specifics about himself other than he tries to blend into society as much as possible to avoid detection. He works a 9-5 at a call center and spends his off-time working on advanced mycology projects, one of which is attempting to crossbreed psychedelic mushrooms to make a new “strain.” Strain is in quotes because it’s even less accurate when used to refer to mushrooms than how it’s commonly used for cannabis but for our purposes, strain is fine. 

“You have to understand crossbreeding is a lot more complex than putting two different mycelium together on a plate and having them go ‘here, kiss.’ You have to isolate a single spore to be able to do it at a microscopic level. It’s hard to do that; it’s hard to verify that without a microscope so people don’t get into crossbreeding unless you can afford a microscope to put the work behind to do it,” Philly said.

The thing with mushroom growing is that much like cannabis, a fair amount of the legwork on figuring out how to do it properly is pioneered by guys like Philly, who lives in constant fear of federal police raids at worst and losing his YouTube account at best.

“I have to really be careful what I put out on there,” Philly said. “I’m trying to steer things forwards, just trying to to drive things to Patreon because I can’t really rely on YouTube.”

Philly told High Times he’s particularly excited about mushroom lineage cards he and his wife have been working on with information about the breeders and history behind the different “strains” of psychedelic mushrooms.

“We basically went full Pokemon,” Philly said. 

Both PGT and Willy expressed parallel views to High Times on how psychedelics should be used or looked at going forward. They both hammered home two distinct points multiple times over:

• Psychedelics can be used as medicine but should more so be looked at as tools.
• Decriminalization instead of legalization.

“I’m more comfortable with decriminalization than legalization,” Willy said. “I don’t think people should go to jail or be charged for cultivating their own medicine, whether that’s mushrooms or extracting DMT or cultivating cannabis, whatever the case may be. People should be able to do it freely. But, legalization brings a whole nother slew of problems: oversaturation, stepping on the toes of all the cultivators that have been doing this for a long time. You have companies that have millions of dollars of backing and you just can’t compete with that.”

The post Willy and Philly: Meet the Undercover Shroom Wizards Carrying Psychedelic Culture on Their Backs appeared first on High Times.

Fujimori, the son of Japanese immigrants, served as president from 1990 until 2000. Like Castillo, he tried to shut down congress while in office. But unlike Castillo, he succeeded. Backed by the army, Fujimori completely rewrote the country’s constitution, and might have remained in power indefinitely had he not been persecuted and imprisoned for human rights violations. Revered as a conservative strongman – the strongest in recent memory – Fujimori began his career as a political outsider. When he announced his first candidacy, no one thought he had any chance of winning. Today, historians argue the only reason he did win – and kept on winning for so long – was because of the man at his side: Vladimiro Montesinos. 

Named after the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, Montesinos was born in 1945 in Arequipa to communist parents who desperately wanted to be perceived as rich and cultured by their neighbors. Understanding that the army was the only way in which ordinary Peruvians could gain wealth and power, Montesinos’ father arranged for his son to enroll at the famed Military School of Chorrillos in Lima. Although he was an unremarkable student, Montesinos’ passion for reading and obsession with acquiring sensitive information helped him become the single most powerful person in Peru. Following a roundabout path through life, one that involved short prison sentences and multiple career changes, Montesinos eventually found himself serving as the head of his country’s central intelligence network – the Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional, or SIN for short – and Alberto Fujimori’s most trusted advisor. During this time, he also presented himself as an indispensable ally to both the CIA and Colombia’s Medellín cartel. 

Montesinos entered the drug trade after he was kicked out of the army for an unauthorized visit to the U.S. Freed from military prison, the disgraced and impoverished young officer started working at the law practice of a family member, where he took on soldiers and police officers accused of drug-related offenses. When Montesinos successfully defended the Medellín cartel member Evaristo Porras Ardiles, he gained the interest (and gratitude) of Pablo Escobar himself. After a bacchanal visit to the latter’s Napoles ranch in Puerto Triunfo, Montesinos was not just defending the cartel in court, but also shipping Peruvian coca leaves into Colombia. Pablo’s brother Roberto claims that Montesinos received between $100,000 and $120,000 per drug flight, and that the cartel donated $1 million to Fujimori’s presidential campaign in the hope of expanding their Peruvian contact’s influence.

Their investment paid off. When Fujimori was sworn in as president of Peru, Montesinos took control of the SIN. According to Rafael Merino, who worked with Montesinos at the intelligence service, his newly appointed boss “contacted the main drug mafias in Colombia and Mexico” as soon as he’d settled into his office. Incarcerated criminals corroborate this story. Said Los Camellos drug ring operator Boris Foguel in an interview from October 2000: “Anyone who did not negotiate with [Montesinos] the right to cross-border operations – that is, pay him multi-million dollar bribes – was persecuted to death by the Peruvian authorities, to the point where they would shoot down in mid-flight small planes loaded with cocaine and dollars.”

As SIN-head, Montesinos played an extremely dangerous and delicate balancing act, accepting money from cartels to keep the drug trade going while at the same time working with both the CIA and the DEA to try and shut everything down. This degree of double-crossing was bound to backfire eventually, and it nearly did in 1996. That year, around 170 kg of cocaine was seized aboard a Peruvian Air Force plane transporting military equipment into Russia. Despite extensive investigations, nobody was ever convicted.  

“All the indications,” write journalists Sally Bowen and Jane Holligan in their watershed book The Imperfect Spy: The Many Lives of Vladimiro Montesinos, which I picked up at a book fair in Puno, on the border between Peru and Bolivia, “are that Montesinos remained personally involved with the illegal drugs trade until the late 1990s, perhaps even until he fled Peru. He had power and insider knowledge of the counter-drug efforts, and he let it be known that his influence was for sale.”

The thing that brought Montesinos all the way to the top – his desire for knowledge and control – also proved to be his downfall. During his political career, Montesinos routinely and secretly filmed himself bribing politicians, judges, and other government employees. His idea was to use these tapes as blackmail if necessary. However, this plan fell apart when, on September 14, 2000, one of these videos ended up in the hands of a Peruvian TV station. Exposed, Montesinos turned into a pariah. When Fujimori, in a futile attempt to save his own reputation, tried to lay off Montesinos, the security chief flat out refused to accept his resignation. Holed up inside the SIN headquarters, he started planning a coup, then fled the country when he realized his chances of success were microscopic. With help from the FBI, Montesinos was captured in Venezuela and extradited to Peru. Held inside a maximum security prison, Montesinos – still alive – is constantly facing additional charges as new evidence of his criminal activities gets unearthed. 

Despite his long-term imprisonment, Vladimiro Montesinos still has considerable influence over Peruvian society. Many of his incriminating tapes were spirited away by allies, and people in power remain loyal to him in fear of those tapes getting leaked. Along with Fujimori, Montesinos continues to be admired by Peruvian conservatives who – similar to Trump’s adherents in America – faithfully deny the irreparable damage he has done to their country, not to mention the countless murders he has authorized. Sitting at a bar with some construction workers from Mancora – a beach town in the north of Peru – one elderly gentleman grabbed my copy of Imperfect Spy and told me, “This book is full of lies!” I didn’t reply. My Spanish wasn’t good enough to tell him why I thought he was wrong. But even if it was, I don’t think it would have been my place to tell him anyway.

The post The Life and Drug Trade of Vladimiro Montesinos: Peru’s Shadiest Drug Trafficker appeared first on High Times.

It was the final stop for The Smashing Pumpkins and Jane’s Addiction. There’d been a few bumps in the tour, but it all ended with splendid rock and a whole lot of Perry Farrell quotes we couldn’t get enough of hearing, pondering, and wondering, how can we get high with Perry Farrell one day?

“Let’s Go Motherfuckers!” – Mr. Farrell 

The two iconic rock groups delivered more than trips down nostalgia lane together. Yes, “Jane Says” or “Tonight, Tonight” ignited a flood of feel-good memories of bright summer afternoons or lazy school days. However, even the band’s classics are gifts that keep on giving in the present. The two bands gave their fans more fond memories that’ll hit them like soft bricks when their songs hit the radio or, more accurately, Spotify in the future. 

Poppy set the tone for the night well—a mixture of rock and comedy. She’s got a lovely voice, especially when she screams, “Fuck the world, it’ll just fuck you back!” She followed that song with a brief silence and a pleasant, soft-spoken, “Thank you,” which had me howling. She just radiates rock—an artist just doing her own thing.

“Wine, weed, can’t stop, can’t stop.” – You Know Who

Once Poppy left the stage, it was Jane’s Addiction time. Queens of the Stone Age’s guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen filled in for Dave Navarro, while original bassist Eric Avery was welcomed back with love and Stephen Perkins kept the energy high on drums. Everyone on stage was playing at an 11, but Farrell, he’s just from another planet, isn’t he? 

Farrell was happy to be back home in Hollywood. The city was equally as delighted to have him back. He is a showman of his own making, although his infectious joy on stage did call David Lee Roth. Just an energizer bunny with a graceful voice to compliment his high-wired movements. 

He is almost always on the move. 

Now, I could go on and on about everything Farrell said in between songs, because really, what other frontman says during a show at the Hollywood Bowl: “It’s a good day when you have a fucking hard-on.” The memorable quotes kept on coming, but his voice was just as entertaining. 

Farrell’s voice always had a hypnotic effect.There’s a gentleness to it, kind of an innocence that can clash with or compliment his more hard-edged songs in a way that’s rich in dynamicism. That voice along with the rest of the band can send you down a nice lazy river with “Summertime Rolls,” which I really wish they played, or a rollercoaster of rock, like “Three Days.” It’s a voice and band that knows how to tell a story. 

On the last night of the tour, Perry’s voice sounded practiced, not tired. He was in lockstep with the band. The group kept the electricity on full blast. It was a show. “What goes good with wine?” Farrell asked. “Sex.” He shared this around the time Ferell’s collaborator, wife, and vocalist, the one and only Etty Lau Farrell, danced and rocked back and forth on a plastic horse. The presentation and dancers match some of Jane’s sexually charged lyrics, but there’s also romance there! It was sweet watching a couple create art together and go nuts for one another. 

By the end of Jane’s Addiction loaded one-hour set, Farrell had a bottle of wine in hand and didn’t want to leave from the look of it. The band behind one of the all-time great rock albums Nothing’s Shocking was warmly embraced. As they deserved.

“You guys like spanking? Come see me after the show.” – P.F.

Billy Corgan reminded us all that the band is now about 35 years old. There was a collective sense of, holy shit, it’s been that long? After over three decades, Corgan keeps exploring new pathways with The Smashing Pumpkins. The Pumpkins recently released ATUM – Act 1, part one of a three-part rock opera that is… divisive. Instead of delivering more of the same, why not polarize, right? Flaws and all, at least the Pumpkins are still exploring.

The band isn’t completely focused on the past when they play live, either, but of course, songs from Gish, Siamese Dream, and Mellon Collie And the Infinite Sadness completely rock and sometimes even wreck—in a good way—the crowd. Together, Corgan and guitarist James Iha, who could barely move on stage and yet was so charismatic, do a version of “Tonight, Tonight” on two acoustic guitars that, I’ll say, was moving. 

The Pumpkins are now a well-oiled machine live. The setlists are tight and flow organically. The band knows when to go quiet or, often in spectacular fashion, go big. Whenever Corgan’s voice wailed and Jimmy Chamberlin gracefully bashed the shit out of his drums, the crowd was on their feet. Such a treat watching Chamberlin at work, as well as seeing Corgan, Chamberlin, and Iha together after years apart. It’s special, and Corgan recognized that when he thanked the crowd. 

One Last Word from Perry Farrell

If it’s not obvious by now, I want to walk down the corridors of this man’s mind with a joint and, just in case for protection, a wiffleball bat. Half-kidding aside, Farrell wasn’t all jokes when he wasn’t singing. In fact, at one point he showed more support for the women of Iran than far too many public officials in the United States. Farrell for 2024, am I right?  

“Our hearts go out to them,” Ferell said. “I just want to let you all know, if you look at the world as a paradox, this is a sign. A sign that the Iranian people they’re not going to take that shit anymore. They’re going to go to the streets. One day, I hope we can meet at God’s mountain and celebrate life and humanity.” 

The post An Ode to the Edible King, Perry Farrell appeared first on High Times.

Christie said he took a deep dive into psychedelics more than 10 years ago, going through what’s now referred to as “ego death,” in an effort to discover bliss and find unity with God. He used them as a tool to find meaning in this life and get beneath the human subconscious that can hinder our growth and development.

As a child, he was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyper Disorder (ADHD) and clinical depression, stating his depression was mostly based on poor decisions and life situations he put himself in.

Prescribed Adderall and antidepressants as a child, he realized he was self-medicating with cannabis in college. He dropping out early, leaving cannabis behind in the wake, then added psychedelics in an attempt to shake off the depression.

He was tripping regularly on either psilocybin mushrooms or acid once or twice a month. This, he said caused him to stop going out and socializing, with his fantasy life taking over.

“I’d go through a kind of cosmic consciousness, then I’d sober up and have to go to work the next day,” he laughed. “I realized these stages I was going through on the psychedelics were already there in my mind. I didn’t have to keep tripping or going through it to move forward. It was the difference between using the experience to open a door or actually walking and working through it.”

With the difference between trying and doing firmly understood, Christie felt he didn’t have to continue using psychedelics. He used the experiences he already had as a tool to get to the next life level, keeping cannabis use as part of his wellness and musical process.

“I hadn’t yet written music, played an instrument, or even considered myself a musician,” he said. “Psychedelics put the pieces together for me. Pointed me in the right direction … I feel psychedelics are as an important a tool to psychology as a telescope is to astronomy.”

“My method in making music became medicating with cannabis, jamming, and recording.”

– Willy Christie

Breathing the Third Eye Open

Meditation has long been a way for humans to transcend their own subconscious—to leave behind the baggage of emotion we store in the mind that can cause us to stagnate as developing human beings.

Through Holotropic breathwork, Christie said he was and is able to transcend much in the same way he did on the psychedelics. 

Holotropic breathing exercises were developed in the 1970s by Dr. Stanislav Grof and his wife, Christina, initially using lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). When the psychoactive formulation was made illegal, the couple developed the breathing technique to allow their subjects the same type of release and realizations outside of themselves.

“The point is not where the work takes you,” he continued, “but what you do with the experience afterwards. Using psychedelics as a treatment shows you the work you need to do, where you need to be in your life – especially if a change is needed.”

It’s not unusual for someone to use psychedelics to help them get to another place of emotional wellness. Fungi, LSD, MDMA, and ayahuasca are all used to help dig into the subconscious for understanding, to heal trauma, and to aid in addiction recovery, offering a reset as a starting point.

“The experiences while on these substances open up your third eye, allowing you to see what’s important, leading you on a path to healing,” he added. “But you still have to do the work. My use of acid actually taught me to medicate smarter, helped me to feel peace long after the experience had ended.”

Christie said he also realized that the psychedelics were more about feeling, and that once your brain stops ruminating, that’s the point where you are truly present—to “be here now,” as the late, great spiritual teacher, Ram Dass, once advised. And meditation, he said, gives him that same portal of peace.

“That’s the message I convey through music—moments of peace,” he continued. “If you have a feeling of peace, of being present, it’s easier to have faith that everything is going to be all right, and you are on the right path.”

Music, he said, is a placeholder for other messages, melodically speaking directly to the subconscious. A signpost letting you know you are not alone, united by a common thread of words and melody.

“Talk about some radical shit camouflaged in music,” he laughed. “Music has a universal message and can speak to many. This may be a dream we are living in, but we are all in the same dream. Music puts you directly in the present. Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now was life changing for me in living in the moment.”

“Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.”

– Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (New World Library)

The Message in Music

Christie recently released a psychedelic rock album, Kukuni, created in a self-imposed six-month isolation, “accidentally” sacrificing the entire summer of 2019.

Afterwards, he swore he’d never lose another summer, and then America’s mandatory COVID-19 lockdown hit, forcing a second isolation period and the completion of the album—fueled by consuming copious amounts of weed. 

“I’m one of the members of the “do drugs and make music for people who do drugs and listen to music,” he laughed. “I went through pounds of weed during the six months time it took to write the album. The influence of the plant is undeniable. One song on the album, ‘Zorrillo’, is a reference to weed. It’s the Spanish word for ‘skunk’.”

His moniker Kukuni makes this album self-titled. It’s a play on the word cocooning—likened to his self-imposed, then pandemic-mandated lockdown.

“I was listening to NPR and misheard the word ‘cocooning.’ I was expecting to hear some new foreign concept, as I’d just become hip to the Japanese concept of Forest Bathing,” he said. “If you are stressed, you go out into the forest and breathe in the pine air. The word cocooning sounded like Kukuni to me, so I went with it.”

The connection to the forest and cannabis is strong, as terpenes are also found in pine trees (pinene). It’s one in the same.

“Just like when you smoke a cultivar with the pinene terpene, when you go into the forest and breathe in that terp, you are instantly relaxed and alert. It’s the same effect,” he concluded.

Christie was recently signed by Liquid Culture, a global community of artists and creators with a mission to preserve and further the psychedelic experience—founded by Nutritious and “Renaissance woman, publicist extraordinaire,” Zoe Wilder.

Christie’s album had him working with producer Tony Buchen (Smashing Pumpkins, Sam Gendel, John Carroll Kirby) and drummer Robby Sinclair (Linda Perry, Chet Faker).

The album cover is trippy in itself, shot by Los Angeles-based photographer, Emily Eizen. The cover features a nod to the plant, with Christie holding cannabis flowers he grew in a vase. In the other hand he holds a mirror, as a sign of his constant searching and self-reflection.

Fueling the Muse

Hailing from Kansas City, Kansas, Christie proved what we all know: even in conservative, illegal states, people grow cannabis. The plant prevails.

“I’ve been growing now for 12 years, but was living with the constant fear of a knock at the door and going to prison for the mandatory five-year sentence when I was still in Kansas,” he said. “So, I moved to Los Angeles in 2016, staying with friends in West Hollywood. When I arrived and exited the freeway there was a gas station on the corner and I remember thinking how high the gas prices were and thinking to myself, I’ll never be able to make it here.”

After placing an ad on Craigslist to put a band together, he met a girl—acquiring both a bandmate and a girlfriend—making the high prices of California a little more bearable. A job with a cannabis company didn’t hurt.

“I worked for a company called the Venice Cookie Company,” he said. “They’re called VCC today and still make a beverage, Cannabis Quencher.

His cultivar, Rainbow Road, was inspired by Mario Kart’s final course on Mario Kart 64. 

“On the course, you are literally driving on a rainbow with stars as guardrails,” he explained. “You are driving around in space on a psychedelic rainbow. What’s better than that?”

Kukuni is filled with symbols, myths, and fables—the language of the subconscious.

“I like to take people into the dark forest of the human spirit and shine a light on the path less taken,” he surmised. “It’s what cannabis does for me, and it’s in the spirit of the music I make.”

The post Higher Profile: Kukuni’s Willy Christie, Musician and Breeder appeared first on High Times.

Recently, the duo told us how they work with companies to not let restrictions hamstring creativity, as well as their incredible work on the Grateful Dead-themed Scarlet Fire Cannabis Co. 

High Times: How did everything with SevenPoint Interiors begin?

Randy: To take a step back, our parent company is called Visual Elements. The primary focus there is high-end retail manufacturing. So we build stores for clients like Nordstrom, Coach, Louis Vuitton, Kate Spade, Hermes, right? My dad actually started the business, and he’s been doing it for 30-plus years. And we started Visual Elements, I think, in 2010. I guess over the years I’ve been working for my dad since I was a teenager. Des and I have been friends for a really long time and we have this amazing manufacturing facility, so we thought, how do we utilize it to do something a little bit more creative and a little bit more direct-to-consumer facing? So that’s when we started the COFO brand, which was targeted to highlight emerging designers locally in Toronto.

With the cannabis side, SevenPoint Interiors started in 2017. With the legalization federally in Canada, it became legal all at once and we wanted to be able to offer our design and manufacturing services to that industry. But understanding that the customers are not our typical… They don’t have retail experience. They don’t necessarily know what it is to operate a retail store, but they won the lottery and they want to open a dispensary as fast as possible, right? So we kind of grabbed that opportunity by the horns and started SevenPoint Interiors, so that we were super focused on cannabis and there was no question about what we did.

Desmond: It was an odd rush because it was a lottery system here in Canada where X amount of licenses were handed out by month. Everyone was just like, when can we open as soon as possible? That led to a modular system that we’ve created to help with quick turnarounds. So, it’s a pre-engineered store fixture system that’s modular, it can expand, it can contract and accommodate retail spaces of many different sizes. All while, really we have a lens on creating a fixture that was specific to the cannabis industry. So everything that came from, what’s your experience when you’re looking at flower? We created our flower global system. We have our capsule, which again, it’s magnifying.

Randy: Yeah, when we realized how quick these turnarounds were, we were like, “You know what? We need a fixture system to support all of these projects.” Because we can’t design brand new fixtures for every client who comes to the door, who needs to open in 12 weeks or whatever it is, right? So that fixture system has been great. It’s budget-friendly. Because we’re vertically integrated, not only are we providing the interior design piece of things, but we’re also managing the budget. I think that’s where we actually have a leg up because we’re vertical. We manufacture for other design firms too, but sometimes a design firm doesn’t necessarily know what it costs to build the thing that they designed.

So a lot of times by the time the design is done and it comes time to price the store, that’s when the client realizes, “Oh shit, I actually can’t afford this. What can we do to value-engineer it?” And so, that’s sort of something we do too, right? Offer other options that try to bring the same aesthetic and design language but in a more cost-effective way.

Desmond: Our leg up is pretty much, we design towards a budget. So if you came to us and said you had a hundred thousand dollars to spend on store fixtures, we can work towards that budget because we build it in-house. We have a team of engineers. The whole production team is here, estimating and everything. We all share our thoughts and build and get a budget that works.

HT: Is that a draw for companies, that it’s more in-house? There’s more quality control?

Randy: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it’s a bit of a smoother process between the design and to manufacturing because we’re handing it off internally from our design team to our estimating team, to our engineers, to our production staff.

Desmond: We’re all under one roof, which makes things easier.

HT: Now having that experience of knowing how to go fast without sacrificing quality, when it comes to working on stores for Chicago, what are some lessons learned you want to bring to that city? For example, how to handle regulations?

Randy: Oh, a hundred percent. Even just living and working through the last five years of legalization in Canada, when it first started. A lot of the rules and regulations that you’re seeing roll out in the States that have now almost come and gone in a way, when dispensaries started opening in Toronto, it was like, okay, we need a barrier to entry. So, you can’t see anything from the street. We don’t want to see any product or any transactions. Every store either frosted their windows or put some sort of divider wall at the entrance and a check-in desk that’s dedicated for a security person to stand there and check IDs all day. 

Reality is, now most of the check-in desks are empty because they don’t want to pay for an employee to sit there all day to just check IDs. Now, there’s a sign that says if you’re under 21 you must show your ID. And then it’s up to the budtenders inside to make that judgment call of whether they’re going to check you or not.

But it started as a very hard and strict rule that everyone was being very careful to follow. And now, you can see it’s relaxed a little bit. As it should. I think some of the regulations were a little over the top. But now, for example, we’re working on some projects in Ohio and they want man-traps for entrances and exits that are—

Desmond: Yeah. From the waiting room to even the sales floor. And then we’ve seen all this happen, all these regulations that are just over the top. I mean with Canada being federal, it is a lot easier because everyone has mostly the same regulations, but state-by-state is different.

Randy: County-by-county is different.

Desmond: County-by-county is different now in the U.S. So yeah, we’re just learning all this on the medical side. We have one client in Ohio. Anyone that receives their license, they have to be open before, I think … February 23rd. And so, everyone’s rushing to get the design in the works, but then a lot of times it’s just educating our clients to say, “Hey, you know what? Design takes time and isn’t a push of a button.” And then production time is this, build the work back, we got to set weekly meetings. We need to hit certain milestones, we need to have certain decisions made, otherwise everything gets delayed.

HT: Do you guys ever find some of those regulations or restrictions creatively limiting, or do you think of them as chances to get more creative and find solutions to them?

Randy: I think a little bit of both. Working inside a box is always, I don’t know, it comes with its pros and cons. One example we can give you, I don’t know if you saw the Project Scarlet Fire—

HT: For the Grateful Dead theme store. Great work.

Randy: You probably saw the photos of that tunnel, that series of walls. So that store, we didn’t frost the windows. We did create some dividing walls, but through that tunnel from the outside of the store, you can see all the way to the back of the store. You can see people move between the panels but you don’t see the product and you don’t see any transactions. It was a way for us to create some visual interest from the exterior but also working within that box of hiding the sight lines.

Desmond: And when you’re in front of the store, you have to see it in person because it automatically wants to attract you and it looks like an optical illusion of some sort. Or people that are like, “Is that a mirror or something happening?” It makes you just draw clients in to experience the space.

HT: How did that design for that store come about?

Desmond: Every client is different, but Dave in particular, being the deadhead that he is, he is a passionate Grateful Dead lover. He goes and travels far distances to go to the shows and he wanted to have fun with it. We sort of agree, you’re selling weed, why not take the opportunity to up that retail experience because you can?

HT: What would you say are some usual essentials for a retail experience? 

Desmond: Well, lockable fixtures. You definitely need to have lockable fixtures. If you’re showcasing any cannabis products on the floor, they can’t be open shelves so that people can take them or anything like that. Efficiency at point of sale. So at the cash desk, something that we have established as how we plan the space is so that usually the vault is right behind the POS … And we’ve created this pass-through system where you can drop, from the vault, your product in, close the drawer and then from the sales floor side, open up the drawer, grab the product, turn around, give it to your client. It’s just quick during rush hour and things like that. But lockable cases are one key thing. A lot of people want to see the experience. Some people want to see the actual flower. Depending on the client, a few like the whole deli-style kind of look where you can open up your mason jar and let your client select the nugget they want.

Randy: And that’s state-by-state too. Not all states allow that. In Canada, there’s no open-sell in Canada. Everything’s packaged and it’s got a government seal on it, right?

HT: What are some common aesthetic choices you or your clients respond to?

Randy: Our first step when we approach a new client is we send out a questionnaire. It’s a detailed questionnaire. It forces the customer to think about some questions that they probably hadn’t thought … about before reading the questionnaire. But the first thing we hit on is your brand. What’s your brand about? What’s your brand story? What’s your identity? Because the aesthetics are all driven by that. Who you are and who your target audience is and what’s your aesthetic as a brand.

Where are they at right now, if they’re an existing brand? And where would they like to go or where would they like to be? We really want to convey that message, what their strengths are as a brand. Definitely carry through their brand story and color story. So that really dictates it. For example, we have one client that’s called Lake Effect. They’re out in Michigan. Their store is currently blue. So blue is definitely a heavy color within the space that we redesigned for them. 

Desmond: They also wanted 1500 SKUs or something like that.

Randy: So based on the way those questions are answered, we know we’re going to need a lot of shelving. We know from a brand standpoint it’s going to be a lot of blue and then Des pulls together a mood board of different materials that complement each other. It all depends on the brand. I don’t know that there’s an aesthetic that we necessarily lean toward. 

Desmond: We’re definitely kept in-the-know with a lot of forecast resources that we look into. So we know what’s, for example, we know what colors are trending 2023, ’24, ’25. Really, it’s just paying attention to what’s happening, I guess, globally and following market research. Resources to think, okay, you know what? To build a store that’s kind of future-proof, right? That’s an important factor for us. Timeless. Something that’s trending right now, but it’s going to be timeless for the next couple of years. 

HT: Creatively, how does cannabis help the both of you in creating?

Randy: Obviously during working hours, if we’re at the office, we stay away from it. But we definitely, both Des and I like to smoke some weed, put our heads down, get creative, and just problem-solve. It’ll help me zone in on one thing. 

Desmond: [The] ideation phase, I think for both of us, is smoking weed. We start thinking about ideas. Then when we sober back down, it’s, “Let’s get her done.” We tally up what we’ve explored and then put it to work. But for me, it’s been my lifetime with smoking. It’s always been part of my creative process, and I think for Randy as well.

HT: Before we wrap up, any subjects you want to stress the importance of for the both of you, the company, and your general field?

Randy: We covered the module system, which we continue to expand on. The importance of branding, we can’t talk about that enough. There are so many clients that come to the table. Not that it should, but obviously if someone comes to the table who’s got their branding figured out, it just makes, we know the process is going to be smoother.

Desmond: And not only that, but in Canada here, the cannabis stores are extremely oversaturated. Our government just kind of gave free reign. Whoever wants to open up a cannabis store can go ahead. And we’re seeing many close now.

Desmond: That didn’t pull up their socks to do their work on how to operate a cannabis store, we’re seeing it, right? But that also shined a light on how important brand placement is in the cannabis industry. Education is key.

Randy: Yeah, customer service.

Desmond: Customer service and education. You want to walk into a store and you want to talk to somebody that not just knows what they like to smoke, but what’s good for you, for whatever effect you need, be it for health reasons or for recreation. That’s such a key, important factor, we’ve noticed, with the oversaturation of all these different stores here. The ones that are succeeding are… It’s either a price war, if not that, then it’s education, customer service. It’s like once you find your hairstylist, you kind of stick with it, right?

The post Desmond Chan, Randy Simmen Want To Make Timeless Dispensaries appeared first on High Times.

His newest special, Posehna Non Grata, is out on Moment.co right now and while the pandemic shook up his original taping date, Posehn used the time to rewrite his hour and to eat some Taco Bell. Hey, we all did some stuff. I’m not sure what the material was going to be for Posehna Non Grata originally, but what came out of his revision is relatable, a little nerdy, and profoundly hilarious. When it comes to Brian Posehn, his resume might be one that hopes and dreams are made of, but off paper, he’s just like us. A junk-food-eating, TV-watching stoner.

Watched and loved Posehna Non Grata. You were all set to tape it, and the pandemic hit. How much of your material did you end up changing between then and now? 

Brian Posehn: Oh, it all got thrown out! The special is all brand new, with the exception of one joke. I do this joke where I talk about weight loss, and this really happened—I scared this woman at one in the morning at the hotel gym. The lights were off where this woman was working out and I walked in, but there was this motion sensor so it turned the lights on. The lights flash on and she sees me in the doorway, and I actually said this to a stranger, “Don’t be scared.” That was the only joke in the special that had been around pre-COVID. Everything else is new. 

The part about The Rock, that just happened recently? 

Yeah, that was the first time I went on stage after COVID, and it just happened that day, where The Rock responded to an old thread from six years ago. The first time I went on stage I brought the phone up like, holy shit! You guys are not going to believe what just happened! The joke just wrote itself from there. I have tags I change with it, but it’s just one of those things where I really have fun doing it, so I just add more jokes to it.  

Have you and The Rock stayed in touch? 

No, not really at all. That was the last response I saw. It could have been just a random person responding or it could be two people because he fired the last guy. I like to think it was really The Rock. 

I like to think that too. Whenever tweets are extra funny, I hope it’s actually him. I like that you kept the screenshot as a trophy. 

The most embarrassing thing is the only reason it became a screenshot for me is because every night before I did the joke, I’d have to go on Twitter before the show and find the old thread. Then I had a younger comedian go, “Hey, you know you can just screenshot that, right?” I was like, yeah totally. How do I do that? I’m so old.

Did you learn to do anything new during the pandemic? Not mentally, but skill-wise. 

No, I just gained weight and watched TV. I watched the same shit I watched my whole life and binged movies. You know, comfort movies. That’s what I turned to a lot, old shows. So no, nothing.

I heard you mastered delivery timing and I think that’s pretty impressive. 

Oh yes! The key is ordering the weed first. Some days the weed guy must be close to me though because sometimes, it gets here in 15 to 20 minutes. I mastered it pretty fast though, like, on the first time. 

Do you think there is any correlation between this skill and some fat shaming you mentioned in your special? 

For sure! I grew up with garbage fast food stuff so I eat more Taco Bell than I care to admit. It’s not even Mexican food, I don’t know what it is. I think it’s Soylent Green. I think we’re eating people! Now I’m losing weight, but I still smoke. People ask me how I get super high and walk and it’s like, I just do. 

You mentioned getting high with strangers and some people are so sketchy…

I think I have a pretty good sketch detector and I’m pretty streetwise. I figure I made it this far. Post-COVID I don’t really smoke with people anymore or if I do, it’s my own stuff. I’ll usually have my own pre-roll with me. It feels like people across the country are reluctant to pass joints, or that’s been my experience. Back then, everyone had something and it was cool. Now people are like, do you wanna suck this? And I’m like, not really. 

Are you doing any mushrooms? They’re all the rage these days. 

I’m not, but it’s funny because I’m finding out that all of these parents are. I wasn’t even aware that it was a huge thing. One of the dads I know microdoses and it changed everything for me. Now I’m looking at him like, dude this guy is high as balls right now! 

He’s probably a better dad. More tolerant like, sure, draw all over the walls; you’re as great as Picasso. 

I’ve never done what everyone is doing so this one is like, ehhh. I got too in my head with acid and shrooms back in the day. I feel like it was more available in California than anywhere probably. Practically everyone I knew tripped in some way. The nerds, the stoners—I would just get too in my head. One time I was at this party and a girl turned me down at a party. So I just walked all the way home, in San Francisco, tripping balls.

I think it’s an age block because we grew up with weed and mushrooms being illegal. Now there are weed stores everywhere, and it’s so great, but mentally I’m like, this is nuts. 

Yes! At first those places would get raided and shut down so even when it went completely legal, I still had this fear of it being raided when I was in the store. I don’t know why but I do think it comes from growing up with it being illegal your entire life. 

I blame Nancy Regan. 

I blame her for a lot of things. I get diarrhea and I blame Nancy, but it was really Taco Bell. 

The post Brian Posehn and The Rock Sitting in a Tree, T-W-E-E-T-I-N-G appeared first on High Times.

The DEA’s reasoning behind the affirmation that cannabis seeds are legal in the U.S. had to do with the 2018 Farm Bill that legalized hemp, defining and separating it from the pot we smoke as Cannabis sativa with less than .03% delta-9 THC. When questioned about the legality of seeds, tissue culture, and “other genetic material” the agency response was that marihuana (yes, they still spell it like that) seeds that contain less than .03% delta-9 THC meet the definition of hemp and are therefore, not a controlled substance under the Controlled Substances Act. 

Sprouting the Seed: Reviving & Distributing Genetics

While speaking in his tropical sunroom filled with the lush multicolored tie-dye like leaves of caladiums and yellow and pink ombre neon hued plumeria blossoms on an overcast December day, Rosenthal explains about how the idea to distribute cannabis seeds as a free bonus with his most recent book began. We’re longtime friends and co-collaborators on a number of projects including the 2022 release of the Cannabis Grower’s Handbook, and I start off our conversation/smoke session by asking about a story he once told me of selling seeds in the Bronx as a child.

“I lived in a residential area and there were people with yards with different plants—a lot of annuals, things like marigold, zinnias—and I would go and collect the seeds from plants when they didn’t clip the flowers off and then I made them into packs,” he says. “It was a place where loads of people went out and hung out on benches and everything and I would sell them the seeds, for which they had no use because they were living in apartments but (laughs).”

Now in his late 70s, Rosenthal was just 8 years old at the time and even received an unofficial certificate for his seed business which, believe it or not, was called Homegrown Seed Company. This was the beginning of a longtime career promoting plant cultivation. He co-founded High Times Magazine in 1974 and the 1978 New York Times review of the Marijuana Grower’s Guide he co-authored with Mel Frank catapulted his publishing career. Through all these years of smoking tough he’s settled on one cultivar that’s arguably his favorite strain, J-27. Back in California’s medical marijuana era, growers needed patients to up their plant counts and one in particular found a number of them amongst the employees of Rosenthal’s publishing company. This grower would deliver ounces, but never the cut. Within the last year, he finally acquired the sole J-27 plant, which he describes as a “treat” with a similar terpene profile to Wedding Cake.

“I gave it to two good breeders, but they were so frustrated by it that they gave it back and I had the only plant,” he says. “And I said, ‘You know what? I’m exactly the wrong person to be doing this because I’m too much of a slacker.’”

To revive the almost lost cultivar he partnered with Humboldt Seed Company and hopes to release hybrid J-27 seeds by 2023. 

“They’ve had a hard time with the plant because it’s a cut from the cut, from the cut from 20 years ago,” Rosenthal explains. “The plant is saying, ‘Oh please let me die.’ But they did coax a few clones from it and they have the same problems, but now that they have clones they can breed it.” 

His own homegrown seed promotion, which Rosenthal has coined the “Million Marijuana Seed Giveaway,” started with a female Jack Herer crossed with “two males, that were vigorous and early,” from Humboldt Seed Company, Very Cherry and Blueberry Muffin, to create Double Dipper. 

“As far as the Million Marijuana Seed Giveaway, all of the crosses are really good crosses and they’re hybrids,” he says. “They’re not F1 hybrids [first generation], but they’re F2 hybrids. The next [generation] they sort of sort out and you get a lot of variation. So there’s going to be variation in these plants and then a grower can choose which plants he or she would like to continue with.”

When Rosenthal grew some of his seeds for his own backyard phenohunt this past summer, he did so in a style that allows for more buds and less vegetation. Using light deprivation techniques he brought the plants into flower early, which produced single stalks of long buds. This method allowed him to grow many plants close together. It also enabled the plants to grow more efficiently, using their carbon dioxide resources to grow buds, as opposed to leaves and branches. This method is also economical as the reduced amount of time spent in vegetation gives indoor and greenhouse growers enough time for an extra harvest, he explains.

Prisoners of Weed Packs

Rosenthal’s wife and publishing partner Jane Klein says the seed strategy has worked in terms of boosting book sales. Each seed drop, of which there have been four thus far, averages about 400 packs containing 10 seeds each. In the sale of the “Prisoners of Weed” packs, 10% of each sale is given to the Last Prisoner Project, an organization which advocates to free those incarcerated for marijuana convictions. 

“So many people who are getting the seeds to grow, but also as a collection, already had the books, so then we created the grow tips booklet,” Klein says of a short booklet that includes two seed packs with purchase. 

The booklet has a QR code that will send people to an expanding library of material. 

“We definitely were inspired by the DEA,” Klein says of the book bundle/seed promotion in relation to the April 2022 DEA letter. “I like it that they were saying that seeds don’t fall under the Controlled Substances Act so now we have the whole conversation of should [cannabis] be rescheduled or descheduled? Why should it be even included in the Controlled Substances Act?”

Seeds vs. Clones   

In this new legal space for seeds Rosenthal predicts a future where they go down in price, leading more growers to choose seeds over clones. 

“Let’s say that you have a variety that’s very uniform, there’s a lot of advantages of starting from seed,” he explains. “There’s a lot less of a chance of infection because many viruses don’t transfer to the seed so that’s one thing. Another thing is that they’re easy to store, transport, and things like that. Seeds will wait, but clones won’t.”

He takes his prediction further stating that as the genetics of cannabis seeds get more uniform we might see people offering germinated seeds, or seedlings, in the same way that tomato seedlings are sold at nurseries.

Rebellious entrepreneurs like Rosenthal and Klein will surely keep pushing the boundaries of where cannabis seeds might pop up next. Watch for where that might be; growing your own weed in 2023 makes for a great New Year’s resolution. 

“I think another interesting thing with the DEA ruling is [thinking about] will more hydro stores start to sell seeds?” Klein says. “This would definitely be a new product that wouldn’t take up a lot of shelf space for them and would inspire people to come into the store and maybe buy other things.”

The post Rejoice! Cannabis Seeds are Legal appeared first on High Times.

In the early morning hours of November 15th we lost our brother Jesse unexpectedly. Affectionately known as Woodie, or Jesse the Chef, he was a loving son and brother, a devoted boyfriend, successful entrepreneur, but maybe most importantly, a true friend to so, so many, his loss will be felt forever. He was only 29 years old.

It’s hard to summarize someone as complex as Jesse. While most people knew him for his incredible skills as a chef, or his larger than life internet personality, those who know him closely knew he was so much more than online banter and a great meal. Dude was a huge nerd too. Y’all know about the Pokémon tattoos, right? He’d dive down whatever weirdo rabbit hole with me, and somehow, he made even those cool. Dude has presence, and the confidence and humility to push his ideas to the next level, and to get us all to buy in.

Raised in Memphis – on the South side with his Mom but getting game from his dad on the North side, he was residing more recently in Los Angeles. Jesse was proof that you could take the kid out of the south, but that your home never really leaves you. But man, he loved where he was from. You could feel it in his energy as much as you could hear it in his voice. Anytime anyone from Memphis did anything we would hear about it. I can still hear him in my head saying ‘You know where he’s from, my boy?’ He played that ‘Memphis, memphis, memphis’ clip maybe 6,000 times. Sure he was doing what he needed to out West, but he celebrated where he was from every chance he got – and he made you want to go there too. I know I speak for all of his friends and followers when I say his stories from his trips back home made it sound better than Vegas. I’m heartbroken that he wasn’t here to see us congregate for him in his home town.

But in LA – LA’s not always the friendliest place, but somehow he made it his home. And in his presence it really felt like one for all of us transplants trying to make something of ourselves. He welcomed us in in a way I haven’t felt often in my life, let alone in the city. He cared. He supported. He uplifted whatever he loved, let alone his people. He’d raise hell for us…

And Maiya – their relationship was a model for us all. You don’t expect much to last in today’s world, but we were all sure they would. They were inseparable. They always matched. It was like you were watching a live action Rom Com – they we’re ALWAYS laughing.

And his parties – those were legendary. A who’s who of ballers from across the art, music and cannabis landscape would pull up to his house not just for a plate, but for the energy. To be around this magnet of cool. 

Truth be told, I just wanted to hang at his house any chance I got. Everyone I ever met there was the highest caliber of person, and I have so many more true, lifelong friends than I would have had I not known him. He’s the reason I started talking to Fidel, and Metro. He was like a cheat code for my coverage. But more than that, even those times where we would just watch whatever popped up on YouTube in his living room were somehow more special than your typical interaction with friends. There was a warmth there that him and Maiya fostered that I have only ever experienced in that house. You were going home every time you stopped by. That laugh. The commentary. The conspiracy theories. The incredible weed. Endless amounts of incredible weed. No one left sober or hungry, it was like an unspoken rule. It was a special combination of magic that hooked anyone fortunate enough to experience it. I know I speak for many of his friends when I say that I feel blessed I got to exist in his presence, and my heart breaks not only for our loss, but for all those that won’t get to experience it. So many people have reached out the last week to say they wished they got to know him, people who I’d told about him, and random strangers who watched him online, and honestly so do I. He was hard not to love.

But that was Jesse. He quantified the weird, and celebrated his love. He brought people together, and curated a life most could only lust after. We talked about hustling and how to make it – but the truth was, he had. Jesse was it. Yes he was an inspiration for so many that didn’t actually know him, but also for those truly close to him. He created his own wave and rode it with a confidence we don’t often see from even the greatest of showmen. He made Weed & Wagyu a lifestyle we all wanted to be a part of. Even some kid like me, who was fine just eating McDonald’s, was all of a sudden trying to play high end, and wearing Dior, because of Jesse. It was wild.

To his Parents, I hope you got to see how bright your son was shining. I know the internet is one thing, but believe me when I tell you that love was real. Dude was good EVERYWHERE. People would stop him in public for pictures, or just to tell him they loved his posts. And he would talk about you all the time, I remember how excited he was when his Dad was coming out. He wanted to show you off. He was so proud to be your son.

And to Maiya, girl he loved you more than anything. It is so clear that you two were soulmates – you were the dream for those of us who haven’t found our person. You gave us faith. I know nothing will ever replace that massive hole in your chest, but know this army Jesse built around himself is here for you forever, and his memory will live on through us all.

Selfishly, I am devastated. I never expected to lose my friend – we had so much left to do. He had so much still to share. We talked about doing an art show together, and I let my anxiety hold it back. I didn’t think I mattered, he was the guy. But he wanted to do it with me, and I never pushed it through. And I was supposed to see him the weekend before he passed. But I was tired, so I said ‘next time’. I thought there would be one. A next time… You always think you’re going to have more time. But let me tell you, you don’t always. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, sometimes it’s just over. And I know I speak for many of us when I say it breaks my heart that I’ll never get to see my friend again. Or call him. Or text him. Or get roasted in my DMs when I post something stupid. Or something that he thinks is Lemon Cherry Gelato. I hope he knows how much we loved him.

I will hold onto the last conversations we had. To the last night we saw each other, at the Montalban in Hollywood, seeing ourselves on the big screen for Fidel’s premiere. That was some bucket list shit, but it wasn’t supposed to be the last. I know I barely scratched the surface of what our friend had to share, but I feel blessed for the time I had. I will carry it with me. I will carry him with me, as I know the rest of us will as well.

Now, I don’t know what it is yet, but I know we have to do something down here [in Memphis], for Jesse and Memphis – a real celebration, not a mourning party, because it’s what he would have wanted. Putting on for Memphis was quintessential Jesse. 

And I know we need to support Maiya however we can, because she is what he cared about most. She was his world, as much as he was hers. 

And I think we all need to start cooking more, because it’s what he loved doing, and it will bring us closer to him – especially those of us who are terrible at it, if only so that we’ll hear that deep little chuckle over our shoulder from the master who we all know could make it way better than we were. I know it would have made him laugh to see us try. But most importantly because we all need to keep Jesse’s vision, Weed & Wagyu alive – however that works for you, I won’t judge if it’s American Beef. 

And finally, we’ve got to make sure we tell everyone we love that we love them as often as possible. If there was one thing Jesse was great at it was giving flowers. You never know when it’s going to be the last time. 

In Jesse’s honor, no more ‘next time’s.

I love you man, I’ll see you soon. Weed & Wagyu forever.

The post In Memory of Jesse the Chef appeared first on High Times.

When we connect by phone, the Long Strange Trip producer is ecstatic at the release of his latest film, Let There Be Drums!, which explores the history of drummers in famous bands and the drummers’ relationships with their children.

Over the course of our conversation, Kreutzmann dives into the origins of his filmmaking aspirations, the influence of the Grateful Dead lifestyle on pursuing his passions, the art of storytelling, and his firsthand look at the normalization of cannabis culture within the 70s Deadhead psychedelic movement.

High Times: Coming from such a prolific music family, how did filmmaking become your path?

Justin Kreutzmann: It became my path the minute I watched Apocalypse Now.

If you’ve seen the film, Mickey Hart tells the story of Francis Ford Coppola coming to Winterland and being blown away by the drum section. Coppola was in the middle of putting together Apocalypse Now and figuring out the score, and as anyone who has seen the film knows, it was a massive undertaking. So Coppola was really inspired by the drums and asked Mickey if he and dad [BIll Kreutzmann] could contribute to the percussion. Of course I was seven at the time and didn’t know any of this—I just knew we were going to Mickey Hart’s studio in Novato and we were going to watch this movie.

We sit down and it’s the Grateful Dead and all of the Coppola people and they put on the six hour version of Apocalypse Now. Francis sits next to the TV and describes the entire movie in terms of rhythm and what percussion sounds the jungle was making at certain points and I just loved it. With the Grateful Dead being so free and easy, you could watch something like Apocalypse Now without parental supervision. It was an amazing experience and even though ninety-percent of it probably went over my head, I looked at Francis like, “I don’t know what he’s doing, but I want to do that. That looks like an amazing job.”

So dad bought me a Super 8 camera and literally one of the first things I shot were the Grateful Dead New Year’s Eve shows in 1977. That’s how I started because you shoot what’s around. You shoot family home movies. I wish I’d shot more, but I was a shy little kid running around with a camera and the Grateful Dead scene—I know this will be a shock to everybody—wasn’t really one where it was like, “Yeah, come backstage and shine a light on all the stuff we’re doing.” You had to be stealthy, pick your moments, and not get yelled at. From seven or eight years old, [filmmaking] is what I wanted to do and I never had a fallback option.

Being around the Grateful Dead, it was very much encouraged to follow what inspired you and to do a job you love because otherwise life would be too hard. Filmmaking for me checked all of those boxes.

High Times: Having your father do what fueled him—how impactful was that on you in terms of staying the course and pursuing filmmaking?

Justin Kreutzmann: It was the most impactful thing ever. I saw what my dad did for work and [what he had to do] to play and make it great. I saw the effort he had to put in. I also saw the fun he got out of it and the rewards—certainly financially—but more the ten-thousand people dancing and cheering [for their music]. I also got to see his part in the band and understand the team effort.

I was in the studio when the band first started rehearsing “Terrapin Station.” For anybody who knows that song, there are a lot of parts, and so it was a long day sitting there watching the Grateful Dead figure it out. It was like Apocalypse Now—it was big, it was epic and I saw it getting more cohesive. The reward six months later was watching the band play these parts on stage and people freaking out. Being able to follow the whole process was really important.

With filmmaking, there’s the writing of it, the shooting of it, editing it, showing it to a theater—I equated it to doing what my dad did in the Grateful Dead and used the examples from him but just applied it to the film world. It’s all about the rhythm of the cuts. You can be deaf and watch a film and still love it because of the rhythm, the pace and the way the beats are landing.

A hard cut in a film is like the “one” beat. But also within that cut, there might be something that is landing on the “three.” You get into these rhythms that are not so pronounced but that can be very subtle and the audience can be moving along with it even if you’re not telegraphing your punches. We all know when you’re watching something and you turn the sound off and you’re just kind of bobbing your head because you can feel what it probably sounds like.

High Times: So whether it’s a film audience or a music audience, it’s more about connecting with them on an undercurrent that transcends sound.

Justin Kreutzmann: You’re telling a story. You never lose sight of the story you’re trying to tell but you’re telling that story visually, through sound, through music and the rhythm of the cuts. A lot of the really fun stuff is when somebody sees something in there that you didn’t even intend but they get something else out of it.

High Times: Along your career journey of understanding music and film, was there ever an experience or collection of moments that validated your initial impulse at pursuing your own filmmaking hero’s journey?

Justin Kreutzmann: There were two points. The first was in 1981 when we did a parody of the Rolling Stones tour produced by Bill Graham where all the guys in my sixth grade class dressed as The Rolling Stones under the premise that we were staying over at Bill Graham’s house. My teacher set up a screening for everybody in the grade—and while it was probably a terrible film—just watching it, having the kids cheer, and having that moment where your peer group recognized what you did creatively was so inspiring and gave you that first hit of validation.

The second one was realizing, “Hey, I might be able to feed my family,” and that filmmaking was something I could do as a career while not having to go through drastic measures to try and put food on the table. When you’re getting going, you hope it’s going to work, you have big dreams, but you have that fear of, “What if I’m no good at what I love to do?” I’m not sure how good I am, but at least I’m able to feed and clothe my children. My wife can take care of herself but we’re all getting by and we’re all having a very nice life.

High Times: There’s something really beautiful about picking a path that speaks to you—like with the members of Grateful Dead—and leaning into it. When you do that, everything else sort of falls into place.

Justin Kreutzmann: One-hundred percent. You also have to realize, growing up in the particular music scene that I did—the Grateful Dead did it their own way. Those guys were the same way back at home as the way they hit the stage. While they would have loved hits, they didn’t go out of their way to get them. They played the music they wanted to play, they had a million-to-one shot, they got really lucky and they were talented enough to make a great career. But it could have gone the other way. This was not particularly commercial radio music, and just watching people do exactly what they wanted to do musically and believe in themselves—even if only ten other people got it—that was great. But ten-million people got it, so that was better.

Growing up, the Grateful Dead didn’t have that private plane, cover of People Magazine, big celebrity thing. They were successful in doing their own thing, but it wasn’t like they couldn’t go out to dinner to a restaurant—it didn’t really impact their personal life, and in that way you kind of had the best of both worlds.

You watch the Rolling Stones and you think there’s no way Mick Jagger could go down to a 7-11 and buy a Slurpee. Maybe he could, but the assumption is he wouldn’t be able to without getting recognized. I have a lot of friends with whom we always joke we’re in the “famous father club,” friends whose dads were in The Beatles or whose dad was Bob Dylan. If your dad is Bob Dylan, everybody knows your dad—which can be tough—but Jacob [Dylan] is literally one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet in your life. Same with Sean Lennon and all those guys who would seem to have carte blanche and not be part of our world are actually really nice guys. It’s really fascinating because I always look at their dads and to me, The Beatles aren’t human, they’re this other thing that happened in the world—in a good way. The Grateful Dead were a few down-to-earth guys and The Beatles were on this mythical plane making this music that everybody loves.

High Times: In terms of your documentary Let There Be Drums!, what creatively inspired you to go on this journey and why this film?

Justin Kreutzmann: It’s something I’d been thinking about in the back of my mind for some time, something that I thought I could do well. Because of my dad, I had grown up around a lot of drummers, knew a lot of drummers’ stories, knew a lot of them personally—and originally, it was a lighthearted thing. Everybody’s got a drummer joke. Just ask [Jerry] Garcia, just ask Pete Townsend. Everybody’s got a really bad drummer joke that doesn’t end well for the drummers. So I thought we’d do this comedy of the sort of stereotypical hotel-smashing animal from the Muppets type stories. But the minute we started doing the interviews, it just went somewhere else. I blame Taylor Hawkins for this because he was the first guy to say, “Okay, I don’t know if this is for the documentary, but how stable was your home life growing up?” He started asking me questions and so instead of the interviewer/interviewee, we’re trading stories.

I’d have my list of twenty questions and the answers were all great, but the minute it went off and got more personal or into areas they don’t get asked a thousand times, it got more interesting. So when I got in the editing room, the film really told me what kind of film it wanted to be. There’s a lot of really interesting drum stuff in it, but there’s more interesting emotional and family stuff, and the connection just happens to be that it’s families of drummers.

Most everybody has a father, most everybody has a family, and most everybody can relate to issues and family stuff. I just sort of showed it in the context of being a kid of a drummer, like through Jason Bonham and Mandy Moon. I mean come on, if your dad is Keith Moon, I want to hear what that’s like. That’s really unique. Mandy’s not a drummer and she was the first interview we did for the film. I think her interview along with Taylor’s really set the tone. She wasn’t going to tell me about her dad’s technique or how he played shuffle. The stuff that really spoke to me emotionally is what ended up in the film and became the focus.

High Times: And drumming just happened to be the way in, but really it’s a much deeper narrative that you’re telling.

Justin Kreutzmann: I’m glad it worked out that way because if the pitch had been, “Hey, we’re going to do a film about our famous drummer dads,” that blows. Because it just sort of happened organically, it ended up being much better. Seeing the different pairings of dads who are here, dads who are no longer here and all that kind of stuff—that was all in the mix. You couldn’t just put that next to a funny hotel smashing story. There’s more to it than that. And also, everybody was being so freaking real with me—there was no way I couldn’t be real when it was me and my dad. We were as real as everyone else was, and that’s what I really love and respect about all of the people in this film.

High Times: Were there any commonalities across all of the interviews that you picked up on?

Justin Kreutzmann: The connective tissue between a lot of the things—and Jason Bonham says it really well: “When your dad’s in the band, you’re like whatever. It’s not like you’re in The Beatles.” He has this great line where he goes to see his dad sellout a stadium in Florida and he asks, “Who’s on the bill? There’s no way Led Zeppelin could do this.” It’s love and respect but just a total kid thing of “this is just something that your dad does,” but your dad just happens to be in Led Zeppelin, but you’re still not impressed because you see him all the time. So that was a very common theme that came up.

High Times: What role did cannabis play for you growing up? Were there any commonalities there?

Justin Kreutzmann: Obviously growing up in the 70s in the Grateful Dead world, cannabis was plentiful, loved, and respected. It wasn’t like all drugs bad, no drugs good. Cannabis, LSD—they weren’t considered drugs. Heroin, crack—that was the bad shit. Even alcohol. But cannabis was just like cigarettes. It’s what everybody did, it was around, and we knew a lot of people who grew it.

I myself was never a weed guy. It was too strong, it made me too freaked out, and so I missed that train. But I’d have to guess I was around enough that I probably had a ten year contact high just from being near the Grateful Dead.

I remember the Grateful Dead were playing Stanford and it was the second set. I was sitting on a road case by Jerry’s area and he walks out with the rest of the band and he’s got his roach in his hand and he just hands it to me. It’s bright daylight at Stanford, everybody could see me holding his joint like he was Indiana Jones at the ark. Part of me really wanted to take a hit but then I looked around and realized ten-thousand people could see me, so I quickly handed it to somebody else.

I’m a sober guy, so I play it pretty clean, but I don’t have a chip on my shoulder. I do love the smell wafting over because it reminds me of home and I wish I was one of those guys [who was able to do it]. I did some videos with the band Slightly Stoopid and they just looked like they were having so much fun. The guys would talk about how they would get edibles for their dads, which I thought was so cool. It works for them and it’s creative and it’s fun, but I’m a father and a husband now and I don’t want to “poke the beast” as they say. Mad props for people who can just have a good time and get a little stoney.

Follow @justinkreutzmann and check out https://greenwichentertainment.com/film/let-there-be-drums/ for access to his latest film Let There Be Drums! available now

The post Justin Kreutzmann on Music, Film, and a Lifestyle Inspired by The Grateful Dead appeared first on High Times.