High Times magazine has enjoyed a long history of probing counter-culture editorials encompassing all aspects of life from music to law. A die hard and loyal readership has kept the magazine publishing monthly since 1974.
Started by the Underground Press Syndicate reporter, Tom Forcade, the publication was a celebration of all the things 60s youth brought to
Steven Hager took over as editor-in-chief in 1988, changing the magazine by removing all editorials about hard drugs and using the magazine to advocate readers to grow their own pot. High Times continue to gravitate towards that message today.
Often similarities between High Times and Playboy are made and the comparisons are well deserved. All issues have a fold-out photo of a weed plant, much like the famous pin-ups found in Hefner’s magazine. Another likewise detail are the ironic articles. Playboy has a long tradition of engaging articles on politics and society often more blunt and truth-telling than those found in TIME and Newsweek. High Times as well has amassed a long list of intellectual articles hidden by gregarious shots of eye-dazzling marijuana.
In Ed Dwyer's 1974 article “I was JFK’s Dealer”, Dwyer interviews a man who remained to be unnamed who revealed stories of the president’s encounters with pot.
“He was taking his boat out with family and friends, and I was asked if I could provide him with the memos I had drawn up in accordance with our conversation two weeks earlier. I knew exactly what was meant by the call, because the President hadn’t asked me to draw up any memos. By ten I had prepared a manila folder full of blank paper. Inside was an ounce of fresh Panamanian from a shipment I’d received the day before. At ten on the dot I answered the door to find a familiar press officer who took my “notes”,” said the man in Dwyer’s article. The source went on to discuss his drug connection with JFK, his brother Bobby and Ted Kennedy.
High Times magazine was also one of the first publications to expose Lyndon LaRouche as a brainwasher and it’s campaign to wage a “war on drugs” as a bogus effort to gain legitimacy. Chip Berlet’s investigative piece “War on Drugs: The Strange Story of Lyndon LaRouche, Sinister Mastermind of the Anti-Drug Coalition”, was widely regarded as an intriguing look into politics’ most peculiar politician when it came out in 1981.
“According to former NCLC [LaRouche’s organization the National Caucus of Labor Committees] members, many LaRouche followers were subjected to sessions where LaRouche or his handpicked aides would strip down a person’s psychological defenses to the point where they would be sobbing hysterically and begging to stay in the Labor Committee,” writes Berlet about the political organization cult-like practices.
With a clear sense of humor and the magazine’s ability to not take itself too seriously, the legendary publication has made a name for itself with their alternative political reporting from writers like Norman Mailer, Andy Warhol and Hunter S. Thompson.
“High Times: That’s amazing. You were covering this media-saturated presidential caimpaign during the day, then snorting coke at night with all those hotshot politicos?”
Thompson: They weren’t very hotshot then,” writes Ron Rosenbaum from his revealing 1977 interview with Hunter S. Thompson centering around his experiences covering former President Jimmy Carter’s 1972 and 1976 presidential campaigns.
Predominantly perceived as anomaly in mainstream
To find out more about the hot-button cannabis-loving magazine visit http://www.hightimes.com
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