Don’t get me wrong, though. There are plenty of perks to the job. Free weed is one of them. Public relations agencies are always sending me the latest, greatest pot products in hopes that I’ll give them a rave review. I get a slew of packages every week. It’s like Christmas all year round. Sometimes it’s a brand-spanking new, expensive smoking device—not yet released to the public—other times it’s CBD, and often enough it’s marijuana. While this might seem like a pretty sweet deal to most people, all of this complimentary cannabis can actually cause a bit of a problem on my end. For starters, I live in the prohibition state of Indiana—getting caught with a small amount can lead to thousands of dollars in fines and jail time. It’s also a federal drug offense to get cannabis through the U.S. mail, a felony, so Uncle Sam could bend me over big time. 

But when I sat down at my desk last Thursday morning, I didn’t anticipate any such trouble. With the holidays rapidly approaching, my only concern was getting all my assignments turned in before my editors shut down their emails and took the rest of the year off. So, without a moment to waste, I sucked back a lethal dose of caffeine and started typing.

As with most writers, I tend to get distracted. In between thoughts, I sometimes jump on social media and see what’s going on in the world. One of the pages I follow is this independent news watchdog based in my hometown that monitors local scanner traffic and reports incidents in real time. It’s usually a lot of “shots fired,” crackheads taking dumps in public, and unruly McDonald’s customers, that sort of thing. It’s more entertainment than news. But as I scanned the page, something interesting caught my attention. The most recent post reported that the local police department was en route to FedEx to investigate a package containing marijuana. At first, I didn’t think anything of it, other than “Oh man, somebody is in deep shit.” But then, it hit me. 

What if the person the package was addressed to was me! 

“Yikes,” I thought, sending the link over to my significant other to gauge her reaction. 

“Is it possible they’re coming for me?” I asked. 

“Yes,” she replied. “Definitely.” 

It was conceivable that I was the one in deep shit.

The situation, as most of you might imagine, had me on high alert. If police showed up at my office waving a search warrant around, I was inevitably going to jail, and fast. There’s enough weed in this place (from all of those public relations packages) to get me jammed up in the criminal courts for a long time. Let’s see, there’s flower, concentrates, edibles, you name it; it’s in my possession. I could start a small dispensary if this writing gig doesn’t pan out. Those bastard cops would storm in here on a mission to find pot and pot they would find. I’d be sitting in a police cruiser within five minutes of answering the door, en route to the Vanderburgh County jail to spend a very long weekend camping out with petty miscreants and alleged murders. I’d have to make up some ridiculous story, too, on why I was arrested to keep the ruffians from trying to steal my blanket. Considering all the violence and madness that has erupted lately in the United States, pot offenses just aren’t respected in the slammer like the old days. 

I’d surely be fighting in a cell, in court come Monday and probably for years to come as I paid steep fines, endure drug classes and everything else the system would put me through to teach me a lesson. My anxiety was through the roof. I mean, I’ve been to jail enough times to know that it’s no place for me. So, the thought of police standing around a FedEx warehouse looking down at a package containing marijuana with the name MIKE ADAMS branded as the recipient, marked with an address that would lead them straight to me, did not give me an easy feeling. The jig was up. I always knew there’d come a time when I’d either have to flee the country or kill myself to escape one of the buried indiscretions of my past. I just didn’t think that day would come so soon. What should I do? What would I do? I was, as far as I could tell, a sitting duck. 

But I wasn’t going to just sit around and wait for the cops to show up and have their way with me. I’d been there before. I knew if they did in fact discover a package of marijuana at the FedEx with my name on it, a search warrant would take time. I just wasn’t sure how much convincing a judge would need to sign off on it. Working in my favor was the fact that the cops didn’t know that I knew they were onto me. I had been tipped off. So, for an indeterminate amount of time, I still had the upper hand. With that in mind, I was going to make sure that if those fuckers came a knocking, they were going to have to work damn hard to bust me. I had time to dig myself out of a hole that a dimwitted public relations agent had tossed me in. It wasn’t like I was getting any work done anyway. Although I typically don’t suffer from writer’s block, it has a way of striking when all you can ponder is that a convoy of police cars and SWAT trucks are hauling ass toward you with loaded weapons. Thinking they might just kick down the door when they arrived, I quit writing and did my darndest to formulate a plan to avoid being detained. 

Cue the Mission Impossible theme song, now! 

I packed up all the pot in the office into a large box and began to think about all the places I could hide it. My office is in a building with several other companies. So, while I considered stashing it in the utility closet down the hall, that probably wasn’t the best option. The cleaning lady could find it and either claim it for herself or call the cops. I couldn’t risk luring them any closer than they already were. I even thought about pushing away the tiles in the ceiling somewhere in the building and storing the box up there. But that was probably one of the first places the cops would look. And if they got the dogs involved, I was screwed no matter what. They’d be howling like they just reached Pablo Escobar’s house as soon as they pulled up in the parking lot. Nope, if I was going to survive the day, that is avoid arrest, stay out of jail and make it home for dinner, getting the weed as far away from my office as possible was the only way to go. 

I moved on to phase two of Operation: Deep Shit. 

I tossed the box in the trunk of my car, but not without first scanning the parking lot to make sure police didn’t have me under surveillance. I then peeled out of there, on a hell-or-highwater quest to take back the freedom that had presumably been ripped from me. My plan was a simple one. Park along the side of the road near my house—a mile away from my office—walk back and play dumb. That way when the cops showed up flashing a search warrant, I wouldn’t have a panic attack and they wouldn’t find jack shit. But I had to get it there first. My nerves were already rattled, so I, as much as I tried not to, was driving like someone with something to hide. 

If I passed a cop, the look in my eyes was going to tell him that I either had a body in the trunk or was traveling with a big old box of pot. All of my attempts to act casual were failing miserably. I stopped twice at a green light; used the wrong turn signal to go left; drove slower than the elderly, and even swerved like I had just left the bar drunk to avoid hitting a squirrel. Nope, I would never make it as a drug smuggler. I did, however, make it to my destination. I seriously considered lighting the car on fire before hoofing it back to the office, but I thought that may be a bit overkill. I didn’t need an arson charge on top of the one I was going to get for drug trafficking. Of course, on the walk back to my impending doom, my mind was spinning. I was overwhelmed with all of the possible scenarios that could arise even though I was a step ahead.

The cops were probably going to inquire as to the whereabouts of my car. They would surely want my home address too. If they came up empty handed at the office—and they were going to—their next move, aside from bending me over the desk and strapping on some latex gloves to see if my colon contained any weed or weapons, might be to raid the house. Cops hate to fail and if there’s any chance they can spend the day busting someone for a drug-related offense rather than dangerous, violent criminals, that’s what they’ll do. What was going to prove problematic for them was the search warrant. It would only be for my office address. They’d have to get another one with the location of my home on it, if they had any intention of ripping apart my underwear drawer. That was a detail I would just have to deal with when the time came.   

For the moment, I took solace in knowing that there wouldn’t be any illegal substances in my office if and when the cops started poking around. Still, all the time I was running around town trying to avoid getting locked up, I couldn’t help but think, why am I the one out here trying to throw the police off my trail like Joe Pesci in Casino, when these public relations firms are the ones responsible for sending me weed? Why was I suddenly at risk of jail when these companies put the weed in the mail? The cops were gunning for the wrong guy. I was innocent! Rather than continue wallowing in paranoia, I decided to pick up the phone and call cannabis law attorney Aaron Pelley with Seattle-based firm Cultivia Law. Aaron’s been getting real-deal cannabis outlaws out of trouble for years. If anyone was going to help stop the cops from crawling up my sphincter, it was him. His advice: If the postmaster calls, or if the cops show up at the office door, don’t say a word. As long as the sender or recipient doesn’t fess up, they have no case.

“They can’t do anything or prove anything if you don’t fucking talk,” Pelley told me. “So, all you have to do is shut up. It’s not a complicated situation because they can’t prove that you knew or should have known cannabis was coming to you. There’s been some situations where they’ve put cameras in the package so they can see the person open it. So fucking what? I don’t know where people get the idea that that would somehow implicate that you knew or should have known cannabis was being shipped. I suppose after you open it, if you say ‘awesome, they sent me the weed I asked for,’ but none of that ever actually happens. I’ve had people shipping basketball sized amounts of weed and getting it intercepted. And as long as everybody didn’t respond to anyone, including the senders, nothing ever happened. They can’t necessarily prove the sender sent it and they don’t want to go through the trouble of pulling video footage for prosecutors.”

Although sending and receiving weed through the mail is a federal offense, Pelley says Uncle Sam rarely gets involved. He’s only known one incident where they sent in the hounds, and it was for a four-foot-tall pallet of weed. As for the local cops looking to get a pot bust, “nobody is home,” Pelley asserts. “Local cops want headlines. But it’s a federal crime that has mandatory minimums. Prison time,” he continued. “That said, if people don’t respond to the communications (from the postmaster or the police), the burden of proof is quite heavy, and the interest is quite low.”

For the next two days, I still remained a little paranoid. Those bastards were going to show up any moment and at least try to give me that cannabis colonoscopy, I just knew it. It wasn’t until the following Sunday that I stumbled across a news article from one of my local television stations showing that $180,000 worth of marijuana (90 pounds) was found in my hometown. It had been shipped from California to Evansville, and a woman named Hua Hou was in custody. It was her, not me they were after. They got their headline. After being scared shitless for days, I found some semblance of relief knowing that someone else other than me was shacking up with blanket-thieving felons. But if what Pelley said was true, I began to ponder, and the interest is low, why was this woman arrested? “Ninety pounds is a lot of weed,” he said. “I suspect that she picked up the packages and got busted, and then she probably sung,” Pelley added, saying that she would have had a leg to stand on if she had just lawyered up and stayed quiet.

Point blank, police need someone to talk. 

“Even if it’s true that you didn’t have any idea that weed was coming, you don’t have control of the narrative,” Pelley explained. “The cop can write down anything he wants. If the only thing a cop can write down is that they exercised their right to remain silent and asked for an attorney, they’ll have to figure out their evidence from there. As soon as you shut up, their job becomes infinitely harder to prove or say that you had something to do with it. But it gets a lot easier as soon as you start talking.”

As for me, I wasn’t saying shit!

Still, I felt I was deserving of restitution for pain and suffering. Perhaps the public relations firms owed me a stack of cash for nearly becoming the scapegoat for their dipshitery. The whole affair must have sawed five years off my life. I now have PTSD: Postal Traumatic Stress Disorder. I’ll have to ask Aaron about a lawsuit. So, please, for the last time, stop sending me pot through the mail (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). And if you do—again, don’t—make it a reasonable amount.

“They’re not looking for one ounce of weed,” Pelley demands.

The post Stop Sending Me Weed Through the Mail appeared first on High Times.

Let’s just say the proverbial pecker gnat was a buzzing. I was on the verge of a 15-hour day—coal miner hours by Southern Indiana standards—up against a tight deadline for Hustler Magazine that I would have hit, too, had it not been for those sandbagging porn stars. At the same time, the in-laws were in town and wanting to get together for an early dinner—5:30, hell, I just had lunch at 2—and I soon found myself scouring the Internet for discount fares to Costa Rica where I would open a banana stand and change my name to Frank. To top it off, when I finally got home and reached into the fridge for a pre-show brew, all that was left was two cans of pineapple lager that Dos Equis sent me the other day hoping for a review. Well, here it is: Fucking yuck! I was beat, feeling defeated and quite honestly not in the mood for the show.

EYEHATEGOD, I would soon learn, wasn’t doing any better. Although a decent crowd came out to be defiled by these sludge metal vets—many of which were outside smoking copious amounts of weed in an attempt to get into the right mind-set—the venue was simply ill-equipped to handle the power. The sound system was puny, the stage needed training wheels, and the freaking disco ball spinning above the crowd as Ringworm, the show opener, brutalized the place was a clear admission of bewilderment. Might as well post a sign outside the city limits: Welcome to the Armpit of America, y’all. We love the night life, we’ve got to boogie. Yeehaw! 

Nope, not unless this tour rolled into town on a pair of cocaine-powered roller skates, the 1970s afro-glitter flair was more of an embarrassment than anything of aesthetic relevancy. Where in fuck’s holy name were all the gnarly monochromatic clippings of the gutter culture that’s become synonymous with the image of this band? EYEHATEGOD is and always has been a bold, unapologetic statement on the spread-cheeks of the societal downtrodden amid a governmental reaming. They’re not a bar band that’s going to be “rockin” the night away to help America’s neighborhood watering holes, much like this one, sell drink specials and get the 9-to-5’ers laid. These weren’t the piss-ant acoustic folkies that got booked to play Matchbox Twenty covers on the patio during Thirsty Thursday. These boys are trap house storytellers of the nod, totally removed from the gluttony of happy hour society, just waiting for the cops to kick down the door and drag everyone to jail. For Christsake, EYEHATEGOD guitarist Jimmy Bower is in Down with metal legend Phil Anselmo! Replace that disco ball with a noose when they’re in town.

At least everyone was sauced up on something, or so it seemed, a necessary spirit, I imagine, for getting the most out of an EHG show. I’ve always theorized that the reason some music gets more interesting when we’re stoned is because it was recorded and mixed that way. Like it was some super-secret portal designed to reveal tunes in their purest form to those individuals in that precise mindset at the time. I’ve found this to be true of EYEHATEGOD records. But I didn’t always hear it.

It wasn’t until some buddies and I got to listening to their 1993 album Take as Needed for Pain while blazing through a sack of grass that I, for one, began to understand where they were coming from. Vocalist Mike Williams would later confirm that I was onto something. “Weed has always been a part of our writing process,” he told HIGH TIMES. “When we get together to jam, it is rare that we don’t smoke. It’s a social thing as well as something that encourages wanting to create music. Not all of us partake, but we are friends getting together to kick a few jams over a joint and a few beers. Weed sometimes unlocks ideas that a sober mind might not touch on,” he added. 

It was near showtime when I sensed the band wasn’t all that impressed with the hand they’d been dealt on this stop. I saw it the second that Williams was accosted by a bartender during soundcheck, just moments before their set began, asking him to help locate the owner of a set of car keys lost during Ringworm’s set. “Um, it’s for a Chevy,” he said awkwardly into the mic, presumably thinking: Well, this is it, boys. We’ve finally arrived in hell. It was just a matter of time. From where I was standing, it was evident that the band had been getting spoon fed a hefty bowl of Hoosier codswallop. It was written all over their faces. Or maybe what I was witnessing was just the blatant cynicism oozing from their eyeballs after three decades in this life. 

In a lot of ways, we shouldn’t even be talking about EYEHATEGOD. After all, the band started as a joke. Yet, their dirty interpretation of the Sabbath influence eventually took off before hitting a wild, downward spiral that would have surely sabotaged better men. There were drug arrests, lineup changes, hurricanes and even death, all of which many would argue is par for the rock n’ roll course. After drummer Joey LaCaze died suddenly of respiratory failure in 2013, Williams learned that he was right behind him, diagnosed with cirrhosis and given a year to live. He would have bit the big one too had it not been for a fan-funded replacement liver. I thought about this as he flipped off the crowd and requested a shot of vodka from the bar. “Be careful with that,” I thought. “They won’t give you another one.” By Williams’ own admission, that’s not something he does often. “If I have a joint, I am much less likely to drink,” he told me. “I am not a heavy drinker, but I like to alter my state of mind and will drink more if I don’t have weed.”

Still, tempting fate where major organs are concerned could end badly, especially for these guys. Not even the most debauched bands in history have suffered such a rotten string of bad luck. These mangy scamps of the south are undoubtedly butt mutts of the punk generation, unequivocal proof that tragedy-prone heathens can be spawned if a lady isn’t careful where she pees. We’re talking total human degeneracy, shitheels, scum of the earth, and I mean that as a compliment.

Coming from all directions, middle fingers were flying, a sure-fire sign that the band was about to play. “We’re EYEHATEGOD,” Williams screamed, as Bower, decked out in a Hank Williams Jr. t-shirt, swooped in with the band’s signature screech and whir seconds before drummer Aaron Hill launched into “Take as Needed for Pain.” Fucking-A! My photographer, Holly, and I were, of course, throwing down in the front row, stage left in front of Bower. “If the crowd gets too rowdy for you,” I yelled into her ear, “just slide out that way,” pointing to a small opening next to the speakers.

Listen, EYEHATEGOD’s music is some of the heaviest in the genre, but they don’t have a reputation for playing fast or stability in terms of cadence. There’s no hooks or anything in the way of song structure. A large part of their discography, some might say, at least I do, resides in the key of the melancholic and wretched. It’s sonic quaaludes under a grey November sky. It’s what one might feel in total isolation, surviving off nothing but handfuls of amphetamine salts, benzos, and the occasional bologna sandwich. That combination makes it difficult for a flock of dead brain cells in combat boots and Vans to throw flying kick spins, windmills, and whatever other spastic mosh pit tactics these whippersnappers have embraced these days without appearing as though they just contracted a rare redneck strain of neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis. As soon as Williams belted out, Breast fed from a dog /since the day I was born, the show was on.

EYEHATEGOD isn’t fodder for parental retaliation, nor is it unbridled angst for teens with too much testosterone coursing through their veins to enjoy music without a clenched fist. It’s more for the ones with bruises on their arms, those marred with cigarette burns brought down by their alcoholic stepfathers. The abused, tortured, and disenfranchised. The aggression isn’t necessarily payback for stolen youth. These fans, the ones who truly identify with the sentiment of the lyrics, stand in pools of faithful repugnance, head nodding on time with the chunk-chunk, their epitaphs all destined to read: Here lies the self-inflicted.  

What I’m trying to say is that I didn’t anticipate a violent mosh pit that carried the distinct possibility of turning someone into a paraplegic by the end of the night. We didn’t need that shit! But then again, these were godless knaves—talking about the Tuesday night drunkards and chain-smoking degenerates that just show up to these kinds of things to open a can of whup ass on total strangers—and the one thing that was certain was that they’d start a pit to Beethoven’s Sonata No. 14 if it meant they got to break somebody’s jaw. So, you never know. 

By most standards, EYEHATEGOD’s show was exactly what you’d expect. Forty-five minutes of ear-piercing feedback and down tuned anthems for the stoned. It was an intimate presentation that at times felt like we were just hanging out at their practice spot, drinking all their beer, smoking their dope, and overstaying our welcome. In a way, though, they made me hate myself. Their presence was somehow a cruel reminder that there are no answers. Success was not without peril, life is pain, there’s no preparation for the end—ours, or anyone else’s—and none of this mattered anyway. It was as though I had taken psilocybin in search of enlightenment, and all I found in that department was depression and dread. When I got home, my serotonin had been undoubtedly sucked from my brain, leaving no immediate hope for recovery, not that I cared. Perhaps that was their intention all along. I reached into the fridge, suddenly reminded that there was nothing left but a pineapple lager to help me find solace in the misery. 

Hey, EYEHATEGOD, fuck you!

The post EYEHATEGOD: Trap House Storytellers of the Nod appeared first on High Times.

But tomorrow would have to wait. It’s not often that a band as aggressive as a cranked-up badger being held against his will by his tiny, little nutsack comes barreling through the cornfields of Southern Indiana on a wild-eyed mission to clobber its inhabitants and prove themselves worthy of the next level of metaldom. No way I was missing that. Newfangled bands like SNAFU are always the hungriest of the breed, the euphonious equivalent of a snarling, junkyard dog with nothing in their pockets but guts, a tendency for ruination and an inflamed liver.

Since their latest tour was dragging these poor bastards through the armpit of America – a place where music is often stillborn, unoriginal and uninspired — it was clear the foursome wasn’t being given any preferential treatment. Nope, just like the black and white predecessors of punk, they were being shot out of the sphincter of some foul beast, forced to pay dues upon dues before they’d ever be allowed to pass through any gate where their souls weren’t inevitably doomed to be sucked dry by unaffectionate crowds. Did this gang of heretics understand what they were getting themselves into when they pulled into town?

We’d find out soon enough.

Last year, SNAFU partnered with Phil Anselmo’s Housecore Records for the release of the band’s long-awaited full-length album Exile//Banishment. The record is loud, raw and often hauntingly unhinged – the way any bombastic blend of punk and thrash should go BOOM! At times, it sounds as though it was recorded inside the drug-ravaged brains of Jeffery Dahmer’s victims while he rammed a power drill into the top of their skulls in a psychotic quest for zombification. Songs like “Eyes of Your God” and “The Pear of Anguish” are an unabashed nod to a rabid generation of metal fanatics, back when anyone who made a derogatory comment about some head’s jean jacket because it was branded with a Hell Awaits backpatch had better be prepared for war. Indeed, the songs are a sonic allegiance to the good ole days. Damn straight! Finally! Every tune is one rip and shred right after another. No, you won’t hear any of nu-metal’s flaccid pseudo-crooners on this offering – this isn’t some crunchy rendition of the glam crybaby culture – nor will you be insulted by some feeble attempt to reinvent Meshuggah. Stop doing that! SNAFU is like snorting shards of glass covered in formaldehyde while perched atop a large horny electric eel. Don’t bother giving me a Rorschach test. Even if the music may cause permanent damage to vital organs – and if the song “Bring Suffering” has anything to say about it, it just might – basking in this abhorrent ensemble until it becomes second nature is possibly the only way to ward off a snuff. 

These guys have support, too, the kind that would prompt many of the would-be starving riff masters of the world to put their eternal soul in hawk with the Devil. After all, Anselmo’s label, while just a vocational launching pad for musical miscreants and visionaries, is responsible for helping a number of bands carve out modest careers. Author & Punisher (Tristan Shone), for one, was out there obliterating smaller clubs until his one-man mechanically engineered noise construct got the attention of Tool, landing him an opening spot during the band’s 2020 arena tour. Point is, SNAFU could go anywhere from here. And that should scare the ever-living shit out of them.

There are so many questions when a young band like this emerges onto the scene and reveals even the slightest hint of potential. Did they have a fighting chance? Would the booze and drugs get ‘em? Would a key member knock up some Podunk princess during the tour, forcing him to take a job at a Detroit 7-Eleven to make his child support payments? Or would they instead borrow a chapter from the book of Harley Flanagan, start eating right and taking jiu jitsu while continuing to punish crowds well into their fifties? A choice, whether they knew it or not, was about to be made. Although these tours were small, the stakes were high. How this band continued to fare over the next few months would inevitably set the tone for their entire career. 

I, for one, was eager to watch. Drunk, stoned, it was all par for the course as far as I was concerned. I was going to that show, even if there was an air of impending violence. All the better.

At the venue, the scene was the typical black hoodie revival, full of beer guts strapped to old white dudes and slaves to mediocrity. Life can be unkind to those unaware of how time passes while they’re busy wasting it. They were all sucking down shots as if they were hanging out backstage at a Pantera concert circa 1994, reminiscing of days less, well, now. Parts of the crowd made sense, while others seemed to have taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque. That was typical in a place like this – a bar and grill style atmosphere that moonlights as a multi-genre music venue. Nobody fits in, yet everyone does. Abnormalities are ever present, as were true marvels of society, and that can sometimes, as the hippies might say, really discombobulate the vibe, man.

It was during the opening band when I was approached by Scott Curnow, one of SNAFU’s guitar players and vocalists. I didn’t recognize him. At first, I thought, “Oh fuck, my number is up.” It was distinctly possible that the large, strange dude headed in my direction from the other side of the room was on a seek and destroy mission to take me out. And I probably deserved it, too. Perhaps I had boned his girlfriend years ago, or maybe written some disparaging remarks about the derivativeness of his band – whoever the fuck they were – back when I was penning reviews for a local radio station to make ends meet. One can never tell in this business. Needless to say, I was relieved to learn that the man soon towering over me wasn’t on the unfettered prowl for retaliatory violence. Whew! Curnow is a colossal 8’13” tall, all dressed in leather, bearded up like a bloodthirsty Viking with dreadlocks. He’s a true monstrosity on genetic stilts. I was just hoping, praying actually, that the entity creeping up on me wasn’t into leisurely disembowelments for sport. “Holy shit, you’re a big dude,” I said during our introduction. “Yeah,” he snapped back, adding that the band’s size (none of these dudes are small) may have something to do with the water. 

We moved on, discussing the new record. Curnow doesn’t mince words when it comes to who’s responsible for the uniqueness of the band’s latest release. It is a unified effort from beginning to end. “There’s a few different elements that make the album awesome,” he told HIGH TIMES. “One would be our song writing process. Unlike most bands, all four of us (Curnow, Rian Staber, Patrick “El Toro” Saldivar, and Mike Jurysta) contribute equally to the process and I believe that is what gives us our distinct sound that’s packed full of lots of different elements of extreme music.” 

The production team, Curnow asserts, was also key.

“We were lucky enough to track this entire album down in Richmond Virginia with Josh Hall and Phil Hall of Cannabis Corpse,” he continued. “They were amazing to work with and gave a lot of great pointers throughout the recording process. We also had our good friend Adam Shepherd help with vocal tracking and mixing. Then we went to Joel Grind of Toxic Holocaust for the mastering. Everyone knocked it out of the park and made the album sound beyond what we could have imagined.”

Although some of metal’s elite may have played a significant role in the creation of Exile//Banishment, Curnow says those riffs are largely due to cannabis. “It definitely played a crucial role in the writing process,” he declared, crediting Sour Tangie and Jack Herer as his go-to strains. “I personally love to use cannabis when it comes to the creative process. It really helps me think of things in a different way. Sometimes when I smoke there’s like a symphony of guitars in my head and I need to stop what I’m doing and grab a guitar to make notes of the riffs.”

Then he was gone.

One thing was certain, if Curnow had been looking to exact his revenge against my loose moral fiber from years past, I would have had to produce an extra set of testicles to get out of there alive. “That guy, as nice as he was, would fuck you up,” I told my photographer as he walked away from us to prepare for the show. She agreed. Everyone knows, and if they don’t, they should, that you have to be careful about who you mess with from Detroit. Outside the dive bar scrappers on the streets of NOLA, even the scrawny ones with no teeth, folks from the D can be equally hard to handle. The Motor City masses, most of which are in a constant state of survival within an economic apocalypse, have nothing left to lose. So, above all, you’d better watch your mouth. 

Moments before SNAFU hit the stage, I was standing in the front row screaming at the top of my lungs, “let’s fucking go!” This reaction caught some a bit off guard. Although the sleepy Evansville crowd has grown accustomed to just loitering idly with their thumbs up their butts as touring bands bleed, sacrifice, and starve onstage, I wouldn’t be party to such trumpery. The howls spewing from my beer-drenched lips were not that of impatience, only anticipation, as I was pretty damn sure, gauging from what I had already seen, that SNAFU was going to rain down a savage display of decimation, and I wanted, no I needed in.

Listen, SNAFU has been butchering towns like this one alive for years, opening for the road-proven thrash band Municipal Waste and sludge masters EYEHATEGOD, just to name a couple. In that domain, where pros are pitted against pros, you are going to get squashed without either summoning a gnarly ghoul with seven peckers before showing up at the venue or, at the very least, hiring an Ouija board player to conduct a pre-show black mass. A band like SNAFU, built on belligerence, needed something vile, disgusting and inherently evil to leave on that stage – and it damn sure better be an honest representation, too – or else they’d risk being devoured by mightier forces and shat outside the venue into a puddle of dumpster juice. If they weren’t tight and combative in the eyes of both peers and idols, they’d be labeled hack jobs and slop artists – dead band walking! The band would ultimately be cursed to play podunk venues like the one Friday night where requests for Skynyrd would haunt them from here to eternity. 

SNAFU had been through the wringers to some degree, far more than anyone else on the bill, so I felt confident that the prematurity of my metal-adorned war cries wouldn’t come back to bite me in the ass.

The lights went down. 

My stomach, for some odd reason, was all knotted up like one might experience during a heated argument, just seconds before someone throws the first punch. Could it be a sign that the proverbial shit was about to hit the fan? Swimming around in the billows of beer lingering in my gut was a hefty cocktail of anxiety and adrenaline fighting for a main artery. As far as I could tell, it was a power struggle to see which one of them could strike me dead from a massive coronary before the second song played. Bets were being taken as the band made their way to the stage. All I had to do, I kept telling myself, was keep breathing at 12-1 odds. “Man, I hope one of those bastards used to be an EMT,” I thought. But that was unlikely. Judging from their sordid appearances, the only thing these boys could assist with was funeral services. Drain, embalm, and smile. I began to consider that I might have to take what I could get. This could be it, and my driver’s license would surely reveal to these sadistic fiends that I’m an organ doner. Oh well, they’d surely be thrilled to get themselves a spare liver for when one of theirs goes on the fritz. 

Perhaps the band would ultimately seize the opportunity to preemptively avenge their reputation following this review – Scott appeared borderline suspicious of my intentions anyway and probably warned the rest – blasting me square in the noggin at full throttle with their guitars, and with the breakneck intensity of a sawed-off shotgun, guaranteeing that my wake, if my family opted to give me one, would be a closed casket. Only, the joke’s on them. I refused to die in this godforsaken place, even if by means as brutal as being brained to a pulp by a Gibson Korina Explorer. Being carted out on a slab, cloaked in a blood-drenched white sheet just miles from my apartment was not to be my fate. I wouldn’t give my hometown the satisfaction. 

It was me against them. 

From the unleashing of the first chord, it was clear that I was going to lose the battle, maybe even the war. But everyone else would too, so I didn’t take it personally. This powerful four-piece arrived hellbent on slicing everyone in their doe-eyed faces with a rusty razor covered in hydrochloric acid. The production, however, wasn’t steeped in malicious intent – well, maybe it was for drummer Mike Jurysta, who I suspect is an actual serial killer. They were just conjuring whatever wicked spirits necessary to ensure they weren’t the ones who ended up in the dumpster. Although the show, for this group of guys, was just an exhibition fight, keeping the chops up, no matter what the cost, is paramount to success. For the entirety of the band’s blistering thirty-minute set, they embarked on a violent incursion of auditory mutilations and feral breakdowns, all of which were compounded by the clamors of madmen pitted against the repugnance of a nation. All these components were packaged up and stuffed inside a tight black hole that presumably leads to the Seventh Circle. The violence I had caught a whiff of as soon as we set out on this adventure had finally arrived, and it did not disappoint. The crowd, judging from their arms-crossed attitude, seemed bewildered by such a crude, tawdry display. “Shit,” I thought to myself. “That’s how you know these guys are doing something right.” It occurred to me following the show, as I made the journey home, that if tinnitus was a sexually transmitted disease, everyone in the venue was going to need to see a doctor come Saturday morning. Just a few decibels louder, in fact, and I was convinced that the ghost of Hellen Keller was going to rise up from wherever she now resides and tell us all to keep it down. My ears are still ringing blood. 

SNAFU is currently in the process of writing their next album while continuing to tour in support of Exile//Banishment. They go back on the road in November with Mutilation Barbecue, so be sure to check them out if they come through your city!

The post SNAFU: Detroit Punks Go Podunk appeared first on High Times.

Long gone are the days when inked appendages were badges of badass almost exclusively carved into the bodies of bikers, sleazy musicians, and ex-cons. Somewhere along the way, pop culture got porked by punk rock and gave birth to a red-eyed love child that looks a heck of a lot like you!

Within America’s bizarre movement to express itself, however, where everyone and their momma is inked-up and sleeved out, there exists an absolute legion of hell-raisers, outlaws, and die-hard stoners forever scarred with various pot-related pigmentations that none of these well-dressed specimens of modern fashion would ever be caught dead with—not in a million years.

In the ’70s, the marijuana tattoo, most commonly represented with a shoddy-looking cannabis leaf that appeared as though it resulted in a gnarly staph infection, was perhaps the official symbol of rebellion. People with the cannabis coat of arms were dead-set against the principles of popular opinion. None of them bought into any of that “religion will save humanity” crap, and they damn sure weren’t about to go to work for the man. They didn’t subscribe to all of the BS being forced down their throats by the frightened servants of authority. Nope, they lived life by their own set of rules, going against the grain of ongoing cultural brainwashing, both parental and political, while giving the proverbial middle finger to, well, anyone who fucking deserved it.

“From the very first time I smoked weed, I understood why the government was trying to turn the population against it,” Steve, a 65-year-old from Springfield, Illinois, tells High Times.

“Marijuana helped me see through all the lies I was told in school and in the church, which made it clear to me from my early teens that the people of this country would need to fight for it.”

Branded with the image of a small, barely legible cannabis leaf on his left forearm, Steve, who remains a loyal advocate for the cannabis cause, is unapologetic about permanently pledging his allegiance to pot. Even if, by his own admission, his ink looks like total dog shit.

“I was like 16, and this dude who had just gotten out of prison was giving people tats in the kitchen at this party,” Steve recalls. “He told us that’s how he made a living in the pen, so we thought he’d do a good job. He didn’t. Mine’s all faded now, and people always say I need to get it covered up. Give me a break. It was done with a paperclip and an ink pen. What do you expect? To me, it symbolizes how far this plant has come.”

Cannabis Ink Goes Mainstream

To the supposed do-gooders of society—the ones putting on their best face regardless of how miserable their life by the rules has become—a pot leaf tattoo was considered the unsavory mark of the longhaired, hippie loser. Anyone spotted with one was considered a heathen. The tattooed stoner culture perplexed working-class Americans. After all, how was it so hard to stop listening to the Grateful Dead long enough to get a freaking job?

The cannabis tattoo has since become less taboo as judgmental society has moved on to slay modern monsters. Cannabis-related ink has risen from the ashes of a subculture and taken on, to some degree, mainstream appeal. Scott Campbell, famed tattoo artist and owner of the legendary Saved Tattoo in Brooklyn, New York, says that people today are just as likely to get etched with the icky in the sanitary conditions of a professional studio than in prison.

“Obviously, with us being in the middle of marijuana legalization, having a pot leaf has less outlaw biker connotations than it did in the ’80s,” says Campbell, who, throughout his career, has inked a number of celebrities from Heath Ledger to Penélope Cruz.

Campbell admits there’s been a radical shift in the type of person he sees literally wearing this passion for pot on their sleeve.

“There is still a bit of illicit excitement when I see people with pot leaf tattoos. It’s not so much, ‘That guy kills people,’ but more like, ‘That’s the guy in the PTA meeting I want to sit next to,’” he says.

Ink as Advocacy

In many ways, this brand of body modification remains a toking testament of the rowdy. Yessiree, there are still plenty of people out there getting homespun stoner ink as a tribute to a lifestyle that the average citizen may not be privy to. In some cases, the tireless work of cannabis advocacy in areas of the United States where weed remains a no-no is where these initiations of the green go down. Benjamin from Bryan, Ohio, tells us that his one and only cannabis tattoo, a pot leaf on his right shoulder, followed an event to decriminalize marijuana possession.

“I was standing on a table downtown with a guitar in my hands singing Legalize It over and over again when this mother came to sign up and said she loves what I’m doing for the cause,” Benjamin tells us.

The woman’s son, a local tattoo artist, eventually showed up to extend his support and offered Benjamin some free ink as a token of his appreciation. Of course, he kindly accepted the gent’s proposition because, duh.

“I closed up and went over to his house and walked away tatted up,” he says.

Ink in the Industry

Out west, where advocacy and capitalism have collided, cannabis tats are, at times, calling cards of the industry. Kelly, a 53-year-old grower from Salem, Oregon, has one that she says was conjured up one night in the spirit of the age-old motto: sex sells. She decided to get inked in an elevated state of mind as she plotted a move to Eugene, Oregon, to get into the cultivation sect. In business, location is everything, and weed is no exception. So, as a going-away present, Kelly pulled up her shirt and had her dedication to the doob marked on her boobs, of all places.

“I had [my artist] tattoo weed leaves on my breasts because, in Eugene, it is legal for females to go outside and be free to be topless,” Kelly tells us, adding that she thought it was a sure thing from a marketing standpoint. “Any advertising is good if it’s nipples and weed!”

Hidden Homages

While wanting to be branded with an homage to the herb, many refuse to give it reverence with a simple pot leaf. For advocates like Gayle from Greenville, South Carolina, the more traditional designs are too generic. Rather than the leaf or even the molecular structure of tetrahydrocannabinol, arguably the next most popular breed of weed art, she opted for one that portrays the beauty of the cannabis plant under a microscope.

It’s a clandestine nod to the nug. To untrained eyes, the tattoo doesn’t appear to have anything to do with cannabis. It’s just a bunch of red, blue, and teal orbs affixed to some slime green squiggly ribbons emerging from torn flesh. There’s no way it could ever be used by law enforcement to establish reasonable suspicion.

“One day, it just hit me that cannabis, from a scientific view, was the tattoo I was supposed to get,” Gayle told us. “It’s different from the average pot tattoo.”

A Badge of Honor

There are times, though, when the tattoos of our past become indiscretions of youth. They are often cruel reminders that we’re getting older and, of no fault of our own, have outgrown the things we once adored and thought were cool. The names of lost love, symbols of political alignments in which we no longer believe, and perhaps even a silly cartoon character. Inked nostalgia is a bitch. It tells everyone we know that there is indeed a body buried out there somewhere. But we’ve lived and learned and, the devil willing, we’ll live some more.

The ink of yesteryear, however, will survive the floods. Perhaps that is why the tattoo removal industry will reach nearly $800 million by 2027. Nobody wants living proof that they were ever that foolish. The stoner with the marijuana tattoo, however, isn’t one steeped in regret. That badge, regardless of its quality or style, remains, presumably from here on out, the highest living honor.

“I can honestly say I have never covered up a pot leaf tattoo,” Campbell says. “Anyone who was brazen enough to get it tattooed before the current cannabis-friendly climate is probably enjoying being able to wear it without having their bag searched every time they go through customs.”

This article appears in the August 2022 issue of High Times. Subscribe here.

The post Mark of the Leaf appeared first on High Times.

There may even be those cannabis conservatives who’ll argue that mingling with any extension of the subjugated south, a place seemingly chock full of flag-praising good ole boys with red, white, and blue constitutions, pounding down brown liquor in pursuit of the maniacal mindset that’s been, on occasion, known to produce wife-beaters and social louses shouldn’t be given the time of day. But they’d be dead wrong. Dead wrong. If anything, Kentucky, an area of cockeyed politics, where the absurdity that dropped out of Nixon’s Republican asshole nearly five decades ago is being perpetuated by the ire of slack-jawed McConnellism, is precisely the place to be.

My mission, if I, of course, chose to accept it (and I did without thinking twice), was to roam this transient Valhalla of bourbon distilleries and music in search for some of that Kentucky Bluegrass. You know, marijuana, weed, smoke, pot. Much to my surprise, however, upon arriving on Thursday evening, I didn’t have to go looking very far. Amidst the mélange of odors, including pizza, BBQ, noodles, and cheap cologne, pot smoke was also prevalent throughout the festival. This was interesting seeing as organizers maintained strict bans against this sort of thing. Any illegal drug use was strictly prohibited. They went as far as to explicitly point out in their entry policies that even cannabis and cannabis products were a big, bad no-no. There was a high security and police presence posted at every gate to enforce this measure, too. Bags were being searched, metal detectors were activated, K9 units could be seen sniffing around. No sir, the supposed riffraff with the reefer wasn’t getting beyond the gates with any of that green stuff, no matter what. If they tried, they’d have Louisville’s finest to contend with. Yet, from where I was standing, just minutes before Alanis Morrisette took the stage, their anti-stoner procedures had failed, and failed miserably.

As the sun slumped into the horizon, plumes of pot smoke wafted across the Highland Festival Grounds like a bomb went off. “Someone’s smoking marijuana,” one man shouted in the distance.

Indeed, they were.

Now, I wasn’t surprised about the festivalgoers’ inability to behave like good boys and girls. You just can’t go dropping over a hundred thousand people into a field under the heat of a Kentucky sky for four days straight, feeding them an unlimited supply of hard liquor and expect civil society to parade around and smile pretty. Louisville is, after all, Bourbon City. If this event was to shake out to be anything similar to what I’ve witnessed at the Kentucky Derby in previous years, the festival was destined to become a menagerie of foul beasts, all with a propensity for violence once the lines to the Porta-Potties got too long. If the inability to take a whizz once nature called didn’t get them riled up enough to unleash their savage wrath, they would surely rise up with wild-eyed ferocity once they checked their bank accounts and saw that those $18 beers were going to have them homeless by the end of the month. I, for one, was ready for anything. But did anyone else know what they were getting themselves into? Doubtfully. By Saturday, at least in my mind, attendees would not only need to come fully prepared to endure desert-like conditions but also cloaked in plastic or maybe even battle armor to protect them from the whiskey-drenched carnage that would surely loom once the darkness set in and those bourbon bellies erupted.

Pearl Jam was set to headline Saturday’s festivities. The band, whose hits include “Jeremy,” and “Daughter,” hadn’t played anywhere in the Midwest in roughly ten years, and maybe for good reason. Their rare presence meant that every class of character from soccer moms to Yoo-hoo girls to a variety of man-fans of varying levels of testosterone would be there too, all summoning their inner, flannel-sporting youth, fully prepared for a time quake of nostalgia. The celebration would be one where twinges of teenage rebellion, memories of first love, and perhaps even simpler times could possibly invoke a slew of deep-seated emotions and set even the most stable fan who’s had one too many shots on course for a nasty reaction. Weirdos, oddities, upstanding citizens, and other random creatures of the night had come to rage, and maybe even cry.

In this possible scenario, there’s only one thing to do: Protect yourself at all times. Although there was undoubtedly a heavy stoner presence throughout the festival, they were still seemingly outnumbered by the whiskey bent and hellbound pushing the experience to the point of toilet-hugging regret. A man named Jarred, who said he came for the bands, not the bourbon, told me that he felt like any fallout would be “cool” if the event would just let people toke up.

“A lot of these people were too scared to try bringing it in,” he said about the ticketholders’ response to festival policy against pot consumption. “I knew they wouldn’t be looking that close. They never do.”

Concerts and weed have always gone hand in hand. Long before cannabis was ever a consideration in terms of legal commerce anywhere in the United States, marijuana aficionados, hippies, metal heads, and perhaps even a Peter, Paul & Mary fan or two loaded up in hatchbacks, VWs, and jacked up Monte Carlos with racing stripes and mag wheels in a quest to see a performance from their favorite bands.

The first time I smelled marijuana, in fact, was in a 1970s model Chevy van with a gray, howling wolf airbrushed on the side. It was 1987 and I was en route to see Mötley Crüe with a buddy, his mom, and one of her friends. Not only did his mom offer me a hit in the parking lot, but so did five other, fully grown men during the show. No, I didn’t accept. I was only twelve and had fully bought into the Just Say No propaganda they’d been feeding us at school. I was scared to death that weed would either kill me or turn me into some deformed monstrosity that resembled Jason Voorhees. I would soon learn, however, that if you went to a rock show, you’d better be prepared to catch a whiff of weed. You might even get the opportunity to smoke some. It didn’t matter if you hadn’t yet grown hair on your balls. For my generation, pot often came before puberty.

It was seemingly easier to smuggle weed into a venue back in the day. All a clever stoner had to do was put a few joints in his shoe and it would go unnoticed. The one security guard trying to get thousands of rabid fans through the turnstile at $5.50 an hour didn’t care enough to enforce drug policy. As long as someone wasn’t carrying a shank, firearm, or nunchucks (hey, I knew a guy who tried that), they didn’t give a damn.

However, Kentucky is a strange place politically, even in 2022. There have been many attempts over the years to reform the drug laws across the state, especially those geared toward legalizing marijuana. But lawmakers have continued to shut down the concept of a taxed and regulated market. They won’t even budge in terms of allowing it to be used for therapeutic purposes. State law calls for petty pot offenders to be charged with a misdemeanor, punishable with as many as 45 days in jail and a $250 fine. But the judicial system is seemingly tired of messing with low level offenses. There’s not a lot of judges these days adhering to the state’s antiquated statute on pot possession, according to a festivalgoer I spoke with named Jesse. “I got popped for around an ounce a few counties over years ago and they just gave me a $50 fine.”

Reports from the Louisville-Courier Journal show that a small fine is a typical response to first-time offenders statewide.

Some Kentucky municipalities have eliminated criminal penalties for pot possession in recent years. Louisville, home of boxing legend Muhammad Ali, is one of them. The Metro Council decriminalized minor pot possession in 2019, making the “investigation, citations, and arrests” pertaining to adult possession of a “small amount of marijuana” the lowest law enforcement priority. It’s not a highly publicized ordinance, so tourists are often in the dark. But not the locals. 

“Nobody really worries about weed around here anymore,” a young Greta Van Fleet fan named Brad told me. “That’s why I don’t understand why the festival cares if we bring it or not.”

The thing is, they probably don’t. However, as long as marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, allowing a Schedule I controlled substance—the same classification as meth and heroin—onto the fairgrounds would certainly cripple the organizer’s ability to secure general liability insurance. And man, considering the amount of bourbon that was being served in that place, they need all they can fucking get! It’s not like the festival was allowing people to bring in alcoholic beverages either. Nope, they were unwittingly forcing patrons to sell off their first born and/or take on a second mortgage to afford the ridiculously priced beer, cocktails, and yes, every brand of bourbon imaginable being sold wherever people weren’t pissing it out. Had cannabis achieved legal status like alcohol, ganja would have presumably received the same capitalistic courtesy. They would have also gouged the shit out of it.

“If it were legal, we couldn’t afford to get high here,” Ashton from Lexington, Kentucky told me. “I’ll always bring my own.”

By the time Pearl Jam went on Saturday night, I knew, and without question, that the gatekeepers of the Bourbon & Beyond festival indeed didn’t give a shit. Not about weed, they didn’t. The smoke wafting across the fairgrounds during Thursday’s lineup, as Alanis Morrisette and Jack White closed the evening with killer sets, was no match for the odoriferous pungency assaulting my olfactory senses once Eddie Vedder and crew plugged in. Sure, the bourbon continued to flow like a busted sewer line throughout their two-hour set. That was evident. Women were storming off left and right as their beer-bellied significant others chased them down in protest of some perceived bad behavior. Arms were grabbed and hearts were presumably broken.

One man that passed me was so ripped out of his gourd that he folded backward as though he had just popped out of the Circus Circus, elevator scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where Hunter’s attorney, Dr. Gonzo, searches his coat for a lighter, jabbering about how he thinks “there’s something wrong with me.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “Man, that dude is going to be a prime candidate for a brain transplant by morning,” I thought to myself. There was something definitely wrong with him. Many others stumbled through the grass like bourbon-dazed zombies, conceivably unsure of their whereabouts, searching for answers that I was sure they would never find. From the stage, even Vedder could tell that the crowd was south of crocked, specifically calling out a man in the middle of the herd that he referred to as “Frank” for disconnecting from reality. “I’m not sure if it’s from the bourbon or the beyond,” Vedder said.

Don’t get me wrong. Although I did, in fact, fear that jungle law would inevitably take over if the barrels didn’t run dry (or if they did), and we’d all have to resort to some rather ruthless tactics to make it out alive, the air of the event remained reasonably peaceful. I never once saw anyone get their ass kicked or dragged out by police kicking and screaming. Hey man, that’s rather impressive, considering that Saturday night’s attendance consisted of a record-breaking 110,000 bourbon drinkers and hellraisers. Many neighborhood bars can’t even keep their patrons from throwing fists once more than fifty people start drinking together, but somehow festivalgoers reached a truce. Sure, Bourbon & Beyond was a sardine can under Kentucky’s slice of the universe, but an asylum it was not, even with the right kind of people. Unless you count the nuts, who dropped a month’s salary on overpriced booze for four days of fun, then I suppose we were all certifiable. Oh well, all in the spirit of good times. Send in the Ibuprofen.

The soundtrack to this lunacy, however, was one that I won’t soon forget. Thank you for that, Kentucky. For all those couples discussing divorce in the weeks to come, I wish you the best of luck. Contention, hurt feelings, and everything that manifests from the rumble is, unfortunately, often par for the carousal. Perhaps in the years to come, the state’s legislative forces will get serious about legalizing the leaf and give their otherwise law-abiding citizens more options than Jim and Jack. Not everyone can hold their liquor. And not everyone can get stoned under the current laws.

Surprisingly, most of the bands scheduled to perform didn’t use their platform to stand up for marijuana legalization. Not even Alanis Morrisette, who admitted to High Times back in 2010 that she was an avid pot fan. But that didn’t matter. She was still one of the most ass-kicking highlights of the entire weekend, and she did play “Mary Jane.” However, Pearl Jam, arguably the biggest act to grace the stage, spoke out a little on the issue. It happened after Eddie Vedder spotted a young, 10-year-old fan in the front row jamming out to the concert with his family. Parents take note: That is how you raise well-rounded children. After a little banter about the youth keeping rock n’ roll alive, Eddie reached out to the young man with a lighthearted warning.

“I was going to lecture you over the dangers of pot smoking, but it’s not even legal in Kentucky,” he declared. “But perhaps by the time you get old enough to do that, it will be, and you’ll be able to make the decision for yourself. You’re obviously a smart kid with great taste in music. He’ll be fine,” the singer concluded.

Who knows, maybe we all would. Sure, there will be some folks who fuck it all up, while others will learn to manage, survive, and even prosper in the wake of whatever freedoms the controls of our respective states decide we are deserved. That has been the case since the inception of this thing called America. But even the responsible slip and fall. That’s no excuse to continue punishing the population under the illusion that Uncle Sam cares about our safety and well-being. We don’t need that. Never did. We’re grown-ups and, as Eddie Vedder so eloquently put it, capable of making our own choices. Many will learn from their mistakes. Others won’t. They’ll keep on trying and never achieve any balance in life, blaming everyone else for their problems. But not all of us are the same. It’s important to understand that the societal downtrodden can’t always be expected to do the right thing, and they can’t always be saved from themselves. Offering some semblance of protection and hope for their futures with foolish laws won’t solve the problem. It’s certainly no benefit to the rest of us. Dumb shit will always see that people go to jail, and dumb people will always end up there. It doesn’t really matter who is held accountable. The politicians and citizens are equally to blame for holding up and, in some cases, reversing progress. However, this is the wrong path. We, every single one of us, should embrace common sense and always try to move forward, even if we don’t always agree. Thanks again, Kentucky. We’ll see you in two-to-three years for Bourbon, Bud & Beyond.

The post Bourbon & Beyond: In Search of Some Good Ole Kentucky Bluegrass appeared first on High Times.

We always imagined GWAR was a wild-eyed pack of social lepers, burnouts, just like us, whose greatest ambition in life was to perhaps get a GED and a factory job if their shitty band didn’t pan out. Also like us. And they surely wouldn’t last long. There was no way that something so blatantly rotten and depraved would be allowed longevity in America. The PMRC would have them killed! So, we obviously bought in, and “Scumdogs” quickly became the soundtrack of our degeneration. We didn’t care if they were just a bunch of losers from Richmond, Virginia, or barbarians from outer space banished to live out the rest of their pathetic existence on the planet Earth for fingering someone in the wrong hole. Either way, GWAR horrified authority, and that ruled! 

When my editor told me I’d be talking with the band’s new lead vocalist, The Berserker Blothar, to discuss their new album The New Dark Ages, their European and U.S. tours, and their newly released Shudder documentary “This is GWAR,” I may have nodded in agreement, but I knew damn well that I would never conduct such a lame, cliche interview with a Scumdog. That’s what Loudwire is for. No, for this old metalhead, who gladly jumped into the white van of the heavy genre at an early age from the wood-paneled Sears stereo console holding his mother’s Conway Twitty and Alabama records, this gang of arthouse misfits and beer-bellied intellectuals, who’d achieved legendary status by sodomizing punk rock with beefy guitars, cheesy lyrics, and cum-stained theatrics deserved a little taste of their own medicine. It wouldn’t be proper to spend time with Blothar asking about music (although I’m guessing he wishes I would have). Now, nearly four decades after being introduced to GWAR, they might want me dead.

HIGH TIMES: Wait, you’re not Taylor Swift. What’s going on here?

The Berserker Blothar: Yes, there’s apparently been some confusion.

HT: Yeah, a little bit. Well, I guess you’ll do.

BB: (Laughs)

HT: So, I was doing a little research before the interview and noticed that GWAR now has a whiskey, beer, CBD, Delta-8. I think I even saw a GWAR crack pipe being sold somewhere. What’s GWAR’s real drug of choice?

BB: We have a crack pipe? I have never seen a GWAR crack pipe.

HT: I think it was black market.

BB: That makes sense. We certainly should have GWAR bongs. GWAR’s drug of choice has always been crack cocaine on stage, right? Because we want to set a good example. But then, backstage, we’re all smoking weed.

HT: Is that just to come down from the crack or just peer pressure?

BB: It’s a long tradition and community of artists and musicians that make… you know, we have a lot of sculptors in the band. And they would sculpt something—usually a bong—and say, “Hey, look, I sculpted a bong, do you have any weed?” And then we would say, “Yes, we have some weed… or no, screw you and your bong sculpture.”

HT: Well, you liked marijuana enough to release your “Bud of the Gods” cannabis line. Honestly, I half expected it to be a high-THC breed laced with angel dust and dried spooge. Why did GWAR opt to produce a non-intoxicating formula, free of THC, blood and human jizz?

BB: Well, you know, we’re trying to make our way into the industry one step at a time. But some of the CBD products—the gummies actually—if you eat those, I know that for a fact they’ll get you high. Because I was supposed to go meet my mother-in-law for the first time. And beforehand, I was like, “Well, CBD will calm me down. Let me just take some of this.” And so I chewed a gummy and the next thing I know I’m pulling over. I can’t drive. I can’t drive anyway. But I definitely got very confused from the CBD gummies.”

HT: Yeah, I get that. I went to take a vitamin once and accidentally took an Adderall instead.

BB: Oh, you don’t want to do that. You don’t want to use your CBD as lube by accident either.

HT: No, I mean, then you need Viagra, right?

BB: Yeah! But, Bud of Gods, it’s a great product. It’ll really take the edge off. But I don’t really know that much about CBD. I know people say that there’s all kinds of things: balms you can put on; umm, petroleum jelly.

HT: You know, they make cannabis suppositories now that are, of course, designed to be jammed up your ass or in your lady’s snatch. Any chance that we’ll get to push a little GWARijuana up our asses in the near future?

BB: That’s a really good idea…a GWAR suppository. It really makes sense. I mean, we do have a GWAR sex toy that’s coming out, so, I mean, we will be going into some butts.

HT: Will it be prickly and painful?

BB: Yeah, it’s a model of the Cuttlefish of Cthulhu. So yeah, it’s got… It doesn’t look comfortable, let’s just say that.

HT: Good! Sounds like something we need.

BB: Yes, and I’m not sure what kind of marriage it would aid.

HT: Probably a Pentecostal one.

BB: Yeah, it’s more like a marriage destroyer (Laughs).

HT: Okay, so, some politicians claim that marijuana is a gateway drug, that it will eventually get people hooked and having them sucking off truckers for spare change. Has GWAR ever blown a trucker for weed money?

BB: Well, sucking off truckers for spare change sounds like a good time… on a Monday night… in Richmond, Virginia. Yeah, right off the highway 95 exit. I’m not saying, meet me there at exit 152. I’m just saying I might be there between nine and eleven tonight. I mean, you know, I think it’s not a gateway to anything more serious than missing work… a lot. But, you know, like anything else, you have to do it in moderation. And that’s why I can’t do it at all. I have a problem with moderation. I’m not a moderator. The truth of the matter is we’ve all been smoking weed since we were 14 years old, listening to Judas Priest in the attic of our parent’s garage, so you know, GWAR has a long-time connection with the weedage. Plus, you know, we used to tour with the Butthole Surfers. Talk about having good weed, boy, those guys had some good stuff. It is true that weed is different now, right? Back then, we just had a big, two-pound bag of shake.

HT: Right, that stuff that gives you a headache.

BB: Yeah, now they’ve got that wax stuff—shatter. It really is like doing crack, you know. There’s so many steps involved. Too many steps!

HT: Right! Who needs all those steps to get high. I can’t keep up.

BB: No.

HT: Okay, so you mentioned GWAR’s marital aid. Don’t you think that weed is the heavy metal aid?

BB: Weed, it really takes the edge off and ultimately, surprisingly, that’s what metal is doing. It’s providing a release for people from the mundanity of their everyday lives. So, we’re proud to be involved with any vice that we can be involved with. You know, people are all upset now because we make NFTs. BOO-HOO!

HT: I saw that you just released them.

BB: Yeah, we put out NFTs and everyone’s like, “Rawr! Boo, NFTS!” Who cares?

HT: No one’s ever happy.

BB: No, unless they smoke a shit ton of weed!

HT: Yeah! Which brings me to my next question. We’re going to get political. So, Richard Nixon launched the drug war and Nancy Reagan took it up a notch by demanding that kids to Say No to Drugs. If GWAR was hired to do a public service announcement about dope, what’s the message?

BB: I think ultimately, GWAR wants people to be inebriated. We’re pushers. We’re pushers from way back. The one’s that McGruff warned you about!

HT: I have to imagine that GWAR has snorted all sorts of shit over the decades. What’s the best?

BB: I mean, we’ve snorted everything from crushed up laxatives—those are good. We got so tired of spending money on drugs that what we would do is actually just smoke the money. It just saved time. I don’t think we ever snorted money, but we definitely smoked some.

HT: Well, they say there’s traces of cocaine on all U.S. currency.

BB: (Laughs) That’s interesting. No, we’ve snorted just about everything. You know, battery acid. The scrapings off the post of the battery of our cars. Crushed up red peppers. We’ll snort anything. 

HT: Now that the Supreme Court says women can’t have abortions, I guess you won’t be snorting baby fetuses.

BB: No, and that sucks! You know, that’s going to dry up. We definitely enjoyed like a bag of Funyuns and some baby fetus.

HT: I hear that’s one of the best highs.

BB: Getting high off unborn baby, jeez, that’s a good feeling.

HT: Hey, we’re doing the lord’s work here.

BB: (Laughs) Look, we’ve been down that road before with drugs and we’ve snorted a lot of cocaine. One of my favorite moments was when we received an award from the ACLU, and I’d just been doing cocaine for hours on the tour bus and kissing with some girl who was neurotically reapplying lipstick. So, I just come out with lipstick smeared all over my face, cocaine dripping out of my nose and take a big, giant check for the missing children’s foundation.

HT: Beautiful. I think.

BB: Those were the good old days.

HT: Yeah, man, where are they now? Where are the good old days?

BB: I know! Where are the quaaludes, man? Quaaludes are great! You know, you can feel like Elvis all the time. That’s what he felt like right when his guts poured out into the toilet, right from his butthole.

HT: Poor bastard.

BB: Pricilla, get me some toilet paper!

HT: Speaking of toilets. Stoners get hungry. What does GWAR eat to satisfy the munchies?

BB: Well, I mean, on the tour bus you’ll find a lot of Pop-Tarts. We definitely eat those, especially the fudge. And despite the supply of babies, GWAR has always been enthusiastic baby-eaters. Just pop the head off one and drain it. Yeah, that’s mainly it. Chicks. Lot of Funyuns. I mentioned those. GWAR is really big on those.

HT: Do I see an endorsement in the future?

BB: That would be great, wouldn’t it? GWAR-branded Funyuns that absolutely taste terrible.

HT: They should come with a complimentary GWARijuana suppository.

BB: (Laughs) Yeah, that’s right. A sour and cream and onion suppository.

HT: Okay, let’s get serious. The cannabis scene is full of wanna-be hippies and Rastafarians. They all wear tie dyed shirts, stink of patchouli and preach peace and love and all that horse shit. If you established an alternative movement called GWARstafarins, what basic principles would its followers need to adhere to, to belong?

BB: First of all, I can’t believe they’re calling people who just smoke weed and look like hippies Rastafarians. Jeez, what do the real Rastafarians think? I’m sure that they’re not thrilled about that. I mean, GWARstafarians would be. First of all, they wouldn’t really have long hair because they wouldn’t have heads. They’d just be a bleeding stump. They’d be holding their head just smoking some weed, I suppose. That’s the first step. We have a fraught relationship with hippies. You know, we’ve killed the corpse of… he was already dead, but then we re-killed Jerry Garcia. Of course, there’s the famous GWAR song “How Do You Hide Money From A Hippy? Put it under the soap.” So, I think a GWARstafarian movement would definitely be a bunch of headless people carrying around their own heads that are smoking joints and they’d be praying to GWAR, offering up all their money and worldly possessions.

HT: They be a society of self-contained bongs and penniless fucks.

BB: Yeah, that’s right.

HT: President Joe Biden said he was all for marijuana reform, but he hasn’t done jack shit for the movement like he said during his campaign. If GWAR was given five minutes alone with the Commander in Queef, what would you do to change his mind… before chopping his head off, of course?

BB: I’d show him what it feels like to be touched when you don’t want to be touched. That’s for sure. You know, I think that it’s wonderful that weed has become commonplace as it has. Everybody’s smoking it all the time. People are smoking it at work. People are smoking it at church. Kids are smoking it in the classroom. Babies are smoking it. I think that’s great. I am very pleased with the progress that has been made. Because it used to be just a few pathetic old hippies who were part of NORML just walking around saying, “Look, one day weed’s going to be legal.” And we’d always go, “HA! You’re so stupid.” But look, look what happened. The government found out they could make some money off of it. This always occurred to me whenever I’d go over to Europe and talk to those sanctimonious Europeans who have negative things to say about American foreign policy and shit. It’s like, you know what? You’re high! You’re really high! And that means you’re not in the streets, so I think the government has a hold on you too. Hopefully that answers the question without answering the question. Because I don’t like answering questions.

HT: Well, sorry. But that poses another question. What tastes better, babies or babies after they smoke weed?

BB: Definitely, you want a smoked baby. A weed smoked baby. Yeah, that would be good!

HT: You’ve got to bring back the GWAR BQ and serve smoked baby. THC infused smoked baby.

BB: Yeah! You know, and I would tell Biden: Look, man, just make weed… make it all legal. Everything. Everything should be legal. Especially, abortion. Abortion should actually be mandatory. And they really need to raise the age limit to like 23. Not months, but years! How are you going to know if the kid’s a shithead before they’re eighteen.

HT: Parents need a trial basis.

BB: Yeah.

HT: That’s the true late term abortion, right?

BB: That’s right. Very late term. 

HT: I’m still waiting for my parents to do it to me and I’m 49.

BB: (Laughs) You never know.

HT: You’re touring Europe and the U.S. through the beginning of November. How does GWAR keep law enforcement from harassing them for weed in areas of prohibition where officials are convinced that getting high will lead to the decline of civilization?

BB: It definitely has happened. Back when GWAR traveled in a school bus, we would drive up on the New Jersey turnpike and there was this one particular toll booth that we would go through. They would have the young troopers out there just training them on GWAR. They’d pull us over and we knew the cop by name, and he would come on and invariably find weed and he’d throw it away. But we also used to get stopped a lot by cops who wanted to go through all the props and take pictures with them. It was great. It was always a good time. “You boys got some kind of traveling show? I see you got some marijuana.” We’ve had run-ins with the cops. When you’re in the tour bus though, they think you’ve got money, so they pretty much give you a pass. They want to hassle the people riding around like a bunch of hippies in a school bus. But you’d be surprised what you can get through with. I mean, you can just cruise into Canada with dead bodies on the bus and nobody cares. Speaking of Rastafarians. I have a friend who toured with Eek-A-Mouse. That’s what he said they did. Just put a bunch of weed in the equipment truck. They never even paid attention.

HT: So, there you have kids. All you have to do to smuggle weed is put it on a tour bus.

BB: That’s right, yes!

HT: Except if you’re Willie Nelson or Snoop Dogg.

BB: (Laughs) Well, yeah.

The post GWAR Smokes Weed, Snorts Dead Babies, and Destroys Funyuns appeared first on High Times.

In the weeks leading up to this highly-anticipated interview, I dove in extensively to Amigo the Devil’s catalog of consternation—starting with Everything is Fine (2018) and on through his latest offering, Born Against (2021)—doing my damndest to remedy the unintentional ignorance I’d been wallowing in all this time. Hey man, what can I say? I’ve had better things to do than keep up on the great American drool. Given the often-sad state of music today, my expectation of hearing anything again that would blow my mind was somewhere between ignoble and the final note that would have me out on the ledge of my second-story office window, ready to belly flop to my death. But Amigo the Devil, that sly banjo-playing bastard, did not show up at this point of my shoddy existence to send me on a deep dive to the netherworld. Although half anticipating some hipster hack crooner from the beaten horse of a post-MTV unplugged generation, there wasn’t a shred of that to be found anywhere on his recordings. No sir, this Amigo fella was a disturbed, solemn, sarcastic son of a bitch. And I liked it!

My crash course in his brand of what is being hailed by music critics across the globe as dark folk, I’m proud to say, took place in the comforts of my backyard, aptly seasoned with a metric ass-ton of beer and edibles, all while aggressively smoking one of nature’s weaker, slower beasts on the grill as the sun slumped into the horizon. Ah, ain’t it poetic? Now, to Amigo’s legion of rabid followers—and believe me, he’s got a more loyal, dedicated fanbase than the Dark Lord himself—my drunken, stoned familiarization methods may seem a bit too leisurely for a proper review. But that’s precisely how this old music aficionado goes-a-hearkening these days: In real-time. Out here, parts deemed by some as the Armpit of America, we enjoy good tunes when we’re all buzzed up, reveling in the quandaries of life, and swatting at goddamned mosquitoes.

Although some of the less cultured of the societal downtrodden might be quick to label Amigo the Devil as part of the redneck, twang genre, we need to be careful with those accusations. It’s not that cut and dry. Why, this is not the faux Rhinestone fuddy-duddy of the new school singing about God and country for the red, white and blue, shit-kicking conservatives of a Trump-humping 2024. Don’t you dare compare him to that rotten scene or any other for that matter. Amigo the Devil, at least as far as an ethos, is an apparition of the old wild west, circa black and white, and all the lawless debauchery of the dusty trail – a time when prostitutes always had a bloody nose, moonshine stole the eyes of lost men and cutthroat violence plagued the streets like an alley cat in heat.

It was when I heard the songs “Small Stone,” “Murder at the Bingo Hall,” and “Shadow,” that my affinity for this young man’s mission took a serious turn, a blasting effect that sent me crawling back to the beginning of his catalog to take in another round. Perhaps I was a little stoned by this time in the evening—okay, I definitely was—but these grim tunes spurred a series of emotional tremors. I felt like I was trapped in some dismal corridor of the H.H. Holmes murder house with absolutely no way of escaping, and my swan song was being ushered in by an organ-grinding monkey in bright red lipstick gripping a bloody razor. Holy freaking shit, Nick Cave and Roy Orbison must have given life to a love child when I wasn’t looking and Mike Patton, the Almighty Savior, was the godfather. But that couldn’t be, could it? The illegitimate spawn of such masters, for reasons we need not get into right now, would have surely been born with a severe case of rickets. I mean, there’s no way in hell for that much talent to fit into a test tube without producing a ghastly birth defect or two. And maybe that’s what makes Amigo the Devil so damn unique—he’s an illusionary oddity wrapped in a decent human being—and he’s rickets free, as far as I can tell. I know this to be true because I had the pleasure of talking extensively with the man via Zoom while he was parked at a Shell station in Little Rock, Arkansas. So what if you’ve seen him driving around town with the taxidermied head of a deer in the passenger seat. Who cares if you can’t understand his inquisitive nature for murder or propensity for taking the occasional shot of Hypnotic when the sadistic spirit moves him? Who among us, am I right? I tell you this; we’ve only witnessed a handful of genuine gut-belting troubadours with the range to cover all the bases in the past two decades and, mark my words, this dude is one of them.

High Times: Where are you right now, a fucking Sunoco?

Amigo the Devil: Yeah, I’m mid-drive right now. I started driving around 4:30 this morning, and I got about six hours to go. I collect a lot of weird shit, so I’m basically driving around collecting. I got a whole haul today.

HT: Is all that for your personal collection?

ATD: Yeah, yeah. Every once in a while, I’ll trade for something. But today was pretty good. (Turns the phone so I can see what he’s got in the backseat) I got a peacock, a little bear, and a Victorian skeleton.

HT: Nice, man. Well, I appreciate you taking time out to talk to me.

ATD: Yeah, thank you for your time. I appreciate this.

HT: My pleasure. Well, first thing’s first, let’s talk about bingo halls.

ATD: Sweet!

HT: I went to one at the American Legion back in the day, and it was insane. Judging from the song Murder in a Bingo Hall, you have also seen your fair share of them. What’s the fascination?

ATD: I love playing bingo, and honestly, I wish I went more often now. My first core memory of the bingo hall experience was in the first band I was ever in. I was like 15, I think. I grew up in Miami, so I was still living in Miami. I was 15, maybe 16, and we were doing a little mini tour of Florida. And this is obviously long ago. We all had these fake IDs that we were using on tour. The bass player, my buddy Kyle, rolls in with this literal photocopy of his brother’s ID. They looked at it, and they just kind of looked back at him and were like, “No.” And he goes: “Please?” I remember sitting there thinking, “Kyle, you’re going to get us into so much trouble.” And she was like, “Okay, fine.” And so, we go in. We played a bunch of rounds. We got the thick packets and all that, and I was hooked. Hooked, hooked, hooked! So, on that tour, I just went to every bingo stop I could find, and that is where one of my obsessions began.

HT: Bingo halls are pretty intense. They are surprisingly low-key until someone beats the room, then look out.

ATD: Oh, it’s brutality.

HT: Well, you knew there was no way you could interview with High Times without getting asked about weed. By law, I have to ask you several personal questions about your experiences. Since you agreed to talk to me, I’m assuming that you’re an advocate or user. I promise, we won’t tell mom.

ATD: I’m an advocate and user. Regular user, but highly lightweight. It’s really funny. It kicks my ass the most of anything ever.

HT: Really?

ATD: Oh yeah, and I don’t know why. I’ve never been able to build up an actual tolerance to it. For me, it’s pleasant. But a lot of what my friends smoke these days just puts me on my ass right away. It’s still enjoyable. I’ve always loved it. I’ve always loved the culture around it. I’ve always loved what it does for people. And I’ve never been able to immerse myself as wholly and completely as I would love to because I’m a lightweight. I’m weak.

HT: No, man, not weak. There’s no need to be a hero. Weed is super strong now. I’ve had some instances where I was like, holy shit, I don’t know if I’m going to come out of this, so don’t feel bad. How did you get turned on to the plant? Any funny stories about your first time?

ATD: I was like 10 or 11. The first few times weren’t very memorable because it was just like what was happening with my older friends. And so, I just got kind of pulled into it and all that. Most of the good stories are from early tours. Again, that same first band I had. They were still relatively lawless. It felt, compared to now, it felt like lawless days in terms of just getting away with things and partying and never really getting into trouble. There’s no YouTube and cameras everywhere and all that. It was just a lot of debauchery, ending up in houses that I shouldn’t have, trying to get weed. And honestly, I’m glad that a lot of people don’t have to go through that shit anymore.

HT: I understand you suffer from depression. Many people argue that cannabis helps ease the worst of their symptoms. Yet, some claim that being stoned makes them too introspective and actually exasperates their condition by highlighting their insecurities. Which side best describes your experience?

ATD: I wouldn’t say I’m unique in this, but I feel like most people around me and most people growing up have the same experience of that absolute inner rage, that turmoil. The hormone explosion and not understanding anything about life.

HT: Ah, yes, testosterone on steroids.

ATD: Absolutely. I remember being able to just take things lightly, and it always brought me down to a place where I was able to rationalize more effectively than the absolute outburst of throwing things, for example. And that’s one thing I loved about smoking when I was young. Funny enough, I always joke about how much I miss shitty weed. I know I’m going to get hell for this. I know everyone’s going to rip on me. But I remember being on tour in Texas, and I gave this dude like $10 or something, and he gave me this giant bag of like dog shit. Just horrible, horrible. I don’t even know what it was. It was like mud. Bricks of mud. And we were like, sick! We were able to just smoke blunts all night. We probably weren’t smoking weed at all. It was probably cow shit or something. But it was great (laughs).

HT: Sure, you didn’t get too fucked up, and the night remained social without incident.

ATD: Exactly. And I miss that. I miss being able to smoke extensively as opposed to just two or three hits and dying.

HT: Yeah, back in the day, my buddies and I would get a quarter bag and smoke it all night long without ever gripping our chests or fearing for our lives. You got high, but not like people do today. So, what about edibles? I love a good edibles story. I’m assuming they’re kicking your ass too?

ATD: Oh my… so one of my favorite edibles stories. I have too many. I’m so stupid. I don’t learn, ever. I’m dumb as hell (laughs). But somebody in Vegas, a friend of a friend, had given me a cookie. That night I had driven right outside of Zion National [Park] in Utah, and I was going to hike Angels Landing in the morning. We planned on hiking at around 7 am or whenever the park opened up. We got to the hotel, and I was like, you know what, I’m going to crush this cookie, go to sleep, and wake up all fucking refreshed. I have problems sleeping anyway so that shit helps me a lot. I ate the cookie and was like, “You know what? I’m going to get snacks. I want snacks real quick.” So, I went to the 7-Eleven down the street. And as I’m in the 7-Eleven, I feel like my blood is just going vrrroooosh-vrrrooooshh. I remember going, “Okay, I’m fucked up. Cool.” All of a sudden, I was like, oh my God, this was not weed at all. These are fucking mushrooms.

HT: Holy shit.

ATD: Before it kicked in too hard, I remember jumping in the car and racing back to the hotel. I got up to the room and just blurted out [in a slow drone]: “It’s not weed. It’s mushrooms.” (laughs). In the room, [my girlfriend] Alicia was like, “Oh, calm down, you just got too high.” I was like, “no, no, no.” All of a sudden, it hit her, too, and she was like, “Fuck…fuck…fuck!” I do love mushrooms. I just don’t like it unexpectedly.

HT: Right, you don’t want to get hit in the face with an impromptu trip.

ATD: Exactly. So, we both curled into bed, and we’re like, it’ll be fine. I remember trying to text people. That was the first semblance of me not having control of anything. I was trying to text, but the letters kept getting further away in my phone. So, I couldn’t read what I was typing anymore. That’s when I knew we were in it. I put my phone down. Alicia goes to use the restroom, and I’m lying in bed. I can feel my heartbeat. I feel like I’m having a fucking heart attack, which is my fear anyway, with my eating habits and other shit. I feel my heartbeat shaking the bed, rattling the bed. Fucking hours go by. And I was like, oh my god, Alicia died. Alicia is in the bathroom, and she died. How the fuck am I going to solve this? So, I’m in bed, and I’m freaking out. So, I was like, just do it, just do it. So, I called out: “Hey, babe.” Immediately, she was like, “Yeah?” And I was like, “Are you okay?” And she was like, “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?” I was like, “You’ve been in there so fucking long.” She was like, “It’s literally been 30 seconds.” I had the entire world collapsed on me for what felt like hours, trying to figure out how the hell I was going to explain that she was dead in the bathroom.

HT: You almost got your Sid Vicious moment.

ATD: Yeah, that was just one of those moments where the trip spiraled so far south, and in one instant, one little response made everything lighten up again.

HT: Yeah, but did you learn anything?

ATD: No! Absolutely not. But I guess my point is that’s how a lot of the strong edibles make me feel now.

HT: I’ve had some scary experiences with edibles, so I can empathize. I had a buddy who did dabs for the first time, and he had to bear crawl on his hands and knees back to the cabin. He couldn’t function at all. The next day, I said something to him about being too high for his own good, and he said, I wouldn’t call that high (laughs). Have you ever done dabs and had them fuck you up like that?

ATD: I’m going to go ahead and say anybody who does dabs regularly is a superhuman. Every time I get suckered into it—and I say suckered lightly because it’s always my choice. It was at a show in Tulsa, and one of my really good friend’s little brothers was there, and he was like, “Hey man, want to smoke?” I was like, “Fuck yeah, let’s do this.” I was thinking we would go back and rip a little bowl and be very civil about things. But when we go to his car, he pulls out the whole dab rig out of the backseat. So, I’m sitting there going, “Oh god, goddamnit.” Now, I still have to go back to the show.

HT: Wait, you had to perform?

ATD: I still had to play.

HT: My God, dude.

ATD: So, I was like, you got this, Danny. You’re good, you’re good. I’m psyching myself up. I was like, I’m just going to take a baby rip and use the excuse that I got to play. Whatever. So, he does his whole thing: OOOOOSSSSSPPPPTTTT (giant hit from dab rig) and just the biggest rip of all time. It’s in the book of world records somewhere. Has to be. And I was like, alright, here we go. He hands it to me, and I was oospt (smallest hit ever), the tiniest, little hit, barely any suction. And he was like, “That’s all?” I was like, “Yeah, I’m good. I’ve got to play. More later.” I got out of the car thinking that I got away with it. This is sick. Fuck no. I could barely fucking walk. The second I get into the venue, all I remember is crawling under the merch table and asking the person doing merch, “Hey, can you tell?” She was like, “Yes, the whole fucking room can. They just saw you do that. They just saw you crawl under the table. Nothing about that was slick.” My grand plan was to pretend it was a magic show. So I came out from under the table and went, “Tada!” I remember everybody looking at me, and I was like, they know how fucking destroyed I am.

HT: They did. Promise.

ATD: Jesus.

HT: So, how did you perform that night?

ATD: Horribly! I have performed better with the stomach flu than I did that night. I have performed better puking into a garbage can on stage than I did that night. (laughs) Like I said, I’m a lightweight. I still love it.

HT: Well, I might have gotten you into enough trouble already, so I guess we should talk about music.

ATD: Okay.

HT: So, going back to when you were a kid. What bands did you listen to during that time that got you to go, fuck, that’s it, I have to play music?

ATD: Growing up in Miami was weird because I didn’t have the same access as people on the West coast or people in New England did to a lot of music that would shape me later. So, I relied a lot on older friends and my cousin, specifically, to guide me. I’m talking 10, 11, 12 years old. I think that’s when I learned, for the most part, what I really enjoyed, and a lot of that had to do with my older cousin, who was the coolest guy in my family in my eyes at that time. And so, every time I’d go visit, he’d be like, “Yo, check this out.” And then he’d play like Testament or something. I’d be like, I obviously love this because you like it. So, he kind of got me into that thrash-esque world, like the Slayers, the main names for then. Once I started figuring out that I could ride my bike to record shops and pick up the zines and pick up fucking tape catalogs, and then I started ordering weird cassettes and weird CDs and all this shit. And that kind of spiraled into weirder and weirder influences. That was mostly for heavy music, which led me to grindcore and all the noise stuff and the weird black metal stuff. The other half of my influences, oddly enough, came from BMX videos.

HT: Wait, no shit?

ATD: Yeah, BMX videos and magazines. I found out about Tom Waits through… I really wish I could remember the name of the magazine, but they had a review, and it sounded so interesting that I went out to try to find it. And I found it at… I’m trying so hard to remember this because they’re just good memories. Uncle Sam’s in Miami Beach had it, and I picked it up, and it was weird. And I loved it. Same with like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, I found that through a BMX magazine.

HT: I remember those BMX magazines. Did you ride?

ATD: Yeah, that’s what I thought I was going to do for the rest of my life.

HT: Dude, that’s all we did when we were kids, ride dirt bikes and jump shit.

ATD: (laughs) Oh, yeah!

HT: We’d wreck, never wearing helmets or any of that.

ATD: Hell no! I love that it was literally just kids going, can you jump from that to that? And you’d be like, obviously I can, and then you’d just eat shit (laughs).

HT: You had to do it, too, because they’d be like, you fucking pussy. You’d never live it down.

ATD: Now you have these 10-year-olds on fucking YouTube doing like front flips and shit off of staircases.

HT: Insane, right? I watch that stuff like, how in the fuck, man? I never did that.

ATD: Oh no, no. I think that’s why I never actually did anything because I didn’t want to get hurt (laughs).

HT: Not like that, man!

ATD: Yeah, like, not that level. I got hurt a lot. I rode for a long ass time, and I stopped when I broke both of my knees trying to jump over a car.

HT: Damn, that will stop you. How old were you when you did that?

ATD: Nineteen.

HT: How old are you now?

ATD: Thirty-four? Thirty-five? Thirty-six?

HT: Those fucking dabs will get you, brother.

ATD: I’m blaming that fucking Tulsa show for most of my problems.

HT: Seriously, Danny, in dab years, you’re only eleven.

ATD: (Laughs)

Author’s Note: At this point, Danny spots the John Wayne Gacy “Pogo The Clown” plate I have on my desk.

ATD: Is…is that a Pogo dish in the back?

HT: Yeah. A reader made it for me.

ATD: Holy shit.

HT: So, it’s not like anything legit, but someone did make it for me, so I thought it was a cool decoration for my office. 

ATD: That’s badass.

HT: I know you’re a big fan of serial killers.

ATD: Yeah, yeah, I am. I love true crime. It’s just too weird, too weird not to.

Author’s Note: Danny and I geeked out for a few minutes about the HBO series True Detective and the 1995 David Fincher film Seven before resuming the interview. If you haven’t seen either of these productions, you’re missing out.

HT: So, like, and I’m sorry to keep switching gears on you. If you were expecting a professional interview, you were sadly mistaken.

ATD: (Laughs) You can try the professional interview thing; I’m still going to be jumping from thing to thing.

HT: Right on. I appreciate that. So, I read somewhere that you tried film school, which parlayed into culinary school and brewing. How did that path bring you to become Amigo the Devil?

ATD: My youngest passion was BMX. I was going to be a BMX pro for the rest of my life. And then I started joining bands, really shitty bands in school, started learning to play instruments, and music was cool. And when I realized that music was a lot more rewarding in terms of social. Especially at that time, BMX kids were getting ripped on a lot.

HT: Sure, we were the hoodlums of society.

ATD: (Laughs) So I was [like] okay, I can ride BMX and be in bands. Perfect life. I stopped playing music for the culinary school dream because I was like, music is for bozos. This shit is going to go nowhere. I was still riding BMX. I went to culinary school, and then the accident happened. Big one. And at that point, I was like, I got to get a real career. I have to. My grandpa was disappointed in me, and that meant a lot to me. And… [Danny pauses]. Oh, I just watched a car explode in the Walmart parking lot.

HT: Holy shit, what?

ATD: Can you see this? (Danny turns his phone toward the parking lot so I can witness the carnage). Oh yeah, you’re joining me on this.

Author’s Note: Danny and I watched this vehicle burn in a Walmart parking lot while droves of callous customers walked by. We’re assuming the owner was still inside the store shopping when their car went up in flames. Man, that really sucks. Hope they splurged for full coverage! Thankfully the Little Rock Fire Department finally showed up with a hose. Be careful out there, kids.

HT: I was checking out some of your live shows on YouTube the other day and what I noticed was that while the theme of the evening might be death and destruction, everyone is super happy and having a fucking blast, singing along and having the best time. And so are you, seemingly. My question is, is this the funeral all of us wish we could have? How does Danny turn death into a party?

ATD: When you find somebody who is into the same weird thing that you’re into, there is an instant spark. Let’s take it to the fun extreme, like very niche kinks. As soon as you find somebody that’s kind of in the same vicinity of the same kind of weird as you, it’s exciting. Because you’re like, “Holy fuck, I’m not alone… or I’m less alone.” So, at the shows, we all get to sing about these really stupid, dark things together in this small niche of people who aren’t that afraid of thinking about death or what is indicative of death. I think the first thing that happens when you hear an entire room full of people singing the same morbid line is excitement. In the same way, if you see someone wearing a t-shirt down the street of a tiny band that no one else knows [Danny points]. You’re not immediately talking about the band. You don’t walk up to them and ask about their favorite album. And I think that’s what I hope is the reason the shows are fun because it’s a room full of people going: I can’t believe we’re all thinking the same shitty thing.

You can catch Amigo The Devil on tour this summer with Murder By Death. He’ll be at the Louder Than Life festival in Louisville, Kentucky Friday, September 23, 2022. Warning: I’ll be there too with a dab rig. And if I see Danny before you do, you better damn well know that I’ve attempted to get him Tulsa high. By his own admission, Danny doesn’t learn, so it should be relatively easy. Just look for him under the merch table. And if he’s not there, buy a shirt anyway.

Yeehaw!

The post Amigo the Devil: An Apparition of the Old Wild West appeared first on High Times.

The nation’s affinity for all things beer, wine, and spirits snuffs out roughly 95,000 diehard drinkers from ills such as liver failure and cancer every year. Meanwhile, the most horrendous consequence that the average cannabis fan might endure, at least as far as we can tell, is perhaps putting on a few extra pounds after stuffing their face with everything in the kitchen once the munchies kick in. But we digress. Considering what we know about both substances, the plant does appear to be a safer alternative to alcoholic beverages. A legion of advocates even claim that legalization may assist in pulling the great, slobbering drunkard out of the nation’s gutter of destitution and despair, ultimately putting them on the path of the straight and narrow.

Fast forward some years, and cannabis legalization for adults 21 and older has taken hold across more of the country. Yet, alcohol-related harms continue to increase. In Colorado, one of the first states to legalize the leaf in a manner similar to alcohol, booze continues to wreak havoc.

A recent study from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) finds that alcohol-related deaths increased by nearly 30% in the Centennial State during 2020. Despite having the option of using cannabis as opposed to alcohol for the past eight years, Colorado residents are evidently still drinking themselves to death at alarming numbers. Liver disease, alcohol poisoning, unsafe behavior under the influence, mental health conditions, and alcohol-induced damage to other organs are turning up on coroner’s reports like wildfire. This uptick in booze-related death isn’t just happening in Colorado either. In other legal states, the statistics are similar. Overall, with or without pot, people are still drinking in excess and paying the price.

Nevertheless, some cannabis supporters still believe that legal weed could be a saving grace for an inebriated nation. “That’s the whole reason the alcohol companies have fought so hard all these years to stop marijuana from going legal,” Logan, a 34-year-old from Houston, Texas, tells High Times. “They know they’d lose billions of dollars.” Logan is one of the many pot purists on the cannabis scene who believes the green is an exit drug, and it’s one that he thinks will secure more fanfare than alcohol ever has. “I know several people who were on their third or fourth DUI and nearly homeless that have gotten sober because they switched to cannabis,” he declared.

Logan may be onto something.

In an attempt to get to the bottom of this controversy, High Times reached out to the scientific minds connected to the NIAAA alcohol study to see if they had any idea why alcohol-related harms are still on the rise in states where cannabis is legal. But not even Uncle Sam’s health cronies understand how cannabis legalization is affecting the sudsy minds of the great American lush.

“We simply don’t have a clear picture yet of how marijuana legalization impacts alcohol consumption and related harms,” George F. Koob, Ph.D. and Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, tells High Times. The most the agency’s research has uncovered so far, Koob asserts, is mounting proof that the consumption of both cannabis and alcohol simultaneously is leading to more roadway hazards. “There is building evidence of increased harm associated with driving under the influence of both marijuana and alcohol,” he added.

It is crucial to point out that the NIAAA study did not, in any way, compare alcohol consumption rates to cannabis use. It merely reveals the savage nature of alcohol abuse in this country. Equally important, the study shows there were just as many alcohol-related deaths in states where pot is still considered an outlaw drug. Alcohol-related harms are on the rise in every state. What’s disheartening, however, is there’s no reported decrease in states with legal weed. And that’s the point of this article. Cannabis might be safer than alcohol. Being high could be a solid alternative to drunkenness. But most people who enjoy a drink now and again, which were not cannabis users to begin with, are probably not going to make the switch.

There may have been some reductions in alcohol consumption in states that have legalized (meaning that some people were likely successful at either cutting back or quitting entirely based on having access to legal weed). Those people, presumably the silent success stories, simply got lost in a significant uptick in alcohol-related harm. More research is required on this subject before the tale of the toker getting sober is properly told. With that said, however, some studies do, in fact, show that the concept of cannabis as a replacement for booze is tenable.

In 2009, researchers at the University of California in Berkeley polled hundreds of medical cannabis patients and found that most of them used cannabis as an alternative to alcohol. Other studies have uncovered similar results. “Across the sample, individuals drank approximately 29 percent fewer drinks and were 2.06 times less likely to have a binge-drinking episode on days that cannabis was used compared with days cannabis was not used. These patterns were observed in males, females, and the infrequent and frequent cannabis use groups,” reports a team of scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Colorado State University.

The medical professionals we spoke to say cannabis can absolutely help those ravaged by alcohol find some peace from beyond the bottle. The caveat is that the desire to give up drinking is essential, and the results are not absolute. “For people who want to cut down or stop alcohol, cannabis can be a viable substitute,” Dr. Jordan Tishler, CEO of InhaleMD and Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, tells High Times. The problem is many people use cannabis and alcohol together. “Use of cannabis will not, on its own, lead to less alcohol use,” he said.

Dr. Tishler doesn’t provide medical cannabis recommendations for patients trying to curb their alcohol use, but he admits that many still report less alcohol consumption. “I have many patients who report using less or stopping alcohol use,” the good doctor said. “However, for most patients, this seems incidental to their care (or maybe a side benefit). I believe it really comes down to whether they are looking to cut back the alcohol and whether they are motivated to do so. Overall, I think cannabis can be helpful in the context of intentional cutting down of alcohol but is not going to cause cutting down on alcohol just because cannabis is being used.”

While weed is likely a healthier choice than alcohol, it doesn’t appear that legalization is helping to dry up an unsober nation. And that’s okay. The cannabis plant doesn’t have to cure the sick, raise the dead or perform any other miracles for the downtrodden of mankind to be deserving of legal status. More to the point, cannabis users shouldn’t be considered any less civilized and law-abiding because their drug of choice isn’t healing the ills of an alcoholic society.

If you ask Dr. Tishler, a longtime proponent of pot for medicinal purposes, the Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol spiel should be permanently canned for the well-being of the nation. Although the slogan builds a solid case in favor of legalization, it does nothing to benefit the health and safety of the population as cannabis consumption becomes more prevalent nationwide.

“There are good data to support the idea that head-to-head cannabis is safer than alcohol, but in reality, neither is entirely safe,” Dr. Tishler said. “Saying that cannabis is safer than alcohol sounds like a good argument for legalizing cannabis, but it really just overlooks the risks of cannabis for political gain.”

The post Why Are So Many Americans in Legal States Still Dying From Alcohol-Related Causes? appeared first on High Times.

Fast forward a few decades, and times have changed. At least to some degree. More than half the United States has some sort of pot law on the books that either allows Americans to consume cannabis for medicinal purposes or gives that right to adults 21 and over. The real upside is that fewer people are getting slammed face down on the pavement and carted off to the pokey for having an appreciation for the herb. All is right in the world. Well, not so fast, maverick!

Prohibition is still alive and well in the so-called Land of the Free. Although there is a political tug of war in Congress with respect to legalizing the leaf at the national level, the federal government still hasn’t budged on bud. Cross Uncle Sam by messing with cannabis — a product that is enjoyed legally by millions of people all over the country — and it could spell serious trouble. Meanwhile, many states are still sticking it to the average stoner, and some of them big time. They are handing down criminal charges for petty possession, drug classes, hefty fines, and even jail time.

It is a little-known fact that tens of thousands of people are still sitting behind bars because of cannabis-related offenses. Jonathan Wall, currently incarcerated at the Chesapeake Detention Facility, a super-maximum jail in Baltimore, Maryland, is one of them. The 27-year-old aspiring cannabis entrepreneur is presently facing 15-years to life for conspiring to traffic pot from California to Maryland. His attorney, Jason Flores-Williams, argues that Uncle Sam’s aggressive pursuit of this young man is nothing short of lunacy. “Our government is locking people in cages for pot while it’s legal to go down to the local strip mall, buy an assault rifle and a fifth of whiskey,” he told High Times. Flores-Williams went on to say: “Corporations around the country are generating billions from the same activity for which my client is facing life in prison.”

Some of the most vocal naysayers of the nug — a title that requires little more than a disconnect from progress and reality — are of the opinion that, despite the herb’s legality in parts of the country, people who are incarcerated for pot must be the dregs of the doob, the scoundrels of a stoned nation: dealers, drug traffickers and violent, weapon-wielding maniacs. Why should they care if any of these people rot in prison? “I don’t want a bunch of saggy-pants thugs in the streets selling weed or anything else to my kids,” Joseph, a 47-year-old factory worker from Lafayette, Indiana, told us. “There are laws in this country for a reason. Some liberal states might not care about addiction and crime, but some of us still do. This country has enough problems.”

There is an apparent communication breakdown between discussing the compassionate release of pot offenders and some slick moves to unleash savage beasts back into productive society. Contrary to what people like Joseph might think, turning loose gun-toting felons who eat young children for breakfast isn’t what’s happening, nor is it the intention of the cannabis movement.

Mariah Daly, a legal fellow at the Last Prisoner Project (LPP), an organization vying for the release of pot offenders nationwide, told High Times that their constituents — the incarcerated men and women they step in to help see the light of day once again — must meet a specific set of criterion to receive the LPP’s assistance. Firstly, the primary offense must be cannabis related. No other illicit substances can be involved in the underlying violation. Next, and perhaps most importantly, the incarcerated individual must be a non-violent offender and not have been convicted of any sex crimes. Nobody is trying to ensure that violent criminals are set free to run amok.

Yes, the people incarcerated for cannabis indeed broke the law. It is important to consider, however, that the punishment didn’t fit the crime.

“Many of our constituents were sentenced to life, de facto life, or 20+ years for their cannabis offense,” Daly said. “No other drugs were involved in the underlying offenses and these men have zero history of violence/sex offenses over the course of their lifetime. Even if you disagree regarding whether cannabis offenders should be incarcerated at all (like say, in convictions “more serious than simple possession”), cannabis offenders who have received excessive sentences should be released.”

The majority of the average, run-of-the-mill cannabis advocates we spoke to about it, some of which are in just as much jeopardy of similar legal consequences, wholeheartedly agree. They contend that society should care just as much about releasing non-violent pot offenders as it does crushing statues of the confederates and uncovering backasswards governmental deceptions like the War on Drugs. At the very least, they should show more interest in freeing discarded offenders than Keeping up with the Kardashians and the release of the McRib. Without correcting the errors of the past, some argue, the country doesn’t stand a chance of experiencing real growth. “Freeing cannabis prisoners is a correction long overdue,” one advocate said.

But why should anyone really care if a bunch of pot prisoners ever get out? Aside from it being a crime in and of itself to simply lock people up for going against the grain of laws that we now know were created out of reefer madness, all the while doing it in a manner that ensured no vile acts were committed against their fellow man, we should — every single one of us — appreciate the volatility of freedom. All it takes is one bad day, and a similar fate could be bestowed upon us.

“Everyone should care about restorative justice in this area because cannabis should never have been illegal in the first place, and because it could easily be anyone in the wrong circumstances,” Morgan Fox, political director of the national cannabis advocacy group NORML told High Times.

“Given the lifelong negative effects and collateral consequences of simply having a criminal record, let alone spending time behind bars, it makes no sense to continue to punish people for federal violations for behavior that is no longer illegal,” he added. “Not only do these direct and collateral effects hinder people from becoming productive, independent members of society and harm their families and communities, but the costs associated with punishing them are an unnecessary drain on the taxpayer.”

The toll of this drain is significant.

According to the latest Federal Register’s Annual Determination of Average Cost of Incarceration (COIF), the average annual COIF for a federal inmate in a federal facility in Fiscal Year 2020 was $39,158 ($120.59 per day). The average annual COIF for a federal inmate in a Residential Reentry Center for FY 2020 was $35,663 ($97.44 per day). Considering roughly 40,000 people are still in cages for non-violent pot offenses, the price tag for keeping them is sheer lunacy.

It is worth noting that arrests for federal cannabis crimes have gone down since 2019. There were fewer than 1,000 people slapped with federal pot charges in 2021. Still, hundreds of thousands are arrested for weed every year, most of which (89%) are for simple possession.

Now, state and federal prisons are not full of harmless pot users who have been stripped from their families forever over a measly joint. That much is true. Still, thousands of these low-end offenders continue to be put through the wringers of the criminal justice system every year, taking it on the chin royally even when the likelihood of spending a day in prison is slim to none.

Most first-time pot offenders are tossed into the system and forced to swallow their fair share of probationary requirements — they can’t smoke weed, can’t be around people who do, can’t leave the state, must attend drug and alcohol classes, pay elaborate fines and court costs, submit to random drug testing, etc. Failure to comply with any of these probationary terms, and, well, there’s a jail cell waiting for them. The punishment for pot possession only gets stiffer with subsequent offenses. In some cases, three-strike rules have put non-violent pot offenders like Missouri’s Jeff Mizanskey in prison for life. In fact, Mizanskey, who had his life sentence commuted in late 2015 by then-Governor Jay Nixon after serving more than two decades behind bars for pot possession, would still be a resident of the Jefferson City Correctional Center today if not for the tireless efforts of lawmakers and cannabis advocacy groups fighting for his release.

A heck of a lot of people like Mr. Mizanskey remain in prison for a plant that’s poised to become one of the most prominent economy boosters this country has witnessed since booze. Some of the latest predictions show the national pot market will be worth nearly $40 billion once Uncle Sam admits to losing the drug war and lets the herb go legal. It means millions of new jobs and a substantial economic boost for everyone from contractors to independent businesses.

Furthermore, most reasonable citizens would agree that the US government’s attitude and behavior toward cannabis offenders is wrong. And according to Stephen Post, campaign strategist for the LPP, the issue hits close to home for many American families. “Given that over a third of United States residents have experienced the trauma of having an immediate family member who has been to jail or prison, I think more people already care about this issue than is realized,” he told us.

For those who don’t give two flying squirts about pot offenders, perhaps it is time to consider the moral argument.

“Communities in the United States need to care about the release of those still imprisoned for cannabis if we are ever going to achieve our nation’s democratic ideal that ‘all men are created equal,'” Post added. “The enforcement of cannabis criminalization is one of this nation’s biggest hypocrisies as tens of thousands remain behind bars, while others are privileged to generate millions of dollars.”

Although progress on Capitol Hill has been slow concerning changing the nation’s weed laws, there is a push, one with bipartisan support, to not only legalize the green at the national level but in a way that also allows for the release of those incarcerated for a variety of cannabis offenses. The Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, which was just approved by the US House of Representatives and now advances to the Senate for consideration, would allow more states to open cannabis markets to adults 21 and older. It would also ensure that those caught up in the gears of cannabis enforcement over the years are not forgotten. This policy change would come with strict criteria before a pot offender finds a reprieve. 

“The MORE Act explicitly limits the charges that are eligible for expungement or resentencing to non-violent cannabis convictions without ‘kingpin’ enhancements,” Fox asserts. “In cases of resentencing of a person who is currently incarcerated on multiple convictions, only the portions of the sentence directly tied to eligible cannabis convictions would be considered and affected, and a judicial panel would weigh all the factors in a person’s case before making final decisions about whether to shorten their sentence.”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear the MORE Act will go the distance any time soon. Even if the Senate were to give it the favorable attention it deserves — an improbable move considering the power struggle within the upper chamber — President Biden still isn’t willing to give his full support to the cannabis cause. For now, pot offenders all over the country will continue to sit in prison while others (maybe even you) could join them one day. So, if there is a message that needs to be conveyed, according to Flores-Williams, faith that our lawmakers are looking out for our best interests is an ignorant and dangerous position. The time for asking “why” we’re still jailing pot offenders is over. Americans should demand as much from the actions of their government as they do casual society. Where’s the cancel culture when we really need it? Because keeping otherwise innocent people behind bars for weed is the real cancellable offense.

“Try not to be blindly obedient,” Flores-Williams advises. “The law and justice are different things, and to blindly follow the law without any concern for justice reduces you to a non-citizen. “That said, I don’t know anyone who thinks that someone should be doing life in prison for pot in 2022. Except maybe a DEA agent whose job depends on it.”

The post Why Should We Care If Pot Offenders Get Released From Prison? appeared first on High Times.

Israel Approves First Ever Medical Marijuana Vaporizer

On Tuesday, Israel gave the Tel Aviv-based cannabis company Kanabo Research the green light to mass produce its VapePod medical cannabis vaporizer. Now, there will be a consumption device available for patients to use cannabis extracts.

But what’s so special about this vape? According to the company, it can precisely measure out doses of the medication. The plans are to sell the product to medical marijuana patients who have experienced difficulties in the past with finding the proper dosage. The company believes this method will lead to better treatment and more accurate administration of medical cannabis.

“This approval is a significant announcement for the medical cannabis patients in Israel who will be able to use the medical vaporizer for the first time,” Kanabo’s co-founder Avihu Tamir told the Jerusalem Post.

Interestingly, Kanabo is a relatively small company. Established in 2016, it currently employs only around 12 people. Yet, it is one of 50 medical marijuana operations in the country working on cannabis products.

Some reports show investors have spent nearly $100 million on the development of medical marijuana inhalers and other devices.

Is the U.S. Giving the Medical Marijuana Industry Away?

As it stands, Israel leads the world in medical marijuana research and development. The country is planning to export medical cannabis to the United States in the near future. Although, we should note that it has been reported that the Trump administration has attempted to discourage this action.

Cannabis industry leaders complain that policy issues have forced the forfeiture of the $30 billion medical marijuana industry. Federal law continues to hinder medical marijuana research nationwide. This lack of attention has caused other nations, like Israel, to get ahead of the medical marijuana game.

“Businesses outside of the country are already making billions of dollars,” said Rick Doblin, founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). “Canada, the Netherlands, and Israel all have booming cannabis research sectors. We have enormous opportunity that we’re squandering.” he added.

Final Hit: Israel’s Ministry of Health Approves Medical Marijuana Vaporizer

As of now, Israeli patients can use only flower-based medical marijuana treatments. The approval of this device will allow those cleared for medical marijuana use to reduce the potential health risks of inhaling smoke. While cannabis smoke is very different from that of tobacco, doctors often advise their patients to avoid chronic smoking of any kind or substance. This vaporizer will allow medical marijuana patients to have another option of consumption while taking their medication.

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