Editor’s note: We originally published this interview with Oliver Tree in 2020, around the release of his debut album “Ugly Is Beautiful.” Oliver Tree Nickell passed away on June 14, 2026, at 32, one of six people killed when two helicopters collided over Rio de Janeiro. He was traveling on his World’s First World Tour. In the conversation below, which ran as he was breaking out, he talked about cannabis as the engine of his creative life, his years dealing and trimming flower in Santa Cruz and the persona he built to pull people toward his music. He called “Ugly Is Beautiful” his last album and said he was done as Oliver Tree. He wasn’t. He went on to release three more, including “Love You Madly Hate You Badly” this past April. We’re republishing the interview as we first ran it, in his own words, to remember him.

For Oliver Tree, having a hand in every aspect of his career is vital. He enjoys wearing the many hats required to maintain a successful career as a recording artist and budding filmmaker. When we connect by phone, he’s a week away from releasing his debut album, “Ugly is Beautiful,” a body of work that is introspective, reflective and intelligently fun. Behind the work is a creator who is not only extremely self-aware of his comedic persona and role as an entertainer, but a man who has built his career on entertaining himself first.

Before we dive in, I’d read that you made the music video for “Bury Me Alive” for six bucks. Is that true?

Oliver Tree: Truth is, I wasn’t even planning on shooting a video. I was actually shooting some promotional pieces for the album and had built prosthetics out of this play doh material. We’d spent a lot of time making them and thought they looked pretty crazy. We had the camera, the story cam gear, and were at a location that had incredible train tracks outside. I was like, “Fuck it, let’s just drop a camera on me and shoot a one-shot-take video,” and I just choreographed things as I went. It was purely spur of the moment and I just kept doing it until it became what you see in the final video.

The sirens at the end of the video – were those added or were they real?

Oliver Tree: There was no production, just me and my two friends filming illegally. It’s three in the morning and I’m just screaming the lyrics, trying to get what we needed as quickly as possible. Someone from the complex was yelling at me from inside the building and I’m pretty sure they called the cops because we ended up getting a pretty fat ticket. I guess the cost [of production] was a little more [than six dollars] if you consider the ticket, but that’s not really part of the budget because there was no budget.

Ultimately, you used what you had around you and crafted something pretty awesome.

Oliver Tree: That’s what quarantine teaches us to do. You have to get creative with what you have. [The experience] proved to me that with a good enough idea, you can execute a strong video. This video that cost me six dollars ended up being more successful than videos I’d spent one-hundred-grand on. And that’s the funny part. You can have all the money in the world, but that’s not going to make a better product sometimes.

I’m ultimately using [music videos] as opportunities as a director to make a scene from an action movie. I’m not really thinking about it like, “How do I make the best promotional piece for my album?” It’s more, “How do I make a crazy fucking scene from a movie that no one’s ever seen before?”

And it  just so happens there’s a music album behind the video.

Oliver Tree: Exactly. Truth is, I only signed a major label record deal so I could get the money to subsidize my vision as a filmmaker. I was signed to an indie label before and it didn’t end up working out. I wasn’t able to afford any of my visions. It was the kind of thing where signing with a major label was a necessity based on what I want to do as a visual artist. The beautiful thing is, I found a cheat code which allows me to use the key from one castle to open the door to another castle. Taking a piece of the music industry and using it to open doors in the film industry.

Is it accurate to say film has been your grand vision?

Oliver Tree: Neither [music nor film] are the main thing, but this is my last album. As Oliver Tree, I’m completely done. This project is over. It’s a fucking incredible album, I spent five years making it, and I don’t need to do anything else. It’s already the best it can be and I’m going to leave it at that. I’m planning to segue over to film now. I’ve been working on screenplays during this COVID period and I’ve been working on building out my own production company. I’m trying to do as much as I can to move myself out of the music industry and into film.

But how did you initially focus on music?

Oliver Tree: Let me first start by saying that my parents met in music class. They were both flute players, but the class got cancelled, so they would go up in the trees at school and play flute. That was the setup to me growing up in an incredibly musical household. 

Every type of instrument covered our walls. There was a piano to bang on. There were guitars. Everything. My parents forced me to play piano at the age of three and I fucking hated it. At the age of six, I was like, “I don’t want to do this anymore,” and stopped. They were like, “Okay, we’re glad you tried it, if you don’t like it, we respect that.” The next year, I’m seven and I go to this guitar shop – Starving Musician – in Santa Cruz where I grew up. I’m playing some of the guitars there and I find this mini Pignose guitar, which has a built-in amplifier that creates distortion within itself. It basically allowed me to play something that sounded like rock, which was my fucking dream. For some reason, distortion always spoke to me, and looking back now, I can see that’s the origin of me as a real rocker. I ended up saving every penny in my piggy bank and bought that fucking guitar, which was a pivotal turning point where I realized this was something I wanted. I wanted to play music for me.

Have you always been conscious to craft narratives within your work?

Oliver Tree: I’ve been filming stupid videos with my friends since I was a kid and I’ve been making music and songs the same way. The sole purpose was to entertain myself. Instead of playing video games, I was making videos and songs. It was just something I naturally gravitated toward, so I just continued to build my skill sets.

At a certain point, you start to have people reach out and offer job opportunities and things like that. In a lot of ways, you start to find that these paths choose you. I didn’t pick to be a musician. A record label reached out to me to sign me. Even though it didn’t go well, I couldn’t stop making music. Even if I wasn’t getting paid, I couldn’t stop making music. And that’s when you know that’s your role. You can’t help it. Eventually, I found the right support system to help me share my art and give positive messages to people to help them get through this fucked up world that we live in.

I am a storyteller first and foremost. I have stories to tell. Whatever means through which I tell those stories, whether it’s through music, film, performance art, through the way I present myself and conduct myself, through interviews and things like that – they’re all ways for me to tell my stories and ultimately set up a mirror in front of society to look at how ridiculous we are and how ridiculous things have become.

To that end, how did you end up crafting your look and persona?

Oliver Tree: It came out of necessity after failure. I’d spent ten-plus years making music and nobody gave a fuck. My first record career had failed and when I ran out of money, I started trimming weed to make a living. I was back to being a normal Joe, you know? Making as much art and crazy shit as I am now, just without any of the support or financing. My image was created to pull people to my music.

I started working with some of my other artist friends and ended up having this opportunity to shoot my first music video that would end up on MTV. It was my first chance of being seen by millions of people. I was like, “Okay. How am I going to separate myself on MTV? Am I going to try and look “hot” like everybody else and sell sex, or am I going to try and stick out like a sore thumb?” I basically pulled together all these parts of my life that were ridiculous, unique elements I thought were cool as a child and built an outfit around them. I went with the bowl cut, the jacket I took from my mom’s closet that my aunt gave her in the eighties, the pants that I always wanted, and sunglasses I would wear as a kid. It made me feel cool. All these things were authentic to myself and my life, but I turned it up a few notches.

Anyway, I showed up to the shoot as the feature on the song and everyone literally looked right through me. It was crazy. My friend from highschool couldn’t even recognize me. When he finally realized it was me he was like, “Bro, we gotta film some Vines.” This was my friend Getter, who was part of the “suh dude” movement with his roommate, Nick Colletti. He filmed these Vines of me in the outfit and they started getting millions of plays, so I started testing out all these different characters. Some of them were even more obnoxious and some were borderline offensive, so I had to learn what was appropriate and constantly reevaluate. I found that my current look specifically was the one that continuously would get millions of plays, even on my rinky-dink Vine account that only had twenty-thousand followers. I had found a look that had cut through the Internet. I had created a thumbnail that was clickbait. Even if he’s obnoxious and annoying, he’s still the most lovable of all these characters I’d made. The [current one] was the one that resonated the most on a cultural level.

So I said, “Fuck it. No one is listening to my music. This image can be a vehicle to pull people over to it and finally give them a chance to hear it.” It goes way beyond making art. Making art is the action of what you do as an artist, but promotion of art is probably eighty-percent of what you do. I just found a way to promote [my music] in a way that could make the promotion itself art. I was able to justify spending eighty-percent of my time promoting because the promotion was just as much art as the music itself. [The promotion] might not have had the same impact a song might have had, but it was a way to pull people to a song.

You discovered one hand could sort of feed the other in a way.

Oliver Tree: Ultimately, what I think I’m doing here is devising a blueprint that allows artists to do every single thing under the sun creatively as one project. The beauty of it is, I can wear one outfit, which allows me to be able be in a fucking random skit on a comedy video and be the same project and the same character in this world where I’m making super serious music that’s lightyears away from [the look]. Creatively speaking, I can do anything I want, and still have it fit under the banner of Oliver Tree.

What went into crafting your specific voice and style?

Oliver Tree: It’s taken almost twenty years to develop my vocal style. For people who think my voice sounds annoying right now, you should have heard it when I was recording at age seven. It’s one of the most awful sounds you can imagine. But that only proves that anyone can be a singer. Anyone with working vocal cords has the potential to be a voice for their generation. For the first five years I was making music, I couldn’t listen to myself. Five years. Can you imagine? I knew there was something unique and special about my voice, but [at the time] it sounded like shit. I kept refining it and refining it and learned how to find all of these different ranges. I was also able to discover these different characters that existed within myself, and I studied groups like Gorillaz – one of my biggest influences – who had all these different genres and voices. They’ve done a great job marrying different sounds together through genre fusion. Their early albums lay a blueprint for how you can mix all of these different styles and I just took that blueprint, expanded on it with modern techniques and applied it to my own stories.

If you look through my songs, sometimes it sounds like three different voices on there. When I was learning how to explore my voice and find other characters within myself, me and my piano player – Casey Mattson – would do these psychedelic sessions where we wouldn’t sleep for a week and would just stay up and make music nonstop. During this time, we’d drink pu erh tea and smoke an endless amount of joints. We’d put on different outfits and set up the lighting for different moods so that each time I went up on the mic, it would be a different experience. Sometimes I’d be channeling a forty-year-old emo man, or another time I’d be channeling a twelve-year-old girl. That was the way I learned to pull some of these voices out of myself and into the music. It’s about channeling. I don’t try to mimic based on things I hear, I channel a character and let them do the singing for me.

Ninety-percent of the music I write is improvised. It’s not actually written. I just go into the booth, improvise, and let the music write itself. I’m at a place now where I’ve found sixteen voices and characters within me. It’s a jazz approach that allows you to capture a moment instead of trying to create a moment. Every lyric, every single melody you hear from my voice is entirely by me. I don’t let anyone else get involved in that because I want it to be the one thing that’s pure about Oliver Tree. Otherwise, you start having all these other people’s stories being told. There’s only one feature on “Ugly is Beautiful,” and that’s Little Ricky ZR3. This guy is the fucking future and is my favorite artist. For some reason, his music really connects with me and I think he’s going to be the biggest artist on the planet in a few years.

Ultimately you have to tell a story that’s authentic and true. It helps to pull from your own experience, and after I’ve established enough of an idea that’s worth singing on, I go into the booth and just let it rip.

Does weed play a role in your creative process?

Oliver Tree: Weed is a huge part of my existence. It’s like my coffee. I don’t drink coffee but I smoke weed from when I start my day until when I go to sleep. I’m not advocating that lifestyle, but for me, because of my body chemistry, weed has the effect of a stimulant. It doesn’t make me sleepy, it actually makes it harder for my brain to shut off. But that’s a really nice advantage when you’re making art all day and need to have something to help you persevere. In some ways, weed has helped me reach my potential creatively. If I have these moments when I’m feeling low energy, smoking boosts me back up to keep creating. So for me, smoking weed is every step of the process. I’m smoking weed while I’m writing the music. I’m smoking weed while I’m recording the music. I smoke weed while I’m mixing the music and I smoke weed during the entire mastering process.

Weed helps me chill during chaos. When you’re traveling the world, never having stability, constantly staying up and functioning on only three hours of sleep, weed is something that can help you have those moments of down time during your day to breathe and just chill the fuck out so you can go back into the chaos with a level-headed mindset.

By the way, did you say earlier you used to trim weed?

Oliver Tree: Yeah, that was how I was able to stay alive financially. My good homie and bass player at the time let me trim for him. I ended up doing that to keep afloat while my recording career failed. But I’ve had huge connections to cannabis my entire life.

Growing up in Santa Cruz, I’d steal weed from my parents, and all through high school I was a really good weed dealer. My mom knew I sold, but I explained it to her this way: I said, “Mom, don’t think of me as a weed dealer, think of me as an entrepreneur.”

At a certain point, I was the only weed dealer at school. It was crazy. I would sell weed in the bathrooms, handing nugs beneath one stall to the other stall. One time, I slid the weed under a stall and the kid was just sitting on the toilet and didn’t take it. I was like, “Does it not look good to you? Is it not enough? What’s up?” Whoever it was, didn’t respond. I heard them leave the stall and then another person came in and they grabbed the weed. I realized I’d slid weed over to some random kid taking a shit.

[Dealing] was a big part of me learning how to run a business. Having a business background became extremely beneficial later on when it came to building companies, starting touring entities, starting recording and publishing companies, production companies – all which utilized skills I learned from my early days as a weed dealer in Santa Cruz.

It sounds like all of your experiences – both in art and business – happened  very organically.

Oliver Tree: It’s cool to be able to understand that the number one pitfall in both music and art is commerce. But the bigger pitfall is that artists are never really taught about business in art. I went to CalArts School for two years and they didn’t teach me a single business class. There wasn’t even one available. That’s fucking insane. People are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to a school that doesn’t even teach them the idea of business, when it’s business that allows you to survive as an artist. To not teach artists about commerce-in-art is extremely detrimental, not only to an artist’s survival, but to the execution of their creative endeavors. Making art on a commercial scale costs a lot of money, so earning how to find – and work with – investors and patrons plays a massive part in that process.

And it succeeds for you – in large part I imagine – because of the dichotomy between your more comical persona and the more serious subject matter of your content.

Oliver Tree: I never try to make the music funny. Paired with my character, it shows you the duality of people. It shows you to never judge a book by its cover. What you see on the outside isn’t usually the vulnerable person within. On a surface level, my album “Ugly is Beautiful” is about teaching people not to judge a book by its cover and to learn how to love themselves and the imperfections within themselves. By me presenting myself the way I do, I can show that message through my actions instead of by preaching to people. I can show people that you can be loved by being who you are and looking the way you look. But the album also goes much deeper, teaching how to accept who you are as a person and accepting where you’re at in life.

There’s so much hatred in this world because people hate themselves and hate their lives. They can’t look at themselves in the mirror, need to have something going on at all times, or constantly need other people around them. People are so sick with hatred that it manifests externally, which is why we’re living in such a fucked up society.

I’ve learned to love myself and how to accept who I am. I’ve learned my flaws are what made the DNA of the character of who I am today. “Ugly is Beautiful” is about coming to a place within yourself where you have finally arrived.

Follow @Olivertree and check out his debut album “Ugly is Beautiful” available everywhere

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In the early ’90s, the SoCal trio of Bradley Nowell, Eric Wilson and Bud Gaugh pioneered a mashup of ska, punk, reggae and hip-hop that took the airwaves and stoner culture by storm, before tragedy struck. Now, 30 years later, Brad’s son Jakob Nowell adds closure and a compelling new chapter to the band’s storied legacy.

Everyone has a Sublime story.

Hearing their music for the first time might have accompanied the loss of your virginity, smoking your first joint or some combination of the two.

You might have been high in a friend’s car, drunk at a house party or, if you were lucky enough to catch one, experiencing their fervor at a live show. Whatever your introduction to Sublime, it came to define your relationship with the band and the story you would share.

For many, their Sublime inauguration came in 1996, hearing Bradley Nowell’s voice crescendo across the radio singing “What I Got,” the global smash hit Rolling Stone placed at number 83 on its 2008 list of “100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time.”

If future Sublime songs could have also made the cut, we’ll never know: the guitar-strumming fingers and rapturous vocals of Nowell were lost to the physical world a month prior to “What I Got” being released. It seemed Sublime was over before it had begun, catching fire only to be without its driving creative force.

Yet, somehow, the music not only endured. It thrived.

“What I Got” became the summer anthem of 1996, blasting through headphones and speakers across the globe. As the band posthumously grew in popularity, fans from all over the world began to both celebrate and mourn the music: appreciation for its existence, disappointment for never being able to see it performed live again.

Our minds became vehicles for connecting with Sublime. We could picture Nowell lighting up that morning cigarette, stepping into a new day’s sneakers, playing the guitar with calloused hands like a mother fucking riot, the energy of the song’s composition penetrating beyond our sound systems and into our souls, where the Long Beach rebel was still alive.

Now, 30 years later, with over 20 million records sold worldwide, Sublime has been revived with original members Eric Wilson and Bud Gaugh, joined by Bradley’s son, Jakob Nowell, in the role once held by his father.

It’s a synergistic, synchronous, full-circle moment: the baby featured in the “What I Got” music video now stationed as the band’s frontman, carrying the torch and resurrecting our connection to Sublime so we no longer need to imagine “what if.”

With a new tour and new music on the horizon, maybe, just maybe, the greatest Sublime story is the one that hasn’t yet been told.

Forged in the Garages of Long Beach

Visit any university in the United States, and at least one student possesses a poster, shirt or other memorabilia featuring Sublime’s iconic sun symbol, a visual representation of the band akin to The Rolling Stones’ tongue and the Grateful Dead’s skull. The imagery has withstood time in the same way Sublime’s music continues to inspire generations of fans old and new.

Forged in the garages and backyard parties of Long Beach, California, lead singer Bradley Nowell, bassist Eric Wilson and drummer Bud Gaugh emerged as SoCal’s preeminent leader in the Cali-reggae-dub movement, bringing with it a following of friends and fans who also happened to be cannabis enthusiasts.

Since the band’s inception, cannabis culture has played a pivotal role as both relatable subject matter within Sublime’s music and an aid to their creative process.

“I’d been smoking since I was 12 or 13 years old, and when Brad turned me onto reggae music, it was like, ‘Oh, these two things go together hand in hand,’” Gaugh said during a recent interview. “It opens you to your spirituality and puts your mind onto an astral plane where you can be more focused on the divinity you’re encountering. The beats, the rhythm, it all went together trancelike. The rhythm would push your buzz and your buzz would compliment the rhythm. It was all intertwined.”

So intertwined at times, the band would roll up to gigs and find the majority of their audience was already stoned.

“We were smoking outside, we were smoking inside, it was just what we did,” Gaugh said. “There was nothing shameful about it as far as we were concerned.”

Weed was a great unifier between Gaugh and Wilson, who had birthed their creative alchemy in different projects prior to Sublime, but never felt completely in flow until meeting Nowell.

“The writing and creative process in those other bands was slow and painful,” Gaugh said. “It was forced. We really had to struggle to write something we liked, but after meeting Brad and playing in his garage the first week, we had five or six songs. It was effortless. With Brad, we had melodies and rhythms you could dance to.”

Sublime’s first official lineup of Nowell, Wilson and Gaugh debuted at a Fourth of July party on the peninsula, a seemingly innocuous show that, according to Gaugh, turned into a riot.

“The party wasn’t just high school kids and friends, adults were present, citizens from our neighborhood, all bouncing their heads to our music,” Gaugh said. “We received instant approval that our unit had groove, and we knew right away we had something strong there.”

Three friends, each playing their part: Gaugh hammering on the kit, Wilson holding down the bass line, and Nowell commanding both the guitar and the microphone with such intensity the entire crowd was afoot, standing and moving to the rhythm, a byproduct of three musicians tapped into their inner divinities, outwardly transmuting a positive vibration birthed in chaos.

The show proved Nowell, Wilson and Gaugh could not only be an effective band together, but that their music resonated on a deeper level with the audience, something Gaugh and Wilson’s other outfits hadn’t accomplished. Sublime was music you could feel.

“Trying to gig with other friends’ bands, we were always welcomed because those bands knew they were better than us,” Gaugh said. “But when we started playing parties as Sublime, those other bands weren’t too happy to re-invite us.”

Five Bands, Five Kegs, Five Bucks

Building on their growing local momentum, Sublime ventured beyond Long Beach to gig at warehouse and college parties, eventually testing the waters of greater Los Angeles.

“There weren’t a lot of clubs letting punk rock bands play back then, so you would get these ‘five bands/five kegs/five bucks’ deals,” Gaugh said. “Promoters could easily put us with a rock band, hippie band or funk/punk band like Fishbone because we filled all those spaces, one of the driving factors behind people’s enthusiasm to see us. We were playing different types of music beyond just one style.”

Pulling from a multitude of creative influences afforded Sublime a diverse range of audience exposure, creating an influx of fandom from a variety of pockets that were traditionally more siloed.

“We made friends with No Doubt early on because we found their fans were also our fans,” Gaugh said. “They were in Orange County and we were in LA County. When we’d gig in Los Angeles, they would support us, and when they’d gig in Fullerton or Costa Mesa, we’d support them.”

The group then sought out bands who were similar in style to organically grow their reach in other locations.

“We’d be playing a fraternity party at the Colorado River and the other band would be like, ‘Oh, this guy over here from Alpha Beta Kappa G-String is their treasurer,’” Gaugh said. “We’d go talk to that guy and steal the information, which is how we learned to gig for ourselves.”

When not immersed in their hard-partying lifestyle, Gaugh and his bandmates flipped through Maximum Rocknroll’s “Book Your Own Fucking Life,” the popular fanzine of the times that listed promoters’ and club owners’ information for bands to book their own shows.

“Miguel [Michael Happoldt, Sublime’s OG mixing engineer and producer] would get on the phone: ‘Hey this is Miguel with Skunk Records, I’ve got Skunk recording artist Sublime coming through your town on these dates and wanted to see if we could hop on a gig there,’” Gaugh said. “We weren’t getting any love until we came up with the Skunk Records imprint. That was the defining factor. It became, ‘Oh Skunk Records? I’ve heard of you guys.’ They had no fucking idea who we were but they didn’t want to sound like assholes.”

The gigs started to roll in for Sublime, and they began to grow their fanbase up and down the West Coast. No longer was it a question if their music resonated with audiences. Now, the mission was to expand their reach and land coveted radio play.

The Sticker on Randy’s BMW

After self-releasing their debut album “40oz to Freedom” in 1992, Sublime embarked on a self-generated tour that began to birth interest from independent labels.

“We were talking with Brett Gurewitz from Bad Religion/Epitaph Records and he gave us some recording time at his studio,” Gaugh said. “We go to Hollywood, we record with Donnell Cameron, but Gurewitz isn’t there. We’re told he flew to New York to sign a contract for Bad Religion with Atlantic but would be back in a week and would call us. Donnell goes to pick up some food for us, and while he’s away, Miguel rewinds the two-inch tape, puts it in the box, and we split.”

Cameron returned to an empty studio with more than enough food for one person, and a small note from the band to have Gurewitz call them when he was back.

But Sublime didn’t see eye to eye creatively nor contractually with Epitaph, and declined to move forward. Having already recorded their material, the band figured they only owed for the studio time and parted ways.

“It was our intellectual property,” Gaugh said. “We were like, ‘This is our music and we’re gonna go,’ which is when we put out ‘Robbin’ the Hood.’ We had half an album finished with eight or nine songs that technically could have been a Hollywood album, but we liked to use all the space on the CD.”

Sublime finished recording “Robbin’ the Hood,” their second studio album, in various living rooms and flop houses across Orange County and Long Beach, but still needed distribution to help maximize its reach.

Fortunately, the band’s previous grassroots touring and independently released records generated enough exposure that they caught the attention of Jon Phillips, a young A&R at Gasoline Alley, an affiliate of Universal MCA.

“I was introduced to Sublime in 1993 through ‘Groovy’ Greg Abramson, an intern at Gasoline Alley,” said Jon Phillips, founder of Silverback Management and Sublime’s former manager. “I’d gotten an entry-level job there right out of school and Greg and I were the same age and had the same cultural identities.”

It was Abramson who handed Phillips the cassette tapes to “Jah Won’t Pay the Bills” and “40oz to Freedom,” instantly igniting his fascination with Sublime.

“Greg invited me to meet the guys and watch them play at Cal State Long Beach,” Phillips said. “I proceeded to identify Sublime as the only band I wanted to sign in the music business. In the two years since I’d received those cassettes, and subsequently ‘Robbin’ The Hood,’ I don’t think there was anything else I wanted to listen to. That’s how infectious Sublime’s songs were, music that fused all these different cultural hues, samples and references.”

In late 1993, Phillips brought the band to the Gasoline Alley offices for what was supposed to be an initial A&R meeting.

“The guys came in hammered with Brad’s dog Lou Dog and cases of beer,” Phillips said. “It scared people. I think Brad thought they were just going to roll in, sign the record deal, and get paid instantly. But the band never really got to meet the brass and sort of got blown off.”

Despite Phillips telling his uncle, Randy Phillips, a partner at Gasoline Alley, that Sublime was the band they needed to sign, he was met with resistance.

“We meet with Randy and he does not think we’re too cute,” Gaugh said. “But we’re Sublime, we’re Bud, Brad, and Eric, and we are who we are. We don’t care if you’re mister fucking Geffen himself, we’re gonna be ourselves. You get the real deal. So we show up stoned, and halfway through the meeting, we step out to smoke a ‘cigarette,’ which Randy did not find professional at all. He basically told us to kick rocks.”

But Phillips was determined to bag Sublime another meeting.

“I came down later that night after the band left and was walking by the executives’ cars with the placards at their parking spaces,” Phillips said. “The cars were all lined up and Randy was driving this new BMW 2-seat convertible European edition.”

“On the way out, we slapped a Sublime sticker on Randy’s brand new BMW that still had its Santa Monica dealer plates,” Gaugh said. “He didn’t think that was too cute either and raged at Jon, almost firing him over it.”

“The label told me they weren’t doing any business with these guys and told the band’s lawyer at the time they weren’t doing any business with these guys. Then the lawyer called me and said he wasn’t doing any business with these guys.”

Phillips called Nowell and broke the news directly, to which Nowell said they were going to write “fuck Gasoline Alley” in the album liner notes. But Phillips was 23 years old and convinced of Sublime’s potential, so he went on a crusade, armed with Sublime’s cassette tapes, CDs, and other underground DIY output.

“I started sending Sublime to every A&R I could contact,” Phillips said. “There was a deal looming at Atlantic Records from another young scout, but they also slept on Sublime. Sublime’s music wasn’t a sure thing for a 50 or 60 year old suit in Beverly Hills and neither were their habits. Years later I asked Brett Gurewitz, ‘You had Sublime in the studio, why didn’t you sign them?’ He was like, ‘They were making music Epitaph didn’t fully identify with, and they had this girl in there doing this ska thing.’”

The girl was Gwen Stefani.

Sublime proceeded to self-release “Robbin’ The Hood” on Skunk Records, but in June 1994, Phillips brokered a reconciliation with Gasoline Alley, netting Sublime their first major record deal.

“When Sublime returned to the office to sign, Brad actually removed a folded Atlantic Records contract from his pocket and joked he was about to sign with another label,” Phillips said. “I’d become close with the guys, dedicated to their mission, and definitely would have been totally defeated if they’d signed elsewhere.”

“We came back to Gasoline Alley with, ‘We thought you’d dig it, just joking, sorry Mr. Randy,’” Gaugh said. “And then we signed a shitty deal.”

According to Phillips, the “shitty deal,” an entry-level Universal Records agreement for which they received $120,000 and was later renegotiated after the band’s success, also included an actual coin flip for their publishing: $100,000 for heads, $75,000 for tails. Nowell flipped heads and planned on using the contract money to buy their own recording equipment and rent a house in North County, San Diego, to make the next Sublime album.

“There are a lot of different layers to that story, but sometimes in the music business, you learn lessons the hard way,” Phillips said. “If you have success, you get some leverage to renegotiate, and if you don’t, labels usually cut their losses and move on. In this case, given all the circumstances, Sublime received an entry-level, boilerplate deal. I actually gave them the advice to lawyer up because I saw what was going on as a young kid. It wasn’t inherent to Sublime, it was any young artist in the music business. They try to own you.”

“Date Rape,” Addiction, and the Edge of Stardom

But as the band laid plans for their future, Nowell spiraled deeper into addiction.

“Brad got slapped with a felony drug charge and wouldn’t be able to travel internationally,” Phillips said. “Gasoline Alley, before Sublime hit any popularity, I’ll give them credit for this, stepped up and threw down $40,000 to $50,000 for lawyers and drug treatment programs to get Brad a drug diversion that allowed him to tour.”

With Nowell on the mend, Phillips focused on maintaining Sublime’s ethos as independent artists, advising the label to allow Sublime to continue marketing the band’s preexisting albums (“40 Oz. To Freedom” and “Robbin’ The Hood”) on independent Skunk Records.

“I wanted the band to build organically and avoid the pitfalls of a major label association,” Phillips said. “By convincing the suits to give us permission to continue marketing the band through Skunk Records, Sublime sold close to a couple hundred-thousand hard copy CDs through independent distribution.”

The vision helped the discovery process, with the popular single from the “40oz” album, “Date Rape,” breaking on KROQ in 1995, roughly six months after Phillips signed Sublime in the summer of 1994.

“When the song ‘Date Rape’ came out, the subject matter was popular in the media,” Gaugh said. “It was national news. People were getting roofied at college parties so it was a common topic on campuses. Brad writes this funny song making light of the situation and how the guy gets it in the end and justice was served. It’s not a ‘pro-date rape’ song.”

In fact, “Date Rape” was first written by Nowell in 1992, three years before it ever received radio attention. According to Phillips, Nowell told him he was jacked on coffee one college morning at UC Santa Cruz and wrote the song without thinking too deeply about it.

But the thought of making a song titled “Date Rape” in 2026 seems unfathomable, regardless if the intent of the song was to shine light on a serious subject through humor. Yet that’s what made Sublime Sublime. Their music reflected the world and times around them, and the band was unafraid to confront the morally reprehensible aspects of society.

Nowell started refusing to play the song live, with Phillips having to sign papers that guaranteed the band would play “Date Rape” at the 3rd Annual KROQ Weenie Roast in June 1995, a now legendary set at Irvine Meadows Amphitheater that saw Stefani join Nowell for their hit “Saw Red” and 40 friends of the band join the stage with fake backstage passes they’d printed in advance.

“Sublime had a penchant, like everyone else, for freedom, and in their case, perhaps anarchy,” Phillips said. “All of that was so much a part of their DNA and the culture around them. It was authentic and they lived it.”

The band wore their association with counterculture on their sleeve, at times failing to show up to their own gigs, further perpetuating their notoriety as purveyors of drugs and mayhem.

But despite their reputation as wild cards, Sublime’s music continued to garner a cult following.

“There was something so unique but also universal about the music,” Phillips reminisced. “The cross section of all the touchpoints Sublime encompassed, hip-hop, reggae, punk rock, pop culture, sampling, even a small ode to the Grateful Dead, they fused together all these music subcultures to create something fresh and new.”

Music You Could Feel

Something fresh and new people could relate to because it was authentic, it was organic, and it resonated.

“We wrote about real things in our lives,” Gaugh said. “Brad had a very charismatic way about writing firsthand. Things that were in our songs like, ‘pissed in someone’s drink and threw a bike in the pool,’ that happened. With all this bullshit going on around us, there was still something lovable about life, and it was about trying to find the ‘good’ even when there were wicked things around.”

It’s why a teenager today can pick up any Sublime record and still have a connection to it, over 30 years later. But perhaps the group’s greatest resonance is the spiritual understanding that they were co-creating music with the universe: Bud, Brad and Eric, a clear channel on the astral plane, a trio communicating truths.

“With Sublime, it was the first time I experienced out-of-body realism,” Gaugh said. “When I was stoned and we were playing, I was floating around the room. A weird, ethereal, metaphysical kind of happening.”

Beyond the shared commonality between Sublime and its audiences around cannabis, weed also provided the basis for creative alchemy between Gaugh, Wilson and Nowell in such a way that their confluence of synergistic output was shared, felt and experienced by the crowd in the same way one might experience Mick and Keith or Flea and Frusciante communicating through their instruments.

“There’s a quote from Brad on one of the promotional CDs, ‘Good music is good music, and that should be enough for anybody,’” Phillips said. “Timeless music is timeless music and that’s the beauty and magic of it. That’s what makes it powerful. One Sublime song could traverse four different styles, not including the full repertoire, which might traverse 10 different forms. They’re so much more intellectual than people give them credit for and there was a lot of wisdom behind where a lot of these things came from that wasn’t by accident.”

The wisdom came from alignment, including Sublime’s connection to the legalization movement. The band’s last performance in Los Angeles was a 1996 benefit show at House of Blues on the Sunset Strip, cosponsored by NORML and High Times Magazine.

The Baby From the “What I Got” Video Takes the Mic

But now, over 30 years later, cannabis is legal and Sublime has returned to the stage under its original moniker, this time with Brad’s son Jakob Nowell installed as the new lead singer. It’s a role many never saw coming, but one the younger Nowell seemed destined for, with their new album “Until The Sun Explodes” due out June 12th, 2026.

Jakob Nowell only knew his father for 11 months, but as fate would have it, came of age and began carving his own path in the music industry, learning more about Bradley Nowell through the body of work he left behind.

Now, the younger Nowell holds the same guitar frets as his father, singing Bradley Nowell’s words, playing the same chords that became his birthright but delivering a sound and feeling uniquely his own.

If we all come from the same source, Bradley Nowell has certainly returned to that place, and now, while channeling from source, Jakob Nowell is undoubtedly bringing forth the essence and mysticism contained within his father’s energy. Jakob Nowell is not a carbon copy of his father, but if you look under the microscope, you’ll see within the double helixes of his DNA that love is also what he’s got.

“When Eric approached me to do a show for H.R. [Paul Hudson of Bad Brains] with Jakob, I was into it but skeptical,” Gaugh said. “I’d played a couple songs with Jakob maybe seven years prior and he was into a different style of music. I thought, ‘Is this going to work?’ But when we got into the studio together, it was like stepping back in time.”

The same “floating around the room feeling” Gaugh once felt with Wilson and Nowell’s father is the same feeling he’s now experiencing with Wilson and the younger Nowell.

“We’re playing in the studio and came out for a break,” Gaugh said. “Jake’s like, ‘Dude, that was so deep, I was floating around the room! Does that happen for you guys?’ Eric turns and looks at him like, ‘Yeah, man. If you do it right.’”

For a band largely without a lead singer for the past three decades, Sublime has encountered new life, a trippy, fortuitous, full-circle experience cracking open the door to the vista of what the original lineup could have looked like to this day. In many ways, the authenticity of Jakob Nowell as Sublime’s new frontman is emblematic of that panoramic landscape.

“Early on when I was working with Jakob, he was totally focused on wanting to create his own identity and vision and not really touch the Sublime legacy,” Phillips said. “But when you’re blood to that, it’s in your soul that you would one day want to embrace and be a part of it. The fact that he has the talent to do it and carry it the way he does is remarkable to me.”

A new generation of music and fans, built upon older pillars, cut from the same stone.

“30 years later, we’re still being played on the radio,” Gaugh said. “It’s an incredible feeling. Our fans are the greatest people in the world. Hats off to them because this is truly a testament to their love of the music and why it’s still here. Getting the opportunity to go out and perform this music with Brad’s son is incredibly humbling. I’m just so grateful to be able to do this. It’s a dream come true. We got short changed, we were never able to play some of these songs. ‘Ensenada’ has topped the charts for seven or eight weeks in a row in the US and it’s still on the charts in Canada.”

Sublime’s current airwave success is due in part to the creative input employed by Gaugh, Wilson and the younger Nowell, methodology eerily similar to the way the Sublime elders created songs with Nowell’s father over 30 years before.

“It’s like how we wrote Sublime back in the day,” Gaugh said. “Brad would come with a melody or an idea and he would sit there and play. Then Eric would start playing or I would come up with a rhythm. It was the three of us creating on the spot. Now, Jakob might have a chord progression already done and a hook, but he might not have all the lyrics, which is exactly how we used to do it.”

Gaugh even sees the younger Nowell employ the same formula his father used when crafting songs, writing about what’s happening around him and even writing about the things he’s experiencing while on tour with Sublime, a key component of his dad’s technique.

It’s part of the reason Sublime’s 1990s discography has remained relevant up until today, where the inputs to the songs transcended the moment in time and spoke to the underlying feelings of the times.

And feelings are timeless.

Perhaps there’s a feeling of comfort between Gaugh and Wilson with the younger Nowell in the fold, a trippy recreation of something alchemically familiar and an opportunity to musically expand a previous endpoint into a new beginning.

“The fact there could be a presentation rooted in the actual kin to Bradley, I just love the generational aspect of music,” Phillips said. “I work with Bob Marley’s son Stephen Marley and Aaron Neville’s son Ivan Neville. Whether it’s blood like the Neville Brothers or the Marleys or Sublime, Bradley to Jakob, it only gets the message of the music further out there to affect more people that need to hear it. We didn’t get to see the real Sublime with Brad Nowell enough, and for that reason, it’s a blessing it gets to continue.”

Continue and thrive with both a new generation of fans and those who have been with the band since its inception.

“For the OG fans, Jakob in the band is closure,” Gaugh said. “It’s some kind of relief for them. Everybody has wanted this for years from a fanbase standpoint, so being able to give them that is awesome. But also, for the longevity of the band. I’m a dad now, and the things my kids do and say, I’m an old man. Trying to stay hip is harder as you age, but Jake’s in it and he keeps us relevant.”

A new frontman from the same seed is able to give us something similar but different, weaving an unexpected, unknown tapestry right before our eyes, one we could never have imagined but now get to experience.

“I was talking with a family at Mission Bay Fest and they were like, ‘My dad played your music and I grew up loving Sublime. Now my kids are listening to Sublime,’” Gaugh said. “With our new music coming out, it almost sounds like we started where we left off.”

It’s as if time stood still and now, 30 years later, we’ve resumed a parallel reality where a Nowell is atop the microphone, a Wilson on bass, a Gaugh on drums and the “What I Got” summer anthem of 1996 is morphing into “Ensenada” as the 2026 anthem of the summer.

After a long hibernation, the sky finally opened and Bradley Nowell reached down, placing his guitar into the waiting hands of his son, Jakob, familiar fingers and a familiar voice that now strum fresh perspectives and breathe new life into the Sublime catalogue.

Now it’s Jakob, backed by Bud and Eric, who lights his morning cigarette, slips into his sneakers, and plays his guitar like a mother fucking riot, honoring the legacy of Sublime and inviting the next generation of fans to come along the journey on the road to something new, helping tell a story that hasn’t yet been told.

<p>The post The Baby From Sublime’s ‘What I Got’ Video Is Now the Band’s Frontman. He’s Bradley Nowell’s Son. first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post The Baby From Sublime’s ‘What I Got’ Video Is Now the Band’s Frontman. He’s Bradley Nowell’s Son. appeared first on Paradise Found.

Twenty years after Harold & Kumar, the actor talks to High Times about meeting Cheech for the first time, the strain deal he never got and what a Jimmy John’s sandwich campaign says about where cannabis culture actually is right now.

Nobody offers Anthony Hopkins free meat.

“People aren’t like, ‘Oh, I saw Silence of the Lambs, here’s free meat,’” Kal Penn says. “We’re the ones who get our version of that.”

He means weed. Everywhere. Every city, every country, every situation where a stranger recognizes him and decides this is the moment. A friend once asked him, after watching someone offer him a joint on the street, whether that happened everywhere he went.

“Yes.”

There are worse occupational hazards.

“Were John Cho and I just that good that you believe that 20 years later I am high right now? I love that, by the way. I love all of that.”

Five Kids Walk Into a Phish Concert

Penn grew up in suburban New Jersey in the ’90s, which explains more than you’d think about how Kumar happened.

“I think everybody’s relationship with cannabis starts with the five friends in your high school who went to Phish concerts,” he says. “That’s just always the starting point for it.”

When he and Harold & Kumar creators John Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg were figuring out what music Kumar would listen to, all three of them landed on Phish at the same time. They were drawing on the same five kids.

The films became the strongest overlap between his public life and the cannabis world. Looking back, he sees one real missed opportunity.

“I probably should have branded this the way Snoop did,” he says. “I wish I was more of a Snoop, because I think there was an opportunity to get that weed strain endorsement deal.”

The munchies deals are great, he adds. The strain deal is the next level.

This reporter suggested the obvious solution: a Kal Penn vaporizer. A Kal Pen, if you will. He did not hesitate.

“Let’s sell that. We can go in on that together. I’m not opposed.”

What He Actually Thinks

Penn is careful about his policy credentials. He worked in the Obama White House on public engagement, not drug policy, and he makes that distinction quickly.

But he has views.

“Of course it should be legal on the federal level,” he says. “You have all these states that have legalized it for medicinal or recreational purposes, and if it’s not federally recognized, there are all sorts of challenges with the banking system and taxation. It would just be a lot easier.”

Cannabis, he points out, has something almost nothing else in American politics has right now. Consensus.

“We can’t even agree on getting healthcare,” he adds. “But there’s more agreement on cannabis.”

Why the U.S. still has no federal medical cannabis framework, despite more than 70 countries having one, is the sort of question that hangs differently when you’re asking someone who once worked inside the White House. Penn does not pretend to have some grand insider answer.

“Just as an average dude who has suspicions, sort of like everybody else,” he admits, “it’s probably a combination of stigma, Americans not being great at leaning into science all the time, and the role of big pharma.”

The state-level progress has been real, he says, and easy to underestimate when you’re focused on how slow everything else feels.

“I’m the last person to tell somebody to be patient about something they want and should have. But there’s been a lot of progress that it would be a shame if we didn’t celebrate too.”

On the racial inequities that have long shaped cannabis enforcement, he is just as direct about what he doesn’t know.

“I have absolutely no idea. I’m just not equipped.”

It is a more honest answer than most people who do claim to be equipped ever give.

He points to the organizations actually doing the work, with lawyers and policy teams who understand the terrain. The landscape has changed enough in 20 years, he says, to leave him genuinely hopeful. People in elected office who came up in a different era. Decriminalization. Recreational legalization. Progress that looked impossible not long ago.

Cheech, Finally

Jimmy John’s launched its Dream Rotation menu this month as a 4/20 campaign, tapping celebrities known to partake to design their ideal post-session meal. The lineup includes Cheech Marin, Amanda Batula and Skylar Gisondo. Penn got a toasted Beach Club, no cheese, horseradish sauce and salt and vinegar chips. Cheech got the Italian Night Club. The whole thing leans into the joke without flinching, which for a national sandwich chain in 2026 feels either overdue or perfectly timed, depending on how long you’ve been watching cannabis inch into the mainstream.

Penn joined for two reasons. He thought it was funny. And Cheech Marin was going to be in it.

“I saw that Cheech was going to be in it and I was like, oh man, we’ve never met,” he says. “Which is crazy because people have used our movie franchises in the same paragraph, the same sentence.”

They finally met on set shooting the commercial. Two of the most referenced names in cannabis cinema, meeting for the first time on the set of a sandwich commercial. It is both ridiculous and overdue.

A major national brand doing this openly, and this playfully, around 4/20 would have been harder to imagine 15 years ago. That was part of the appeal.

“What’s their munchie goal? What’s their journey?” he says, and means it. “I just thought that was so fun.”

It Was a Joke. Sort Of.

Penn’s contribution to the campaign video involves a gym session at 4:20 a.m., some light reading and a very specific sandwich ritual. He hates explaining jokes, he says, but here goes.

“I just thought it would be really funny, the idea that somebody gets up to celebrate 4/20 but then just makes it a normal day,” he says. “That was the first layer.”

The second layer is the real one. Most people, he says, still go to work, go to the gym and live their lives. The lazy stoner stereotype was always simpler than the people inside it. And Harold & Kumar, whatever else it was, understood that.

“It’s stoners who come over and they’re like, ‘Thank you. Finally, a movie where the guy’s a banker and a doctor.’”

Getting Older, or Too Good at the Brand

At one point, the conversation drifted to the gap between public image and real-life habit. Penn, characteristically, turned the question into a better one.

“Do you think that means we’re just getting older or do you think we’re too good at our brands?”

He has thought about this. The Hopkins comparison is how he works it out. Hopkins does not get offered free meat. Penn gets offered joints in every corner of the world. Which probably means he and Cho were just that convincing.

As for cannabis and his creative process, he is clear: not connected. Some writers swear by it.

“Good for you,” he says, with zero condescension. “I feel like everybody has their process.”

Kindergarten Rules

The Dream Rotation eating sequence has its own logic, Penn says.

“You want the sweet and savory. You don’t just want them once. You want them repeatedly in an alternating order,” he says. “There’s a thing in a lot of cultures where when somebody leaves the house they’re given a small sweet as a good omen. Would it kill you to have a little bite of the sweet before dinner?”

On puff or pass, there is no hesitation.

“Your guest should come first,” he says. “If you have 20 people over and you’re offering somebody a joint, you better have enough for everybody. That’s just kindergarten.”

Beyond Cheech, his ideal session would include Snoop Dogg. Snoop invited him to his 50th birthday party and the setup has clearly stayed with him.

“He had a regular bar where the signature cocktail was a gin and juice,” Penn says. “But then there was also a weed bar.”

“Knowing how to take care of your guests and knowing your brand. That was such a highlight.”

Anthony Hopkins never got the free meat. Kal Penn got Cheech, Snoop and a weed bar.

Not the worst version of typecasting.

<p>The post Kal Penn Knows Exactly Why People Keep Offering Him Weed first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Kal Penn Knows Exactly Why People Keep Offering Him Weed appeared first on Paradise Found.

GÜD Essence CEO Jasmine Johnson has been building a Black woman-led cannabis company in Florida since 2016. In an exclusive interview with High Times, she breaks down what equity in this market actually looks like in practice, and what it has cost her to find out.

“I’ve been involved in this process since 2016,” says Jasmine Johnson.

She says it the way people say things they have had to make peace with. Not bitterly. Not defeated. Just clearly, the way you state a fact that has become so familiar it no longer surprises you.

Johnson is the CEO of GÜD Essence, a Black woman-led cannabis company and one of the few in Florida positioned to operate as a licensed MMTC. A Miami native, she launched her first business at 18, co-founded Crescendo Jazz & Blues Lounge, a South Florida cultural institution that hosted more than 300 events, and has managed over $200 million in assets across cannabis, real estate and hospitality. She holds degrees from Florida A&M University and Florida International University and has built research partnerships with universities alongside her dispensary infrastructure.

None of that made Florida’s system easier.

Nearly a decade in, she has one operational dispensary in Clearwater, more locations in development, a cultivation and processing campus under construction and a purchase agreement tied to a notice of intent to award a license, with certain components still pending regulatory approval. Along the way: a 750-page application, a $150,000 filing fee, a two-year wait and no award. A key partner who withdrew just before an ownership change submission. Court rulings that kept extending already extended timelines.

“The average entrepreneur cannot sustain a decade-long timeline based on uncertainty,” she tells High Times.

The Gap Between the Story and the System

Florida talks about equity in cannabis the way most regulated markets talk about equity: at the licensing stage, in the language of opportunity and access, in the framing of a door being opened.

Johnson has been through that door. She knows what’s on the other side.

“Equity is often marketed at the licensing stage,” she says, “but the real challenge begins after. There’s a narrative around ‘opportunity,’ but in reality, the market favors operators with deep capital reserves, political relationships and existing infrastructure. Without those, equity becomes more symbolic than functional.”

That gap between the marketing and the mechanics is where GÜD Essence has had to operate. No institutional backing. No political shortcuts. Instead, Johnson leveraged roughly $10.3 million in equity from her family’s real estate portfolio, structured retail leases to shift buildout costs to landlords and built with a discipline that leaves no room for the kind of inefficiency better-funded operators absorb without thinking about it.

“Where others can absorb inefficiencies,” she says, “we’ve had to build with precision. Every dollar, every decision, every timeline matters.”

What It Actually Takes

Florida’s MMTC licensing process requires full vertical integration from the start: cultivation, processing and retail all at once, before a single dollar comes in. Timelines shift without warning. Approvals come slowly. Capital drains steadily.

“You’re investing millions before you generate a single dollar,” she says, “with no guarantee of when approvals will come.”

The system, she argues, underestimates what entry actually costs and what survival actually demands. Minority entrepreneurs typically enter without institutional backing, and the structure doesn’t account for that gap.

“It’s not just about getting a license,” she says. “It’s about having the resources to survive long enough to use it.”

She is direct about the low points. Multiple moments when the rational calculus pointed toward stopping. A filing that went nowhere. A partner who walked. Rulings that kept the finish line moving.

“What keeps me going is the long-term vision and responsibility to build something that creates access and opportunity beyond just my company,” she says. “That purpose outweighs the short-term challenges.”

What Florida Gets Wrong

If Florida were serious about diverse ownership, Johnson has a list.

Reduce the barriers to entry. Create pathways for phased growth instead of requiring full vertical integration upfront. Fix the timelines. Improve regulatory efficiency. Rethink the structural assumptions that make the whole system hostile to independent operators without institutional capital.

“The system underestimates the true cost of entry and survival,” she says.

She also points past the state level entirely. Florida’s current framework is too narrow in its focus on select cannabinoids and too slow to incorporate research. GÜD Essence is developing products targeting chronic pain, diabetes and other serious health conditions. The market she is building toward is more clinical and more ambitious than what Florida’s system currently accommodates.

“Florida has an opportunity to modernize its framework,” she says. “We are especially committed to developing products that support conditions like chronic pain, diabetes and other serious health challenges.”

Still Building

GÜD Essence today has one operational dispensary in Clearwater, with locations in development in Orlando, Jacksonville and Titusville. The cultivation and processing campus is moving forward. Johnson is still in it, still building, still working toward a version of this market that looks less like the one she entered in 2016.

What people outside Florida most misunderstand, she says, is simple: the capital required, the time required and the commitment required are not what anyone advertises when they talk about cannabis equity.

“This is not a market where you can move quickly or test concepts,” she says. “It requires full commitment upfront, with significant risk and delayed return.”

Nearly a decade in, Jasmine Johnson is still here. Still building. Still waiting for Florida to catch up to the story it keeps telling about itself.

<p>The post She Paid $150,000 for a Florida Cannabis License and Got Nothing. Then She Found Another Way In. first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post She Paid $150,000 for a Florida Cannabis License and Got Nothing. Then She Found Another Way In. appeared first on Paradise Found.

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.

<p>The post Bam Margera: ‘Weed Does Not Lead To Other Drugs. It Leads To Fucking Carpentry.’ first appeared on High Times.</p>

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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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The AEW star gets candid about loss, love, life on the road, and the role cannabis has played in helping her stay grounded through it all.

There’s nothing subtle about Marina Shafir.

I learned this last week after sitting down with the former mixed martial artist turned wrestling icon, who cheerfully sparked one up while we discussed her life, her career, and of course, her love for the plant.

The daughter of professional power lifter Veniamin Shafir, Marina Shafir began her journey at six years old, when her parents signed her up for Judo.  

While most girls her age were crafting and taking piano lessons, Shafir was launching opponents over her shoulder and perfecting her rear naked chokes.

Even at a young age, she was a badass. And when she talks about her early years in combat sports, it’s clear she’s proud of the dedication and work she put in to go from after-school Judo classes to one of the most distinctive figures in pro fighting and sports entertainment.

But it was also quite apparent that nothing – not even getting paid to beat the shit out of people on television – gives her greater joy than talking about her family. 

Fighting, Family, and Weed

Mother to a 9-year-old son and married to AEW pro wrestler Chris Lindsey (a.k.a. Roderick Strong), Shafir perked up when I asked her about her husband, with whom she both works and trains.

“He’s such an amazing partner. I love that I can speak my love language with my husband while training together. That’s a different level of trust. He understands who I am, and I understand who he is,” Shafir said.

Indeed, a strong partnership with her husband makes her very hectic life possible.  Balancing work and family life when you’re constantly on the road is no easy task.  

Shafir and her husband, Chris Lindsey

Shafir tells me that to balance her work and family life, she just takes it one week at a time.

“There’s so much going on outside of my bubble that I can’t control. Dealing with injuries. It’s a lot. So I take it one week at a time,” she said.

“We really try hard to carve out time for our son, too. Soccer practice, going to the farmers market, and just making time for family,” Shafir added.

While Shafir’s family is clearly her priority, her passion for her job remains strong.  Make no mistake: she was not hesitant to express her love for her job with AEW, too. 

“I love a good flex. I’m not talking about a physical flex, but like an energy flex. That’s why I love my job so much,” Shafir said.

“I’ve always had an infatuation with martial arts. I was able to fall in love with judo and MMA, and now something completely branched out from those things. It’s action theatre. We get to tell our stories in a physical way,” she said.

“My character is a part of me. It’s always been a part of me,” Shafir said.

Another part of Shafir is her love for the plant. And it goes much deeper than just getting a quick buzz.

“I tried weed when I was in my late teens, but I was more of a drinker back then. I grew up around Russians, and my family is very Slavic and European. Every weekend, everyone was drinking and smoking cigarettes. That was the dessert for the week. But when I was 23, my dad died, and soon after that, I moved out to California to live with my best friend, Ronda [the first American woman to win an Olympic medal in judo and former UFC Women’s Bantamweight champion, Ronda Rousey], to train and take martial arts seriously. That’s when I really started smoking weed,” Shafir said.

“It was actually hilarious because as soon as we got to LA, she gave me this chocolate bar. I didn’t know how much to take, and I ended up eating the whole thing. It was 100 milligrams. I was supposed to start training the next day. I was out for three days,” she said.

“So I slept it off, chugged a lot of water, and after that, slowly started smoking small amounts of weed. Eventually, it just became a natural part of my day. And then I quit drinking, which was a good thing,” Shafir said.

“I was able to work with a lot of really smart people in neurology, and they would tell me that alcohol will wreck you and that maybe I should stop drinking if I’m going to get punched in the head. So I quit drinking. And weed helped make that possible,” she said.

“It actually helped me grieve a bit, too, after my dad died. When I moved away from my hometown, it was nice to be away from it all. And then I just got to feel my relationship with my dad away from home. A lot of that happened while I was high, and I’m so glad that it did. My dad was a huge part of my life,” Shafir said.

Veniamin Shafir

While Shafir had no problem opening up and showing a side that most people would likely never see, don’t get it twisted.  She’s still a savage competitor with a strong warrior mentality.  

Everything she’s achieved today can be equated to her undeniable work ethic and her ability to effectively fight through some of the toughest physical, mental, and emotional battles of her life.  The fact that weed played some role in her success just makes her story that much more fascinating.   

Overall, Marina Shafir is a no-nonsense, weed-smoking athlete who adores her family, loves her job, and comes across as far more grounded than her wrestling persona might suggest.

<p>The post AEW’s Marina Shafir Hits Hard, Smokes Weed, and Would Rather Talk About Family first appeared on High Times.</p>

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Before New Constellations started turning heads with dreamy synth-pop and soft-focus heat, Harlee Case was already building a different kind of scene in Portland: femme, weird, welcoming, and very, very stoned.

“Females first. In cannabis there are plenty of heady bros doing things, we wanted to create a space for women and one where they felt safe to fully express themselves,” says Harlee Case, the co-founder and former Cosmic Creative director of Portland’s now-defunct but still fondly remembered Ladies of Paradise and its Lady Jays pre-roll line, now one half of New Constellations, the band carrying some of that same color, softness and emotional charge into music.

That line gets right to it.

Before cannabis marketers learned how to fake intimacy, before every brand with a pastel palette started pretending it had built “community,” there were people in weed culture actually doing the work. In Portland, for a stretch, Harlee Case and the Ladies of Paradise crew were among them. They were not selling sterile empowerment copy. They were making actual spaces. Rooms where women felt safe. Parties that felt like portals. Shoots that looked like weed had finally been handed over to girls who liked fashion, fantasy, wigs, glitter, color, softness and smoke in equal measure.

What they built did not come from trend forecasting. It came from a hole in the culture.

“The evolution of Ladies of Paradise mirrored the needs and desires of women in the industry,” Case says. “When we first began, legalization and the recreational market was new and while there were a ton of women behind the scenes working, the narrative was still very masculine and mostly ‘heady’ culture. Ladies of Paradise carved a space in the industry for women who didn’t subscribe to the stereotypical vibe that there was back then.”

That mattered. It still does.

Because for all the talk about cannabis becoming mainstream, the early legal era was full of stale visual language and tired assumptions about who weed was for and how it was supposed to look. A lot of “culture” was still coded male. A lot of cool was still filtered through glass art machismo, grow-room seriousness, and a kind of studied roughness that left plenty of people out.

Also read: What Do Stoner Girls Carry in Their Purse? We’re Here, We’re Hot, We’re High AF

Ladies of Paradise walked in wearing platform boots and said: no thanks.

“Through being our authentic, fashion-forward, wild selves, we gave women permission to do the same and normalized cannabis for the girlie pops,” Case says.

That sentence may sound playful. It’s also a mission statement.

Originally, Ladies of Paradise was supposed to something else. Then real life intervened, which is often where the good stuff starts.

“Originally, Ladies of Paradise was going to be a blog and in meeting our girl Leighana, we decided to host a launch party for the blog, it was at that moment it clicked that this is needed.”

The thing they made was never just a product line. It was a visual language. A social code. A permission slip. And like most real scenes, it sharpened itself through nights out before it ever turned into a business model.

“Our Cowboys vs. Aliens party unintentionally became the blueprint,” Case says. “Crazy and fun themes with weed aplenty and free to all guests, these theme parties became the catalyst that continued to push Ladies of Paradise forward and into the limelight which led us to more photoshoots and eventually into branding, marketing, event planning, and various other creative endeavors for cannabis companies and accessory brands.”

That blueprint did not begin and end with aesthetics. The looks were part of it, sure. So were the wigs, the colors, the gowns on farms, the feeling that cannabis no longer had to be framed through the same stale masculine lens. But what made it real was the part that could not be mood-boarded.

At the center of the whole thing were a few rules.

“Females first.”

“Genuine connection and making people feel seen.”

“Fun. Have fun, wear a wig, don’t take life too seriously.”

That’s Harlee’s own shorthand for what mattered most when Ladies of Paradise was in full swing. Not optimization. Not audience segmentation. Not over-polished lifestyle aspiration. Safety. Visibility. Play.

And when it came to measuring whether an event actually worked, the metric was not some fake notion of “engagement.”

“Feedback and messages from the community,” she says. “Connection was key for us. Making people feel seen and building an actual community, not just throwing an event to make money, but genuinely wanting to uplift women in the industry at a time when they needed that support.”

That distinction hits harder now because weed has spent the last few years getting very good at faking sincerity. Plenty of brands know how to borrow the look of femme culture. Far fewer know how to build the conditions that make people feel held inside it.

Case has a clean read on the difference.

Her green flags for genuinely femme-forward culture are direct and unsentimental: “Transparent action: not just saying ‘we support…’ but taking action on the beliefs stated and being transparent about those actions.” Also, “Connection with the leaders: Direct connection with those hosting the event or holding the space?” And maybe the biggest one: “The people in the space. Is the space actually a safe and sacred container when you attend.”

The red flags are just as sharp: “Over hyped marketing and tokenism that has no substance or action behind their statements.” “Caring about aesthetics only but not working with organizations or activists within the femme space.” And one line that could probably be applied to half the market: “Lux packaging and shitty actual products.”

There it is. Whole TED Talk, six words.

The point here is not that Harlee once worked in cannabis and now makes music. That would be too small, too neat, too LinkedIn. The more interesting story is that she learned how culture actually works in weed, then carried those lessons somewhere else.

With New Constellations, that same emotional and visual instinct shows up again, only now in song form. In the band’s pastel universe. In the soft electric glow of its imagery. In the warmth of its fan connection. In the refusal to build at a distance.

“I think I got to flex my visionary muscles,” Case says. “Having larger-than-life dreams and learning to assemble strong teams around me that I knew could aid me at getting there. I’ve always chosen to hire friends who had talent over professionals who had experience. It’s always made each leg of the journey that much more fun and worthwhile because I’ve always worked with my best friends and learned alongside them as we accomplished goals.”

That is not only sentimental. It is structural.

A lot of the same people from the LOP orbit are still there, now helping power New Constellations behind the scenes. Case lays it out plainly.

“Behind LOP was truly a group of best friends giving their absolute all to make a business they loved work,” she says. “Through it all I’m most proud of the work we did with each other on ourselves and our relationships to each other in really really challenging situations. We built a life long relationship to each other. I still live with one of the LOP girls, Alisha, and Keke and Leighana are on the NC team. Keke Browne is basically the creative director of the visual part of the band and Leighana has been tour managing, book keeping, and a ton of admin for us. Lucky for Jade she’s off being a mom in Costa Rica but still flies in for shows and will always be one of our biggest supporters. At heart we will always be LOP girls.”

That may be the truest quote in the whole interview.

Because beneath all the color and softness and feminine magic, the real engine was work. Admin. Logistics. Bookkeeping. Team trust. Fair pay. Showing up. Keeping the lights on.

“Keeping the lights on. Constantly pivoting with the market to stay compliant. Hustling for new clients and making sure we were doing everything legal and compliant by that specific state and their laws. There was so much behind the scenes always.”

So yes, the aesthetic mattered. The glitter mattered. The costumes mattered. The dream mattered. But none of it floated. It was built by women grinding, improvising, paying collaborators first, and trying to preserve joy without becoming a parody of it.

“We would always pay collaborators, creators, and influencers first, before ourselves, every time,” Case says. “This meant not getting paid personally sometimes but this was crucial to us.”

That ethic still echoes in New Constellations, a project that seems to understand something a lot of musicians and weed brands alike forget: if people feel the room was built for them, they come back. If they feel seen, they tell their friends. If they trust your taste, they trust your next move.

Case says the band is gearing up for a first album, North American touring, Europe, bigger rooms, bigger live production, more moving parts. But the core ambition is still emotional.

“We like our fans to leave with hope,” she says. “We don’t want to tell them where to spend that hope but just encourage them to have it and do what they please with it.”

That feels like the right ending, and maybe the right thesis too.

Harlee Case helped build a corner of cannabis culture where women could arrive loud, weird, feminine, high, safe and fully themselves. Now she’s doing something similar through music. Same instinct. Same architecture. Different medium.

First, she helped weed get prettier. More open. More alive.

Now she’s teaching music how to feel like that too.

<p>The post Before Weed Learned To Fake Female Empowerment, Harlee Case Made It Real. Now She’s Giving It A Soundtrack. first appeared on High Times.</p>

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Duke Rodriguez runs Ultra Health and is running for governor of New Mexico as a Republican. In a moment when “rescheduling” is still only a federal directive, not a finished reality, he argues cannabis can shift from a partisan fight to a practical test of governance: rules people can follow, honest labeling, real oversight, and a legal market that can actually compete with the illicit one.

Tensions are mounting for America’s cannabis industry as banking blunders, inconsistent testing standards, labyrinth laws, and illicit markets engulf the industry in clouds of chaos and confusion.

Fortunately, the paradox of U.S. cannabis laws hasn’t stopped the industry from progressing, with some industry projections putting the market at almost $45 billion in 2025. Groundbreaking figures aside, America’s cannabis industry represents a contradictory landscape, promises versus paralysis.

As red states start launching medical programs, conservative voters are shifting stance and federal agencies quietly embrace forthcoming change in unpredictable territory. Maneuvering what feels like an endless maze demands unique perspectives from veterans, seniors, industry reformers, and conservatives.

Keen to get an insider’s perspective, I spoke to Ultra Health CEO and Republican candidate for governor of New Mexico, Duke Rodriguez, about his highs, lows, and beliefs that America is fast-approaching a tipping point in how it views cannabis.

The Rise of Unexpected Voices in the Legalization Movement

Gone are the days when legalization was driven solely by progressives. Today, the complex world of cannabis is increasingly shaped by pragmatic conservative voices like Rodriguez, who believes the industry’s future depends on regulatory consistency, public trust, and economic fairness.

“Rules that protect patients and consumers, reward responsible operators, and ensure cannabis is treated like the serious healthcare and economic sector it has become,” Rodriguez told High Times.

In December 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to pursue moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III. The order did not change the fact that the United States’ multi-billion-dollar cannabis industry remains federally illegal. The bizarre daily reality is that thousands of legal businesses have sprouted from a state-by-state medley of 40+ programs operating devoid of national standards.

“There’s a lot of hurdles to overcome to get there, but the future is bright!” Rodriguez wrote on Facebook following the executive order.

Modern cannabis needs concrete infrastructure intertwined with public health safeguards, legitimacy, and long-term sustainability, principles that mirror Rodriguez’s broader priorities as he runs for governor of New Mexico as a Republican: making government work, protecting patients and workers, and bringing predictability and accountability to systems that affect people’s daily lives.

Why Conservative States Are Quietly Becoming Cannabis Strongholds

The new right-of-center argument for cannabis reform is a hazy patchwork weaving elements of medical autonomy and limited government with personal choice and free-market opportunity, beliefs held strong by conservatives like Rodriguez, who has evolved from Medicaid reformer to cannabis industry leader. Formerly serving as Cabinet Secretary under Gary Johnson, he’s no stranger to the world of politics and has even been endorsed by the former New Mexico governor himself.

“Good governance means creating rules people can realistically follow. When policy starts with human outcomes rather than political labels, it brings people together,” Rodriguez said.

Amid the rise of red-state medical programs, more seniors are dabbling in cannabis over opioids. Meanwhile, veterans passionately advocate for cannabis treatment options and rural communities reap new job rewards. On the whole, the old anti-drug narrative is diffusing like smoke in the wind, with economic arguments for improved tax revenue, job creation, agricultural opportunity, and reduced enforcement costs rapidly replacing moral panic.

“Conservatives are becoming more vocal about cannabis reform because the facts have caught up with the politics. We see that regulated cannabis supports patient care, public safety, and local economies, while reducing black-market activity. It’s no longer an ideological issue. It’s a practical one,” Rodriguez added.

Honing in on the power shift within the Republican Party, younger conservatives overwhelmingly favor reform, with a survey from Pew Research Center revealing that 57% of Republicans aged 18-29 support legalization. (1) Plus, recent analysis from Pew Research Center found that 43% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents favor legalization for medical and recreational use, indicating that further legislative change is likely on the horizon. (2)

Understanding The State-Level Regulatory Crisis

Inconsistencies in ever-shifting state policies, among the many consequences of federal paralysis, are constantly etching flaws into an industry where thought leaders, business owners, and healthcare experts crave clarity, professionalism, and stability. As leaders steer the shift from stigma-driven laws to science-rooted regulations, policy changes through 2025 created fresh compliance demands and new investment opportunities across multiple markets.

“Families see healthcare choices. Cannabis doesn’t ask people to abandon their values — it allows them to apply those values in a practical, humane way. That’s rare in modern politics,” Rodriguez said. His gubernatorial campaign has been backed by former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson.

Regardless of the clear progress that’s already taken place, unclear rules are still provoking corruption or favoritism, while the illicit market is forcing law-abiding growers and businesses to work harder if they want to stay afloat. Regulatory overreach is making underground farms all the more tempting, while steep taxes make legal product prices soar higher and loopholes discourage operators from playing by the rules.

“When compliance becomes more expensive than innovation, the legal market suffers and the illicit market thrives. Good governance means creating rules people can realistically follow,” Rodriguez said during our conversation.

Shrinking the illicit market demands clear, fair regulation, enforced consistently. In a hypothetical (and hopeful) scenario where the cannabis black market is completely stamped out, billions of dollars could be funneled back into legal economies, shifting demand away from unregulated channels, enhancing medical safety, and uniting Americans through a multitude of shared economic benefits.

It’s clear that the misshapen cannabis industry’s destructive dents need mending sooner rather than later. The following crisis factors are just a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things:

Overregulated Entry, Underregulated Protection

Hopeful business owners in some states are stifled by stiff entry barriers, whereas others implement loose systems that enable “bad actors” to sell non-compliant products. Then there’s the black markets that prosper under both extremes. By some estimates, illicit sales still represent the majority of U.S. cannabis commerce in several major states, with untested product and unpredictable cannabinoid levels remaining part of the risk.

Labels Don’t Always Match Lab Results

Consumer confidence is noticeably damaged by the absence of nationwide standards across the U.S. cannabis industry, where labs go head-to-head instead of joining forces. With robust leadership in place, the U.S. can implement strict national testing and proper packaging and labeling criteria. Until that happens, consumers may be left dealing with widespread labeling inaccuracies. A study published in the journal Scientific Reports in 2025 found substantial mismatches between labeled and measured cannabinoid content in sampled flower products. (3)

There’s No “Level Playing Field”

Distorted by outside political pressure, the U.S. cannabis market has long been warped by deep allegations of corruption and bribery. Discrimination taints the unfair and biased licensing system, leaving many players on the sidelines with no chance of rising to the top ranks of favored participants. The obvious lack of consistent federal rules is creating a volatile landscape, but states could maintain autonomy while meeting minimum standards with the right approach.

Barriers to Research and Medical Data Collection

A functional national framework is starved without science-based policy, simplified licensing processes, and financially attainable compliance requirements. Given that cannabis is still legally “taboo”, researchers are left tugging at whatever roots they can find to prove the plant’s medical credibility. Inconsistent and limited research is inevitably delaying policy progress and causing mixed feelings: cautious physicians, wary consumers, and hesitant insurers.

Banking Issues and Cash-only Operations

The recent rescheduling order will likely reduce perceived risk for banks and investors over time, ultimately improving cash flow, boosting profitability, and supporting jobs. However, billions in cannabis revenue indicate lost federal tax income, ultimately creating regulatory contradictions and pressuring U.S. lawmakers to reform federal law in a way that shields state economies, boosts banking access, and sustains economic competitiveness.

These are just a few of the convictions held by Rodriguez, who says he plans to push cannabis regulation to the forefront of his campaign for governor of New Mexico. He decided to run after watching the state become what he claims is “revenue-rich” but“results-poor”, convinced that the state needs leadership focused less on ideology and more on execution, outcomes, and trust in government.

Q&A: Duke Rodriguez on the Future of Regulation, Oversight, and National Policy

For decades, Duke Rodriguez has lived at the crossroads where two drastically different worlds collide: healthcare reform and cannabis freedom. Raised from humble beginnings in California, he moved to NM aged 14 and got his hands dirty as a hard worker from the very beginning.

At age 38, Rodriguez launched his first startups, laying the groundwork to plant Ultra Health’s first seed a little over a decade later in 2010. Since then, the gubernatorial candidate has been praised, scrutinized, underestimated, and more recently analyzed under the media spotlight as he runs for governor of New Mexico.

To some Republicans, Rodriguez is admired for his trailblazer mentality. To many in the cannabis community, he’s living proof that change can emerge from the most unexpected corners. And to the businessman himself, his journey revolves around one thing: giving people the freedom to choose their own path when it comes to plant-based medicine.

Below, Duke speaks with the candor and conviction of someone who has lived through the battles and comes out believing the movement is bigger than politics. Here’s how our conversation went down:

1. Duke, your career history is impressive. How would you say your background in Medicaid reform and healthcare influenced your approach to the cannabis industry?

“Medicaid reform taught me hard truths – mainly that government systems are slow to adapt, even when people’s health is on the line. When I saw patients using cannabis because nothing else worked, I realized the system needed to evolve.

Cannabis is medicine. People don’t turn to it for luxury. They turn to it for relief, dignity, and control over their own health. My healthcare roots pushed me to take cannabis seriously long before it was fashionable.”

2. Based on your success as a business owner in a highly regulated industry, what important lessons can you share about navigating government regulations while growing a business?

“Regulation didn’t scare me – inconsistency did. The cannabis movement has always been full of people who fought through paranoia, stigma, and government indifference.

I just tried to build a company that honored that struggle. Clear rules, transparent processes, and no favoritism. We grew because we respected the community and refused to cut corners.”

3. How will the skills and experience you’ve gained in both the private and public sectors strengthen your role as governor?

“I’ve seen what happens when bureaucrats try to solve problems from a windowless room, and I’ve also felt the pressure of making payroll as a business owner. Those worlds collide in cannabis.

To move this industry forward, you need someone who understands both the people trying to start a dispensary and the systems that could shut it down.”

4. How do you envision cannabis slotting into the conservative agenda, such as in states where the party remains divided?

“Freedom is a conservative value. Choice is a conservative value. Keeping the government out of your private decisions is a conservative value.

Cannabis doesn’t divide the conservative movement – the old stigma does. The more Republicans hear the real stories — veterans sleeping through the night, seniors cutting back on opioids, families staying out of jail — the more they realize the movement aligns perfectly with conservative principles.”

5. How can a Republican governor approach cannabis regulation in a way that considers industry interests, including public health and safety?

“We can protect consumers without turning cannabis into a political toy. High testing standards, honest labeling, real science – these things make the industry stronger.

People forget: the old prohibition model never protected anyone. Responsible regulation does.”

6. What obstacles have you overcome as a conservative advocating for cannabis legalization and reform, and how have you accomplished those feats?

“The stigma. The suspicion. And honestly? The sideways looks from my own party. But I didn’t walk into cannabis to win a popularity contest. I walked into it because the people using cannabis — patients, veterans, workers — deserved someone who was willing to stand in the fire with them.”

7. You say that the government shouldn’t pick winners or losers. Please elaborate on this in the context of cannabis regulation, and kindly explain how you would ensure a level playing field for businesses in the space?

“When certain companies get special treatment, the whole system rots. A level playing field builds trust. Cannabis already has enough challenges without political favorites and backroom deals.”

8. As someone who built a well-respected company in the cannabis space, what cannabis policy mistakes do you think the state and federal governments are making?

“Federal paralysis. State overregulation. And too many politicians who pretend cannabis doesn’t exist while communities and businesses carry the weight. We need a consistent national framework that respects science, encourages entrepreneurship, and honors the human stories behind legalization.”

9. In your opinion, how can conservative principles like free-market capitalism and limited government be applied to cannabis regulation, and what does that look like in practice?

“Limited government. Free enterprise. Individual liberty. These aren’t slogans – they’re a blueprint for how to regulate cannabis with common sense. The market thrives when the government sets the guardrails, then steps aside.”

10. Cannabis legalization is a divisive issue within the Republican Party. What do you think is the biggest misconception that Republicans have about cannabis, and how would you address it?

“The biggest misconception? That cannabis in 2025 looks like cannabis in 1975. The science is different. The needs are different. And the people using it are your neighbors, your coworkers, your parents.”

11. Considering your experience in the healthcare and cannabis sectors, how do you respond to concerns about cannabis use affecting public health? Do you think industry regulation and innovation can effectively address these concerns?

“We answer those concerns with knowledge, not fear. Today we have precise dosing, rigorous testing, and real medical data. Regulation and innovation is how we protect public health – not by pretending the plant doesn’t exist.”

12. Do you see cannabis as a tool for addressing broader issues like criminal justice reform or opioid addiction? If so, how would you expand on those goals as a potential governor?

“Yes, cannabis can help us tackle bigger issues. Criminal justice reform. Opioid dependency. Racial equity. Economic development. This plant has been part of the problem only because the law made it so. It can be part of the solution too – if we let it.”

13. You are a Republican who is publicly embracing cannabis – do you notice a generational shift occurring within the party when it comes to issues like drug policy and social reform?

“There’s a quiet revolution happening. Younger conservatives overwhelmingly support legalization. Older conservatives are seeing the medicinal benefits up close. The ground is shifting right under the party’s feet. We’re moving toward an era where cannabis isn’t a wedge – it’s a bridge.”

14. How do you plan on capitalizing on your position as governor to ensure that cannabis businesses succeed, while also protecting consumers and communities?

“I’d build a system that rewards good actors, protects consumers, supports communities, and doesn’t shove small operators aside. If cannabis succeeds, New Mexico succeeds. And vice versa.”

15. Looking to the future, what role do you see cannabis playing in the political future of the United States, especially as more states consider legalization?

“We’re reaching a national tipping point. You can feel it – culturally, economically, generationally. Cannabis is no longer a counterculture. It’s becoming common sense. The states that embrace this moment will own the future of an industry that’s only getting bigger.”

Capitalizing on Cannabis as a Vehicle for Larger National Reform

Cannabis legalization can serve as a stimulus for broader national reform since it combines law, economics, civil rights, public health, and governance. Building an evergreen industry that continuously thrives and benefits everyone depends on various factors, including:

• Criminal Justice Reform

The subject of criminal justice reform stands at the forefront of larger national cannabis reform. Research suggests that cannabis-related arrests sank in states with decriminalization and legalization laws. Currently, there is no evidence that relaxing cannabis restrictions inflates criminal activity rates, presenting an opportunity to redress decades of disproportionate enforcement. (4)

• Opioid Crisis Mitigation

Cannabis reform may offer harm reduction benefits by replacing addictive opioid prescriptions with safer alternatives. Studies indicate that cannabis could be a powerful tool for tackling the nation’s growing dependence on opioids, with the number of opioid-related deaths plummeting from 17,029 in 2017 to 13,026 in the year 2023. (5)

• Economic Development Across States

States are collectively generating billions in cannabis-related tax revenue due to job creation, agricultural expansion, and surges in tourism and hospitality associated with the U.S. cannabis industry. Per a 2023 report from the Tax Foundation, nationwide cannabis legalization could generate $8.5 billion annually. (6)

• Equity & Social Justice

Cannabis reform helps social equity through the crafting of policies that support local communities, while simultaneously wiping old records clean, keeping people out of jail, avoiding corporate takeover, presenting business opportunities for all races, and reinvesting tax dollars into places most affected by prejudiced drug laws. (7)

New Mexico as a Case Study for the Future

Figures published by the Cannabis Control Division show that both adult-use and medical cannabis sales have exceeded $1.9 billion since cannabis was legalized across New Mexico in April 2022. With a rapidly growing state market, the landlocked state demonstrates the epitome of great potential, opportunity, and volatility.

New Mexico could become a model or a warning, with its success or failure revealing a lot about the national picture. Rodriguez foresees only one outcome: a thriving market that states can closely monitor and mirror, so long as the state has leaders capable of balancing both government and business. Clarity and consistency will determine the future of cannabis as a bipartisan issue in a divided country.

“If New Mexico can show that cannabis policy can be practical, compassionate, and economically sound — without ideological excess — we can help lead a national conversation focused on solutions, not sides.”

Federal agencies can’t ignore the industry forever, as cannabis rapidly becomes normalized in all areas of life, including wellness, medicine, and recreation. The key is to shield small businesses while promoting competition through incentives for innovation, streamlined tax structure, and guardrails against monopolization.

A Greener Future

Duke Rodriguez’s message is a call for fairness, clarity, and depoliticization on a subject that rises above and beyond party identity. Now, the question is whether the nation can establish a system that fulfills its true potential.

“Cannabis has always been about people who just needed another option,” Rodriguez said. “I saw that in healthcare first. And it changed everything I thought I understood.”

As the industry approaches a critical, pivotal juncture, America can either move in the direction of modernization and lead the global cannabis market, or latch onto old-fashioned policies and trail behind. Federal policy debates are reaching a state of urgency, steered by economic, legal, and regulatory pressures.

The next five years matter more than the next 50; industry maturation is escalating and the future is being written now. SAFE Banking and other reforms remain critical, considering that large-scale, powerful corporations are still smoking out smaller businesses operating in the federally illegal market. Let’s not forget that cannabis grows naturally on our planet and should be fair game for everyone.

There’s no denying that the U.S. cannabis market is facing a structural reset following the administration’s directive to pursue Schedule III, but as we reach America’s tipping point, cultural acceptance is outpacing legal change. It’s time to see cannabis as a unifying political force, not a dividing one.

References:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9543368/

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/03/26/most-americans-favor-legalizing-marijuana-for-medical-recreational-use/

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/08/facts-about-marijuana/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-03854-3

https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/255061.pdf

https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates

https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/state/cannabis-tax-revenue-reform/

<p>The post A Republican Weed CEO Wants To Be Governor. Can Cannabis Be His Bridge Issue? 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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