Jimmy John’s Dream Rotation campaign doesn’t wink at cannabis culture. It hires Cheech Marin, lets him argue with a sandwich and makes Kal Penn’s ideal 4/20 a gym session and a book. The wall is down.

Cheech Marin is sitting, holding a sandwich. He looks at it the way a man looks at something he has decided to tolerate. “I try to like people,” he says, “but then they start talking.”

The sandwich grows a face and starts talking.

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This is a Jimmy John’s ad. It is also, somehow, the most accurate representation of where cannabis culture and mainstream America currently stand: fully in the same room, no longer pretending otherwise, and apparently ready to get weird about it.

The Dream Rotation campaign, which Jimmy John’s launched this week ahead of 4/20, is built around a simple and genuinely funny idea. The brand tapped a handful of celebrities known to partake, asked each of them for their ideal post-session meal, filmed the results and let the creative get strange. The lineup includes Cheech Marin, Kal Penn, Amanda Batula and Skylar Gisondo. Each has their own spot. Each brings their own energy. Together, they amount to something the cannabis world has not seen from a brand this size in quite this way before.

This is not a wink. This is not a green leaf emoji in a caption. This is Cheech Marin, one-half of the most iconic cannabis comedy duo in film history, having a full argument with a sentient sandwich on behalf of a national fast food chain.

The Cast Matters

The talent selection is doing real work here and it is worth slowing down on.

Cheech Marin is not a celebrity who happens to be adjacent to cannabis. He is, alongside Tommy Chong, the defining pop culture face of cannabis humor in America. Casting him is not a subtle nod. It is a statement.

Kal Penn is Harold of Harold & Kumar, the film franchise that brought stoner comedy into a new generation and a new demographic. He later served in the Obama White House, which gives him a cultural biography that almost no one else in the entertainment industry has. His presence in the campaign adds a layer the other talent cannot: the idea that cannabis and mainstream American institutions are not actually that far apart.

Skylar Gisondo, who appears in a series of memes Jimmy John’s has been posting alongside the campaign, brings the younger internet-native energy. His face sipping through a straw while captions read “me when my grandma asks me to garden with her” and “me when the sweet treat demon starts whispering in my ear” is the kind of content that travels. The “gardening” euphemism, deployed without explanation, assumes the audience is in on the joke. They are.

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The Orders Are the Bit

Part of what makes the campaign work is that the celebrity meal orders are genuinely specific in a way that feels real rather than manufactured.

Kal Penn ordered a toasted Beach Club, no cheese, horseradish sauce, salt and vinegar chips, and the new Cereal n’ Milk Crispy Treat. His described eating ritual involves alternating between chips and sandwich in a precise sequence, with the dessert distributed across both halves. This is not a man who casually threw out a sandwich order. This is a man with a system.

Cheech went with the Italian Night Club and salt and vinegar chips. He also picked Penn as his dream session partner, a choice that connects two of the most culturally significant cannabis films ever made in one meal order.

Amanda Batula took the J.J.B.L.T. with BBQ chips. Skylar Gisondo ordered the Spicy East Coast Italian, no mayo, with jalapeño chips.

The specificity is the joke and also the point. These are not sanitized celebrity endorsements. They are actual people with actual preferences, talking about getting stoned and eating sandwiches, on camera, for a brand with thousands of locations across the country.

What This Actually Means

For most of the last decade, mainstream brands approaching 4/20 fell into one of two categories. The first was the safe play: a vague post, a color palette that happened to include green, a caption that could plausibly mean anything. The second was the slightly bolder play: a joke that gestured toward cannabis without committing to it, often involving the number 420 placed somewhere in the content and nothing else.

Jimmy John’s did neither. The Dream Rotation campaign names what it is, casts people whose entire cultural identity is built around cannabis, films Cheech Marin being existentially annoyed by a talking sandwich and deploys Skylar Gisondo memes that use stoner slang as fluently as any dedicated cannabis brand would.

The reason this is possible now and was not in quite the same way five years ago is not complicated. Legal adult-use cannabis exists in the majority of American states. The cultural stigma has collapsed faster than the federal policy has moved. Brands that once worried about alienating customers by associating with cannabis now risk appearing out of touch by refusing to acknowledge what their customers already do.

Jimmy John’s read the room. The room, it turns out, is full of people who have opinions about chip-to-sandwich ratios and find it very funny when Cheech Marin loses an argument to his lunch.

<p>The post Cheech Marin Is Talking to Sandwiches in a Jimmy John’s Ad. Cannabis Culture Has Officially Gone Mainstream. first appeared on High Times.</p>

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Two West Coast rap legends are opening cannabis dispensaries in California within weeks of each other. Xzibit goes first. Snoop comes home.

West Coast hip-hop has always had a complicated, generative relationship with cannabis. Two of its most enduring figures are now making that relationship literal — and building businesses around it.

Xzibit opens the third location of his Xzibit’s West Coast Cannabis brand this Saturday, April 18, in Marina del Rey. Three weeks later, on May 9, Snoop Dogg opens S.W.E.D. Long Beach — his second California dispensary and his first business in his hometown.

Xzibit: XWCC Marina

XWCC Marina, located at 3452 W Washington Blvd in Marina del Rey, is Xzibit’s most ambitious retail location yet. The brand launched its first store in Bel Air in 2024, followed by a second in Chatsworth. The Marina del Rey flagship is designed around Xzibit’s creative vision — a lounge-style space blending cannabis, art and culture in what the brand describes as a one-stop destination.

“At all XWCC locations, we’re pushing cannabis culture forward,” Xzibit said. “Each store is uniquely built as a reflection of my life, creativity, and west coast culture.”

The grand opening takes place Saturday morning at 9 AM with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, brand activations and local vendor participation.

Snoop Dogg: S.W.E.D. Long Beach

S.W.E.D. — Smoke Weed Every Day — already has locations in Los Angeles and Amsterdam. The Long Beach store, at 2115 E. 10th Street, is a different kind of opening. Long Beach is where Snoop grew up, and the store’s design reflects that explicitly: street-inspired visuals, references to the Hood Rich Lowrider, retro arcade games, two live DJ booths, a personal lounge and a hologram of Snoop himself.

“Long Beach made me who I am,” Snoop said. “Opening S.W.E.D. in Long Beach is my way of showing love to the community that showed love to me. We’re creating jobs, opportunities, and a space that celebrates the culture.”

The grand opening on May 9 is a 21+ event, or 18+ with a valid medical recommendation. Snoop will be present for a ceremonial ribbon cutting.

Two artists, one industry

What both openings share is a deliberate rootedness — stores built to reflect the artists’ actual lives and communities rather than generic dispensary aesthetics. Xzibit has described XWCC as an extension of his creative DNA. Snoop is framing S.W.E.D. Long Beach explicitly around job creation and community investment, tying the opening to the city’s Grow Long Beach Economic Blueprint.

Neither is a first store. Xzibit is on his third location. Snoop’s Long Beach opening is his second California store. These are scaling businesses, not celebrity experiments — and both are landing in the same state, in the same month, as California’s legal cannabis market continues to find its footing against persistent pressure from the illicit market.

S.W.E.D. Long Beach opens May 9 at 2115 E. 10th Street, Long Beach. XWCC Marina opens April 18 at 3452 W Washington Blvd, Marina del Rey.

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From medical rumors to a possible upper-crust grow op, a new story is once again linking King Charles III to cannabis. This time, however, it has nothing to do with health speculation or the monarch’s well-known passion for botany. Instead, the connection comes by way of a police raid at a historic property tied to his royal past.

Police in North Wales discovered a large-scale illegal cannabis cultivation operation inside Plas Glynllifon, a 19th-century mansion that hosted the investiture ball for then-Prince of Wales Charles—now King Charles III—in 1969.

According to North Wales Police, officers executing a search warrant under the Misuse of Drugs Act uncovered what they described as a “significant grow operation” on the building’s top floor. Superintendent Arwel Hughes told the BBC: “We uncovered a grow, which was on the top floor of the building. We estimate around 12 rooms with grows in them and they were fairly mature plants.”

Authorities also confirmed that the operation relied on illegally tampered electrical systems and diverted water lines into the building—common hallmarks of sophisticated clandestine grow sites.

No arrests have been made so far, though police say forensic work and digital evidence analysis remain ongoing as the investigation continues.

A Royal-Era Mansion Turned Into an Indoor Grow

The story quickly drew attention across the UK not only because of the operation’s scale, but because of the property itself. We’re talking about Plas Glynllifon, a sprawling aristocratic mansion with a dramatic history, decaying interiors, and its own local folklore. Most notably, the estate hosted the official ball following King Charles III’s 1969 investiture as Prince of Wales, tying the now-crumbling property directly to modern royal history.

Alan Fryer / Plas Glynllifon

Built in the 1830s near Caernarfon in Gwynedd, the Grade I-listed neoclassical mansion once belonged to Lord Newborough and was long considered one of North Wales’ grandest private estates. In recent years, however, the largely vacant property has fallen into disrepair, its decaying halls becoming a magnet for urban explorers and paranormal enthusiasts.

The sprawling estate has reportedly earned a haunted reputation over the years, with visitors claiming eerie phenomena inside its deteriorating corridors. One of the mansion’s most enduring legends centers on Maria Stella Chiappini, an Italian-born aristocrat tied to the property whose dramatic life later inspired ghost stories surrounding the estate.

Those same historic halls, stone walls, and aristocratic interiors have now been overshadowed by a far less ceremonial scene: entire formerly ceremonial rooms transformed into clandestine grow spaces.

Another Odd Coincidence Linking King Charles III to Cannabis

there is no indication that the current British king is connected whatsoever to the operation or to the property’s current use, the story inevitably revives memories of another cannabis-related headline that circulated widely in 2025: rumors claiming that Charles had explored medical cannabis as part of his cancer treatment.

Those reports, never officially confirmed, claimed the monarch had considered cannabinoids as a therapeutic complement, consistent with his long-documented interest in integrative medicine, organic agriculture, and plant-based therapies.

Though the two stories are entirely unrelated, this latest development adds yet another chapter to the strange and recurring pattern of headlines linking the British Crown to cannabis.

It also highlights a uniquely British paradox: while medical cannabis has been legal since 2018 with a doctor’s prescription and regulated access continues to expand slowly, the illicit market continues to meet substantial parallel demand, often through increasingly sophisticated clandestine operations set up even in historic properties and heritage buildings.

In this case, the contrast could hardly be more British: a mansion once used for royal pageantry has, decades later, become the site of a massive clandestine cannabis grow.

<p>The post From Royal Balls to Weed Walls: Massive Grow Found in Mansion Linked to King Charles III first appeared on High Times.</p>

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B-Real, Xzibit and Demrick have spent decades around rap and weed. On “This Thing of Ours,” the Serial Killers trio sound loose, sharp and fully in command. In this conversation with High Times, B-Real and Xzibit look back on first smokes, touring in the pre-legal era, building cannabis businesses and why age still means nothing if the hunger is there.

“We still can rap circles around half the motherfuckers that are doing this shit right now who are younger than us.” B-Real is filled with aplomb. The Cypress Hill frontman, now 55, has been pumping out albums and rocking stages for nearly 40 years, giving him the hard-won wisdom to school even the cockiest younger rappers. The same can be said about Xzibit, whose résumé includes multiple collaborations with Dr. Dre, most notably on 2001, an era-defining run on MTV with Pimp My Ride, and a spot on the legendary Up In Smoke Tour alongside Eminem, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Westside Connection, Ice Cube, Warren G, Kurupt, MC Ren and Nate Dogg.

Together with Demrick, B-Real and Xzibit are also part of Serial Killers, a side project they’ve been building since 2013 with albums like Day of the Dead and Summer of Sam. Their latest set, This Thing of Ours, is a master class in lyricism and, in many ways, a flex. As the title suggests, it’s fully theirs. They rap about what they want, pick the beats they want, this time courtesy of Scoop Deville, and make the music they want to make. There’s no pressure to chart, no label breathing down their necks and certainly no urgency to sell a million copies.

Both B-Real and Xzibit also have other ventures bringing in revenue, and some of them involve weed. B-Real has championed cannabis his entire career. In 1993, Cypress Hill made a stop at Omaha Music Hall, where a hilariously large fake joint dominated the stage and burned throughout the show. The group repeatedly pushed for legalization through activism and, today, B-Real owns Dr. Greenthumb’s dispensaries in California. Xzibit, meanwhile, has launched his own cannabis business, West Coast Cannabis, with locations in Bel-Air, Marina Del Rey and Chatsworth.

During the interview, Xzibit makes a stop at one of his facilities and walks through rows of marijuana plants waiting to be harvested. It’s a surreal sight. In the 1990s, when Cypress Hill and Xzibit were omnipresent, recreational and medicinal marijuana were still illegal. It wasn’t as easy as stopping by the nearest dispensary to stock up on your favorite strains. You had to rely on random fans in whatever city you were in, or have a plug. Here, B-Real and Xzibit look back on those early days, the current state of the cannabis business and ageism in hip-hop.

High Times: Cypress Hill’s relationship with weed goes way back. I want to ask you about a story that Sen Dog told me. He said one of the first times you smoked weed as a kid, you smoked a joint with him on his porch, then he had to go to work. When he came back eight hours later, you were still in the same spot and hadn’t moved. Can you corroborate that?

B-Real: That’s his exaggerated story. Of course he doesn’t tell people that he bullied me into smoking my first joint. But yeah, no, that happened. But it didn’t happen the way he said it. We smoked before he went to work, and we had a whole bunch of homies in the neighborhood, so I went and hung out with them. Then I came back to his crib when he was getting off work. That was the normal get-down. We’d link up with Sen before he went to work security at JC Penney, then we’d meet up with him to smoke him out after. So the story wasn’t exactly true. I’ll tell you that. I’ll smoke his ass under the table, hands down, today.

So it wasn’t like you were frozen there for eight hours and couldn’t move?

B-Real: [Laughs] No. Nothing has ever done that to me except maybe some mushrooms, but not no weed.

He said that his dad came home and was like, “I think there’s something wrong with your friend.”

B-Real: What was wrong with me was that I was friends with him [laughs].

What’s up, X? Welcome to the conversation.

Xzibit: What up! What’s going down?

Thanks for joining. We’re talking about weed origin stories. Do you remember the first time you smoked?

Xzibit: I was in high school. My friend Richard Harvey and I had a mutual friend called Wally, this short, white, redhead kid. We had some weed and I had never smoked weed. He had a green Buick Skylark that we went out and smoked in in the parking lot at lunch and, from what I know now about weed, it was some compressed, super-seedy, nasty motherfuckin’ brick weed, right? He broke it down and put it in the joint. He couldn’t roll very well and there were sticks coming out of the sides. I didn’t know what I was looking at, right? I smoked it and it was trash, but that was my first time.

High Times: Did you get high?

Xzibit: I don’t know. I was just like, “Damn, this is not a good experience.” But I didn’t know. I was just smoking weed. I was just happy to have the experience. But from what I know now, it was super trash. I didn’t really get high until I started smoking out of Philly blunts. Then we would just keep the whole thing. Instead of breaking it down, we would kind of squeeze the tobacco out, then pack it back and make it a full cigar again. I think that’s the first time I really got high. That’s how I started in the beginning. I didn’t know how to roll, so we would just dump out the tobacco.

But that first time, something about it made you want to try it again. Was it like, “Let’s see if this really works”?

Xzibit: You do things when you’re that young. Of course, I smoked it one time. Why not do it a second time? The second time was better. It was better weed.

Remember when bowls would pop because of the seeds?

Xzibit: Shit was popping everywhere. It was like, “What the hell?”

What about you, B? Do you remember your very first time?

B-Real: Absolutely. I was probably in the fifth grade.

Xzibit: Damn, you got me beat right there.

B-Real: I was a fast kid. I hung out with these four other kids and we all listened to metal, oldies and shit like that. We had one older homeboy who was a gangster to us. He was a young gangbanger at that point, but he was older than us. We looked up to him and, after school, we’d go to his crib and listen to either oldies or some metal. He’d break out this little acrylic bong, about eight inches tall, with big graphics. We’d smoke out of his fucking bong. I didn’t know what we were doing. I was just like, “Well, fuck, they’re doing it. Let’s go.” We’d all leave and go our individual ways. But when I got home, I didn’t realize I had the munchies. Every time I got home, I was asking my mother for food and she’s like, “Why are you so hungry when you come home from school all the time?” Because I had the fucking munchies and I didn’t realize that’s what it was. That was my first experience. I was hitting bongs before joints.

In the ’90s, we had to try really hard to get weed. I remember having to go to North Omaha to meet up with some shady individuals to get it, and now you can just go to a dispensary and get it yourself. When you were on tour back then, how did you get weed?

B-Real: It was a gamble because not everywhere had good weed. You had to know someone in that town or meet someone who knew somebody. It was hit and miss for the first six or seven years until we started cultivating our own shit and taking it on the road. It was stuff our friends grew because we didn’t trust what we’d be able to find. Once we ran out of whatever we brought with us, it got sketchy and you had to try to find people. Back then, there were none of these social media platforms to communicate with anyone. It’s so much easier now because there are so many cultivators out there in each state who are very talented, so even if it’s black market, it’s probably pretty good, whereas back in the day, black market was absolute shit.

[Editor’s Note: At this point, Xzibit pulls up to his dispensary and walks through rows of hanging marijuana plants.]

B-Real: Oh, wow. Damn, you got there fast. You were just in the car.

I take it you’re at West Coast Cannabis?

Xzibit: Yeah, I’m at my store in the Valley.

How many locations are there?

Xzibit: We have Bel-Air, Chatsworth and we just opened our store in Marina Del Rey.

I heard you just celebrated two years at Bel-Air, right?

Xzibit: Absolutely.

How did you go about getting weed on tour? Was it similar?

Xzibit: We always had it. We just illegally trafficked it.

When recreational and medicinal weed started becoming legal, were you surprised, or did you always think it would happen?

Xzibit: For me, it really didn’t change anything except now we’re just not getting in trouble for it.

B-Real: When we started going to places like Amsterdam in the early ’90s and seeing what they were doing, the structure of their cannabis culture and business, I knew it was possible for us. No one could call when, but as soon as people started getting into their activist and advocate bag and really wanted to make change, that’s when you saw the change happen. Like Xzibit said, it didn’t change much because we always had our own shit and we weren’t depending on anyone else, but it definitely made it easier to not have to sneak around or any of that shit. We could smoke freely and not have to fucking worry about it anymore, so it wasn’t necessarily a shock. It was more relief, like, finally these motherfuckers got it.

Is there any less allure because it is legal?

B-Real: Yeah, there is that, and for the thrill-seekers, the black market still exists. It’s out there for you if you want it. It ain’t going nowhere. And the work’s not done yet. There’s still a ways to go in terms of legalization. Until we’re federally legal across the board, there’s plenty of work to do. Because trying to be a multi-state operator with a licensing format is almost impossible to ensure that the licensees that, let’s just say, come under Dr. Greenthumb’s. Let’s just say I do licensing deals with Greenthumb’s, much like how Xzibit and the rest of us operate. We partner up with people through licensing unless we own a piece of that license. But in multi-state operations, you can’t necessarily supervise the shops everywhere and you can’t tell them what to do. You can only give them suggestions on how to operate. If they wanted to say, “Hey, fuck you, we got your name up here. We’re going to operate it the way we want. As long as we’re doing it according to the law, you can’t tell us how to operate.” When it’s federally legal and we’re allowed to franchise, then we could give them a playbook they absolutely have to follow. We can look through the books, we can do all the fucking things and make sure they’re operating the way all the others operate within the franchise. Right now, it’s too complicated.

The taxes in every state make it practically impossible for the margins to make sense, so there’s a lot of work to do. We need to get it federally legal so all of us who want to be in this business, whether it’s just in our home states or we want to operate as multi-state operators because we feel our brand has that sort of strength in the market, can do it with fewer complications and get a fair shake. A lot of these states turned over a lot of fucking money in tax revenue through the cannabis industry. We bailed out a lot of state economies through cannabis culture, legalization, decriminalization and all that we have in place. The fucking nation needs to say thank you to this business that brought money out of nowhere.

I’m pretty sure Colorado taxpayers got money back from the cannabis industry.

Xzibit: There’s definitely a lot of work to be done in that aspect. There needs to be a tax when it becomes federally legal. It should be 3%, the same as alcohol and tobacco.

What’s the tax now?

Xzibit: Right now, it’s at 38%.

Is federal legalization any closer?

B-Real: No, not yet. I think there’s too many other things going on for any one of those politicians to be focused on cannabis right now. It’s actually up to the cannabis advocates to keep pressing, instead of sitting on their hands and just being thankful for what we got. We got to keep pressing because politicians ain’t going to do it. This dickhead president ain’t going to do it. The people got to keep pressing.

What are your daily rituals when it comes to smoking these days? What do you prefer: blunts, joints, bongs?

B-Real: Xzibit smokes tree bark [laughs]. He wraps his shit with Backwoods, and I call it tree bark.

Xzibit: [Laughs] Look, man, you get samples of everything. So I just kind of like to roll joints and concentrates together, sometimes in the joint if I have to, but most of the time I roll it in the wood.

Are we smoking all day?

Xzibit: Yeah, it doesn’t really slow me down. It’s good. A cup of coffee and I’m good.

B-Real: For me, it’s joints on papers with a glass tip, and sometimes we’re smoking hash holes. And for those that don’t know what that is, some other folks call them donuts, but it’s a joint with hash lined right in the middle. High Times folks know what the fuck that is. We smoke through the day. It’s part of who we are, and it’s not because we have to, it’s because we want to.

Cypress Hill has always advocated for cannabis. It’s cool to see that you turned it into a business. You too, Xzibit.

Xzibit: But it takes the team. It takes a lot of good people around you, and good people are hard to find. So once you’ve got a good team, you take care of them, and it becomes like a family.

April 20 is coming up. I grew up on 420 North 41st Street. My dad didn’t understand why somebody stole our sign every single year. Now he knows [laughs]. How do you guys celebrate 4/20?

B-Real: Every day is 4/20. It’s still the same.

Xzibit: Yeah, what do you mean? What’s the difference?

B-Real: Everybody else parties on 4/20 because it’s like every stoner’s birthday and shit.

Are you doing anything special at your stores?

Xzibit: Yeah, our grand opening is on 4/20 at the West Coast Cannabis Marina Del Rey store, but I’ll be going to the other locations as well.

Anything happening at your store, B?

B-Real: There’s specials, there’s flavor drops, there’s meet-and-greets and stuff like that. Usually we’re out of town. This is probably the one 4/20 in the last couple years where we’re actually at home, not doing anything. But I might stop into one of the dispensaries, maybe San Diego or something like that. We’re dropping music that day as well.

One of my favorite songs you did was actually “Dr. Greenthumb’s.”

B-Real: Yeah, that’s the calling card. It gets lit.

Cypress Hill just released a new single, too. You’re busy.

B-Real: I’ve been blessed to be locked in with two amazing albums: the Serial Killers album, This Thing of Ours, and this Cypress Hill Spanish album. Two completely different things. I’m blessed to be working like this.

Who would have thought all these years later that you’d still be doing it at such a high level? No pun intended [laughs].

B-Real: We try to stay busy. I think our school, the gold school, we were very young at heart when we started this but advanced in our years because of the street life we led before this. It sort of gave us an advantage in the mentality, like only the strong survive shit, right? We were very young at it, and we’ve kept this young, competitive mentality throughout the years, even as we’re now in our 50s. We don’t look at ourselves like we’re in our 50s. We feel like we’re in our fucking 30s and 40s and still doing it at the highest level. It’s about the state of mind you’re in. If you feel you’re fucking too old for this shit, you will sound and feel like you’re too old for this shit, and it’ll be done for you. But those of us in this modern age of it, we don’t feel that way. We feel like we’re still competitive. We still can rap circles around half the motherfuckers that are doing this shit right now who are younger than us. Although we do recognize the youngsters that are right there with us, too, because there are plenty of youngsters that get down. But, you know, it’s the competitive spirit. And as long as we’re taking care of ourselves, we’re right in state of mind, we could do this as long as we fucking want.

Absolutely.

B-Real: Look at The Rolling Stones. They’re close to fucking 90 and still doing shows. All of you guys, we all have such a spirit of youth. Like, it’s still there. And I think that helps us age very well. If Madonna could be a pop star at 60-fucking-something or 70-something, whatever she is, why can’t we still be cutting it up? And it’s about how much you put into yourself and how much you put into the art. So fortunately, Xzibit still has that passion. He’s not as old as us yet, but he will be one day. He’ll still have it. He’s got it in him.

The work ethic is insane, too.

B-Real: You got to want to do this, and we still love to do it. I think it shows when you hear or see us do the music that we still love it. If we were just going through the motions, you would hear that and be like, “Ah, this shit is kind of OK,” and you’d flip forward to whatever the next shit is. But when someone still has passion about it, I think you can hear it, and we still definitely do.

<p>The post B-Real and Xzibit on Brick Weed, Backwoods and Why They Still ‘Rap Circles’ Around Younger Rappers first appeared on High Times.</p>

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The artist is entering cannabis as co-founder and brand ambassador of Young Gong, a new venture with Dr. Sha-Ron Pierre-Kovler’s Glenmere Farms Enterprises.

YG Marley is entering the cannabis business.

The artist is launching Young Gong, a new cannabis brand created with Glenmere Farms Enterprises, the New York-based company led by biomedical scientist Dr. Sha-Ron Pierre-Kovler. The official launch is set for April 19 with a “Countdown to 4/20” event at Partake NYC in Long Island City, during the 2nd day of NYC’s weekend-long Kanafest.

According to materials shared exclusively with High Times, Marley is part of the venture as co-founder and brand ambassador, giving the project a more direct connection to the artist than the usual celebrity licensing play. The brand is being positioned around cannabis, music and meditation, with the name “Young Gong” drawing on both Marley’s identity and the idea of sound as a healing force.

“I’ve wanted to work with Dr. Sha-Ron for a while now,” Marley said. “I saw that she is a creative genius. She understands this plant is more than just a feeling — it’s a frequency.”

Pierre-Kovler said Marley made sense as a partner not just because of his public profile, but because of his long relationship to cannabis culture and his instinct for pairing strains with mood, setting and experience. In her view, New York also offers the right backdrop for that kind of rollout, giving the brand a chance to build cannabis-centered experiences in a market still taking shape.

That language carries through the rest of the rollout. Young Gong is framed not just as a cannabis line but as a broader lifestyle brand, one that leans on the overlap between cannabinoids, sound and wellness. The company says packaging will include QR codes unlocking exclusive digital content from Marley, tying the physical product to music and other branded experiences.

The first products will roll out across New York on April 19, according to Pierre-Kovler, with a New Jersey launch expected this summer. The debut lineup includes Harmon-E, K-Lab, Melody Makers and Roads of Flames, each positioned around a different intended effect and audience.

Pierre-Kovler said her role in the venture is to help shape the science, formulation and broader vision behind the brand, drawing on her research background and a focus on giving consumers products that feel safe, consistent and grounded in more than just marketing language.

Pierre-Kovler, whose Glenmere Farms Enterprises is part of the joint venture, is described in launch materials as one of the few Black women operating at scale in legal cannabis and as a longtime advocate for cannabinoid-based wellness. Glenmere says its broader portfolio includes both Dr. Sha’s and Young Gong Cannabis.

For Marley, the move adds a cannabis venture to a public image already closely tied to one of music’s most storied family legacies. But the pitch here is not nostalgia. It is a modern wellness-forward brand with celebrity visibility, scientific branding and a launch timed for the cannabis industry’s most crowded week of the year.

The official Young Gong launch event is scheduled for Sunday, April 19 at 9 p.m. at Partake NYC, located at 10-29 44th Rd, Long Island City, NY. More details are expected through the brand’s Instagram account, @younggongcannabis, and its website.

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After a European rollout last year, Sensi Seeds and Death Row Records are bringing five exclusive strains to the U.S., giving American home growers their first shot at running seeds developed with Death Row’s lead grower, AK.

Snoop is bringing Death Row into the grow room.

After launching in Europe last year, the Death Row Records collaboration with Sensi Seeds is officially landing in the U.S., giving American home growers access to five exclusive strains for the first time: B-Funk, Dough Boy, Studio Candy, Caramel Pineapple and Cereal Killa.

For Snoop, the timing came down to making sure the project was solid before opening it up stateside.

“We’ve been building this the right way: getting the genetics dialed in, seeing how people rock with it overseas, and making sure it’s something I can stand on. Now it’s time to bring it home. The fans been ready, the growers been ready, so we’re ready to open it up and let the people grow what we grow,” he told High Times.

This is not just a celebrity cannabis tie-in or another branded jar. It is a seed drop meant for people who actually grow.

Snoop also framed the release as part of something bigger than merch.

“We’ve grown Death Row from a music label into a full lifestyle universe and this is a natural evolution of that. This isn’t just merch or a logo on a package… this is the DNA.”

The project was developed with AK, Death Row’s lead grower, and the idea, at least from his side, was pretty simple: build five strains that each bring something different to the garden.

“When developing these strains, we prioritized flavor, effect and yield,” AK told High Times.

That comes through in the way he talks about the lineup. He’s not pitching five versions of the same plant with different names on the pack. He’s pitching five different roles.

“Our goal was to deliver five cultivars that each serve a clear purpose in a home grower’s garden, while showcasing the depth of modern and legacy genetics working together,” he said.

B-Funk sounds like the one they expect a lot of people to start with. AK describes it as vigorous, expressive and especially rewarding for growers who like to work the plant a little. He points to its Burmese Pie and Fruity Juice background, heavy resin production and lateral growth that responds well to SCROG and supercropping.

Caramel Pineapple goes in a different direction. Taller, longer, louder. AK says the SFV OG and Jamaican Roadkill Skunk lineage gives it a lot of character, both while growing and once it’s in the jar.

Dough Boy is the sturdy one in the group. Bushy, forgiving and built to deliver. AK called it the “foundation strain,” pointing to its Northern Lights and Durban background and the kind of structure that makes life easier for growers who want something dependable.

Then there’s Studio Candy, which he framed as high performance in a smaller footprint, and Cereal Killa, which he described as especially well suited for indoor setups and growers looking for something compact, efficient and deeply relaxing.

That’s probably what gives the whole thing a little more shape than the average celebrity weed rollout. There’s at least an attempt to speak to growers like growers.

And the pairing makes sense. Sensi brings the breeding history. Death Row brings the cultural gravity. Snoop sits right in the middle of that, which is probably why this feels more natural than a lot of cannabis collabs that start with a name and end there.

Whether these actually become favorites is up to growers now. That part always is. But this is a good move. It takes Death Row out of the abstract and puts it somewhere more tangible: in the tent, in the room, in the hands of people who want to grow the thing themselves.

That’s a much better place for it.

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In an exclusive High Times interview, the Jackass icon and his wife Dannii Marie talk recovery, sleep, bad trips, psychedelic ceremonies and why their new brand feels less like a launch and more like a life.

“Weed does not lead to other drugs,” says Bam Margera in an exclusive interview with High Times. “It leads to fucking carpentry.”

He says it to make a point about his wife. She builds bongs out of apples. That, he explains, is what cannabis actually does to people.

Two years sober from alcohol, goes to bed at ten, skates; he’s building a cannabis brand called Bam THC with his wife Dannii Marie, and the project feels less like a licensing deal than like something they are actually building around their life.

“Cannabis played a big role in recovery because I had a really horrible sleep schedule,” he says.

Purple Bin Laden Weed

Bam Margera was not, historically, a cannabis person.

His first experience happened at 23, on the Steve O tour in Copenhagen. Someone offered him a hundred dollars to eat a hundred dollars worth of raw flower. He needed the money.

“I swallowed this shit and I just remember laughing my ass off for no reason,” he says. “And then I just stopped in a panic mode.”

He went back to his hotel room, wrote a list of everyone he loved because he thought he was dying, fell asleep on the bathroom sink and woke up 24 hours later, badly bruised. For the following week he survived on vanilla ice cream. Everything had a yellow tint.

He steered clear of cannabis after that. Then, years later, he ended up on Snoop Dogg’s tour bus in Petaluma. It wasn’t his idea to smoke, exactly, but when Snoop has taken eleven puffs off a joint and passes it to you, the social math is simple. Margera counted the puffs, took one and immediately went somewhere he did not want to be.

“Note to self,” he says. “No more Purple Bin Laden weed.”

He missed the whole show. He lay in a bush outside the tour bus and stared at the moon.

Even after that, the conclusion wasn’t simple. Cannabis didn’t agree with him — except when it did. The difference, it turned out, was context. At a nightclub one night, stoned and recognizable, he walked in and immediately felt surrounded.

“Everybody recognized me and I thought like they were like crows attacking me saying the word bam,” he says. “Bam, bam, bam. I’m like, I got to get the fuck out of here.”

A campfire in the woods with chill friends? Fine. A crowded nightclub with everyone in his face? Total shutdown. He knows the difference now. The plant didn’t change. The situation did.

Enter Dannii

Dannii Marie is Bam’s wife. She is also, by her own description, his business partner, stretch coach and personal trainer, and the person who — when they first got together — decided she was going to change his relationship with the plant, whether he liked it or not.

She’d been using cannabis daily since she was 16. Grew up in Charleston with a mother in medicine who normalized it at home. Arrived in adulthood without the stigma that had kept Bam away from it for years. When he came into her life still drinking, she saw the situation clearly.

“I hate alcohol and I hate drugs,” she told him. “Marijuana is not a drug. So if you want to do that, that’s great because I do it all day every day. Anything else is off limits. And you have a boyfriend called vodka, and if it touches your lips, you’re cheating.”

What followed, slowly, with gummies and a ten o’clock bedtime, was a different relationship with the plant. Not recreational. Not rebellious. Functional.

“I would stare at the ceiling till the sun came up with my racing ass thoughts,” he says. “And the weed gummies, or just a puff of weed, would help me completely go to bed.”

Two years sober. Bedtime at ten. Skating again.

The Part He Doesn’t Sanitize

Margera doesn’t trade in gentle euphemism for his past.

He stayed away from drugs and alcohol as a teenager because he had one goal: to become a professional skateboarder. That focus held. Then he made it, the money came, the cars piled up in the driveway. Two Lamborghinis, a Ferrari, a DeLorean, two Bentleys…

“I’ve run out of goals and wishes, man,” he says. “Now I’m just going to get fucked up.”

He did. Daily drinking. Cocaine. Adderall. He ended up in treatment on 18 different medications, half of them sleep-related. They made him sleepwalk. He knocked himself out five or six times in the same treatment center, each time a two-thousand-dollar ambulance ride he did not need.

“Pretty much all in a row,” he says.

Meanwhile, the one thing that had actually helped him sleep was off the table. That is the part that still frustrates Dannii.

“They can’t hit the bong,” she says. “We are so backwards.”

When the courts ordered Margera into rehab, she moved first. She got him a Pennsylvania medical card before he went in, thinking ahead about probation and what would happen if he tested positive. Then, at the facility, she ran into the same wall: the staff wanted to put him back on the same medication cycle that had been sending him into walls. She shut it down. He did 30 days clean of everything except cannabis.

The system, in her telling, had it exactly backwards. Alcohol is legal. The thing that helped him sleep is the thing they were trying to keep away from him.

Why The Body Needed This

Bam’s injuries are not theoretical.

Sixteen staples in his head. Eight broken ribs on one side, four on the other. Three broken feet, fifteen broken right wrists, eight broken left wrists, every finger, every toe. For years, alcohol muffled the pain and made it worse by morning. He’d wake up hurting worse than before, drink again to get through the day and run the whole cycle back.

The Bam THC roll-on broke that loop.

“With the THC and the CBD and the menthol and the lidocaine in these roll-ons,” he says, “it numbs it in such a healthy way that in like seconds you could go skating the day that you woke up and you can barely even limping to the fucking bathroom.”

What They’re Building

Bam THC launched earlier this year with that roll-on as its flagship: a lidocaine-based topical with CBD, THC and menthol, built around the simple premise that some bodies need serious relief and don’t want to smell like a dispensary while getting it. Flower, concentrates, gummies and pre-rolls are on the way. Dannii handles quality assurance on the inhalables and edibles, keeps a notebook rating each product and why, and worked with Bam closely on naming and packaging.

“A lot of other companies wanted to just put his name on something,” she says. “Which I would not allow.”

Manufacturing is handled by the SMAK’D team out of Miami, with over a decade in the industry. The strain names, No Safety Kush, Skull & Smoke and Punk Runtz among them, were designed by Bam and Dannii together.

In the interview, they talk over each other, wander into stories about Tommy Chong at a Comic-Con signing and Snoop wearing Bam’s custom sunglasses on stage that same night in Petaluma. At one point, Bam watches Dannii describe her testing process and says, unprompted: “Your passion for these products are seriously like my passion is skateboarding.”

“It’s fun because it helps both of us,” she says.

Dear Congress

Ask Margera why cannabis is still federally illegal and he goes full Bam.

“If everybody got along and behaved themselves and nobody did anything wrong, there would slowly be no more news. There would be no more helicopter chases, no more jails, no more tickets to give out. We need to have drunk motherfuckers fighting each other and getting arrested.”

She once sent him into a dispensary alone to pick something out. He emerged bewildered.

“Babe, there’s a lot of flavors in there now,” he reported back. “Do you want the kiwi strawberry birthday cake or the grape honeydew melon coconut maple nut crunch weeds?”

She did not want the grape honeydew melon coconut maple nut crunch weeds.

Dannii has the sharper version of the legalization argument. She helped Curaleaf intake patients in Florida when the state couldn’t process medical-card volume fast enough, standing at the front door helping elderly patients check in who had no idea what they were doing. She’s watched large operators move in and degrade the product since. She’s dumped dispensary flower that came out like oregano.

“Your street guy now has better weed than the dispensary,” she says.

The cultural inversion is something she finds genuinely bizarre. The skating world, where Bam built his entire identity, has always been cannabis-forward. The modeling world, where she built hers, still hides it. She’s stood outside venues in beautiful gowns, watching colleagues smoke cigarettes while she quietly does something the industry treats as far more scandalous. Her mother is a cardiologist.

“She’ll puff a Marlboro Red,” Dannii says. “Your heart doctors are smoking cigarettes and cannabis is not legal. I don’t understand it.”

She wants legalization but she also wants the plant left intact. The two things are not the same, and she knows it. Her pitch to Congress lands in one sentence: “Cannabis is a beautiful plant. Please do not destroy it.”

Seven Ceremonies

The recovery story doesn’t stop at gummies and bedtimes.

Margera has done seven ten-hour ceremonial sessions with a close friend, a shaman from Iran named Naveed. They start at five in the morning and end at five at night. The process involves a brew he describes as shiahuasca, a paste called harmala, “five burns on the skin filled with a frog oil called kambo” that makes his face swell and purges him completely, three mushrooms and rapé, “a tobacco blown up the nose to clear the sinuses.”

“If he wasn’t there to guide me, I’d probably lose my mind,” he says. “But he’s always right there, just eye contact. He doesn’t even have to speak.”

What comes up in the ceremonies, he says, is everything. Every decision, every regret, every road not taken, running on a loop until something settles. He describes the end of each session with unusual clarity: “Yes, I figured it out. That’s great.”

He says he’d only do it in a controlled ceremonial context. Not recreationally. Not casually. The structure matters.

“This one can’t be just tripping some mushrooms,” he says.

His shaman, he adds, has worked with heroin addicts, alcoholics, people with serious illness. He believes in it the same way he now believes in the gummy at ten o’clock and the roll-on before the skate park: not as magic, but as tools that work when approached with intention.

What The Brand Is, Really

Two people finishing each other’s sentences, genuinely excited, clearly building something that means something to them.

Margera speaks about addiction and self-destruction with the bluntness of someone who can no longer afford to romanticize it. He doesn’t sound polished. He doesn’t sound cured. He sounds like someone who knows exactly how bad things got, which is maybe why he takes the ten o’clock bedtime seriously now.

“He’s not going to go backwards just because we have a cannabis product,” Dannii says. “It’s actually helped him a lot.”

Bam put it differently.

Weed doesn’t lead to other drugs. His wife proved it with an apple.

Photos courtesy of Bam THC.

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The Puerto Rican hitmaker says cannabis is bigger than business, framing the plant as medicine, resistance, and a way to challenge the machine that taught people to fear it.

Like many others, Farruko’s first encounter with cannabis didn’t come through a prescription or a dispensary. It came from the streets, from music, from leisure. It happened at home. Among friends, among chords, in the haze of long nights where a blunt of krippy or kush could go around until everyone’s eyes were too heavy to stay open. A relationship between the Puerto Rican artist and the plant that, if we wanted to, we could find in bars that have already become part of Latin reggaetón’s DNA: Los maleantes quieren krippy / toas las babies quieren kush, or Ya no quiere amor, quiere marihuana. (The hustlers want krippy / all the girls want kush or she doesn’t want love anymore, she wants marijuana.)

What began as a recreational experience gradually evolved over time, revealing another dimension. Cannabis was present in both artistic processes and chill moments, but also—perhaps without him fully realizing it—during moments of healing: medicinal treatments, slowing down, meditation, letting go. He discovered a sense of pause, introspection, and the physical relief offered by this alternative medicine, which helped him manage several health issues at a moment when, he says, taking too many pills was already doing more harm than good. Where some still see stigma, Farruko saw opportunity.

Once he understood that, the Puerto Rican artist—a Latin Grammy winner, recognized by the Billboard Latin Music Awards, and a musical collaborator with names like Daddy Yankee, Sean Paul, Bad Bunny, and Arcángel—decided to turn his personal and spiritual experience into a public defense of medical cannabis. He did it from Puerto Rico, and against years of stigma.

That intersection gave rise to Carbonnabis, his medical cannabis brand developed in and for Puerto Rico, with ambitions to reach the world: to make its way into homes, dispensaries, and the hands of anyone who may need the plant’s healing potential. Rather than a celebrity whim to add another asset or simply enter a rapidly growing industry, Farruko approached it as something personal, medicinal, and educational.

In conversation with High Times, Farruko talks about spirituality, natural medicine, prejudice, Puerto Rico, the industry, and reggaetón with a conviction that is unexpectedly clear: defending the plant, he says, can also be a way of waking up.

Farruko and cannabis: From recreational use to medical

For Farruko, his relationship with cannabis was once part of everyday social life, part of the same urban culture that also shaped the music he was creating at the time. “I obviously used it recreationally before this whole shift toward making it fully medicinal began,” he says.

What changed over time wasn’t just his personal relationship with marijuana, but also the context surrounding it. As different countries began regulating its medical use and scientific research started to expand, Farruko found himself entering a very different conversation. It was no longer only about leisure or social culture, but also about health, treatments, and regulation.

But before getting publicly involved in that space, he decided to educate himself. “It took me a while to really study it, dive into the topic, learn about it, and find the right people to develop this project with,” he explains, referring to the creation of the brand.

The process wasn’t without doubts. The artist knew his decision could draw criticism, especially after the personal and spiritual changes he had gone through in recent years, which he had openly shared with his audience.

“I definitely had my doubts before getting into it, of course, because I’m coming from a moment in my life where I’ve changed a lot of things,” he says.

That learning journey ultimately transformed what could have been just another business venture into something far more personal. In his case, Carbonnabis does not appear to be an opportunistic venture within a growing industry, but rather the result of closely observing the shift in social perception around cannabis and the increasingly clear role it is starting to play in the medical field.

Experiencing the effects of medical cannabis firsthand

Behind Carbonnabis there’s more than just an understanding of the market or a reflection of the cultural shift around marijuana; there’s also a very tangible physical experience.

Farruko says that for years he lived with several health issues: recurring muscle pain, constant inflammation, episodes of gout, and difficulty getting proper rest. As often happens in these situations, treatment relied mostly on prescription medications. “I wanted to do it, especially because of my personal health conditions: I suffer from muscle pain, I have gout, and I get inflammation over the smallest things,” he explains.

Managing those symptoms meant taking pills frequently to control flare-ups and pain. Over time, however, the side effects began to take a toll.

“The excess of pills was already hurting me,” he recalls. “Every time I had inflammation, the pill I took would upset my stomach.” On top of that came another common consequence of high-stress routines and constant public exposure: rest became increasingly difficult. “I wasn’t sleeping well, and I started looking for alternative medicine,” he says.

It was in that context that cannabis began to take on a different role in his life. What had once been part of leisure or musical culture slowly began to appear as a possible therapeutic tool.

When asked whether he truly found a working alternative in the plant, Farruko doesn’t hesitate. That turning point—between the fatigue of pharmaceuticals and the search for a more natural medicine—would ultimately become one of the main forces behind the creation of Carbonnabis.

Cannabis as a ritual

Beyond its medicinal dimension, Farruko also describes his relationship with cannabis from a more intimate place. Not necessarily as a direct tool for writing music or altering his creative process, but as a way to slow things down, something that can naturally coexist with those activities.

“I use it to meditate, to think, to step away and have my own space, and, of course, to rest,” he explains.

In his account, something appears that many users recognize: the moment before using it as a ritual in itself. The simple act of pausing, preparing the flower, and stepping away from everyday noise. A gesture that, in the middle of packed schedules and constant stimuli, becomes an excuse to slow the pace.

“Your brain is juggling so many things all day…,” he says. And for him, that moment of pause begins even before anything is lit. “From the process of breaking it down, having it in your hands, rolling the blunt, you’re already doing it… it’s like therapy. It’s the perfect excuse to stop, think, and take a few minutes for yourself.”

In that way, a simple gesture starts to take on a different meaning. Not so much an “escape,” but a way of reclaiming moments of introspection. “Human beings rarely stop,” he says. “We’re always moving fast.”

Between the noise of the digital world, the pressure of work, and constant public exposure, that small moment of pause—for some almost invisible—can become, in his words, a way of listening to yourself again.

Carbonabbis: When personal experience becomes a medical project

That entire personal journey eventually took concrete form in Carbonnabis, the medical cannabis brand Farruko launched in Puerto Rico. Its name blends Carbon Fiber Music, his production company, with the word “cannabis.”

The project, he explains, is mainly aimed at patients seeking relief from everyday but deeply widespread conditions: stress, anxiety, and muscle pain.

The genetics developed for the brand are designed around that balance. Farruko describes it as a hybrid variety created to combine different therapeutic effects, with broad aromatic profiles meant to make the experience more approachable and personalized.

“It’s a hybrid plant that has that balance,” he explains. “With my plant, we’ve focused more on the medicinal side than the recreational.”

Alcohol, tobacco, and sugar are legal, so why isn’t cannabis?

The birth of Carbonnabis isn’t only about seizing an opportunity in a fast-expanding industry. For Farruko, it’s also about something broader: helping change the conversation around cannabis. “It’s more personal, and about educating,” he says. “People have demonized the plant a lot.”

In his view, that demonization coexists with an obvious social contradiction. Substances such as alcohol, tobacco, or even sugar—whose negative health effects are widely documented—remain part of everyday life with far less controversy.

“Everything in life, if you don’t use it the right way, will have consequences,” he explains. “But we see, for example, alcohol is legal, tobacco is legal, sugar—which is the most dangerous drug—is legal. It hasn’t been subjected to the same kind of campaign against it that marijuana has.”

He adds: “There’s also no moment where you stop. Someone who drinks often loses control; one drink turns into many until they’re being carried off the floor. I’ve never seen someone under the effects of cannabis alone, fighting or acting aggressively. Obviously, it doesn’t affect everyone the same way, but most patients and people who use it recreationally don’t behave that way,” he explains.

That double standard, he suggests, has deeper roots. If he had to explain why such a clear distinction exists between some substances that are not only legal but socially legitimized and marijuana, Farruko points to two reasons: “I think it’s big interests and double standards,” he says.

For him, the reasons are political, economic, and tied to powerful incentives. “Everyone has their own interests at play. That’s no mystery, and everyone is going to look where the business is. This is a fight that’s been going on for years, for centuries, I’d say, where the plant has been demonized.”

Access, democratization, and products designed for specific conditions

That shift in the conversation—from prejudice to education—is exactly where Farruko wants to position Carbonnabis. But beyond the cultural narrative, the brand also operates within the concrete structure of Puerto Rico’s medical cannabis industry.

Currently, Carbonnabis products are available in 68 dispensaries across the island, where patients can access different formats from the brand. The lineup includes flower, vapes, and edibles, and so far, the reception has been strong.

“Right now we have gummies, vapes; the quality we’re offering, people have really loved it. The reviews and feedback from the public have been incredible,” he says. In fact, demand has been so high that “it’s almost sold out already. We’re about to drop the second release,” he adds.

Upcoming launches will also include new vape models, new designs, different genetics, and edible products like chocolates. The strategy, he explains, is to maintain a constant rotation of varieties to meet the expectations of a public that knows the market well and demands quality. “We’re changing the strains all the time so people can always find something new,” he says.

One particular feature of the project is that the strains don’t come from existing commercial varieties. Instead, they were developed specifically for the brand. “These are strains that belong to us. It’s not like we took a strain that already existed out there with a name. This was built completely from scratch,” he explains.

Within that framework, Carbonnabis aims to make medical cannabis more available to patients through a more accessible approach, one oriented around the specific needs of each individual. The idea, he says, is that anyone walking into a dispensary can find a product designed for their particular condition. “So they have the opportunity to obtain a plant designed for their condition,” he says. “They can walk in and say, ‘Look, my joints hurt, I can’t sleep, or I have X condition, what do you recommend?’”

And for patients who don’t feel comfortable smoking, the range of formats opens up other options. “If the patient doesn’t like flower, then they have the option of a gummy, a drink, baked goods,” he explains.

Ultimately, the intention is simple: to move medical cannabis out of the territory of stigma and turn it into just another tool within personal health and wellness.

For Farruko, the potential was always there. Together with his partner Eli Estrada, he began developing the project some time ago. “We were looking for a way to do it because cannabis has always caught my attention, and I always saw its potential because it’s a flower. It comes from nature. It must have something that can help us, because nature is designed for that. I never bought the story that it was something bad. We just had to find the right way to use it. To understand it,” he says.

That way, he reveals what the main goal had always been: “I knew that this way we could help a lot of people. The vision was to enter this space and grow, because I think it has huge potential, and it’s something new for many countries where the market is just beginning to open.”

Puerto Rican sovereignty through local industry

The plants are developed in collaboration with First Medical, one of Puerto Rico’s medical cannabis operators. For Farruko, that decision also reflects a clear objective: strengthening the local industry.

“I did it with the full intention of helping farmers here and supporting cultivation in Puerto Rico, so the industry keeps moving forward on the island,” he says.

Looking ahead, the project also includes plans to expand beyond the island and eventually open its own physical dispensaries. For now, however, the focus remains on consolidating its presence within Puerto Rico’s medical cannabis system.

For Farruko, part of the reason Carbonnabis could take shape on the island has to do with how much the medical cannabis system in Puerto Rico has matured in recent years.

The artist lives there and has watched that evolution up close. Today, he explains, the island has a wide network of dispensaries, multiple locally cultivated brands, and a regulated system that allows patients to access specific products based on their medical needs.

Access operates through a regulated medical framework: patients must obtain a license accompanied by a professional recommendation, after which they can purchase different products within the system. “I really like the way the system works here, where everything is done through a license you obtain with a medical recommendation,” he explains.

That process also includes evaluating each patient’s specific needs, something Farruko considers one of the most important advances in how medical cannabis is approached today. “They check what conditions you have and recommend what type of cannabis you should use depending on your case,” he says.

The result is a market that goes far beyond traditional flower. In Puerto Rico’s dispensaries today, multiple formats coexist, designed for different patient profiles: edibles, oils, topical creams, capsules, and infused beverages. “It’s incredible how much it’s industrialized and progressed,” says the artist.

That context—an expanding industry, a regulated system, and a growing community of patients—is the environment where Carbonnabis aims to establish itself before considering international expansion.

Puerto Rico, Latin identity and local pride

The growth and momentum of the cannabis industry are undeniable, and, looking back now, they also seem almost unstoppable. Globally, of course, but if we turn our attention to Latin America, the progress stands out even more. Uruguay, after all, became the first country in the world to legalize marijuana, and that momentum can also be seen in places like Argentina, Colombia, and, of course, Puerto Rico.

The strong presence of the Latin community and its unique characteristics creates an interesting contrast with the markets that usually dominate the conversation, such as the United States or parts of Europe, especially when you look at the number of entrepreneurs emerging from these regions.

For Farruko, the goal was always clear: “I wanted it to be something grown in Puerto Rico, something that could come out of there, so the farmer could not only see opportunities within the island but also show the world that Puerto Rico can stand alongside markets like Los Angeles or Denver.”

In his view, the island doesn’t just have the musical talent that has turned it into one of the most influential cultural epicenters of the past few decades… it also “has the potential” in agriculture, business, and science to position itself within the global cannabis industry.

But before thinking about international markets or competing with long-established hubs like certain cities in the United States, Farruko believes the first step is strengthening what already exists at home. “Prioritizing Puerto Rico, because it’s my home,” he says firmly.

The logic, he explains, is simple: build a solid foundation locally before expanding to the rest of the world. “You have to be strong at home first before you can go out.”

In that sense, Carbonnabis also works as a way to reclaim local identity within an industry that is often dominated by large capital or narratives disconnected from the communities that historically lived alongside the plant.

For Farruko, the growth of the cannabis industry in Latin America is closely tied to those communities. “First, you have to understand who we are at the root,” he says.

Faith, spirituality and cannabis

If there’s one point where the conversation becomes more delicate, it’s when the plant enters into dialogue with faith.

In recent years, Farruko has spoken publicly about his spiritual transformation, a personal process that also marked a shift in his public and artistic life. Because of that, he acknowledges that his defense of medical cannabis can raise a few eyebrows.

“In my case, it’s always going to be something uncomfortable for the public,” he admits.

The tension appears especially among more conservative religious circles, where cannabis still carries decades of moral stigma. “Orthodox groups in that space, or religious people, you could say, tend to attack the plant and its use,” he explains.

However, Farruko believes many of those criticisms stem more from cultural interpretations than from concrete religious doctrine. “The Bible doesn’t specify anything about cannabis,” he notes. “It doesn’t say it’s bad. It’s simply not there.”

For him, the key is not absolute prohibition, but responsible use. A logic that also appears in many spiritual traditions through the concept of free will. “When something is used the right way, it can bring multiple benefits,” the artist says.

He also draws attention to what he sees as a broader silence—from both religious groups and society at large—about the consequences and risks of other types of widely accepted medical treatments. “Maybe science and chemicals are harming human beings, and this could help counter that in some way; help patients find a better quality of life without damaging their liver. We see how pharmaceuticals affect the liver and can really tear it apart. They relieve you in the moment, but the condition is still there,” he says.

He also points out that the relationship between plants and spirituality is nothing new. Throughout history, different cultures have used plants with psychoactive properties within rituals, ceremonies, and spiritual practices.

For Farruko, that historical context helps explain why today’s debate is often shaped more by recent prejudices than by a broader understanding of human traditions.

In his personal experience, cannabis has not only been part of his creative process or his moments of rest, but also a tool that helped him manage physical pain and periods of stress. “I know the benefits it has. I know how many people it has helped, and how it has helped me too.”

Defending that position publicly, he acknowledges, isn’t always easy. But he chose to do it anyway. “I’ve defended it with everything I’ve got.”

To explain his stance, he often turns to a phrase found in scripture that, for him, captures the balance between freedom and responsibility: “Everything is permissible for me… but not everything is beneficial.”

Between faith, natural medicine, public controversy, and ancestral traditions, Farruko ultimately offers a simple idea: the issue isn’t necessarily the plant itself, but the relationship each person chooses to build with it.

Cannabis as an act of positive rebellion

Toward the end of the conversation, Farruko returns to an idea that runs through the entire interview: changing the social perception of marijuana is not something that will happen overnight.

The plant carries decades—even centuries—of cultural, political, and media-driven stigma. A reputation that, as the artist himself notes, cannot be undone with speeches alone. “Once something gets a reputation, it sticks,” he reflects. “That’s the reputation the plant already has.”

In his view, transforming that collective perception is a slow process. It doesn’t depend solely on arguments or public debates, but also on real experiences that allow people to question what they have taken for granted for years.

“It’s going to be very difficult to change people’s perspectives,” he admits. “But it happens through actions, not through words.”

For him, that shift begins when people can approach the plant from a different perspective: by researching it, experiencing it, and observing its real effects, rather than the narratives that have dominated the conversation for decades. “By experimenting and proving that it’s different from what we were told,” he says.

In that sense, Farruko sees a parallel between cannabis, his music, and his own career. All three, he says, share something in common: they all emerged in contexts where questioning the established order meant going against the current.

“I see it as an act of rebellion against an oppressive system.”

But he clarifies that this is not a destructive rebellion. Rather, it’s one that aims to open conversations and expand the way we understand certain things. “The plant, the music, and my career are acts of rebellion,” he says. A rebellion that, in his view, has a clear purpose “on a positive level.”

More than confrontation for its own sake, the goal is to spark curiosity, invite people to question assumptions, and open space for new ways of thinking.

“Wake up… not everything we’re told is what it really is,” he says. “It’s always good to question. It’s always good to educate yourself.”

Within that intersection of music, spirituality, natural medicine, and public education, Farruko seems to have found a way to align his artistic present with a personal cause that, for him, goes far beyond business.

His musical present: Panama, memory, and the roots of reggaetón

Although cannabis now occupies a central place in his public discourse, Farruko still thinks about his present through music as well. In fact, one of the projects he’s currently preparing looks backward in order to better understand the origins of the genre he helped take to the world.

“I’m about to release an album that I recorded in Panama,” he reveals.

The choice of location is no coincidence. For Farruko, Panama holds a fundamental place in the genealogy of reggaetón, even though that chapter is often overlooked when the history of the genre is told.

“Panama was a pillar for recording reggae and reggaetón in Spanish,” he explains. “It planted the seed for what would become the reggaetón genre.”

The trajectory, as he sees it, is fairly clear. First came Jamaica, where reggae and dancehall were born, genres that would later become key foundations for many reggaetón classics. Then Panama, where the first Spanish-language adaptations began. And finally Puerto Rico, where the genre took the shape that the world recognizes today. “Puerto Rico gave it our essence, and that’s what we now know as reggaetón.”

With the new album, Farruko says he wants to do exactly that: refresh the collective memory and bring the roots of the movement back into the conversation. “With this album, I wanted to remind people of that history… to bring back that sense of orientation and education.”

Throughout his career he has experimented with different sounds—trap, Latin pop, electronic music—but Farruko insists that reggaetón remains the DNA of everything he does.

“I’ve never limited myself,” he says. That creative openness, he explains, doesn’t mean abandoning the genre’s origins—it means expanding them. “I’m a descendant of reggaetón. That’s what’s in my genetics.”

Over time, he says, his musical curiosity has only grown wider. “I’ve become even more of a fan of creating, of expanding my ear, my creativity.” But even when he explores new sounds, one thing remains unchanged: the rhythmic essence that gave birth to the genre. “Without losing the essence, which is reggaetón. The roots.”

Because, as he says with a laugh, there’s one element that always returns. “The tumpa tumpa is always going to be there.”

At the end of the day, that rhythm is more than a musical structure—it’s part of a generational identity. “We grew up listening to reggaetón, and it’s what allowed us to travel the world and become who we are today.”

For him, understanding where reggaetón comes from is also a way of protecting its cultural identity at a time when the genre has gone global and often loses sight of its Caribbean roots.

From the raw beginnings of reggaetón—an evolution that Farruko himself was clearly part of, alongside milestones like Daddy Yankee’s Gasolina in the early 2000s—to today, when the genre has become a global phenomenon that emerged from Latin neighborhoods and exploded in clubs across Europe and the United States, the idea remains the same: never forget where it all came from.

The lost value of music in the digital age

“What becomes popular isn’t always the foundation. It’s not always the one who cleared the path,” he reflects. “The people who come later, when the road is already paved, move forward so easily and comfortably that from the outside people say, ‘That’s the guy who did it.’ When that’s not really the case.” And adds: “That’s why it’s always important to give credit and bring attention back to how it all started, how the whole movement was born.”

Amid that reflection on the genre’s roots, Farruko also pauses to consider broader cultural shifts. “Over time, imagine… books… people don’t even like them anymore. They prefer them on an iPad or on their phone,” he says. “Times change, and we have to find ways to educate, to package information, and pass it on in the ways technology, humanity, and each generation keep evolving.”

Reflecting on the future of new generations—and of reggaetón itself—while trying not to sound “too conspiratorial,” Farruko believes we’re already living through a massive transformation that affects the entire music industry: the way we consume music.

In the streaming era, access is immediate. But something about the symbolic value music once had seems to have faded.

There was a time, he recalls, when getting your hands on an artist’s music involved an almost physical search: finding the cassette, buying the album, sharing it with friends. “Having a cassette or a record from your favorite artist felt like a treasure. Getting the music was hard. Seeing how your favorite artist lived was almost impossible because there were no social media showing their lives… So when you saw them, it was like seeing an alien, something out of this world,” he says, laughing.

That difficulty made every album feel special, something to keep and listen to for years.

“Those moments were appreciated more. It was more artisanal. Now with digitalization—which has helped us a lot, because I grew up in that world and my career expanded through social media and platforms—we still have to find ways to preserve information,” he says. “Over time everything evolves, technology keeps growing, and we move further away from the physical. We have to find ways to preserve those moments, those creations, so they keep traveling through time and new generations can keep discovering them.”

Today, with nearly the entire catalog of recorded music available in the cloud, that relationship has completely changed. And for Farruko, that also creates a new challenge for artists: finding ways to preserve those creative moments for the future.

Between the plant, the music, and the spiritual journey that has shaped his recent years, Farruko seems to have found an unexpected common thread: questioning the status quo. Whether through an album that revisits the roots of reggaetón or a brand seeking to change the conversation around medical cannabis, his goal remains the same: wake people up, offer perspective, and leave behind something more than just songs.

The Farruko of then and now

Before the conversation ends, one final question inevitably arises: what would happen if the Farruko of fifteen years ago, the one behind Chulería en Pote, the young artist taking his first steps in reggaetón, were to meet the Farruko of Carbonnabis today?

The answer comes with a mix of humor and reflection: “We’d probably laugh at each other,” he says.

In his mind, the encounter would be almost surreal: two versions of himself separated by years of experiences, success, personal crises, and spiritual transformations. “One wouldn’t believe where he ended up, and the other wouldn’t believe how it all started.”

The Farruko of today—entrepreneur, established artist, promoter of a medical cannabis project, and a public figure who openly speaks about faith and purpose—acknowledges that the road wasn’t without its hardships.

So if he could tell his younger self anything, it wouldn’t necessarily be about music, fame, or business. “I’d have a lot to say so he wouldn’t have to take as many hits as I did,” he says with a laugh. “It would be a pretty intense conversation.”

But, at the same time, he knows many of those lessons can only be learned by living through them.

Between music, spirituality, and his effort to change the conversation around medical cannabis, Farruko now looks back with the awareness that every stage—even the difficult ones—became part of the same journey.

One that, as he puts it, is still being written.

<p>The post ‘Cannabis Is an Act of Rebellion’: Latin Superstar Farruko on Weed, Healing and Fighting the System first appeared on High Times.</p>

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What do you give someone who already has everything? That’s the question Distinctive Assets, the company responsible for gifting Oscar nominees, must have asked itself every year for the past 24 years. And yesterday, at the 98th Academy Awards ceremony, the answer appears to have been a rather redundant “everything”: a medley of luxury items, trips, and experiences for the modest sum of USD 350,000 a pop. The gift bag for the Oscar nominees includes stays in idyllic destinations, beauty treatments, designer objects, personalized prenuptial agreements, and even cannabis products.

Regarding this carefully curated selection, Lash Fary, co-founder of Distinctive Assets, said in a statement: “Our extraordinary nominee gifts are in no way based on need. We are acknowledging these amazing nominees while elevating and showcasing small businesses, minority-owned brands, female entrepreneurs and companies that give back at a time when everyone can use a little more fun and frivolity.”

Thus, nominees can choose from five travel experiences in destinations like Sri Lanka, Costa Rica, or Finland; sample high-end cuisine featuring edible gold; visit Beverly Hills for liposuction or dental work; and enjoy a range of items such as luxury showerheads, pens, suitcases, board games, thermoses, tea boxes, or a gold-plated crypto cold storage wallet. Or, why not, commission a custom prenuptial agreement by a company specializing in millionaires.

Add to the mix several cannabis-related items. As reported by the British newspaper The Mirror, the gift bag includes THC-infused drinks from Cann Social Tonics and Señorita THC Margaritas, pre-rolled joints from Dogwalkers, high-potency cannabis products from RYTHM and infused gummies from Beboe. That’s right: not one, but several different luxury cannabis brands. The latter, Beboe, has even been nicknamed the “Hermès of marijuana,” in reference to the iconic high-end clothing brand. Another interesting tidbit: tattoo artist Scott Campbell, known for his work with celebrities, created Beboe inspired by his grandmother, who used to bake pot brownies for his mother when she was battling cancer.

This isn’t the first time cannabis has been included in the exclusive Oscars gift bag: this has been a tradition since 2019, highlighting how the plant is slowly—but surely—moving from taboo to mainstream. In fact, this shows how weed is not only becoming a luxury item but is increasingly replacing alcohol: the gift bag contains many culinary delights, but only one bottle of tequila, and several non-alcoholic options, as Infobae reports.

Now, the selection by Distinctive Assets is neither insignificant nor random: it’s based on the consumption habits of today’s billionaires and celebrities, no more, no less. Not “based on need,” indeed. Besides reflecting popular trends (such as the greater acceptance of weed), it’s worth noting the wide range of cosmetic procedures included. We’re not just talking about products, which abound in that blessed bag (creams, perfumes, body oils, electric flossers, among many others), but also liposuction, facial rejuvenation, dental treatments… And that’s without even mentioning the custom prenup, the biggest representative of “rich people’s problems” in the collection, closely followed by the gold-plated crypto wallet.

Such a selection paints a vivid picture of today’s Hollywood elite: celebrities who prioritize well-being, self-care, and pleasure… with a strong emphasis on preservation, on protecting what they own, on fighting against the ephemeral, whether through surgeries, wallets, or legal agreements. Or at least, those are the values reflected in this bag of luxuries, of “fun and frivolity.”

In no mood to condemn the lifestyle of the wealthiest (who among us wouldn’t take advantage of these benefits if given the opportunity?), such a display does leave a bitter taste: it reminds us that we live in a world not only of growing inequality, but where weed costs thousands of people their freedom, while the richest are expected to enjoy it as a free, luxurious, and chic trend.

Cover photo created with AI.

<p>The post Weed at the Oscars: Luxury Cannabis, Cosmetic Surgeries and Prenups Inside the Nominees’ $350K Goodie Bags first appeared on High Times.</p>

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Two sharp fangs pierce a thin layer of skin. There have been several bites throughout his life, but he still remembers that first one. “I’ll never forget it.” His muscles twitch in a chaotic melody, and in that sudden burst, far from terrifying him, something clicked in his brain. Was that what had been scaring him all these years? Yes: and suddenly, fear turned into curiosity, and then into obsession. A mania he deliberately pushed to the extreme. “From that moment on, I was hooked,” Highdro confesses to High Times regarding his obsession with… snakes!

American rapper Highdro is one of those people who have always faced their own fears head-on. That’s why, at one point, he confronted his fear of heights by jumping out of a plane and, later, with the same drive, he began rock climbing. At last, of all his fears, one remained: snakes. So he faced them. After overcoming that terror—because this man goes from one extreme to the other—he began successfully raising them. Yes, you read that right: Highdro raises snakes. “The next step was to turn that passion into a business,” he says.

And from that mindset, he offers a striking definition: “Snakes taught me that fear is a story we tell ourselves. When you eliminate that story, anything becomes possible.” He never thought he would be around snakes, let alone raising them. “They also taught me patience, adaptability, and that ‘misunderstood’ doesn’t mean ‘dangerous.’ I used to think that people who loved snakes were weird… now I’m one of them, and it turns out we’re just passionate, misunderstood, and too cool for the stereotypes,” he continues.

Not many people know this, but reptile therapy is a thing that exists. Yes, the wonders never cease: there are people who treat various ailments by interacting with snakes! How come? Highdro posits a possible explanation: “Snakes offer a different kind of connection energy. They are silent, calm, and predictable. When a snake trusts you enough to relax in your hands or around your shoulders, it’s a completely different kind of connection.” This rapper definitely has Barry White vibes from The Simpsons episode “Whacking Day”.

Highdro—who is also a rapper and obviously smokes pot, hold on, we’re getting there!—claims that Hollywood demonized snakes to sell movies “at the expense of these incredible animals.” He compares them to cats and calls them “low-maintenance” since, as he says, “they don’t scratch the furniture.” Let’s talk numbers for a moment: a snake can sell for up to $100,000. Whoa! “There are snakes out there that would make a snake-hater fall in love in five seconds.” So… innovative entrepreneurs, you know what to do.

Let’s get down to business. In his life, weed has brought him peace and, artistically, has opened up new creative outlets. “Cannabis makes the world slow down so I can hear myself think. And the crazy thing? Snake genetics work very similarly to cannabis genetics,” the rapper insists. “My history growing weed definitely gave me an edge in understanding how snake genetics work. Both worlds teach you patience, precision, and appreciating the magic hidden in the details.”

Besides, Highdro has been a fan of the RAW Rolling Papers brand for many, many years, since way before. “I found my first pack trying to quit blunts, and I couldn’t stop talking about them. I got like half the city to quit blunts and switch to RAW. The company noticed and reached out, and they’ve supported my music and my movement ever since. Almost two decades later, and it still feels like family. RAW isn’t a brand to me; it’s part of my story,” the rapper says, aware of his influence.

Clearly—one doesn’t need to be particularly perceptive to notice—everything Highdro does is intrinsically linked: music, weed, and, of course, reptiles. Aware of this, he tries to explain it in his own words: “The crazy thing is, without even trying, all the paths I go down end up intertwining as if they were meant to be together. My purpose is to challenge the status quo, push people to face their fears, and make them think deeper about who they really are.” 

These days, he’s working on his reptile-inspired music because—as he well knows—”the reptile world deserves an anthem.” So everyone listen up: the reptile hit is coming, the one that will be playing in cars, in supermarkets, on TikTok, and while you’re housecleaning. “My music is the soundtrack to the ascent from self-doubt to self-confidence and then to self-mastery. If someone leaves feeling more capable than they did before pressing play, I’ve done my job.”

He’s also preparing an exclusive album for “Josh (Kesselman) and the RAW family.” Later, he’ll travel to Spain, and more songs about snakes and pot are on the way. And then another album, plus some further homage to the serpentine creatures themselves, his true muses. Ladies and gentlemen: Highdro, unusual character, and the true guardian of the scales.

Photos courtesy of Highdro.

<p>The post From Fear to Obsession: Meet Highdro, the Serpentine Prophet Who Blends Rap, Weed & Reptiles first appeared on High Times.</p>

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