MAGAZINE SECONDS SECONDS #48, 1998 • interview by George Petros A Brief History of HIGH TIMES Magazine HIGH TIMES — the name says it all. Sparkling champagne during Prohibition, sparkling Cocaine during The Me Generation, sparking up blunts today in the Hip Hop 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 drug paraphernalia trade mag (with plenty of helpful articles) aimed at Head Shop owners, it quickly mutated into an underground Drug Culture 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 Marijuana prohibition: cops busted for dealing; politicians laundering drug profits; grandmothers busted for cooking with Hemp 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 Heroin — 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 drugs. 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 New York 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 Arts 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.