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Home , Cannabis Cup, George Petros, High Times, Rockefeller drug laws

MAGAZINE SECONDS SECONDS #48, 1998 • interview by George Petros A Brief History of Magazine

HIGH TIMES — the name says it all. Sparkling champagne during Prohibition, sparkling during The Me Generation, sparking up blunts today in the Nation — from the beginning of time our pleasures have been defined by intoxication ritual and its attendant transcendental rhetoric. In 1974 a guy named Tom Forçade decided to combine the two — and so he founded High Times. Intended to be a paraphernalia trade mag (with plenty of helpful articles) aimed at owners, it quickly mutated into an underground mag with almost paradoxical “mainstream” distribution and world-class investigative credibility — attributes that continue to gain strength. High Times today is a slick monthly sitting prominently on most of America’s newsstands. It’s treated almost like a porno mag — a testament to the crazy, mixed-up situation that has arisen from the blundering prohibition: cops busted for dealing; politicians laundering drug profits; grandmothers busted for cooking with seeds; alcohol cartels financing anti-drug campaigns; terminal patients at war with beauracrats; illegal sting operations in foreign countries conducted by agencies implicated in the importation and sales of Cocaine and — it’s just plain nuts!

248 “I’m afraid this country is becoming something like Nazi Germany was in the Thirties when it comes to . There might have to be refugees from this.”

SECONDS: I see High Times started with published a Hippie magazine, Orpheus, out seasonal issues — of a school bus. Then he moved to HOLMSTROM: It started as a quarterly and started a commune called The Free magazine. They wanted to make it a trade Ranger Tribe and ran the Underground magazine for paraphernalia. Tom Forçade Press Syndicate. He thought of the idea had been the director of the Underground for High Times when he was hiding out in Press Syndicate and he had the distribution Florida on bomb charges. He was arrested contacts. They printed ten thousand copies for trying to blow up a candidate during and they sold out immediately. They printed the Miami convention — because he was another ten thousand and those sold out stage managing a Rock musical called Eat immediately. Then they printed another ten The Rich and they found smoke bombs thousand and those sold out. They printed in his truck. I heard a great story about fifty thousand copies of the second issue how Jane Fonda was upset during that and those sold out immediately. The peak convention because her and Tom Hayden was when they put a Marijuana plant on were giving an important speech and the cover. That was the highest selling issue Forçade was playing this loud music. He in the history of the magazine — and it pissed everybody off — and for all the right wasn’t even on newsstands. Just through reasons. the underground, they were selling close to SECONDS: Where did the money come a million copies per issue. from to start the magazine? The lore is that SECONDS: Tell us about Tom Forçade. he made it in smuggling — HOLMSTROM: Tom Forçade was HOLMSTROM: He was a smuggler, that’s the founder of High Times. He was well-known and documented. Nobody involved with the Yippies and the White knows where the money came from Panther Party, he was allegedly in the — nobody would ask that. He also ran a Weatherman and he founded the Zippies, a speakeasy at the time — or a smokeasy, as countermovement against the Yippies when he called it. the Yippies supported George McGovern in SECONDS: Where was this? ’72. HOLMSTROM: I don’t know exactly, SECONDS: Did the Zippies come about but there was a story about it in one of during the convention? the early issues. People would knock on HOLMSTROM: Yes. Zeitgeist the door, be escorted into a room, given International Party. They were dedicated to a menu; it would be weighed out in front keeping the resistance against the war. One of them and they’d leave. He was very of things that turned people against Tom proud of these kind of things — he loved was that he would advocate violence. Like Marijuana and the more Marijuana he I said, he was allegedly a member of the could get involved in, the better he liked it. Weatherman. As far as how the magazine was founded, SECONDS: Where was he from? it doesn’t take much money to print ten HOLMSTROM: Arizona. He left there and thousand copies of an underground mag. 249 A B r i e f H i s t o r y o f H I G H T I M E S — J O H N H O L M S T R O M

They sold thirty thousand copies of the supports Partnership For A Drug Free first issue and then people were lined up America, you’ve got everybody in the book. to take out ads — I don’t think he had Everybody puts out a nice public image by to put in money after that. It’s a success putting down drugs. No company’s going to story like Playboy, where support High Times. Hugh Hefner raised five SECONDS: When I look at thousand dollars and that’s the literature of the D.A.R.E all he ever needed. program, its sponsors include SECONDS: What was the Coors and Anheiser-Busch. early reaction to High Times? That’s kind of ironic, isn’t it? HOLMSTROM: I know I HOLMSTROM: By the didn’t like it at the time. late Sixties-early Seventies, I thought it was late and their sales were way down passé, but obviously it because of Marijuana use. wasn’t. It got good press in Throughout the Seventies, Time and Newsweek. The people were staying home, tone of the country back then smoking Pot, watching TV was that they were going and not going to bars. The to decriminalize Marijuana. club scene was almost dead. Nixon had just been through People were cocooning. Watergate — the Shafer SECONDS: What was Commission report had happening in America come out and people knew when High Times came that Marijuana wasn’t a out in 1974? dangerous drug. The feeling Tom Forçade HOLMSTROM: I was going around the country was it to School Of Visual at would be legal eventually. the time, so I wasn’t paying attention. SECONDS: What happened? Did Cocaine SECONDS: So you didn’t have a sense ruin Pot’s credibility? that society was about to evolve into a drug- HOLMSTROM: That’s part of it, but it’s friendly state? also when the family movement started. HOLMSTROM: New York is a bad From what I understand, some woman example because they’d just passed the walked into a record store and her fifteen- Rockefeller laws. If you were caught with year-old son was off looking at these Star drugs you were facing a very long prison Wars-type devices and the sales help at term. I was clean at the time, and the store explained these were bongs. She anti-drug. was horrified the record store would be SECONDS: Isn’t Governor Pataki currently selling bongs and started writing letters to giving automatic probation to anybody congressmen. That’s the surface story but who’s a non-violent drug offender — since the anti-drug movement is funded by HOLMSTROM: Not to Deadheads; just to certain forces in government and business, Coke dealers who are politically connected. it’s hard to believe, since bongs had been for SECONDS: You just mentioned Deadheads sale for so long. Everybody knows Hippie and Cocaine dealers. Where the average boutiques became very popular around ’67. American might view the drug culture as One of the reasons they became popular is one thing, what you’re implying is that it’s they were selling pipes and paraphernalia. segmented. In fact, High Times was launched at a HOLMSTROM: Oh yeah. I think High boutique show. The boutique shows were Times got into trouble when they started pretty much paraphernalia shows; they putting Cocaine coverage in the magazine. weren’t really about just clothing. The natural following of this magazine was SECONDS: What were some of the business always Hippies and Deadheads and they interests that opposed Pot? rejected Cocaine culture, which was more HOLMSTROM: If you get a list of who attached to Disco culture.

250 “If you were caught with drugs you were facing a very long prison term.”

SECONDS: The way we understand the course of their business. They try to keep history is that High Times hit its nadir in up on the latest technical advances; they the early Eighties — read the grow books — whatever they can HOLMSTROM: Things definitely fell apart to get an edge on busting our readers. A once Tom died. There was factionalism certain kind of law enforcement official and disagreement over the direction the hates what we represent — even if they magazine should take. It wasn’t the same smoke Pot! magazine. Tom held everything together SECONDS: What about Operation Green and it became a downward spiral once he Merchant? was gone. Between 1981 and 1985, it was a HOLMSTROM: There’s been a number of Cocaine magazine. police actions against the magazine. It goes SECONDS: How would you characterize from starting the family movement to try the next period in its history? and discredit us, to passing legislation in HOLMSTROM: It went back to being a the Seventies, to outlawing bongs and bong Pot magazine. The magazine was close to advertising and drug literature — being broke in 1985 but from 1986 on, the SECONDS: Is this state legislation? renaissance began. HOLMSTROM: Yes, state by state. Then SECONDS: That’s when you came in — the D.E.A. once took classified ads telling HOLMSTROM: Steve Hager, myself and people how to set up a Meth cooker and then John Howell were the three people who they were busting the people who answered started to turn it around. the ad. It looked really bad for the magazine SECONDS: Were you a Pot lover or was because it looked like we had something to this just a great editorial gig? do with it. But the High Times ad people HOLMSTROM: Hagar talked me into it. didn’t know it was the D.E.A. behind the ads; He said, “We kicked Cocaine out forever.” they were using some kind of front. I would not have worked for the magazine SECONDS: Do you have a relationship with otherwise. Steve said he was going to the D.E.A.? revive High Times and bring it back to HOLMSTROM: If they do something, the glory days. He laid out a plan and it we’ll report on it. With Operation Green sounded good to me but I was nervous Merchant, they busted a bunch of stores in because High Times had been stiffing 1989 that were advertising in High Times. freelancers for many years. While it was a Peter Gorman [High Times executive editor Coke magazine, it was not paying people. at the time] called them up and they jokingly In the Seventies, if you worked for High answered the phone, “What, you guys are Times it enhanced your reputation with still in business?” But they’ll do interviews people in the magazine industry. In the with us. We’ve interviewed former D.E.A. middle Eighties, if you worked for it, it agents who understand that we’re one of was more embarrassing than working for a the few magazines in the country that have pornography magazine. Steve said he was told the truth about what’s been going on all going to turn it around and he did. these years. Not all D.E.A. agents tow the SECONDS: How did you kick Coke out? party line. A lot of ex-police and ex-D.E.A. HOLMSTROM: It happened before my want to talk to us about what they know time but from what I’ve heard, everybody about the corruption and the damage the agreed. Nobody had any great love for drug war’s doing. it and the stories about freebasing and SECONDS: Ever had a snitch here? Crack made it obvious that it was not a HOLMSTROM: Forçade said he thought he recreational drug, that it belonged in a had one in the mailroom in the Seventies. category with Heroin. He said when he was running his different SECONDS: What’s High Times’ groups in the Sixties, you could always tell relationship with law enforcement? which ones they were. He’d just give them HOLMSTROM: It’s very weird. They use all the shitwork to do and it wouldn’t be long the Trans-High Market Quotations in the before they’d quit. There was one informer

251 A B r i e f H i s t o r y o f H I G H T I M E S — J O H N H O L M S T R O M

called Chic Eder and he was one of the SECONDS: They repealed it by vote. things that lead to Tom’s suicide. This guy HOLMSTROM: But that didn’t hold up in Chic Eder, who I think even wrote something court. You can’t pass a ballot initiative that for High Times and was a close associate will overturn a court decision. See, Alaska of Albert Goldman, was did not want to join the involved in smuggling union, so when they did adventures and turned join they put in their out to be a snitch. Tom statehood claims that found this out right before they would keep their he died. state constitution. This is SECONDS: Is it because why even though thirty- of this guy that Goldman’s three states have passed book on smuggling never medical Marijuana bills, got published? nobody can get legalized HOLMSTROM: No. medical Marijuana There was just no in any state, because interest. That’s when Federal law supersedes the pendulum started State law — not so in swinging. Goldman did Alaska. The Supreme an article on smuggling Court decision, the Raven for New York magazine decision it was called, making it sound like which made Marijuana a romantic adventure. decriminalized was During the post- tied to the very strong honeymoon language about the right period, Marijuana was romantic. to privacy in Alaska. The law was that SECONDS: But again, Cocaine came along you could legally possess an ounce to four and ruined it. ounces in your home in Alaska. But if you HOLMSTROM: Cocaine itself wasn’t were caught in a car, you’re busted. It’s a discredited until the mid-Eighties. The very strange animal up there. For instance, White House scandal had a lot to do with drug testing has been overturned by a it. Did you see that High Times cover with Canadian court as an invasion of privacy. Jimmy Carter and a Coke spoon? That Decriminalization of Marijuana in Germany incident did a lot of damage. began because of a court decision where a SECONDS: Peter Bourne doing Coke at judge said is no more harmful a disco — than alcohol or tobacco and so it shouldn’t HOLMSTROM: At a NORML party, I be illegal. believe. Apparently somebody asked Keith SECONDS: Is decriminalization in our Stroup, the head of NORML at the time, future? if Peter Bourne was using Cocaine at a HOLMSTROM: I’m afraid this country is NORML party and he didn’t deny it. That becoming something like Nazi Germany did irreparable harm. Just a few weeks was in the Thirties when it comes to drugs. before, there was federal legislation that There might have to be refugees from this. would have decriminalized Marijuana. This SECONDS: Tell us about medical is where everything shifted. Carter was Marijuana. on the record saying Marijuana should be HOLMSTROM: We’ve got articles about decriminalized. Decriminalization bills were medical Marijuana dating back to the first passing all over the country. issue. We followed Robert Randall’s fight to SECONDS: Including Alaska, right? get legal Marijuana from the government HOLMSTROM: That wasn’t a bill, that in 1981. The medical thing’s been going was a Supreme Court decision of some kind on for twenty-five years. In 1988 Francis on States’ Rights. I don’t think they ever Young, who was the D.E.A.’s administrative had a ballot proposition. law judge, weighed all the evidence

252 “Not all D.E.A. agents tow the party line.” presented by NORML and the other side and the petroleum industry — and said Marijuana is “one of the safest HOLMSTROM: I don’t know if they’re therapeutically active substances known trying to stop it or not. The funny thing to man,” that it’s safer than aspirin, and is, if they did grow it for Hemp, the Hemp he recommended that pollen would degrade it be made available all the good quality for medicine. It wasn’t Cannabis. binding and the D.E.A. SECONDS: Tell us about arbitrarily overruled Hemp. Why did it become his decision. There are illegal? some revolutionary HOLMSTROM: Hemp things going on. We is probably the oldest have something on the cultivated plant on the website about Marijuana Earth. Harry Anslinger, preventing brain damage, a bureaucrat involved because they discovered in alcohol prohibition, these brain receptors. started beating the It’s good for fighting drums against Marijuana Alzheimer’s. The D.E.A. use. There was anti- has been hanging onto Marijuana literature and this idea that Marijuana anti-Cannabis literature has no medical use. The before. I don’t go along current classification with the theory that makes it more deadly it was all industrial than Heroin and Cocaine. espionage. I’d say Both of those substances have medical use. temperance societies had a lot to do with People think because states have passed it and racism had the most to do with it. medical bills that it’s available to patients. Mexicans and Blacks were smoking it and It’s only been given to eight people through it was associated with Jazz and that’s the a government program that’s now been reason it was made illegal. If you read the closed for ten years. stories about the people who were passing SECONDS: What about those forty acres in laws against Marijuana, it was obviously a Mississippi where they raise the stuff? They racist White Supremacist attitude. People gave you this freeze-dried ditchweed and want to believe Harry Anslinger’s uncle, say, “Look, this doesn’t do anything.” Andrew Mellon, made it illegal because HOLMSTROM: That’s how they do it. But Hemp was some big threat, but Hemp there are medical studies being conducted was not made illegal by the Marijuana in other countries. The prohibitionists Stamp Tax Act. The Hemp industries all are scared to death of medical Marijuana. gave testimony at the hearings and even They’re trying to prove that the only Anslinger admitted Hemp had many uses. reason anybody wants to make it legal for He said it makes the strongest clothes on medicine is because people want to use the face of the Earth. The feeling about it for recreation purposes. When I first Cannabis was that is was the poor man’s came here, that’s what I thought. Then wine. As industrialization took over our we started hearing from AIDS patients society and more people became middle who were using it to sustain life and I was class and aspired to be upper class, they blown away. The more you learn about this looked down on anything peasant-based. plant, the more respectful you become of it. Anybody who had a spinning jenny in The most useful plant on the Earth is the their house would grow Hemp and make one that the government’s trying to stop. clothing out of it. Nobody wanted to wear SECONDS: That’s where its industrial foes Hemp clothing; it was cheap, they wanted enter and it’s not just the Hippies versus the cotton. When the cotton gin was invented, cops anymore. Now it’s the cotton industry Hemp cultivation started to decrease in

253 A B r i e f H i s t o r y o f H I G H T I M E S — J O H N H O L M S T R O M

importance. A cotton shirt would cost much have very good Marijuana in high-altitude more than a Hemp shirt but when cotton areas. That could be why the Marijuana in became cheaper more people wanted to Australia is very potent. There’s a hole in buy the cotton shirt. It’s like Cocaine in the ozone layer there and more ultraviolet the Seventies. You used to have to spend a radiation. We did a great story I took lot of money on Coke and when it became flack for: “Growing Pot On The Moon.” cheaper, everybody wanted to buy it and People thought we were bullshitting but people stopped buying Pot. it’s absolutely true. If you grow Cannabis SECONDS: How could mere social disdain under simulated extraterrestrial conditions, lead to prohibition? you’ll be getting pure sunlight without HOLMSTROM: It’s part of it, though. Look any filtration from an atmosphere. The at the way people look down on Hippies Cannabis plant gets zapped with so much and Pot smoking now. The social stigma ultraviolet light, the plant just frosts with surrounding Marijuana is very strong. It’s all the THC. a very strong cultural bias. Why Marijuana SECONDS: What impact has High Times is illegal is the million dollar question. had in twenty-five years of publishing? Nobody knows. We scratch our heads all HOLMSTROM: The most valuable thing day around here trying to figure out why. High Times has done is keep the voice of Why is the most useful plant on Earth protest going for twenty-five years. For a being outlawed? few years there in the Eighties, High Times SECONDS: Does Pot grow everywhere? was the only voice of protest against the HOLMSTROM: Pot has always grown all Drug War. During the “Just Say No” years over the world. It’s grown more widely than it was very fashionable to beat the drums any other plant, except for regular grass. about how we should get tough on drugs. It’s grown in the Arctic Circle — High Times was the only voice against that SECONDS: As a kid, I always thought of madness. Now in the Nineties, people are Pot as a tropical plant. waking up to the fact that it was a sham. HOLMSTROM: Allegedly, Cannabis I hope enough people realize this before comes from the Himalayas and that’s a it’s too late and our laws have been changed very cold area and very high up. The THC, and our constitution is gutted from what I’ve been told, is the plant’s and what was once a great democratic protection from ultraviolet light and republic is turned into what Nazi Germany ultraviolet light is much more concentrated was in 1936. ••• at those high altitudes. That’s one of the reasons Nepalese Hash is so good — they

254 “While everyone in America was smoking Pot and listening to REO Speedwagon, the political roots of everything were being dismantled. Pretty soon what you have is just a lot of silly Potheads.”

SECONDS: What is your position at High crowd into violence — Times? SECONDS: People planted there by the HAGER: I’m Editorial Director of the government? magazine and I’m the producer of the HAGER: Yeah. That’s the Cointelpro in , and the World Hemp Expo action. That’s the group that Hoover set up to Extravaganja. destroy AIM [American Indian Movement], SECONDS: What was your reaction when the Black Panthers, the Yippies — there was your first saw High Times? a whole division of the F.B.I. whose job it HAGER: I thought it was dumb. It struck was to infiltrate and destroy the alternative me as a commercialization of Hippie culture. movements. While everyone in America See, I didn’t really read the magazine, I was smoking Pot and listening to REO just looked at it. Once I read it I realized Speedwagon, the political roots of everything the people working for the magazine were were being dismantled. Pretty soon what you top-notch journalists doing good work. At have is just a lot of silly Potheads. that time in my life, I wasn’t doing drugs. SECONDS: Once the fear of being sent over I smoked Pot and then I quit because I got to Vietnam was gone, maybe folks didn’t care busted. I was the first person arrested for so much about other issues — LSD in and I bailed on the whole HAGER: But once you took Acid, you thing. I was like, “You mean I’m going to realized you could construct an entirely go to jail for the rest of my life?” I was only different world view and it’s just as right as fifteen years old and they terrorized me. I the one you were supposed to live in. LSD was in a room where somebody sold it and blew everybody’s perceptions wide open, but they said I had knowledge of it. It was only economically, you couldn’t do anything with because I was running an underground that knowledge. All the Left-wing people at newspaper called The Tin Whistle that they universities lost their jobs. If you were at arrested me. It went out to four high schools IBM and they saw you were taking LSD, you in Illinois. lost their job. SECONDS: What town were you in? SECONDS: If corporate America and the HAGER: Champaign-Urbana, which is a government is running the show, how is it university town. I was hooked up with the that this pro-Pot magazine took off? whole underground newspaper community. HAGER: Because everybody wanted to know Tom Forçade was working in New York with about Pot. States were gradually introducing an organization called the Underground decriminalization laws and things were Press Syndicate and they’d send us their getting better as far as Marijuana goes. stories. The university had an alternative Everybody wanted to smoke it and be a paper called The Walrus and they gave us connoisseur. space in their office for The Tin Whistle. I SECONDS: Tell me about the government saw the way the government was working putting pressure on High Times. to destroy everything. People’d get on the HAGER: They would harass the advertisers, microphones at rallies and try to incite the all the paraphernalia industry — bongs, pipe 255 A B r i e f H i s t o r y o f H I G H T I M E S — S T E V E H A G E manufactures, rolling papers. They passed put High Times out of business. What they laws that they could advertise anywhere but do is go into the offices of the cultivation High Times. If you look an old issue of High equipment advertisers and seize all their Times from ’76 to ’78, it’s all ads from the computers and equipment. They gave them paraphernalia industry. their stuff back and said, “If you continue SECONDS: Who was it that harassed the to advertise in High Times, we’ll be back.” advertisers? So ninety percent of them drop out of the HAGER: While they were decriminalizing magazine. The D.E.A. told them that growing Marijuana that created a backlash of Right- equipment was not illegal but the fact that wing people that wanted to criminalize it they were advertising the equipment in even more. It’s a struggle; every time you High Times meant that they were engaging make progress with Marijuana there’s in a criminal conspiracy. Our attorneys a hysterical group of people within the got the whole thing thrown out. We built Government that start fighting that progress. up a huge advertising base of cultivation equipment and the D.E.A. launched an operation to remove those ads from the magazine, just like they removed the paraphernalia ads. Newspapers from around the country all rallied to High Times’ aid and said how terrible it was that the government was violating freedom of the press. The government’s PR effort was backfiring and we were getting positive publicity. I had a platform to talk about Hemp and medical Marijuana, which is stuff I didn’t know about when I came to the magazine. We steered away from being a cultivation magazine, towards a political activist magazine with information about Hemp and medical Marijuana. SECONDS: Coke and Heroin? SECONDS: Was there any deals struck HAGER: Little bits of everything. Larry between the D.E.A. and High Times? Sloman was the editor-in-chief when they HAGER: No, we would never make were doing a lot of Cocaine centerfolds. If concessions to the D.E.A.. you look at the centerfolds, that’s going to SECONDS: Where do police fit into this? tell you what the staff’s into. My feeling HAGER: They don’t want to arrest people was Coke was played out and there were for Pot; they’re sick of it. But it’s a milk run too many casualties. It didn’t have a culture for the cops too — it’s easy to bust Potheads. — Marijuana has a culture. There’s no They don’t have to worry about being shot. of Cocaine, you know? We take SECONDS: But what I am asking is if the Cocaine out of the magazine and start government ever tried to plant anybody in the focusing on Marijuana and circulation High Times offices? starts booming. People start running back HAGER: They planted informers around to the magazine; they’re very happy with Tom. They didn’t work at High Times, they the magazine all of a sudden. We start were all outlaw smugglers that befriended to encourage people to grow their own Tom. Half the people selling Coke could be Marijuana instead of buying it at outrageous talking to the D.E.A., you don’t know. That prices. We’re very successful and issues start world is a hallway of mirrors. But we’re jumping off the newsstand because people journalists working as activists. There want this information. We start to have a lot aren’t many D.E.A. agents that can walk of ads from people selling equipment to help in and have a conversation with me and people grow. In 1989, the D.E.A. launches convince me they’re honest people espousing Operation Green Merchant, an attempt to countercultural views. 256 “Half the people selling Coke could be talking to the D.E.A., you don’t know. That world is a hallway of mirrors.”

SECONDS: How much does the liquor “drug-free” society. industry contribute to the war on drugs? HAGER: The thing about alcohol is it makes HAGER: A lot. Then they donate money to people violent and it’s very convenient to the Partnership For A Drug Free America. have a large class of violent people if you The brains behind Partnership For A Drug want to go to war. Those people can be led Free America is the Johnson & Johnson around by the nose. Drunks at football games Foundation — pharmaceuticals. They’re can be manipulated like puppets. Potheads much more concerned about this than the are individualistic. It’s like trying to herd a Alcohol industry is. Alcohol and Tobacco bunch of kittens. know they will lose a lot of money if SECONDS: If there’s any hope for Pot’s Marijuana’s legal — but the pharmaceutical legalization, I think it’s going to come from a industry will lose billions. militant Black community. SECONDS: Why is the That’s the only thing the pharmaceutical industry government’s still afraid threatened? of. HAGER: Because their HAGER: The war on industry is based on drugs has destroyed the synthetics. If you make Black community. They’re a synthetic, you own the all in jail. You think these rights to it forever and people are going to come you get a royalty. out of jail rehabilitated? SECONDS: Why don’t They’re going to come out they make synthetic with lots of hostility, lots Marijuana? of contacts with criminal HAGER: They did; it’s elements — when they called Marinol. They come out of jail they’re do. Nobody wants it but professionals. You’ve taken you can get a Marinol a fifteen-year-old kid and prescription from a doctor. made him into a hardened Pot’s better. If the natural psychopath killer by plants were available putting him in jail for five to people, you wouldn’t years for Crack Cocaine. go to a pharmacy to get But this whole thing’s something, you’d go to your garden and going to turn around. The last time I did get what you want. They want to sever our an interview was during Operation Green connection to natural plants and medicine. Merchant. I told them how people were going They want to make sure you get all your to be wearing clothes made out of Hemp medicine in pill-form synthetics. The war on and they acted like I was the a dreamer drugs is an artificial, architected system that Pothead out of my mind, laughing at me. demonizes a certain class of people. Heroin Now there’s a hemp store in every town in addicts can live, hold jobs, and be productive America. Cotton is tremendously bad on the members of society and so can Cocaine environment. Half of the chemicals used in addicts. What makes these people marginal agriculture are used on cotton. There’s no is they’re demonized. The pharmaceutical chemicals needed for Hemp. companies don’t want the natural plants, SECONDS: When celebrities like Woody so they’re made illegal — and then you can Harrelson advocate this stuff, doesn’t that make ten times as much money on them. enlighten people a little bit? The whole system’s calibrated to make the HAGER: If you take the two million people most amount of money and also conveniently in jail — eighty percent of them for drug scapegoat a large class of people. You can violations — those people must have ten manipulate opinions by blaming everything relatives each that know the whole system on those lousy drug addicts. We’re like the sucks. Then you take all the people who Commies now. smoke Pot and know that it’s not that SECONDS: Nobody in power ever says harmful and that alcohol and tobacco are they want a sober society; they only want a far worse. Then you take all the people with 257 A B r i e f H i s t o r y o f H I G H T I M E S — S T E V E H A G E

AIDS, glaucoma, epilepsy and add those magazine with it. Then I discovered Pot. I numbers together, and over half the country wasn’t a big Pothead, but once I got onto the is being touched by this issue. I think you’re medical, Hemp and environmental issues going to wake up one day and Marijuana will — everyday I’d find an unbelievable piece be legal. of information. The first American flag was SECONDS: Why is there not a violent made out of Hemp. The War Of 1812 was reaction against the war on drugs? fought over Hemp. Hemp can stop glaucoma HAGER: I don’t think armed revolution — I never knew this stuff! We got the works in America. We don’t have the Psychedelic Bus and went around organizing manpower or gunpower to consider it as a demonstrations, started a group called the possibility. Once you start preaching armed Freedom Fighters — and we turned this revolution, you’re Number One on the F.B.I. issue into a national issue. That’s why people hotlist. They’ll bring the gunrunners in to like Woody Harrelson are walking around on sell you the guns and two weeks later they’ll TV talking about Hemp. Without High Times come in and shoot everybody. They love to see doing that, nothing would have happened. progressive activist movements get armed. We put Holland on the Marijuana map. The That’s a license for them to shoot you on Cup brought the consciousness to everybody sight. I don’t want anything to do with armed that Holland was the place where they could revolution. Too many chuckleheads. breed seeds. The quality of Marijuana is SECONDS: What was the state of High much better now as a result of the fact that Times when you came in in 1986? we hold the Cannabis Cup there. HAGER: No staff; it’s like an empty shell. SECONDS: At what point were Black people Sloman had left and gone on to National brought into the mix? Lampoon. John Howell is the only person HAGER: Bob Marley, Cypress Hill — Black there and he hires me. John has a two- covers always did really well for us. Blacks thousand dollar budget per issue and no don’t have that many choices on the staff. They’re just trying to fill the pages newsstands, so when they see a magazine anyway they can. I start going through that isn’t it a Black magazine put a Black the filing cabinets, which are trashed. The on the cover, they’re fascinated by it because magazine wasn’t being managed well. If they don’t see it very often. you’ve been running a magazine for ten SECONDS: So how do they fit into the years, you should have enormous resources equation for drug legalization? you’ve built up but there was nothing HAGER: Their kids are being exterminated. there and the whole thing was completely Inside the prison system, there are Blacks demoralized. Nobody thought the magazine who understand what’s going on and was going to go on much longer. I was hired desperately want to change the situation. and I had all this energy and I didn’t know It’s cultural genocide. It’s an emergency and any of the past history. I wasn’t even a big something needs to be done right away. Half Pothead, I just thought, “A national magazine the teenagers in the community are going to with national distribution, let’s see what we jail. Imagine if you went to the suburbs, to a can do with this.” I went through the files bunch of White high schools, and rounded up and found all these unopened manuscripts half the kids in junior high and said, “You’re that had been mailed in — nobody even going to jail.” The penalties are much greater opened them! I started going through this in the inner city because of the Crack bullshit. stuff and found five or six really good stories. If you’re living in the ghetto, you’re trapped One of them was written by Peter Gorman — and sometimes the only escape is drugs. and he ended up becoming executive editor. SECONDS: Is being a Pot smoker in America I had just finished a book called After like being a Jew in Nazi Germany? Midnight, all about the East Side art scene HAGER: I would say being Pot cultivator is. and the crossover taking place between art If you’re caught cultivating Marijuana, and music. I had met John Holmstrom while they will take your home, take your I was doing that and I got him to work on business, take your vehicles, and put you the magazine. I made all these contacts in jail for mandatory minimum and make with artists like Kenny Scharf and I took money off you while you slave labor for them. everything I pulled together and stuffed the Is that the equivalent of being a Jew in 258 “Our viewpoint is that small-scale home cultivation of Marijuana would help keep the black market from becoming the monster that it is.”

SECONDS: What is your position at High SIMUNEK: What you had was a lot of Times? strains that were genetically cultivated in SIMUNEK: I’m the Cultivation Editor. I’m the western part of the . That in charge of the horticultural section. was the epicenter of where the strains came SECONDS: So law enforcement would be the from — interested in you — SECONDS: Why there? SIMUNEK: I’ve never been contacted, knock SIMUNEK: In the Sixties, that’s where you on wood. had a large amount of your Hippie Cannabis SECONDS: Are the cops eventually going to farmers. The climate is good for it and show up here? there’s lots of woods for outdoor farming. SIMUNEK: I think if they showed up here it They traveled north from all would be the biggest publicity push we could the way up to Vancouver — it’s basically ever have. If they want to raid here and rifle decriminalized in Canada now. So they my pockets for a dime bag, it would certainly developed the strains over a decade or two help the sales of my book. and then Holland caught onto it. A lot of the SECONDS: Would a raid hurt the economics strains that are popular in Holland, things of the magazine? like “Skunk #1” and “Northern Lights” are SIMUNEK: There’s nothing they could get. really imports from Northern California. It’s a can of worms because it goes down to That’s why there’s a similarity to a lot of the First Amendment — freedom of press. We Dutch strains. It’s even difficult for me to do not enclose joints in the magazine. tell them apart because they have same SECONDS: But aren’t you involved in a basic building blocks. They want those Indica conspiracy to inform people how to break the indoor breeding strains, as opposed to the law? Is it advocacy or instruction? equatorial Sativas, which are very gangly, SIMUNEK: Our viewpoint is that small- take a longer time to mature and are very scale home cultivation of Marijuana would difficult to work with indoors. help keep the black market from becoming SECONDS: Tell us about Indica and Sativa. the monster that it is. SIMUNEK: There’s , SECONDS: How has Marijuana changed and . over the decades? They come from various parts of the world. SIMUNEK: It’s gone from an import Sativa is equatorial: longer breeding time, business to a national business. We don’t see takes a lot more sun, a lot more time. The the Jamaican imports, and the Maui Wowie Indica is more of a northern strain, from and the Colombian imports — it’s there but places like India. It breeds shorter, like it’s low-grade stuff. What you see now is hash plants, which are bred for resin. They more of a connoisseur-grade Marijuana that mature a lot quicker and what the breeders is grown secretly indoors here in the United did was take those strains and cultivate States. We have domestic farmers flooding them for indoor fast-harvest cultivation. the market and beating out the imports. Ruderalis is very rarely seen. It’s not really SECONDS: How about the Marijuana itself? prime breeding material. It tends to have How has it changed botanically? a very buddy top — it’s like a single stalk 259 A B r i e f H i s t o r y o f H I G H T I M E S — C H R I S S I M U N E K with a couple of outshoots. It doesn’t do very not properly preserved the way you would well for potency or smokeability or yield, so preserve oranges or tomatoes. Holland has it’s usually not used purely, though it does done its best, but as far I can see, they appear in some strains. Those three are the haven’t managed to preserve that wide of only genetic variances of the plant. But, a range. They’ve preserved the Skunks and there’s an endless amount Northern Lights and things of strains. like that. There’s also SECONDS: What is genetic drift. A lot of these Sinsemilla? things are crosses. You SIMUNEK: Sinsemilla cross two plants together, is Marijuana that does that’s going to drift. Some not contain seeds. It’s like strains are stable, some are growing Sunkist seedless unstable. Like your Skunk oranges. It’s grown is a more stable strain from clones and is not that has remained the pollinated. same throughout the last SECONDS: How about twenty years. Pot grown indoors? What’s SECONDS: Was the name Hydro? “” just a SIMUNEK: Hydro is catch-all phrase for good exclusively indoor grown, Mexican Pot? in a soilless medium with SIMUNEK: I’m sure there the roots growing directly was an Acapulco Gold at in water. It’s a high-yield, one time, but there’s no fast way to harvest. If you regulation of this, obviously want to pump out the most — so anything could be amount of Marijuana in “Acapulco Gold.” the least amount of time, you’re probably SECONDS: Were there more botanical going to want a “sea of green,” which is lots of descriptions of Marijuana in the past? small plants grown in a hydro system where SIMUNEK: There is literature going back you can pump a lot of chemical fertilizers into hundreds of years on Hemp because it it and really beef them up. Hydroponics is not was first bred for fiber, clothes, sails, ropes normally organic — I myself like organically and things like that. It wasn’t bred for its grown bud — but in this age of prohibition, psychoactive properties. you want to put the best looking product SECONDS: What was the watershed event on the market in the least amount of time. that got people smoking Pot? That’s why Hydro is so popular. SIMUNEK: The way it entered mainstream SECONDS: How has Pot changed in the White American culture was through Jazz sense of being an intoxicant? I think it’s an and the Beats. entirely different drug from the Pot of twenty- SECONDS: Anyone in particular? five years ago. SIMUNEK: Louie Armstrong was a Pot SIMUNEK: The difference would primarily smoker. was the Jazz dealer be the way it was grown, which was outdoors in the Thirties. in large fields without the heavy modern SECONDS: When I became aware fertilizers that we use indoors. And the fact of Marijuana, it was considered very that is was Sativa, as opposed to what they transcendental — now grow indoors — usually Indica or an SIMUNEK: It is transcendental. You can’t Indica/Sativa cross. classify it with any other drug except for SECONDS: Because of the prohibition, some Mushrooms or Peyote, the psychedelic plants. great types of Pot of lore, like Acapulco Gold It’s administered exactly as it comes out and , are extinct. Being the of the ground. Pot is not altered, changed, cultivation editor of High Times, could you reduced or distilled. It should not be lumped find Panama Red? in with other drugs. SIMUNEK: I’ve never been able to. Yes, SECONDS: What’s the future of the drugs because of prohibition these strains were laws? Are we going to see decriminalization? 260 “Pot is not altered, changed, reduced or distilled. It should not be lumped in with other drugs.”

SIMUNEK: Now it’s become a States’ argument that this plant is bad when the Rights issue. It’s bringing up a lot of fact is it’s good. This is a movement with constitutional issues, like does a state such a stigma attached to it, it’s going to take have the right to declare it legal — like years and years to shake the stigma. In the in California for medical buyers — while Thirties, when homosexuality was illegal and Federal laws prevent it? You’re going to homosexuals had no rights, they were in the see a lot of litigation in the next decade same social ghetto. How could such a large or so. I don’t think you’re going to see too amount of the population not stand up and many politicians getting behind it. It’s fight for their rights? It was just the social taboo. You’ve got sixty years of rhetoric climate of the times. and propaganda against Marijuana at this SECONDS: So is it a civil rights issue? point, dating back to Anslinger, and it hasn’t SIMUNEK: That’s exactly what it is. It’s abated. The same way it took Nixon, a probably the most important civil rights strong anti-communist, to establish relations issue today. What other socio-economic with China, it might take a conservative to group can be arrested at any time just for say, “Why are we spending all this taxpayer’s being who they are? We’ve got targets on money on a drug war? If people want to our backs. I compare it to the beginning of kill themselves, let them.” If the Democrats the anti-war movement of the Sixties or the get behind it they’re accused of being women’s movement of the Seventies. We’re druggies. Clinton is the architect of the most approaching that crest where we’re going to expensive drug war in history. come out. We’re getting a lot of good media SECONDS: What’s the profile of today’s coverage. CNN, ABC — these networks typical American Pot grower? are starting to give unbiased reports about SIMUNEK: A guy with problems in social Marijuana for the first time. It’s just going management skills. [laughs] He’s going to to take time. Drug use is a medical issue; be paranoid, self-righteous and difficult it’s not a criminal issue, plain and simple. to get along with because it’s a solitary Putting a person with a substance abuse business. Loose lips sink ships and they’re problem in a jail is not doing him any good well aware of it. They’ve got to worry about and it’s not doing the world any good. the landlord, the gas reader, cops walking by, SECONDS: You’ve talked about the next door neighbors, girlfriends and business stigma of Pot smoking. Does High Times associates. perpetuate that stigma? I see a vestige of SECONDS: And satellites looking for tenth- that Robert Crumb vision of the Pothead in of-a-degree temperature differentials — your magazine and I wonder if that’s not SIMUNEK: That’s overrated, though. Ninety something that turns off the Yuppies — percent of busts come from a snitch. Once SIMUNEK: That’s our culture, Marijuana they get that, they’ll take out all the satellite culture. What you just said to me is like imaging equipment and the heat radars — saying to Pharoah Sanders in 1969 — with SECONDS: To justify their funding for next an Afro out to here and African robes year. — “Hey, you’re trying to advance your people, SIMUNEK: Sure. After the Cold War, the but you’re not going to do it this way. White government had all this money that they people aren’t going to accept you.” It’s the couldn’t spend on bombs anymore so they same thing with the gay rights movement built up this police state instead. They when they’re prancing down the street have all this technology for some guy who’s dressed like Alice In Wonderland. People say, growing a couple of plants in his basement. “You want people to take you seriously and SECONDS: Isn’t is scary that we’re you dress all fucked up like that?” Hey, this exterminating this plant? is what we do and this is what we are. We SIMUNEK: Yeah, it’s hard to think there have our straight, conservative side, but let’s would be such a war on such a beneficial face it, Marijuana’s a drug that promotes plant — an aesthetically beautiful plant. It happiness and a sense of humor. High Times gets down to the essential insanity of their covers the waterfront. •••

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