A man who used Snapchat to sell fake oxycodone pills that actually contained fentanyl—leading to the death of a teenage girl as well as several other overdoses—faces 20 years in prison.

Jeremial Lee Leach, 20, of Evansville, Indiana, has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, followed by five years of supervised release, after pleading guilty to one count of Distribution of Fentanyl Resulting in Death, one count of distribution of fentanyl, and one count of distribution of fentanyl resulting in serious bodily injury.

Michael Gannon, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration-Indianapolis, and U.S. Attorney Zachary A. Myers for the Southern District of Indiana released an announcement on May 17 describing the ordeal and the consequences.

Leach sold fentanyl on Snapchat as “Mel,” resulting in at least three overdoses, one of which resulted in the death of a 19-year-old woman. “Mel” sold small blue pills marked with M 30 which is supposed to indicate they contain oxycodone hydrochloride—i.e. sold as Oxycontin, Reltebon, Zomestine, etc. Researchers call fake M 30 pills as “Dirty 30s,” and they’re highly dangerous—the slightest miscalculation of fentanyl can easily stop breathing.

“This young woman should be alive today. Mr. Leach pushed deadly poison over social media, ending a teenager’s life far too early, and risking many more,” said U.S. Attorney Myers. “Fentanyl traffickers commit their crimes with utter disregard for the lives of our friends and neighbors or the harm they cause to families in our community. I commend the outstanding work of the DEA, the Evansville Police Department, the Evansville-Vanderburgh County Drug Task Force, and our federal prosecutors to secure some measure of justice for the victims of this fentanyl dealer. The sentence imposed here should serve as a warning: these poisons kill—and selling them will earn you decades in federal prison.”

On June 25, 2022, in the late hours of the night, officers with the Evansville Police Department (EPD) responded to a call about an overdose from a residence on Wedeking Avenue. The first woman was lucky—and responders were able to revive her with naloxone. 

But within hours, at approximately 10:55 a.m. the next morning, EPD officers responded to the same residence for the overdose of another woman, who was only 19 years old, who subsequently died. The coroner found a fake oxycodone pill containing fentanyl when examining the body. The cause of both overdoses was determined to be fentanyl intoxication.

But “Mel” on Snapchat wasn’t done dealing his fake oxycodone pills.

On Aug. 20, 2022, EPD officers were dispatched to a restaurant located on Hirschland Road concerning an overdose. There, the officers found a woman hunched over, falling out of consciousness. But she was also lucky and was revived with naloxone and the woman regained consciousness. The woman told police that she thought she had simply taken a 30 mg tablet of oxycodone, which would not have caused an overdose. The woman’s companion, identified as “Leach,” supplied the pill at a residence on Shanklin Avenue. It was again traced to “Mel” after officers with the Evansville-Vanderburgh County Drug Task Force set up two more drug deals a few months later.

Police then executed a search warrant at Leach’s residence on Shanklin Avenue, where officers found 33 blue pills marked “30,” a digital scale, two 9mm pistols, and approximately $1,843 in cash.

“The sentence imposed on Mr. Leach is righteous and justified. Mr. Leach utilized social media platforms to advertise the sale of fentanyl and continued distributing the poisonous fentanyl even though it had already caused fatal and near fatal overdoses. The DEA would like to extend their deepest condolences to the Duncan family and all families who have lost a loved one to a fentanyl poising,” said DEA ASAC Gannon. “DEA remains committed to working hand in hand with our state, local and federal partners in order to keep our communities safe.  DEA commends the outstanding work by the Evansville Police Department, The Evansville-Vanderburgh County Drug Task Force and the United States Attorney’s Office.”

‘Hit Me Up’ for Weed on Snapchat

A much lesser “threat” on Snapchat is the sale of weed. A woman was busted in 2018 for setting up her weed business on Snapchat (which is admittedly much safer than selling fentanyl.)

The Beatrice Daily Sun reported in 2018 that Nebraska authorities were tipped off about a Snapchat video made by a woman named Madison D. Carlson. In the video, she held a large bag of cannabis, with a corresponding caption reading “Hit me up.”

Following the post, someone snitched, and authorities went to Carlson’s residence around 9:30 p.m. and immediately noticed two cars in a nearby alley with their lights on. In one vehicle, police found Carson with one female minor. According to police documents, the car reeked of weed. In the other, a male juvenile, who, upon further inspection, was carrying a concealed bag of marijuana in his waistband.

The two female accomplices told police they had just gotten rid of the pot until Carlson was removed from the vehicle, and eventually forked over an additional 32 grams and $80 in cash. Since minors were involved, Carlson also faced serious charges, even though cannabis is not capable of causing bodily injury in the same way that fentanyl is.

Plugs can be found on just about any social media platform, but especially when it comes to pills, buyer beware, as deadly counterfeit pills abound.

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Last week, a psilocybin research bill in Indiana was sent to the desk of Gov. Eric Holcomb. The bill was recently passed in the Senate in February (Senate Bill 139), followed by the House Public Health Committee shortly afterwards.

Following the end of the 2024 legislative session on March 8, bill sponsor Sen. Ed Charbonneau published a press release about his pride in working toward passing three different bills. The first would help make child care more affordable for Indianans, and the second included an expansion to health plans to include coverage for searching biomarkers for diagnosis or condition treatment. 

However, the third bill includes a mention of SB-139. “Another bill I worked on this session was Senate Bill 139, which would have established a fund to aid Indiana research institutions in studying the potential use of psilocybin in treating mental health and other medical conditions, especially in veterans and first responders,” Charbonneau wrote. “While SB 139 did not make it through the legislative process, the language was added to House Enrolled Act 1259, which would also expand the number of people eligible to provide health care services.”

Now the bill is being sent to the desk of Gov. Holcomb for final review. If SB-139 became law, it would create a therapeutic psilocybin research fund that would be managed by the Indiana Department of Health. The fund would provide financial assistance to research institutions to study psilocybin as a method of treating mental health or other conditions. The bill currently states conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, chronic pain, migraines, alcohol use disorder, and tobacco use disorder.

Additionally, it works to compare “the efficacy of psilocybin as a treatment for mental health and other medical conditions…with the efficacy of other current treatment options for mental health and other medical conditions.”

One requirement of institutions that apply to research psilocybin would include the use of veterans or first responders in their study as they “Evaluate and determine whether psilocybin is an effective treatment for mental health and other medical conditions.” After the study is concluded, the researchers would then submit a report of their findings to the Interim Study Committee on Public Health, the Indiana Behavioral Health Commission, and Human Services, as well as “state department and division of mental health and addiction.”

If passed, these processes to organize applications would begin starting on July 1, 2024.

Last year in November, the Interim Study Committee on Public Health, Behavioral Health and Human Services held its last meeting and issued a report recommending that legislators consider developing a psilocybin pilot program in 2024 “that strikes a balance between access, research, and prudence.”

At the meeting, Charbonneau explained that he’s already spoken with educational institutions that are interested in studying psilocybin. “I have had discussions with both [Indiana University] Health and with Purdue University,” said Charbonneau. “I spoke to 150 pharmacy students at Purdue, and afterward had a chance to speak with the dean of the pharmacy program…and he texted Dr. Jerome Adams, who’s now at Purdue University.” Adams previously served as U.S. surgeon general under former President Donald Trump.

The report made a distinction between medical cannabis and psilocybin, and described psilocybin-assisted therapy as more beneficial. “Many people conflate increased access to psilocybin assisted therapy with the issue of increased access to medical and recreational cannabis,” the report said. “However, the committee hearing made it clear that the evidence for psilocybin assisted therapy is promising and significantly more robust and the two issues are unrelated.”

Indiana’s neighboring states of Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio all have some form of cannabis legalization now. The only remaining state is Kentucky to the south, which currently has legalized medical cannabis but won’t officially launch until 2025.

However, Sen. J.D. Ford told WFYI Indianapolis in January that the lack of progress is due to legislators refusing to discuss legalization. “You’ve got the elected officials who are unwilling to have the conversation and you’ve got some of these other powerful lobbying groups that are continuing to block conversation, block bills from getting a committee hearing,” Ford said.

In a press event in January, Senate Pro Tempore Rodric Bray shut down inquiries from reporters regarding cannabis decriminalization or legalization. “Are we going to legalize cannabis this session? That’s not going to be the case,” Bray said. 

Previously in 2019, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb has previously stated that he will not take action on any cannabis legalization bills until it has been legalized on the federal level. “If the law changed, we would look at all the positive or adverse impacts it would have,” Holcomb said. “I’m not convinced other states have made a wise decision.”

In 2023, he did admit that decriminalizing cannabis in small amounts makes sense. “I do not believe that simple possession at certain limits should derail someone’s life,” Holcomb said.

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A bill, introduced by GOP state Sen. Ed Charbonneau, would establish “the therapeutic psilocybin research fund,” which would be “administered by the Indiana department of health (state department), to provide financial assistance to research institutions in Indiana to study the use of psilocybin to treat mental health and other medical conditions,” according to the official text of the legislation.

Additionally, the measure would require a “research institution that conducts a clinical study to prepare and submit a report to the interim study committee on public health, behavioral health, and human services, the state department, and the division of mental health and addiction.”

According to the Evansville Courier & Press, the fund would subsidize research institutes to study whether psilocybin could make for an effective treatment for those with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, chronic pain and migraines, and it would “require the studies to prioritize veterans and first responders: groups with a higher likelihood to suffer from the above disorders, especially PTSD.”

“Before taking part, participants would undergo mental evaluations, the bill states. After the studies wraps, researchers would then determine how mushrooms stack up against currently accepted treatments for the targeted issues,” the newspaper said. “They would then ship the results to an ‘interim study committee,’ as well as the state health department and the division of mental health and addiction.”

The bill is the byproduct of the Indiana interim study committee on Public Health, Behavioral Health and Human Services, of which Charbonneau serves the chair.

In the fall, the committee recommended that the Indiana legislature authorize a psilocybin pilot program. 

According to Cannabis News, the committee was tasked in June with studying “a number of topics related to mental health matters, including psychedelic-assisted therapy.” 

“Specifically, they were charged with studying alternative treatment options that had been given ‘breakthrough therapy’ status by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and examining policies ‘enacted and under consideration in other states’ that allow psilocybin-assisted therapy ‘for veterans, first responders, and others experiencing mental illness,’” the outlet reported.

Cannabis News said that the panel ultimately recommended that the legislature authorize “state research institutions ‘to conduct a pilot clinical study utilizing established therapeutic protocols as a starting point to explore the efficacy, safety, and feasibility of psilocybin assisted therapy in Indiana.’”

Charbonneau said at the time that he had held discussions with both Indiana University Health and Purdue University about the research program.

“I spoke to 150 pharmacy students at Purdue, and afterward had a chance to speak with the dean of the pharmacy program,” the lawmaker said, as quoted by Cannabis News.

Charbonneau said that the dean texted Dr. Jerome Adams, a former United States surgeon general in the Trump administration who is now Presidential Fellow and the Executive Director of Purdue’s Health Equity Initiatives.

“We’ve had a talk,” Charbonneau said at the time, regarding his conversations with the universities. “They’re interested in possibly moving forward, but that’s just a preliminary talk.”

As the outlet Benzinga noted, the clock is ticking for the bill to be approved.

The proposal was “filed as an emergency measure, meaning it would take effect immediately upon passage, which could come as early as this week,” according to Benzinga, noting that officials “would need to establish fund administration and application processes by July 1.”

“While the bill creates the fund, it doesn’t initially allocate any money. Donations, gifts and state appropriations would fill its coffers. After completing research, the funded institutions must report their findings and recommendations to various entities, including the Department of Health and an interim study committee on health issues,” the outlet said.

Psilocybin’s therapeutic benefits have long been touted by advocates, but the substance has only recently been championed by elected officials and policymakers. Emboldened by the shifting public opinion, activists have also tried to usher in reform themselves. 

In California, a campaign to get a psilocybin proposal on the state’s ballot this year said this week that it had fallen short of that goal. 

According to Marijuana Moment, this marked the “the third election cycle that Decriminalize California has made a play for the ballot, only to fall short amid what organizers say is a variety of complicating factors, including voter confusion over a failed legislative push for psychedelics decriminalization and separate reform campaigns also seeking to put their measures before voters.”

“As exhausting as this process has been, we’ve learned some extraordinary techniques that we’re going to put into effect for something much larger than this as it was, because psychedelics was basically a delivery mechanism for a better society,” Ryan Munevar, campaign director of Decriminalize California, said. “That was the goal, at least.”

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A variety of hemp plant genetically modified to produce little-to-no THC has been approved by the United States Department of Agriculture as safe to grow and breed on U.S. soil. 

The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) released a notice about the plants last week, created and submitted by Indiana-based Growing Together Research, a biotechnology company specializing in cannabis, hemp, psychedelics and agriculture. APHIS regulates the “movement of organisms modified or produced through genetic engineering.”

“APHIS found this modified hemp is unlikely to pose an increased plant pest risk compared to other cultivated hemp,” the USDA notice said. “As a result, it is not subject to regulation under 7 CFR part 340. From a plant pest risk perspective, this hemp may be safely grown and bred in the United States.”

Growing Together Research announced in June of this year that they had achieved the ability to modulate how much Delta 9 THC is expressed in plants. They credited the reasoning behind their experiment with attempting to help US hemp farmers whose crops test “hot,” or over the allocated .3% THC limit at which point the law requires the whole crop be destroyed. 

The same announcement by GTR also hinted at experiments underway in trying to get cannabis plants to produce more THC than normal, a feat I can only surmise will resonate much more positively with a majority of the High Times readership. 

“Based on its demonstrated ability to turn ‘down’ or ‘off’ the genes coding for THC expression, now GTR is applying the same techniques to turn THC expression ‘up.’ GTR will soon commence an effort in collaboration with Canada-based academic and commercial partners to create a cannabis cultivar with enhanced expression of THC. An initial set of high THC cultivars are expected to be created by the third quarter of 2023,” GTR said in June. 

An announcement for the super-weed has not been released yet but GTR estimated that almost 10 percent of the American hemp crop had to be destroyed between 2018 and 2020 due to testing too high in Delta-9 THC. They also suggested that current testing methods may be leading to inconsistent levels of THC and other cannabinoids in hemp-derived products. 

GTR explained their ability to modulate THC levels up and down as the “Delta 9 dial” which they activate by editing particular genes. They likened the process to a menu of genetic traits that they could essentially pick and choose from with their genomics platform. This supposedly allows them to block or encourage the production of Delta-9 THC, which is the compound traditionally associated with the “high” in cannabis. 

“Understanding the mechanics of the THC pathway are perhaps the most important component of truly unlocking the promise of cannabis and hemp,” said Sam Proctor, chief executive officer of GTR. “We are very excited about our results to date and look forward to further innovating for the benefit of stakeholders across the cannabis and hemp supply chain.”

It was not immediately clear based on the USDA announcement if these new hemp genetics will contain altered or reduced levels of hemp-derived cannabinoids like Delta-8 THC, which have skyrocketed in popularity since Donald Trump legalized commercial hemp production under the 2018 Farm Bill. 

Hemp-derived gummies, vapes and isolates can now be found in head shops all across the country, even in certain states where cannabis is still medically and recreationally illegal. This includes the sale of “THC-A flower” otherwise known as regular cannabis flower tested a certain way to skirt Delta-9 THC regulations by keeping the THC in its decarboxylated form, THC-A. 

More clarification will potentially come soon regarding the new hemp plants as the USDA was tasked primarily with determining if the genetically modified hemp plants posed a “plant pest risk” rather than regulations concerning the compounds contained in the plant, which are largely left up to the FDA and DEA. This is due to the Plant Protection Act which gives the USDA the “authority to oversee the detection, control, eradication, suppression, prevention, or retardation of the spread of plant pests to protect agriculture, the environment, and the economy of the United States.” 

After thorough review the USDA decided GTR’s new diet hemp plants are not a plant pest risk so unless any further clarification comes down the chain from other federal agencies, the plants can be freely grown and bred all throughout the continental United States. 

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) publishes a weekly column called “Fridays on the Farm” where it highlights various farmers from across the country about how they embrace sustainable agriculture or protecting local species of wildlife. One of the more recent posts in this series includes an interview with the father and son duo, Jeff and Jeffrey Garland, who co-own Papa G’s Organic Hemp Farm in Indiana.

The interview explains how Jeff (the father) previously cultivated corn, soybeans, and hay on his 200-acre farm before his son, Jeffrey, asked him if he had ever considered growing hemp back in 2020. Although Jeff initially had considered selling his farm, Jeffrey helped connect them with the right people to get a hemp farm set up.

During their first season, they cultivated both in an open field as well as a high tunnel, or large, domed greenhouse. “At the end of the season, they tested the quality of the plants and the ones grown in the high tunnel had well-outperformed the ones in the field. They had grown longer and larger, which led to more oil being produced, and the oil itself was a better quality,” wrote USDA article author Brandon O’Connor.

With the improved results for the hemp grown in their high tunnel greenhouse, the duo sought out assistance from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program to expand the tunnel and maximize their hemp oil production. “They applied for an EQIP contract in 2021 and were approved with construction on the tunnel slated to take place in time for the 2022 growing season,” O’Connor explained. “Because of the ability to control the growing environment for their plants, the high tunnels enable the Garlands to extend their season by multiple weeks on both sides. It [is] a major part of turning their hemp operation into a truly year-round operation.”

Jeff added that the tunnel allows them to extend their growing season and increase their yield. “We’ll have to pull early [in the field]. Two to three weeks earlier in the field than we do in a high tunnel,” Jeff said in the interview. “When you let them go longer, you’re going to produce more oil. It’s important to have that high tunnel.”

Like other farms featured in the USDA’s “Fridays on the Farm,” soil health is of utmost importance. “It all starts with the soil,” Jeffery said. “If you don’t have good soil, you’re not going to have good plants and then you’re not going to have the best oil. So, we really put lots and lots of organic matter back into our soil.”

The Garlands add “multiple forms” of compost and fertilizer to feed the soil, but they also asked the NRCS to help them create a cover crop plan as well. With the help of conservationist Lee Scnell, they developed a cover crop mix that includes 17 species of plants.

Papa G’s Organic Hemp Farm cultivates hemp that’s used in a variety of salves, tinctures, soft gel capsules, gummies, and topicals.

Last year, the USDA released a report stating that the hemp market was valued at $824 million. As of last February, industrial hemp growers planted more than 54,152 acres of hemp, with 33,480 harvested. 

According to USDA’s National Agriculture Statistics Service (NASS) Administrator Hubert Hamer, the report was a “needed benchmark” to assess the state of the industry. “Not only will these data guide USDA agencies in their support of domestic hemp production, the results can also help inform producers’ decisions about growing, harvesting, and selling hemp as well as the type of hemp they decide to produce. The survey results may also impact policy decisions about the hemp industry,” Hamer explained. 

The USDA first mailed out surveys to collect hemp farm data back in October 2021.

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It was nowhere near show time, and it was readily apparent that trouble was brewing. An Instagram post made by Harley Flanagan, founder of Cro-Mags, inarguably the forefathers of American hardcore, suggested that he had just entered the stinky ole brown eye of cultural division in the United States of America, landing smack dab in a gas station where chicken livers and confederate flags are such hot pieces of redneck commerce that they often receive top billing. It’s not every day that New Yorkers get slapped in the face with racism at the retail level, one as unapologetic and greasy as the fowl organ fare these joints are frying up in the back. Most of us lingering anywhere near the hemorrhoidal itch of the South are, at times, callused to these passive-aggressive tokens of imbecility, but not this multi-racial band from the East coast. If there was an underlying sentiment oozing from Flanagan’s fingertips it was, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Sheeeeiiiit! Conflict was in the air. I could smell it. One wrong move from the chaw-spitting locals and Flannagan, a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, would surely snap one of their limbs—a leg perhaps—and have them crying for their mommy in a puddle of urine and axle grease. I just knew by the time they got to Evansville, Indiana to play their show at StageTwo, that bald bastard would be carrying around some hillbilly’s foot on a keychain. The only possible redemption surging from this southern cesspool serving up chitlins to the average fowl-eating fascist, at least judging from the photos Flanagan included in the post, was a Ramones and Led Zeppelin flag flying next to a couple of dreamcatchers near the cash register. Perhaps it was a sign that America’s divisiveness was beginning to narrow, and Flanagan and crew would arrive to their show without incident. It was maybe even just about as promising an omen this nation has seen in a while suggesting that we, as a collective people, might just get along in the end. Sure, the specter of unlicensed band merch wasn’t exactly the hallmark of equality, but it was a start. 

Cro-Mags, I was certain, could handle themselves. I, on the other hand, had problems of my own. At the same time Flanagan was staring down a line of ethnocentric wares in one of Tennessee’s seediest pump and dumps, I was in the middle of a pre-show meeting with my photographer and partner, Holly, making sure that she had everything she needed to properly shoot the band’s performance later that night. The conversation, as many of them tend to happen, entailed one of my incessant, borderline lunatic ramblings of logistics and how we needed to enter a transcendental mindset where hack jobs be damned! Meanwhile, Netflix was passively playing in the background. I have a theory that Holly likes to keep some form of noise on at all times just to tune me out during the paranoid madness that rendezvouses at the 11th hour. It’s when I’m most inclined to rag anyone’s nerves—even those who love me. Running interference this time around was YOU—the series about an obsessive bookselling serial killer doing his best to carve out, and quite literally, some semblance of an American family. I wouldn’t even mention such an unimportant detail of what happens in the hours prior to attending a show for the purpose of penning a few words, if not for looking up at one point during our discussion and seeing the lengthy member of a corpse dangling on the goddamned TV.  

“What the fu…”

The dead dick quickly caught my attention, not because of the sheer size of it under morgue-frigid conditions, but because it wasn’t at all realistic. “That’s not what a dead dick looks like,” I declared. My spontaneous revelation about the continuity of the corpse cock was welcomed with utter disregard. Holly didn’t bat an eye. It seems not even my dark knowledge of human anatomy could detour her focus of the business at hand. What would, however, I would later find out, is her pre-teen and his borderline criminal aversion to doing homework. Although we were scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. to ride to the venue together—after I, of course, got myself into the appropriate mindset to mingle with a few IPAs and a pull or two of Blue Dream—a missing science assignment would test the permanence of our professionalism. “You’re going to have to go without me,” she texted at 7:30, knowing damn well that such a short notice change of plans, one quite possibly leaving me without a photographer, could cause me to suffer an aneurysm and leave me for dead. “I’ll meet you there, later, though,” read a second text, giving me at least some reassurance that I wouldn’t have to resort to shooting the damn thing with my iPhone. 

Having no other choice but to suck it up and go it alone, for a while anyway, I summoned an Uber and made my way, ever-so-anxiously, to the venue without a lensman. No way I was risking the chance of missing a second of the Cro-Mags. This show, for me, was an important one.

Scan the archives of punk rock history and Harley Flanagan, now 56, is there. He’s fucking everywhere. 

From the time he was barely old enough to wipe his own ass, Flanagan was rubbing elbows with the elite of New York’s wild and weird. Look, there he is with Andy Warhol and Joe Strummer. Wait, there he is now with Debbie Harry. Flanagan almost ensured his place in the well-chronicled narrative of New York punk, a scene many of us only got to witness thanks to shutterbug documentarians like Bob Gruen, just by refusing to leave. In a lot of ways, his story of hanging out in popular NYC haunts from CBGB’s to Max’s Kansas City at 12-years-old playing drums for his band The Stimulators reads like the script for Forrest Gump. As outsiders, we’re all just that sweet, old lady sitting on the park bench, listening intently, yet skeptical of whether he actually shook hands with President Kennedy or if he’s just making that shit up. 

Yet, in Flanagan’s case, it’s all real, every last tale. He was fucking there. Although he’ll be the first to tell you that it all seems like a dream. Albeit one where some of his heroes were there to guide the way. “Not only did [The Clash] play some of the best live shows I ever saw but it’s the reason why I always try to give a moment to every fan I meet,” Flanagan told High Times. “Because I know how much it means to be a young fan and to meet somebody that matters to you. And that is the difference between them treating you with respect, like a human or them being a total rockstar asshole and fucking you off. [The Clash] were so good to me, and I always try to pay that forward. It meant a lot, they were really cool guys, and I will always respect them.”

Yep, there from the days when the first generation of New York punk was captured in black and white, making the transition to the color snapshots of the 80s and 90s, showing up alongside legends such as Henry Rollins, Jeff Hanneman, and halle-fucking-lujah, God himself—Lemmy Kilmister from Motörhead. Perhaps part of Flanagan’s longevity over the course of rock ‘n roll history can be credited, at least in part, to his ability to concede to the trumpets when they start to roar. “One time I asked Lemmy how he keeps going with the amount of bullshit you have to eat in this business,” Flanagan recalls. “His response was ‘would you rather be slicing bacon for a living?’ which I remember all the time when I’m not feeling it. The kicker is that he knew I was a vegetarian as well, so it was like ‘would you rather be doing something you really hate to survive?’”

Forgive me if I remember this wrong.

The first time I saw anything about Flanagan and Cro-Mags I think I had just hit puberty. As a young turd growing up in one of those diminutive chicken liver-slinging towns of Southern Indiana, I, like most snot-nose adolescents just learning to jerk off, was still listening to stuff like AC-DC, Hank Williams Jr. and Quiet Riot. Wait, Hank? Yep, even us young metalheads had a little shitkicker in us! We didn’t have any real record stores nearby, so if K-Mart didn’t carry an album in their limited music department, I didn’t have it in my collection. I did, however, regularly loiter in the magazine aisle at my local grocery store, flipping through the latest issues of Hit Parader, Circus, and every other now-defunct music publication trying to find new, up-and-coming bands to devour. In the back pages of one, amidst the typical features on the Motley’s and Ozzie’s, that’s where I first spotted Flanagan. I’d never seen anything like him. Branded with a massive tattoo of a gnarly, fire-breathing Devil across the whole of his chest, his head shaved, scowling like a methed-out madman in front of his less-intimidating bandmates, Flanagan looked like Charles Manson’s younger, meaner brother who had just killed 40 people busting out of a mental institution to start a band. He wasn’t the typical malnourished rockstar that regularly appeared in those pages—scrawny with no muscle definition whatsoever, yet posing like they could whup some serious ass. This dude seemed fit and legitimately unhinged enough to back it up. While the rest of those spandex-wearing wusses were busy cleaning out their parent’s retirement savings trying to make it with their shitty band, Flanagan’s attitude resonated a certain gutter authenticity—starving yet always wired up enough to take it on—whatever that may be. “Holy shit,” I said to a friend of mine who was with me at the time. “Look at this dude.” 

The band’s inclusion, if memory serves me correctly, was more or less a blurb about the rise of New York hardcore, and there was no more fitting of a poster child for the movement than Flanagan, I was sure of it. I had no idea what hardcore was at the time. I’d never even heard of Cro-Mags or any other band for that matter, where the buzz-cut, military-style coiffure was part of the official garb. I’m not saying they started bald club, but Cro-Mags was the first band in my purview where they skinned it on back. All the dudes in Metallica, the heaviest, angriest band I had found (and unapologetically worshiped), had unkempt pompadours nearly down to their ass, and to me, a pastoral pipsqueak from Indiana with maybe three pubes swinging from his nuts, they seemed like the kind of guys you’d want in your corner if the shit hit the fan. But the hyperbole of their winces and clenched fisted posture paled in comparison to the probity of Flanagan’s grit and machismo. 

He was the real deal.

My best assessment of all this hardcore business was that it meant actually having the cojones to back up whatever piss and vinegar was being sprayed from the stage. Don’t write a check your lyrics can’t cash. Are you going to bark all day little doggy or are you going to dive headfirst into the pit and take an elbow to the jaw? Not just anyone could take the plunge from passivity to pandemonium and make it out alive. Perhaps it was a metaphor for the life that manifested this genre. Maybe that’s how this seemingly deranged skinhead managed to slip through the editorial gatekeepers of a music rag typically catering to glam and hard rock, and his mug, all intense, gnashing teeth, a man who’d inevitably eat your grandmother if she got too close—soul, colostomy bag and all—came to be burned into my impressionable, idiot brain. The Bon Jovi’s and whatever other ineffectual cock rock crooners of the time were forever doomed, in my opinion, and their pouty-lip regime was about to die. It was good riddance as far as I was concerned.

In the following weeks, I made every attempt to get The Age of Quarrel, the band’s debut record, but, as you might have guessed, it was not to be found among K-Mart’s stock. None of my friends owned it either or even knew who the fuck Cro-Mags were, so getting my hands on a shoddy reproduction proved a daunting task. I even tried to convince my mom, who had totally bought in to the scripture according to the PMRC’s satanic panic suicidal revival, to drive me to the nearest city to see if it could be procured from a real record store, but she was hellbent on offering no further contributions to my life of degeneracy. It wasn’t until a few years later (yes, years) that I ran into this guy, all decked out in black wearing a leather jacket with Ed Gein painted on one sleeve and Joey Ramone on the other, who happened to have a copy in his extensive tape collection. “Play this one, play this one,” I demanded. “Oh man, Cro-Mags is a scary band,” he replied. 

That’s precisely what I wanted to hear. 

From note one, Cro-Mags was the antithesis of what I had come to know as rock ‘n roll, far different than what those heavy drinking, down-picking, chunk-chunkers from the Bay Area were putting out. And the lyrics were more personal, too, like an intimate warning scrawled on the shithouse walls of a sleazy dive bar, letting all of those with piss on their zippers know that they’d better not fuck around. “What does it take to prove you were a fake. I thought so anyway. Won’t show you no mercy today!” Coming from a podunk town where I never fit in, made to feel, oftentimes, as though there was something wrong with me for not subscribing to the livestock-porking life of small-town America, this was deliverance. Not only was the band staffed with an apparent ruffian, a dude who looked a hell of a lot like I felt, but the overall message, in my eyes at least, was one of strength, not taking shit from the feeble hierarchy of imperialistic pecker weeds, never bowing down, and always fighting back, win or lose. Show no mercy at all! 

Flannagan, long ago, infiltrated the systemics of a drug-addled rock ‘n roll lineage—one that often claimed to be influenced by punk—respectfully punching his idols in the throat, if for no other reason than to prove it wasn’t enough to get mad for the sake of politics, but you also needed to pick up a tire iron on occasion to get your point across. Cro-Mags was one of the first bands, alongside maybe Black Flag, to inspire a cult of young born-losers to cut their hair, get off the couch and fight—for something, anything that wasn’t complacence. Those who bought in became dangerous to the sheep-lapping from the societal trough. Anyone who didn’t show the kid any respect back in the day would meet the ire of the man—and they’d lose, real fucking bad. 

Fast forward to now and all the pseudo tough guys to emerge from Flanagan’s influence in the realm of hardcore and heavy music, many now with beer guts, all bloated relics of a philosophy they were never strong enough to uphold, got squishy. But Flanagan is still hard as nails. He just keeps getting better with age. If you’ve ever found yourself asking why this man is still around, duking it out onstage night after night, it’s because the true primogenitor remains the steeple of his church. And while Flanagan may have partaken in the same narco-lunacy that downed many hags of heavy metal in his formative years, all this iconic monstrosity leans on now for levity is the casual beer and cannabis. 

“I don’t drink it every day,” he told me, when asked how he can still enjoy brew and maintain his chiseled physique. “But [cannabis] helps me medicinally and also helps me a little with my head, but I find that smoking fucks my lungs up, so I do take breaks,” he added. “I think the plant itself is amazing. It has so many benefits and can be used in so many ways. I’m glad it is being explored more and more. And I’m glad that people are starting to recognize its value as more than just some stoner hippie drug. I do think too much of anything is not a good thing. But I am definitely a fan. I used to grow. It’s a beautiful plant. It should be respected not demonized.”

At the show… 

“Look out!” I shouted, as some scrawny dude came flying at us from the mosh pit over to where we were standing on an upper tier of the venue, knocking Holly, who was too busy adjusting the settings on her camera to see it coming, right to the floor. I saw the impending collision just seconds before impact but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Given the modest task of holding Holly’s beer (so she could fool with the camera) and two of my own, well, my hands were too full to shield her much from the body hurtling at full speed. Not without the two of us wearing enough beer to end up hyperthermal before the end of the night. Not that it mattered in the end. Smaaaaack! As the three soft boys in front of us went down on top of her like a sack of potatoes, so did their beer. Although my photographer had finally arrived it appeared that more trouble was in the wings. The camera was now covered in brew, the lens smudged, maybe even scratched and Cro-Mags were up next. A weaker journalist would have packed it up, sent a scathing message to his editor telling him to ‘fuck the fuck off’ and never spoke of this night again. However, what’s that they say? The show must go on. Shit, and we needed more beer too! 

By the time Cro-Mags came out, it appeared as though the stars of rock journalism had finally aligned—if you believe in all that hippie-dippy, cosmotheistic crap. All I know is the man-made camera was finally in working order and my photographer, the trooper that she is, presumably sans concussion yet reeking of overpriced beer, was in the thick of the performance and on a quest to document whatever hairy hell may come. I couldn’t be bothered with logistics anymore, my job would come later. It was out of my hands now—I’d already given it up to whatever snaggletoothed goblin was haunting me from within the ether. Let that bastard sort it out. 

The rebellion of my teen years, however, had been unleashed, left to swim in a nostalgic sea of testosterone with that new brute smell. Although I’d been steeped in societal contempt from a young age, Flanagan’s presence suggested that I hadn’t throttled the system hard enough in a long time and, well, that was something that needed to change. I thought about that as I watched him from the sidelines owning the stage, belting out with more conviction than any howling stripling twice his junior. Fuck the new heavy, the glam, modern hardcore and every other genre moving in the direction of the American pussification. It was nights like these, those reminiscent of a day less sensitive, when we on occasion got our noses broken by our friends and laughed about it, that we must ask ourselves: Why can’t we take it back to when we frothed at the mouth like animals? Or was it too late for such sentimentalities? Was this gritting state of ruminatiation everyone’s swan song at this point in time, no matter how heavy the cross they bear?

Cro-Mags mowed through their hour-long set, complete with fan favorites “Hard Times” and “Apocalypse Now”, as though their pre-show ritual included gnawing on an electric fence before bitch slapping it with their wieners. As an official representative of an aging punk culture, one left with only a series of faded tattoos and a certain look in our eyes that tells the tale of the so-called born-losers, those who’ve seen some shit and resolved a long time ago to taking no more, this show was perhaps one of the most monumental I had witnessed in many years. My generation, some fallen to the sag as the decades wane while others discover a rebirth in the second act, is one consisting of diehard fans, and its devotion is worn on our sleeves. We had come up when music was the presence of power, and now we, the same as Flanagan, were proof that not only was old man strength real, but we were going to need it too. Sure, it’s like Flanagan said from the stage in the middle of the show that night, perhaps getting honest with the crowd as penance for a young life gone, at times, unpleasantly awry. We can’t change the past, the violence, our despicable acts, but we can lead today better than the last, and do it with kindness and love. “Life is amazing. It’s absolutely great. I would’ve never guessed I would be alive this long, never mind that I would be living my best life, married to an amazing woman, two grown sons, a killer band, and I’m feeling great,” Flanagan told me. “What else can I possibly want? Life is great. I’m living the dream and enjoying the ride. And whether I’m playing in front of a few hundred people, 50 people or 100,000 or I’m training or whatever else it is I’m doing, I’m loving every minute of it and giving it my all every single time. That’s how I live my life.”

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A Republican lawmaker in Indiana is putting his weight behind a pair of bills that would bring legal marijuana to the Hoosier State.

GOP state Sen. Jon Ford “recently signed on to support two bills this legislative session related to cannabis and its possible future use in the state,” according to local news station WTWO/WAWV, with the legislator saying “he wants to begin to have these discussions … due to the area he represents being on the border with Illinois, where recreational marijuana is legal.”

Ford indicated that he was driven to support the measures after conversations with members of law enforcement, who said that the discrepancy between Indiana and other bordering states has led to confusion.

“It’s hard for law enforcement to understand where we are on the issue, so I really wanted to support the bill so we can have that discussion,” Ford told WTWO/WAWV.

Ford authored the two bills with a pair of Democratic lawmakers.

Senate Bill 336 would establish “a procedure for the lawful production and sale of cannabis in Indiana.”

Senate Bill 377, meanwhile, would establish the following: 

“Permits the use of cannabis by: (1) a person at least 21 years of age; and (2) a person with a serious medical condition as determined by the person’s physician. Establishes the adult use cannabis excise tax, and requires a retailer to transfer the tax to the department of state revenue for deposit in the state general fund. Exempts veterans from payment of the sales tax on medical or adult use cannabis. Establishes a cannabis program to permit the cultivation, processing, testing, transportation, and sale of cannabis by holders of a valid permit. Establishes the Indiana Cannabis Commission (ICC) as a state agency to oversee, implement, and enforce the program, and establishes the ICC advisory committee to review the effectiveness of the program. Requires that permit holders take steps to prevent diversion of cannabis to unauthorized persons. Requires that cannabis and cannabis products be properly labeled, placed in child resistant packaging, and tested by an independent testing laboratory before being made available for purchase. Prohibits packaging cannabis in a manner that is appealing to children. Authorizes research on cannabis in accordance with rules set forth by the ICC. Establishes a procedure for the expungement of a cannabis related conviction if the act constituting the conviction becomes legal. Makes conforming amendments.”

It is probably a long-shot for either bill to become law this year, however. 

Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican, has said previously that he isn’t keen on the state legalizing marijuana before the federal government. 

“The law that needs to change is the federal law,” Holcomb said in 2021. “It is illegal right now for recreational use, for medicinal use. There are states that have ignored that law. I will not ignore any law whether I agree with it or disagree with it or disagree with it so that’s the law that needs to change.”

But last year, after President Joe Biden announced that he would issue pardons to all individuals with federal cannabis convictions, Holcomb said that Indiana would not be following the White House’s lead.

“The president should work with Congress, not around them, to discuss changes to the law federally, especially if he is requesting governors to overturn the work local prosecutors have done by simply enforcing the law,” Holcomb said at the time. “Until these federal law changes occur, I can’t in good conscience consider issuing blanket pardons for all such offenders.”

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Only, unlike the rest of those shackled in servitude, I’d venture to say that my job probably doesn’t suck nearly as bad. I am a freelance writer, the smut and weed correspondent for various national publications across the country, including this one. There’s no one at the office where I work to hassle me if I show up late, walk around without pants or use the crapper eight times before 9 am. In other words, I am the king of the castle. This also means that I am fully responsible for the whole damn kingdom: Rent, bills, and any legal matters that may come up, that’s all on me, pal. Nobody is going to swoop in and save the day if I happen to get caught in a jam. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes,” she replied. “Definitely.” 

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

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

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

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

Cue the Mission Impossible theme song, now! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Point blank, police need someone to talk. 

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

As for me, I wasn’t saying shit!

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

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

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Pardons are still a hot topic after President Joe Biden announced on Oct. 6 that he would be pardoning citizens who have federal convictions for cannabis, and asked that state governors do the same to provide relief for people in their regions. However, Indiana Gov. Holcomb recently stated that he would not be pardoning simple cannabis convictions.

“The president should work with Congress, not around them, to discuss changes to the law federally, especially if he is requesting governors to overturn the work local prosecutors have done by simply enforcing the law,” Holcomb said, according to ABC57. “Until these federal law changes occur, I can’t in good conscience consider issuing blanket pardons for all such offenders.”

Holcomb added that his state already offers expungement programs. “What Indiana has done, is act proactively, not reactively, by creating an opportunity for those who have maintained a clean record since a conviction of simple marijuana possession and a number of lower-level offenses, to apply for—and receive—an expungement which seals their record,” Holcomb said.

However he did confirm that many people who currently hold cannabis convictions on their record deserve to have an opportunity to have it removed. “I do agree that many of these offenses should not serve as a life sentence after an individual has served their time,” Holcomb added. “Expunged convictions cannot be disclosed to employers, to those who grant licenses, or when seeking housing.”

At a luncheon on Oct. 12, Holcomb shared his opinions on favoring expungement over pardons. “If you are busted for simple possession of marijuana and stay clean for a number of years, five years, then you can pursue expungement. That is never disclosed and that will never be in the way. If you do the crime and pay the time, then you can move on,” Holcomb said, adding that he does not believe cannabis should be in the same Schedule category as substances such as heroin or morphine. “But that’s Congress’s job.”

In December 2021, Holcomb began ramping up for the legislative session which began in January 2022. Although at the time, the Indiana Democratic Party stated that adult-use cannabis legalization was a top priority, Holcomb explained his support for medical access instead. “The law that needs to change is the federal law,” said Holcomb in December 2021.

News outlet WSBT asked Indiana legislators about Biden’s recent pardons, and many were supportive, but leaned toward federal descheduling. “I think this does reveal that legalization is inevitable in our future and whether or not Indiana wants to set that up at the state level or wait for the federal government to do that,” said Rep. Maureen Bauer. “So, for us, it’s still [a] schedule one drug. And I don’t see the state of Indiana changing the legalization of the drug until federally it’s descheduled,” added Sen. Mike Bohacek.

Possession of cannabis is a misdemeanor in Indiana, as of 2014. Currently, the state of Indiana has not legalized adult-use or medical cannabis. According to The Indiana Lawyer, over 94,000 people were charged with a cannabis possession misdemeanor between 2018-2021.

A pardon isn’t enough to release people from prison, partially because many people’s sentences are more complicated. According to Marion County Sheriff’s Office Captain Mitch Gore as of Oct. 13, the Indianapolis Adult Detention Center only had one inmate who was convicted for cannabis possession, while 320 others were convicted both because of possession as well as other non-cannabis related charges.

Allen County Sheriff’s Office Captain Steve Stone also confirmed that not very many people could be released immediately. “It would be a very, very low number. We wouldn’t even arrest you because you’d be out before we were even done doing the paperwork,” Stone said.

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I’d spent a large part of the afternoon licking a week’s worth of journalistic wounds: unapologetically abusing a slew of strong IPAs from the comforts of the front porch, getting all glassy eyed in between regular fill-ups, while watching the October sky serve as a reminder of how all things, both the good and bad, come to an end. I had pretty much resigned myself to staying in for the night. The outside world had nothing left to offer. Might as well wallow in self-loathing. Perhaps I’d check out the new Hellraiser flick or just glutton myself to death on some trashy cuisine that would surely serve as penance for a life gone wrong. “To hell with it,’ I thought to myself. I’ll get ‘em next time.” There’s always tomorrow. 

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

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

We’d find out soon enough.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The production team, Curnow asserts, was also key.

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

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

Then he was gone.

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

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

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

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

The lights went down. 

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

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

It was me against them. 

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

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

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