Another year being weird is in the books, and what an eventful one it’s been! From THCa to Schedule III, our community is jumping through as many loopholes as ever, and with just as many doomsayers out there waiting to yuck our yum. It can be both exhausting and exhilarating at the same damn time.

As usual though, while the doom & gloom may be great for headlines & clicks, the hearts of the diehards beat on. Our demise is continuously overstated – we’re a resilient kind. We continue to find a way.

Over the past year we’ve covered some major ground in our little experiment over here – from fighting bullshit legislation, to sounding the alarm about spray terps, rebranding the term stoner to praising mylar bags – it’s hard to think of any hot button issues we DIDN’T bitch about. We campaigned for small batch, and macrodosing, while asking important questions like ‘can weed bring us closer to god?’ and ‘who raised you fucking people?’. I called many of us addicts, while Matt called those who don’t smoke cops. (Only teasing, he didn’t say that.) But to say we’ve got range, and depth, at this point I’d say that’s a pretty massive understatement. We’re fuckin’ meta, baby. (The adjective, not the company.) It’s crazy to see the legs this lil’ section has developed, and the voices that are now asking to be a part of it – we’re truly just getting started…

But if you remember last year’s recap, I had promised to evolve this section with some new features & assets that I thought would be coming online and well… they didn’t. Instead, some other things happened, and we’ve had to take a different direction, so let’s start there.

What’s going on with High Times?

Now if you’ve been following the news lately you might’ve seen some stories out there starting to count us out, or preying on our demise. I’ve had a lot of articles shared with me over the past few weeks that contained questionable information about the company and our situation, so I figured this was a good medium to set the record straight. I know every person that dislikes the brand or me personally has shared these articles, and celebrated that we’re likely all out of jobs. Well friends, I hate to break it to you, but the truth, as always, is likely going to be much less satisfying than the idea you’ve made up in your head. You’ve got some valid questions and while I don’t have all the answers right now, I’d like to give a little update for all of you wondering what’s up.

Right now, High Times is in the process of a rebirth. While I can’t speak to or for any other area of the High Times enterprise, I can speak to what’s going on in this particular house. As you all know, our media business is an important cornerstone of this industry. Now in its 50th year of operation, the magazine’s voice has been a rallying cry for our culture longer than most of us have been alive, and it’s one many people, including myself, would like to see given the proper love and care it deserves in order for it to continue to bear fruit for the community for many years to come. Because of that, and many other things that actually have very little to do with us, High Times is currently in the process of changing ownership.

What does this mean?

Similar to the acquisition that happened in 2017, sometime in the next few weeks, or months, High Times will be acquired, and thus have a new owner. We are in a process right now where court appointed representatives are studying what we do & packaging up our business to offer it to potentially interested parties who may want to develop or operate it going forward. This is company-wide, and every asset and business area we have is being analyzed. 

Now, our media business has operated independently from the other business areas forever, but it is possible, and honestly likely, that this side of High Times will be separated from some of the other assets our former leadership amassed over the past few years. I know that this may seem like a loss for the brand, but in reality optimizing our lean business model in order to ensure we can grow and prosper for years to come is essential for every business, and it’s the media side’s biggest priority. This is likely a necessary decision for the future of all of our current business areas. Speaking for my team, we all love what we do, and are honored to do it – we simply can not imagine letting this voice fall off into the ether, and we’re doing everything in our power to protect it. While it’s not 100% in our control, I’m feeling pretty good about the future right now, for the first time in a while.

While sure, any change of this magnitude is scary, and uncertain, the truth is that High Times is an incredibly resilient brand. It WANTS to breathe, and grow – it just needs the room to do so. Had you told me 10 years ago High Times would be publishing longer than VICE I probably wouldn’t have believed you, but with all I’ve seen over the past 7 years here it no longer surprises me. I have watched countless people try to hold us down or count us out in my time here, and none have been successful. The brand continually carries on in spite of whatever gets in its way. High Times really is just like the plant we all love so much, it’s a weed – it’ll bloom through whatever cracks of light it gets. And we’re here to prod those little cracks to let some more light in.

Now, while I can’t promise that whoever the new owner is will want to keep me or any of this around, I can tell you my priority is ensuring this team continues on. That the work continues on. What I can promise you, dear reader, is that I will keep doing whatever in my power is best for this business, this brand, this community, and the information that you deserve, no matter what the future brings, or what may happen to my role at this company. I have fought many an executive who thought we could just Chat GPT this work out, and I am not afraid to continue that argument as long as they’ll have me, but we don’t get to control everything… Whatever the case, we’ll find a way forward.

Silver Linings

So with that brief explainer, let’s loop back around to my initial point. 

Because of all that’s been going on the past few months, the growth that I expected to see at the end of last year obviously hasn’t happened – respectfully, our priorities have to shift with the business – but rest assured, we haven’t given up! In fact, in true High Times fashion, we turned those lemons to lemonade, and worked out some new, more cost-effective, ways to get these ideas over the finish line. We even worked out a few kinks to spruce the projects up a bit. While we’re still underwater dealing with this sale, and addressing the very real concerns many of you have raised to us, I am confident that the new model we’ve hypothesized will allow us to create a bunch of that content we’ve been waiting to make for you – no matter who is manning the ship at that point. I don’t want to let too much out of the bag yet, but yes, we have heard all your requests for video content and podcasts, and we’re not too far from the day we’ll get to introduce them to you.

I know you’ve got more questions – and that the road ahead seems long, and tired, but the truth is we’re far closer to many of our goals than we’ve ever been, and we’re all fighting harder than ever. With all the momentum we’ve built over our collective history in this fight, let’s not forget to remember how far we’ve come. We’re doing the things our ancestors thought impossible; it would be silly to give up now. 

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A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Mississippi medical marijuana dispensary owner challenging the state’s ban on cannabis advertising. In the legal action, Clarence Cocroft II, the owner of Tru Source Medical Cannabis, argued that Mississippi’s regulations prohibiting cannabis advertising in any media amounted to unconstitutional censorship of the industry.

But U.S. District Judge Michael P. Mills disagreed with Cocroft and dismissed the lawsuit on Monday. In his ruling, Mills wrote that because the possession of marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, it is not a “lawful activity” that is protected by the U.S. Constitution like some other forms of commercial speech.

Cocroft opened his dispensary in Olive Branch, Mississippi after the state legislature legalized medical marijuana in 2022. In his lawsuit, he argues that he has faced difficulty reaching potential customers because of the state’s ban on advertising by cannabis businesses. 

The judge, however, said that overturning Mississippi’s ban on cannabis advertising would be a “drastic intrusion upon state sovereignty.”

“This is particularly true considering the fact that, by legalizing marijuana to any degree, the Mississippi Legislature has gone further than Congress itself has been willing to go,” Mills wrote in his ruling, according to a report from the Associated Press. “In light of this fact, on what basis would a federal court tell the Mississippi Legislature that it was not entitled to dip its toe into the legalization of marijuana, but, instead, had to dive headfirst into it?”

State Sued Over Advertising Ban

Cocroft is represented by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit libertarian law firm. The lawsuit names the Mississippi Department of Health, Department of Revenue and Alcoholic Beverage Control Bureau as defendants in the legal action.

In the suit, Corcroft maintains that Mississippi’s ban on cannabis advertising prevents him from reaching out to customers via television, radio or print ads. He is even forbidden from placing ads on billboards that he owns. 

The judge ruled that the state cannot prohibit cannabis businesses from displaying products on their websites or from using “appropriate signs” on their businesses. The authority to enact other restrictions, however, lies with the state Health Department, which bans dispensaries from advertising or marketing “in any media.” Corcroft’s legal team says the ban amounts to unconstitutional censorship.

“When Mississippi legalized medical marijuana, it relinquished its power to censor speech by medical marijuana businesses,” said Ari Bargil, an Institute for Justice attorney. “If a product is legal to sell, then it is legal to talk about selling it.”

Corcroft’s suit argues that a current review of cannabis policy by the Biden administration and presidential pardons for low-level federal marijuana offenses constitute a de facto legalization of cannabis. But while the president has pardoned thousands of people who have been federally convicted of marijuana possession, cannabis remains illegal under federal law. As long as marijuana remains a federally controlled substance, the judge ruled, the states are free to pass laws that restrict advertising by cannabis businesses.

“Plaintiffs thus argue that Congress and President Biden have ‘all but’ made the possession of marijuana lawful, which strikes this court as a tacit admission that it still remains illegal under federal law,” Mills wrote.

In a statement released after the judge’s ruling and dismissal of the case, Corcroft said that Mississippi’s ban on cannabis advertising is a violation of the First Amendment rights of legal businesses. He added that he plans to appeal the judge’s ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“I’m prepared to fight this fight for as long as it takes,” Cocroft said. “This case is bigger than me and my dispensary – it is about defending the right of everyone to truthfully advertise their legal business in the cannabis industry.”

Although Mississippi’s regulated medical marijuana businesses still face the state’s ban on advertising, Brian Vicente, founding partner of the cannabis and psychedelics law firm Vicente LLP, noted that some states with similar policies have later modified the restrictions.

“Mississippi’s marijuana laws are still new. In most states, we see advertising restrictions lessen over time as states realize that marijuana, including medical marijuana, is a legitimate product that is not only highly regulated but also legal and safe for sale in the state,” Vicente wrote in an email to High Times. “Mississippi needs to consider that, by severely restricting medical marijuana advertising, they are hurting their medical marijuana patients who need access to this important medication. These restrictions significantly impact patients’ accessibility to information about the program and their medication.”

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One woman’s experience in a clinical trial on ketamine therapy turned into a real Mickey Mouse operation. 

In a study published last month in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, a group of researchers based in Canada sought to “investigate how previous environmental stimuli shaped the experiences of patients receiving ketamine for treatment-resistant depression (TRD), and develop the concept of ‘imprinting’ to account for such time-lagged effects across diverse hallucinogenic drugs.”

“Psychedelic drug experiences are shaped by current-moment contextual factors, commonly categorized as internal (set) and external (setting). Potential influences of past environments, however, have received little attention,” they wrote.

The research team used recordings of treatment sessions and interviews involving 26 participants of the clinical trial, which entailed intravenous ketamine infusions for treatment-resistant depression from January of 2021 until August of 2022.

In detailing the results of the trial, the researchers zeroed in on two participants, a 28-year-old female and a 34-year-old male, whose “subjective ketamine experiences were significantly altered by varying exposures to particular forms of digital media in the days preceding treatments.”

The 34-year-old man described “a pixelated consciousness” while on ketamine, an experience owed to his habit of regularly playing as many as 16 hours of video games a day. 

“This patient’s first three ketamine experiences were characterized by vivid visual hallucinations described as ‘videogame-like’ in both content and form. I.e., he reported that most of his time during the infusion was spent reliving recent game experiences and he described ‘pixelated’ complex hallucinations that strongly resembled the aesthetic of video games like Minecraft, which he had played frequently in the days preceding the treatment sessions. He summed up his experiences as evidence that he had ‘a pixelated consciousness,’” the researchers wrote.

The 28-year-old woman’s experience was, well, a whole new world.

“The patient responded robustly to these first two ketamine treatments and described them as having many typical features of psychedelic therapy: feelings of connection, introspection, emotional processing, and mysticism. They resulted in rapid and significant improvements in depressive symptoms and suicidality, and the patient was discharged after six weeks in hospital with the plan for further infusions if necessary,” the researchers wrote in their evaluation of the patient. 

“Six months later, as an outpatient enrolled in the aforementioned clinical trial, she received a course of six ketamine infusions over four weeks with the same team, a nearly identical treatment protocol, and a similar treatment setting. Despite reporting a similar degree of psychedelic effects, her first outpatient ketamine treatment was described as having remarkably different phenomenology,” they added. “Namely, the patient reported that involuntary visual hallucinations of Disney iconography ‘hijacked’ her experience, greatly diminishing its mystical and emotional qualities.”

In an excerpt from one of the session’s recordings, the woman is quoted as saying that she “saw Disney stuff” but “didn’t want to.”

“It hijacked it! And it’s my fault for always scrolling through the ‘pins’… I’m just annoyed that I felt like I had the Band-Aid on. It felt like I almost ended up going to important things and then Disney frickin’ covered it up,” the patient said in the recording.

The researchers said that the exchange provides evidence that “the patient readily drew a link between this treatment’s visual images of Disney characters and her previously undisclosed habit of trading commemorative Disney pins on a social media forum.” 

“She described spending approximately six hours per day on this digital activity since many years, with the notable exception of her month-long hospitalization when she received her first two ketamine infusions. Of note, she also described various Disney-themed physical objects in her home environment though precise details are not available,” the researchers said. 

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New research once again destroys the lazy stoner stereotype, or the cannabis amotivational syndrome theory, instead showing both teen and adult cannabis consumers are “no less likely” to be motivated, nor are they less likely to show interest in rewards.

”Cannabis amotivational syndrome” is a hypothesis tossed around from commentators in the media for years that suggests regular cannabis use can lead to apathy, or less motivation, and anhedonia, or loss of interest in pleasure from rewards.

These supposed impacts on motivation are part of the hysteria surrounding teen use of cannabis while in developmental years. NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano wrote for High Times about “the media’s absurd hysteria about teens and pot” adding that claims such as amotivational syndrome are often invented or grossly exaggerated.

But this new study examined both apathy and anhedonia levels, measured against controls to determine if stoners are truly less motivated—in the way they are often portrayed in the media.

The study was published August 24 in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology.

A team led by scientists at University College London (UCL), the University of Cambridge, and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London examined whether cannabis users show higher levels of apathy and anhedonia versus controls and whether they were less willing to exert physical effort to receive a reward.

The research was part of the CannTEEN study, which is also examining other factors involving teen cannabis use. For the study, 274 adults and teens were chosen if they had smoked or consumed weed at least weekly.

“Our results suggest that cannabis use at a frequency of three to four days per week is not associated with apathy, effort-based decision-making for reward, reward wanting, or reward liking in adults or adolescents,” the researchers concluded, however finding lower anhedonia in users, but with a “small effect size.”

Martine Skumlien, a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, immediately noted the unfounded claims of the way cannabis is portrayed in the media.

“We were surprised to see that there was really very little difference between cannabis users and non-users when it came to lack of motivation or lack of enjoyment, even among those who used cannabis every day,” Skumlien said. “This is contrary to the stereotypical portrayal we see on TV and in movies.”

“There’s been a lot of concern that cannabis use in adolescence might lead to worse outcomes than cannabis use during adulthood,” Dr Will Lawn of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London said. “But our study, one of the first to directly compare adolescents and adults who use cannabis, suggests that adolescents are no more vulnerable than adults to the harmful effects of cannabis on motivation, the experience of pleasure, or the brain’s response to reward.”

“In fact, it seems cannabis may have no link—-or at most only weak associations—with these outcomes in general. However, we need studies that look for these associations over a long period of time to confirm these findings.”

Over half of participants in the study carried out several tasks, with one assessing physical effort. Participants were given the option to perform button-presses in order to win points, which were later exchanged for chocolates or sweets. There were three difficulty levels and three reward levels, as more difficult trials required faster button pressing. For each test, the participant could choose to accept or reject the offer and points were only given if the test was accepted and completed.

A second task measured how much pleasure they received from rewards. The researchers found “no difference between users and non-users or between age groups on either the physical effort task or the real reward pleasure task, confirming evidence from other studies that found no, or very little, difference.”

Other recent studies also shred the cannabis amotivational syndrome theory.

A previous study, “Effort-related decision making and cannabis use among college students,” published January 27 in Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, also disputes the cannabis-induced amotivational syndrome theory, finding no evidence to support it.

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