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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Xzibit: What up! What’s going down?

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

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

High Times: Did you get high?

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

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

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

Remember when bowls would pop because of the seeds?

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

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

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

Xzibit: Damn, you got me beat right there.

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

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

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

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

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

I take it you’re at West Coast Cannabis?

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

How many locations are there?

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

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

Xzibit: Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

Is there any less allure because it is legal?

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

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

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

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

What’s the tax now?

Xzibit: Right now, it’s at 38%.

Is federal legalization any closer?

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

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

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

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

Are we smoking all day?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you doing anything special at your stores?

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

Anything happening at your store, B?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Absolutely.

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

The work ethic is insane, too.

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

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From early reform efforts to modern legalization fights, these Black leaders helped reshape cannabis law and justice.

Written by Parabola Center for Law and Policy

Today, support for cannabis legalization is widespread. A majority of Black Americans favor reform, politicians now campaign on outdated drug laws, and celebrities speak openly about racial disparities while building careers in the legal cannabis industry. That visibility, however, is the result of decades of work by Black leaders who challenged prohibition at moments when public opinion, policy, and personal risk were far less predictable.

In earlier decades, speaking publicly in favor of legalization carried far greater personal and professional risk. Before public support began to increase, advocates could jeopardize their careers and reputations. Consumers faced criminal prosecution and incarceration. These risks were not borne equally: because the War on Drugs disproportionately targeted Black communities, Black advocates and consumers faced significantly higher legal and social consequences.

Since the 1990s, High Times has celebrated both unsung heroes and well-known activists for bravely standing up for what they believe in. This Black History Month, we continue that tradition by recognizing some of the Black leaders whose early courage and truthfulness were critical to the legalization movement. Without their courage, we might never have secured the rights we often take for granted today.

Parabola Center for Law and Policy, a POC-led cannabis nonprofit that puts people over profits, curated this list to honor the individuals who have done just that–fought for people’s rights without regard for personal risk or gain. From the thousands whose hard work and dedication have led to better marijuana laws, we selected 10 Black champions to honor for their contributions to legalization. 

1. Professor Michelle Alexander

In 2010, Michelle Alexander changed the conversation with her bestselling book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. While reshaping the national dialogue in favor of criminal justice reform, she also made a major impact on cannabis policy.

In a memorable address to the International Drug Policy Reform Conference, she criticized the hypocrisy of white men profiting from newly legal cannabis while thousands of Black and brown people remained locked up for the same activity. 

In 2015, she inspired a new generation of cannabis leaders when she declined to endorse Ohio’s legalization effort, writing, “Granting an oligopoly for ten wealthy investors is not justice.” The measure failed 65-35. 

2. Dr. Joycelyn Elders

An outspoken advocate for public health, Dr. Joycelyn Elders is best known for her steadfast support for comprehensive sex education in public schools. In 1993, she became the first Black person to serve as Surgeon General, nominated by Bill Clinton, and she achieved extraordinary results for underserved communities. Although widely recognized for her moral clarity and candor on many public health issues, it is less well known that she was also an early supporter of marijuana legalization. 

In 2010, she supported California’s Prop 19, telling the New York Times, “I think we consume far more dangerous drugs that are legal: cigarette smoking, nicotine and alcohol. I feel they cause much more devastating effects physically. We need to lift the prohibition on marijuana.”

3. Major Neill Franklin

After 34 years in law enforcement, Major Neill Franklin began reexamining his role in prohibition and in repairing the harm it had caused. In 2010, well before legalization entered the mainstream, he joined the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, and testified in support of marijuana legalization across the country. Over the next decade, using his professional credibility and reputation, he helped broaden the movement by making the case that regulated cannabis was better for public safety. 

His groundbreaking leadership didn’t stop at legal cannabis; he also joined United Nations advocacy efforts to end the prohibition of all drugs globally. Dubbed “the cop who broke with the drug war,” Major Franklin was recognized as a High Times Freedom Fighter last year.

4. Dr. Carl Hart

Dr. Carl Hart is a neuroscientist and psychologist at Columbia University who has spent decades challenging myths about drug use through both his research and his acclaimed books. When trace amounts of cannabis in Trayvon Martin’s blood were cited to justify his killing, Dr. Hart publicly dismantled the claim, comparing it to the alarmist narratives of  Reefer Madness. 

He has also served as an expert witness in family court to protect mothers from having their children removed based solely on a positive cannabis test during pregnancy. By consistently confronting fear-based policymaking and advancing evidence-based research, he has reshaped the legalization debate.

5. Linda Jackson, LVN

A cannabis nurse who was evaluating patients for cannabis approvals as early as 2003, Linda Jackson has been described as “way ahead of the curve.” While nurses’ contributions in the early era of medical cannabis in California received less attention than those of physicians, they were equally essential. In aninterview with the cannabis journal O’Shaughnessy’s, she detailed the process she used for patient intake. 

Because medical cannabis regulations had not yet been clearly defined, she and her team developed a framework from scratch to interview patients, assess their history, and obtain their consent–all using telemedicine. Through this approach, she estimated that between 300 and 400 patients received approval to medicate with cannabis.

6. Dr. Renee Johnson

A scientist and professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Dr. Renee Johnson would not describe herself as an “advocate.” But as a researcher who looks at substance use in marginalized groups including people of color, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ youth, her work to discover and publicize the true impacts of legalization has been vitally important. 

When many of her counterparts were quick to declare that medical cannabis laws increased use, she led astudy showing the opposite: three years after medical marijuana was first approved, rates of use declined. At the same time, she warned that use could rise or fall depending on context, emphasizing that public education would be key. Her commitment to truth over rhetoric has had a meaningful, positive impact on the legalization debate.

7. Professor Beverly Moran, Esq.

The first Black woman to serve on the national board of NORML, Professor Beverly Moran has a wealth of credibility as a professor of law and sociology. A longtime academic affiliated with institutions such as Vanderbilt Law School, she consistently focused on protecting consumers within emerging legal markets. 

In aninterview, she explained the distinction that drives her work: “We have to understand that there’s a difference between consumers and the industry. . . [T]obacco consumers do not want tobacco to be more addictive, and yet tobacco companies worked for decades to make it more addictive. Alcohol producers and casinos would be more than happy if everyone was addicted to their products. These are the issues we deal with. . . how to keep it safe, how to keep it legal, how to keep research going, how to keep people out of jail.”

8. Dorsey Nunn

With a three-word question – “What about Pookie?” – Dorsey Nunn challenged the national legalization movement to call for the transition of those in the legacy market into the legal market. Sentenced to life in prison at age 19, he began advocating for the rights of incarcerated people while still behind bars. After his release, he co-founded All of Us or None and became executive director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, helping build a nationwide movement to restore the civil rights of formerly incarcerated people. 

Featured in 13th by Ava DuVernay, Dorsey Nunn has changed the conversation by insisting that those most affected by the War on Drugs lead the fight to end it.

9. Deborah Peterson Small

The academic article The War on Drugs is a War on Racial Justice was written by attorney, community organizer, and Harvard Law School graduate Deborah Peterson Small in 2001. When she wrote How We Can Reap Reparations from Marijuana Reform in The Root in 2016, she had been inspiring organizations and activists for over 15 years with her organization Break the Chains, and it was still far ahead of the curve. 

As one of the first people to argue that marijuana legalization should serve as a way to compensate the Black communities that the War on Drugs had harmed, Deborah Small has had a profound impact on the way that legalization laws were written and implemented.

10. Clifford W. Thornton, Jr.

Clifford Thornton retired in 1997 to work on drug policy issues. By 2001, he had spoken to over 60,000 people about drug policy reform, focusing on race relations, economics, and public health. In his talks, he shared his own tragic story of drug criminalization, when his mother died from a heroin overdose. 

In 2006, he became the first African-American candidate to appear on the general election ballot for Governor of Connecticut. Over the following decades, he continued to appear in the media hundreds of times, serving on the NORML board and helping to remove the DARE program from various districts. Almost 25 years after Clifford began full-time advocacy, his home state of Connecticut finally legalized cannabis.

Honorable Mention: Representative Barbara Lee

No list of this kind would be complete without mentioning Congresswoman Barbara Lee, an iconic marijuana law reform advocate whose outspoken support for change dates back to the 1970s. Rather than holding a static position or claiming vindication as public opinion shifted, Rep. Lee kept innovating and introducing more bills, culminating with the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act. 

When the MORE Act passed the U.S. House in 2020, it marked a symbolic but significant milestone: the first federal legalization bill approved by a chamber of Congress explicitly centered on racial justice. Without her decades of strategic and pioneering leadership, cannabis legalization in the US might look very different today.

Authors’ Note: To prevent any conflicts of interest, Parabola Center staff, board members, and advisors were not considered for this list.

All images courtesy of Parabola Center.

This article is from an external, unpaid contributor. It does not represent High Times’ reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.

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I was fourteen when I first found cannabis. And High Times. The two didn’t just make me feel better—they saved me. Back then, I didn’t have words for what I was feeling: a restless, chaotic mind, a chest tight with panic I couldn’t name. Cannabis slowed everything down just enough for me to breathe, to feel, to survive.

Not long after that, an adult handed me meth. That was the beginning of a 26-year descent into addiction, chaos, and legal trouble. Ironically, my first felony was for Marinol—a synthetic version of the very plant that had quietly held me together as a teen. The system made no sense: rules designed to protect people instead punished curiosity, survival, and the search for calm.

Cannabis didn’t cure me. It wasn’t a miracle. But it kept me alive long enough to get sober and start piecing my life back together.

The Long Road Through Darkness

Addiction teaches you a strange kind of patience, the kind that feels like hell until you’re on the other side. It teaches you persistence when every part of you wants to quit. For me, it meant surviving years of meth, pills, and chaos—sometimes day by day, sometimes hour by hour.

Even when I was at my worst, cannabis offered a tether. A single hit could slow the mental screaming enough to focus on something else—writing a sentence, taking a photograph, noticing my child’s smile. It didn’t fix me, but it allowed me to stay present long enough to rebuild, long enough to make choices that didn’t kill me.

I got sober on January 20, 2020. Since then, I haven’t touched meth or pills. I’ve relied on natural cannabis—not as an escape, but as a stabilizer. It keeps me grounded when life pulls at me from every angle, when the weight of trauma threatens to crush me.

Growing, Creating, and Fear in South Dakota

I live in Mitchell, South Dakota, a place where cannabis has always been at odds with the law. I grew up in a world where a joint could get you arrested, where growing a plant meant constant fear. Compliance didn’t equal safety. For decades, I cycled through addiction, incarceration, and chaos, constantly numbing pain instead of facing it.

Even today, the law doesn’t always protect you. In 2023, my business partner’s home—the headquarters of our media company, the place where we ran operations and told stories about recovery and cannabis—was raided. It was mid-morning when law enforcement showed up: local police and state agents, a swarm that turned an ordinary day into something I still feel in my body. They searched the house top to bottom, photographing rooms, opening drawers, treating a home like a crime scene.

The warrant claimed suspicion of manufacturing and distribution. They seized plants (mostly seedlings), edibles, and equipment. Then came the part that still doesn’t sit right: the sudden shift from “business” to “criminal,” as if intent and context didn’t matter at all. In the aftermath, we were left facing charges—and trying to make sense of how quickly everything we’d built could be reframed as wrongdoing.

The system was twisted. Legal did not mean safe. Compliance and intent didn’t matter. The trauma lingered long after the doors were cleared. PTSD is real. Fear is real. Every unexpected knock, every sudden sound can make your body remember what it thought it survived.

That raid didn’t break me. It changed me. It made advocacy unavoidable. Silence allows harm to continue. I speak up because other people live in the same fear without the words to describe it. I speak because legalization without accountability is not justice.

Cannabis as a Tool, Not a Crutch

I want to be clear: cannabis is not a cure. It’s a tool. It’s not the hero of my story. I am. But cannabis was the thing that allowed me to be alive to tell this story. It allowed me to survive long enough to create art, raise my child, and advocate for change.

It supports creativity, not by numbing me, but by giving me the space to sit with discomfort without collapsing. Writing, photography, producing media—these are the ways I process what cannot be neatly resolved. Cannabis allows me to stay present, to reflect, to create. Without it, some of those moments might have passed me by entirely.

I’ve learned the hard way that love, care, and patience—whether for a plant or a life—make all the difference. You can have the best equipment, the fanciest soil, the most expensive lights, but if you don’t put yourself into it, it won’t grow. Cannabis thrives under attention, just like people.

Recovery, Creativity, and Advocacy Intersect

Now I’m a father, a writer, and a grower. I co-founded a small media company that focuses on storytelling, healing, and education around recovery and cannabis. But the story isn’t about the company—it’s about the lived experience behind it.

Recovery and advocacy are inseparable for me. I can’t pretend the world is safe because the laws changed. I can’t ignore the people still living under threat, stigma, and trauma. Legalization isn’t just about laws on paper—it’s about accountability, access, and safety. Cannabis saved me, but the system didn’t. That tension is what fuels my advocacy.

I want people to see that recovery, creativity, and cannabis use can coexist. They can thrive when you embrace honesty, responsibility, and courage. But they require vigilance. You have to engage, you have to speak, you have to create. You cannot wait for someone else to fix the system for you.

Telling the Truth Anyway

This isn’t about pretending everything is okay. Life isn’t neat. Legal doesn’t mean safe. Fear doesn’t vanish with legislation. But I keep growing, creating, and advocating—not despite what I’ve lived, but because of it.

I grow cannabis. I create art. I recover out loud. I survive and I continue to speak. I’m not here to sugarcoat it. I’m here to tell the truth. To show what it really looks like to use cannabis responsibly while rebuilding a life from the ashes of addiction. To show that survival is messy, creativity is necessary, and advocacy is urgent.

Cannabis gave me time. Time to be a father, a partner, a creator. Time to find my voice, and use it. Time to take the lessons of survival and transform them into something meaningful. And that is what I hope my story offers: not a prescription, not a cure, but a lens into what’s possible when someone stays alive long enough to create.

This article is from an external, unpaid contributor. It does not represent High Times’ reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.

<p>The post Cannabis Kept Me Alive: Recovery in a State That Still Hunts Weed first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Cannabis Kept Me Alive: Recovery in a State That Still Hunts Weed appeared first on Paradise Found.

On pleasure, respectability, and the parts of cannabis culture worth protecting.

The other night I got high with a few friends. Not to unlock my third eye, crush a deadline, or biohack my nervous system into a state of tantric productivity. We weren’t chasing enlightenment or insight or growth.

We just wanted to laugh. To unwind. To play DnD and stop carrying the day around like a sack of wet concrete.

We sat around my living room passing a joint built like a power forward and talking about absolutely nothing of consequence—the kind of conversation that floats, drifts, wanders, and somehow becomes the best part of your week.

And in the middle of that dumb buzz, I had this tiny intrusive thought:

Is this still allowed?

Not legally, per se, but culturally. I started to wonder whether joy alone was still a valid reason to light up. Because within modern cannabis culture, you can feel a growing pressure to justify your high. To prove you’re doing something responsible with it.

Smarter. Healthier. More productive.

More adult.

The carefree, fun-time vibe is quietly shifting toward the idea that cannabis must be functional to be legitimate. That you need a reason more noble than “I enjoy feeling alive for a minute.”

You can hear it in dispensaries now. Ask what’s good, and you get outcomes. Disclaimers.

Focus.
Sleep.
Recovery.
Regulation.

Meanwhile, no one looks down on the sun for giving us vitamin D and energy. No one shames rosemary for its calming effects. But light up a joint because you want to smile? To loosen the death grip your shoulders have on your neck?

Suddenly, you’re kind of childish.

Come on. Community? Laughter? That moment when your jaw finally unclenches? That’s medicine. Those things do real work. Which makes the disconnect strange, because our bodies already understand this.

There’s even a word for it: anandamide—often called the “bliss molecule”, a naturally occurring compound in the human body tied to pleasure, mood, and that quiet sense of well-being. Your brain produces it when you exercise, when you laugh, when you connect. Cannabis just happens to interact with the same system. A reminder that, as humans, joy was always part of our design.

But in the transition from prohibition to legalization, we quietly decided that only the clinical stuff counted. And this isn’t just a weed problem. We track our steps. Food turns into macros. Hobbies become monetized. Play without purpose, fun without payoff. It all starts to feel pointless.

Somewhere along the way, humans lost the thread.

That’s how you end up with the stoner archetype—the original cultural mascot and patron saint of the untroubled—quietly being pushed toward the back exit.

When Enjoyment Started Needing an Explanation

Walk into any dispensary today and everything is microdosed, precision-engineered, terpene-tailored, data-backed, sustainably sourced, and paired with a promise to level you up.

In the long arc from Reefer Madness to Bong Appétit, weed went from “this might make colors sound different” to “this supports mitochondrial performance.” I don’t want to be Luke Skywalker. I just want to smoke some Skywalker OG and watch Empire for the tenth time.

None of this is an argument against medicinal cannabis or wellness. Those uses are real. They’re vital. They save lives. What worries me is the creeping idea that happiness alone isn’t enough. That cannabis needs to earn its keep through good behavior.

That shift didn’t come out of nowhere. It arrived with legalization, and with the quiet understanding that freedom would come with conditions.

At a certain point, palatability became the entry fee to normalization.

What Cannabis Learned to Say in Order to Be Taken Seriously

For decades, cannabis survived on the fringes. It was messy, unserious, and almost exclusively illegal. When the doors finally opened, the plant did more than just step into the light—it stepped into a boardroom.

And unserious isn’t a good business model.

To be accepted, cannabis had to make itself marketable to regulators, investors, landlords, and risk managers. Fun didn’t translate. Play didn’t test well. But wellness did. Metrics and clinical language did. That’s when cannabis learned to speak in outcomes instead of experiences.

This wasn’t a conspiracy. It was adaptation. Respectability became validity. The plant put on a lab coat and shed its laughter because that was the cost of legitimacy.

But something gets lost when legitimacy is built on justification. When pleasure has to restrain itself, it shrinks. And what used to be communal gets stripped down, privatized, and reduced to a single-player game.

Legalization gave us liberation, but it also imposed a new discipline: behave, explain yourself, don’t be weird. The stoner—the unruly, joyful, unoptimized soul of the counterculture—was politely asked to grow up.

But it ain’t a counterculture unless you’re against something. And if we’re choosing targets, I hope bullshit goes first. We’ve got more than enough of that to burn.

Cannabis used to be fun first. Silly in the best ways. A break from the absurdity of being a human strapped into the meat grinder of modern life. Now it’s increasingly framed as a productivity aid with bad branding and too much plastic.

A friend of mine, Nate, put it perfectly the other day:

“Relaxation is a medicinal benefit. Because of that, I’ve always thought it was impossible to disentangle recreational and medicinal use.”

He’s right. The fence between the two is thinner than we pretend.

Another friend once told me about a guy who smoked her weed all day, every day, called it “medicine,” and made her want to throw him through a window. In that context, yeah, calling it medication felt like a dodge. Sometimes you need to treat the root cause, not just the symptom.

But over time, she realized something else: not all medicine has to cure. Some remedies simply restore. Amusement. Connection. Breath. A widening of the ribs. A reminder that at the end of a shitty day, everything will be okay.

Cannabis can do that. And we shouldn’t have to pretend it needs to be more than that.

No one judges the friend who screams into a pillow after a meeting that should’ve been an email. No one blinks when dancing counts as relief and saunas count as reset. Bone broth is somehow a cure-all—which I still think is questionable, but sure. Fine.

As a society, we’re perfectly comfortable calling all of this care. Pleasure, in small, subtle, essential doses.

Hell, half the internet thinks dunking yourself in a freezing lake at 5 a.m. makes you a warrior stoic. But spark a joint after work for no good reason and suddenly you’re “masking your problems.”

Which brings me to the stoner—the folk hero of this whole operation, and the biggest part of the culture we’re in danger of losing if joy stops counting.

The Stoner Isn’t Who You Think

I know the stereotype: tie-dye, cheek-shaped couch dents, sticky fingers, bong water darker than midnight.

But the real stoner—the one I know, the one who built this culture and kept it alive when it was illegal, unprofitable, and dangerous—is something else entirely. 

The real stoner is curious.

Imaginative. Generous. Playful. Present.

The real stoner feels life as much as they think about it.

They find poetry in a bag of Cheez-Its. They stare at the ocean for hours and call it meditation. They know half the meaning of life is buried in beautiful, stupid 1 a.m. conversations. One of the underrated gifts of being a stoner, in the best sense, is emotional availability. The way it lowers the guard just enough to see the joke in existence.

Laughing when the punchline is simply: life, man.

Cannabis keeps my edges flexible. It keeps me soft where adulthood tries to calcify me. It keeps me from becoming another stiff-backed, stress-locked adult drowning in existential dread and Microsoft Teams notifications. I’m laughing my ass off a hundred times a day and taking life about 30 percent less seriously than I did at twenty-two.

Weed is WD-40 for the human spirit.

Instructions: shake well, apply generously, avoid contact with bosses and buzzkills.

It’s given me patience in my relationships, curiosity about life’s small miracles, and resilience when the world feels too sharp. It doesn’t turn me into someone else. It keeps me from becoming someone I never wanted to be.

If that’s not medicinal in its own strange way, I don’t know what is.

What Disappears When Fun Isn’t Enough

If joy, laughter, awe, curiosity, and relief stop being valid reasons to smoke, here’s what else goes with it:

The circle.
The ritual.
The generosity of passing the joint to the person who needs it most.

Community becomes transactional. Creativity turns into content.

In short, a big piece of the culture’s soul goes missing.

And if cannabis’s potential is limited to a wellness supplement—a consumer product with no spiritual footprint, a tool rather than a companion—then legalization didn’t liberate weed. It put it in a gilded cage.

Picture a future where joints are considered primitive, blunts are frowned upon, and flower is “too unpredictable” for an optimized lifestyle. People only smoke if it can be paired with a self-improvement goal. Your friend sparks a bowl and instead of saying, “God, I need this,” they recite, “I’m consuming this to support neuroregulation and emotional resilience.”

This isn’t a fight against wellness, medicine, or legitimacy. It’s a fight against the shrinking of what we call valid. If we lose the stoner—the curious, rebellious, alive part of this counterculture—we lose the permission to feel good for no reason at all.

A smile is enough.
Relaxation is enough.
Laughter is enough.
Feeling human again is enough.

If legalization teaches us anything, it shouldn’t be how to justify cannabis. It should be how to enjoy it without apology.

So let’s not forget, in our noble pursuit of validation, why we fell in love with this plant in the first place.

Now go get high for no damn reason.

<p>The post Joy Is Still a Valid Reason to Smoke Weed first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Joy Is Still a Valid Reason to Smoke Weed appeared first on Paradise Found.

I’ve spent years watching cannabis content evolve, and most of it follows the same rhythm. Fast edits. Trending sounds. Quick hits. Then I came across Cough Creative, and something felt different before I could even explain why. The pacing was calm. The visuals felt familiar. It didn’t rush you. It invited you in.

Ally Train isn’t just making cannabis content. She’s building atmosphere. Drawing inspiration from old nature documentaries, her work blends humor, comfort, and intention in a space that often prioritizes speed over substance. Behind the aesthetic is discipline, lived experience, and a deep understanding of how storytelling can create connection.

I sat down with Ally to talk about creativity, censorship, discipline, and what it really means to build something original in an industry full of noise.

Ally Train of Cough Creative’s style is instantly recognizable. When someone lands on a Cough Creative video, what do you hope they feel before they even realize why they’re watching?

Ally Train: Comfort. I purposefully modeled my videos after old nature documentaries in order to bring a sense of familiarity to my viewers. I want them to immediately recognize the pace of my content, even if the subject matter is a new and comedic take on it.

Every creator has an origin story. What was the moment when you realized cannabis wasn’t just part of your life, but part of your art?
Ally Train: I’ve dealt with chronic illnesses my whole life, the most prominent of which is ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory autoimmune disease that causes immense pain in my joints as well as migraines. I was officially diagnosed and prescribed medication at age 15. The medication helped tremendously, but it didn’t fully end my migraines. I started smoking casually with friends around the age of 16 and realized that not only was I having a great time, but my head was also no longer throbbing. That’s when it really started to click for me, and I began researching the benefits of cannabis. My fire was ignited, and now I use cannabis for my migraines, nausea, anxiety, you name it.

Your edits, pacing, and visuals are on a different wavelength than most cannabis influencers. What’s the creative philosophy running behind your content that people don’t see?
Ally Train: I didn’t want to keep up with trends anymore. I wanted to be the trend. The idea behind my content is this: yes, I am making videos about smoking weed on the internet, but why can’t those videos be good? Why can’t they be dramatically funny? Why can’t they be incredibly detailed? Some of my videos are obviously filler episodes, and some are goofy and fun to make, but there are many that I spend a lot of time on and take tremendous pride in. I think that’s what makes the difference.

Cannabis creators often get shadowbanned, demonetized, and limited. What’s the most frustrating platform battle you’ve had, and how did you adapt?
Ally Train: In June of 2023, my account had just hit 20k followers. It happened pretty quickly after reaching 10k, and I was celebrating the milestone with friends and my now fiancée on a trip to Vermont. This was when I was still playing it fast and loose with my content, so I should have seen it coming. I had taken about 3g of shrooms and about 400mg of RSO when my parents called to tell me they had just bought a puppy. Right after that, Ariana from @IndicaWife called and said, “Do not panic, I need to let you know that your account is gone.” Then the shrooms and RSO hit, and my world crumbled. After months of appealing to Meta, I finally got my account back, and I’ve been much more low-key about what I do online since then. I use phrases like “getting some fresh air,” “increasing my appetite,” and “indulging,” and I never show myself lighting up on camera. I let the smoke or vapor allude to the action instead.

What’s something you refuse to compromise in your content, no matter what the algorithm or brands want?
Ally Train: I don’t drink alcohol, so you won’t ever see me selling it. If you think you see me drinking alcohol, I can promise you it’s juice or a sparkling drink in a pretty glass. I’m a sucker for a pretty glass. The same goes for nicotine. I’ve been approached by nicotine and tobacco brands, but I have no interest in marketing anything nicotine or tobacco-based.

You’ve built a loyal community. What do you think your audience understands about you that casual viewers miss completely?
Ally Train: At a glance, people think this is all that I am, which is understandable because it’s what I’m presenting. But it’s kind of insane to assume that just because someone makes videos about smoking weed, they must only spend their life smoking weed. I am a multifaceted person, and my followers understand that. This page is themed, and I’m only going to post within that theme.

In an industry overflowing with copycats, how do you protect your originality and avoid getting pulled into the sameness of social media trends?
Ally Train: It’s hard to get stuck in trends when I already have my own format. What am I going to do, work a TikTok dance into my videos? I’ll occasionally do a trending recipe, but I have the freedom to pick and choose what I use from the zeitgeist. Sometimes I get writer’s block and revisit things I’ve done in the past, but I always add a twist. No two videos are identical.

What’s a misconception about cannabis creators that you wish you could erase forever?
Ally Train: That we’re lazy or stoned to the bone 24/7. Recording and editing is one thing, but running a page is also running a business. I’m not just posting. I’m keeping the books, pitching brands, building websites, and designing merch. I’m doing all of it.

If you could design the perfect ecosystem for cannabis creativity, what would it look like?
Ally Train: That question is so loaded you would need three editions of High Times to print my answer, so I’ll keep it short. We could build the most perfect platform in the world, but none of it matters unless companies are willing to pay creators their worth for contracted content creation.

What’s the next evolution of Cough Creative?
Ally Train: I’m working on merch and hopefully a website where people can get to know me better. I also have a few bigger projects coming soon that I can’t talk about yet, but people should keep their eyes open.

People talk about your creativity, but rarely about the discipline behind it. What keeps you consistent?
Ally Train: It’s less a habit and more a deadline. I post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and that keeps me working throughout the week.

When you scroll through cannabis content today, what feels missing?
Ally Train: The issue isn’t what people want to make, it’s what platforms allow. I miss the aesthetic reels where people set up rigs in beautiful places and took rips to vibey music. Seeing fewer of those videos feels like a symptom of the algorithm cracking down. It felt like we were smoking together as friends.

Your visuals feel emotional rather than transactional. What themes do you return to again and again?
Ally Train: Joy, camaraderie, and comfort. Everyone is exhausted. People are working hard, the news feels heavy, and connection is missing. If I can offer that through my videos, I’m happy to do so.

What risk almost didn’t happen but ended up defining your brand?
Ally Train: Switching to documentary style filming. I had been thinking about it for months, but it was far more involved than my usual content. Before that, I was just using trending audio. Once I took the plunge, I fell in love with the process and haven’t looked back.

If someone were discovering cannabis for the first time, what advice would you want them to hear?
Ally Train: Start slowly. Nothing is embarrassing about coughing, being a lightweight, or needing to lie down. Nothing is embarrassing about getting too high. Keep water nearby, grab your favorite snacks, inhale fresh air after you hit, and don’t hold it in. Put on some chill music and let fresh air hit your face. Isn’t it wonderful that you exist in this moment?

Photos courtesy of Ally Train.

This article is from an external, unpaid contributor. It does not represent High Times’ reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.

<p>The post Finding Calm in Cannabis Content: A Conversation With Ally Train of Cough Creative first appeared on High Times.</p>

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“Anyone in jail for anything to do with cannabis should be set free.”

Ice-T does not blink when he says it. He does not reach for qualifiers. He keeps talking.

“It’s legal in enough places,” he adds. “That’s like having somebody in jail for alcohol after Prohibition.”

We are on House of Haze, a High Times podcast I host to talk power, culture and weed in the real world. Ice-T arrives with clarity as a tactic, control as a practice. He has lived around cannabis forever, tried gummies, never took to smoking, and still carries a simple rule for life outside the house: be alert.

“The guys that were the most dangerous were the sober cats,” he says. “Chronic gives what I call chronic delay. That split second could be your life out here in the streets.”

He is not anti-weed. He is anti-sloppiness. The crew rule is blunt.

“If you’re with the crew and you get drunk and you stop listening, one of us gets to knock you out,” he says. “Then we carry you to the car. It’s about control. It’s not worth the party.”

Legalization, without romance

Ice-T does not sugarcoat the business. His Jersey City shop, The Medicine Woman, took years and millions to open. Margins are thin. The myth of easy money is gone.

“What dispensaries are like now is like liquor stores,” he says. “They’re on every other corner. You got taxes, overhead, building costs. People think you’re getting rich. Nah. If I wanted to get rich, I would sell bricks of cocaine.”

Then he drops the line most celebrities avoid.

“I am absolutely in it for the money,” he says. “It’s a business. Don’t get mad at capitalism. But if you can hire kids from the community and kick some money back to charity, that’s righteous.”

Justice with teeth

Ask him about federal legalization and he does not hesitate.

“Do I want it federally? Only to free the prisoners,” he says. “Having the federal government in your legal business? Who needs that?”

On politics, he is colder.

“Politicians are the biggest criminals in the history of the world,” he says. “Both wings are on the same bird.”

Safety and the American reality

The country is flooded with guns. He has a line for that, too.

“I don’t trust anybody with a gun,” he says. “There are more guns than people. I’m not pro-gun. I got one because if somebody breaks in my crib, I don’t want to grab a butcher knife. It’s too late. This is what it is.”

He is not here to debate. He is here to move the conversation forward.

“I don’t like debates. I like progressive conversation,” he says. “My opinion can be changed, but first I have to believe you’re intelligent enough for me to listen.”

Upstream to the seeds

Retail opened another door. Ice-T went upstream with Brothers Grimm Seeds on BodyCount, a cross of Purple Urkle and Rosetta Stone bred by MrSoul and led by CEO Laura “MrsSoul” Campanella. It is a genetics play, not a lifestyle pivot.

“If I’m signing a seed, I want my shit to be the best in the history of the world,” he says. He laughs, then lands on a goal every grower understands. “Personally, I would love my seeds to win the Cannabis Cup.”

Rick and Morty, and being in on the joke

He knows when the culture lets you in. Rick and Morty called. He said yes. They made him a superhero and, mercifully, didn’t roast him.

“You hit different generations at different times,” he says. “You’re lucky when animation does not dog you.”

Techno, E, and why he quit the hard stuff

Ice-T didn’t touch drugs for most of his life. Then came one Miami night at Crowbar, a packed techno club, Coco looking fire, the music hitting. He decided to try ecstasy.

“I walk up to this kid, I’m trying to get some E… they point me to this dude, big pants, glow sticks, the whole shit. He looks at me, ‘Oh shit, Ice-T,’ reaches in his pocket, pulls out a handful of E. ‘They said I’m the man. Now you’re the man.’”

He took one and felt the switch flip. “First thing, I’m rubbing my own legs. Everything outside of Coco is out of focus. And the most amazing thing happened, I understood techno. It was divided, it was moving. I’m like, this shit makes sense.”

The fun didn’t last forever. A different night, someone handed them “Molly” in capsules. It wasn’t. “Two in the morning when I’m ready to do my deed, my teeth are chattering. It was speed. I was up for two days. I showed up to Law & Order like, ‘Yo, I’m high from Saturday night.’ I was acting super fast.”

That was the line. “With fentanyl and all that, I’m scared. I don’t want to die. A lot of my friends have died on the first try.” Gummies and a rare maxi-dose mushroom experiment aside, he keeps it simple and safe. “Whatever you’re doing, make sure you’re in a safe environment.”

The bottom line

This is Ice-T in the cannabis era. No fantasy. No fake purity test. Just a straight read of risk, reward and responsibility.

“You never really know if somebody’s your friend till you tell them no,” he says at one point. It doubles as an ethos for the industry. Tell the truth about the money. Tell the truth about the rules. Tell the truth about who still sits in a cell.

And free them.

Photo courtesy of Ice-T.

<p>The post WATCH: Ice-T’s Wild MDMA Story, Guns, and the Truth About Legal Weed first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post WATCH: Ice-T’s Wild MDMA Story, Guns, and the Truth About Legal Weed appeared first on Paradise Found.

For a lot of people, cannabis content starts as a joke, a trend, a way to chase numbers. For Stephanie Trenkamp, it started as survival. She was a mom in her garage, lighting up after bedtime, trying to hold it together while figuring out how to help support her family without disappearing from her kids’ lives.

Online, she tried everything. Beauty. Lifestyle. Whatever the algorithm seemed to want that week. None of it felt honest. Behind the scenes, she was using cannabis every day, yet the internet version of herself looked like everyone else’s feed. The disconnect turned into burnout, then into a decision: stop performing and show people who she really is.

When she finally posted a video of herself smoking in the lake, the response was instant. The comments came from moms, parents, people who had been hiding the same ritual for years. They were not asking for perfect content; they were asking to feel less alone. Out of that moment came @thegardentok, a platform, a podcast and a growing community of what she calls high-functioning gardeners who use cannabis to stay present, not checked out.

Since then, Trenkamp has ridden the full rollercoaster of being a cannabis creator online: viral spikes, suspended accounts, stores shut down, and platforms changing the rules overnight. Through it all, she keeps posting, keeps talking, keeps reminding people that cannabis users can be good parents, good partners, good leaders.

I sat down with Stephanie to talk about the moment she said “screw it,” how she balances marriage and motherhood with a public cannabis routine, and why making people feel seen will always matter more than going viral.

Your aesthetic and vibe online are instantly recognizable. How intentional is your brand identity, and how much of it is simply who you are at your core?

Honestly, my entire brand started as me just being me. I didn’t sit down one day and say let me create an aesthetic. I was literally a mom in my garage, lighting up after bedtime, trying to figure out my life. The vibe people see now, the bold, the humor, the smoke, the spiritual delusion, the GO ALL IN ONE YOU energy, that is who I have always been at my core. The intentional part came later. I used to hate social media. I never saw the point of it until I became a mom and suddenly needed an outlet, a place where I could still be myself while trying to build something that did not pull me away from my kids. Posting started as a way to feel less alone, like maybe there were other people out there who understood me. And then it clicked. I can literally monetize my entire life just by showing up as who I already am. Once I realized that, everything changed. I did not create a brand. I leaned into the version of me I had been hiding from this whole time.

You’ve built a calming, grounded presence in a fast-moving space. Where do you think that energy originally comes from?

My energy comes from finally getting to a place where I genuinely do not care what anyone thinks. That confidence reads as calm to people, but it is really just freedom. Cannabis was the first thing that ever helped me tune out the noise and tune into myself. It quieted the pressure, the opinions, the expectations, especially coming from a family full of law enforcement, where cannabis was never seen as normal. For me, it became the thing that helped me feel secure in who I am instead of trying to fit into a version of myself that never felt real. So that grounded vibe people pick up on really comes from being bold enough to be exactly who I am. I am willing to be polarizing. I am willing to be honest. I am willing to show up fully myself. Cannabis helped me get comfortable in my own skin and now my energy reflects that. I am unapologetically myself and people feel that.

What was your life like before cannabis content, and what parts of your background shaped the person we see today?

Before cannabis content, my life looked like every other mom trying to hold it together while figuring out how to make money for my family and still be present. I was posting online, but none of it felt like me. I was mimicking what I thought the internet wanted because I was still trying to figure out how people were actually building something real on social media. Meanwhile, I was using cannabis behind the scenes every day. But no one saw that part. I have always been someone who just goes for it. My senior year of high school, I was voted most likely to get what I want, not because I had it all together, but because I always had this belief that there will always be someone prettier, better, faster, but there will only ever be one of me. I learned early on that you have to be your own biggest fan in your own head if you want to be successful at anything. People will doubt you. People will misunderstand you. People will try to stop you. I have never let that keep me from trying and doing what I want to do.

My background shaped so much of who I am today. I worked in the beauty industry for years, which taught me how to talk to people, how to turn it on, how to connect, how to sell, how to be charismatic. I have always been creative. I studied graphic design. I have always had that mindset of if something does not work, keep going. I was never the person who quit. I was the person who kept failing forward until something finally clicked. Then one day, I saw creators posting cannabis content online and something in me finally said screw it. I posted a video and within an hour, it passed a million views. Moms were commenting that they felt so seen. And for the first time in my entire journey, I thought, “This is it. This is what I am meant to be doing.” I stopped trying to be what I thought the internet wanted and started being who I actually am. I have been a cannabis user for over a decade. I always wanted to be part of this space, but I just did not know how to fit into it until that first post. Once I went all in, everything aligned and everything exploded. And looking back, it makes perfect sense. Every job, every skill set, every risk, every moment of failing forward built the person people see today. Which is really just the same person I have always been: me.

Everyone has a turning point. What was the defining moment that pushed you toward becoming a cannabis creator?

The real turning point for me was burnout. I was creating content that looked like everyone else’s because I was still trying to figure out what my place was online. Nothing felt authentic. Nothing felt fun. It was like I was performing instead of actually showing up as myself. At the same time, I kept seeing cannabis creators getting this massive response. People were relating. People were talking openly. People were finally being honest about something I had been doing behind the scenes for years. And something in me finally said, “That is who I really am. That is what I actually love. That is a conversation that needs to be louder, especially for moms and parents who feel like they have to hide this part of their life.” So one day, I just hit that mental point of screw it. Why am I hiding this? Why am I pretending to be someone else when the real me is right here? I picked up my phone, filmed a video of me smoking a joint while floating in the lake, and posted it with zero expectations. That moment of saying screw it changed everything. It was the first time I chose to show the world the part of myself I had been afraid to share. And that decision is what started everything that came after.

When you first started posting, did you ever imagine your platform would grow into what it is now?

When I first started posting, I was not thinking about going viral or building a huge platform. I just wanted to finally show the world who I really was and see if anyone out there felt like me. But I will also say this: a part of me did expect it. I mean, at the end of the day, I had already built up a large following from posting about something I didn’t really love. So I knew if I could do it once, I could do it again. Because desire without expectation is just wishful thinking, and I have always had the desire to be in this space. Every time I tried something new online, I could feel that pull, that knowing that there was something more for me, and I just had not found it yet. When I started posting cannabis content, it was the first time in my life that something did not feel like work and I could still make a living doing it. I love creating it. I love talking about it. I love the people it brought into my world. And the messages—thousands of them. Comments, DMs, shares. Moms, dads, and grandparents saying I feel so seen. People saying you are me. Can we be friends? I have never felt this understood. I love you for saying what I cannot say out loud. You’re my favorite account on Instagram. That was when I realized it was bigger than me. It was not just content. It was connection. It was community. It was giving people a safe place to breathe and be themselves in a world that tells them to hide. It was about being honest and unapologetic about something society has judged for so long. So yes, part of me always expected something big to happen because I believed it would. But I never imagined it looking like this. I never imagined it would turn into a movement of people who finally feel seen. I am so grateful that this is my life and that I get to make people feel understood in places where they may not feel understood at home or in their community. That means more to me than a large following. Making people feel seen is the whole point.

How do you balance marriage, motherhood, and your personal cannabis routine in a way that keeps your home life strong and grounded?

Honestly, balance is a myth. I do not think anyone is perfectly balancing marriage, motherhood, building a business, and having any sort of routine. I think you just learn how to be self-aware enough to know what you need and when you need it. Cannabis is part of that for me. It keeps me regulated, present, patient, and grounded. It helps me show up as the mom and partner I actually want to be instead of the stressed-out version of myself that used to run the show. In my marriage, I am very open about it. There is no sneaking around, no shame, no pretending. My husband knows cannabis is part of who I am and part of what helps me stay centered. When I feel good, my home feels good. And when the energy in the house is off, everyone feels it. So for me, cannabis is not an escape. It is a tool. It is something that brings me back to myself so I can show up for the people I love without losing my sanity. So I do not balance everything. I just allow myself to be human. I let myself take space. I let myself use the tools that support me. And cannabis is one of those tools. It keeps me grounded in a life that could easily feel chaotic if I let it. It helps me show up with love instead of overwhelm. That is what keeps my home strong.

How did your husband respond to your content journey early on, and what role does he play in the life you’re building today?

My husband has always supported me in every single thing I have ever done, and I know how rare that is. Especially because he is a retired police officer who comes from a world where cannabis is not just stigmatized but completely frowned upon. So to have someone like that stand behind me, even when he did not fully understand what I was doing, is something I do not take lightly. Before cannabis content, I was a stay-at-home mom, and he supported that fully, but I still felt this deep pull to contribute in my own way. When you have kids and your partner works in a dangerous line of work, you start thinking about stability and protection in a different way. That is what pushed me to start posting online in the first place. I wanted to build something that could take care of my family if life ever forced me to. In the beginning, he supported me even though he did not get it. And I do not blame him. Most people do not understand the online world until they see results. I think it was not until I started making a substantial amount of money that he had that “holy-crap” moment. That was when everything clicked for him.

When I shifted into cannabis content, I think he was skeptical at first, and honestly, it made sense. He came from a world where this could cost someone their career. But the one thing about my husband is that he will never try to hold me back from who I am or what I want to do. He trusted me. He trusted my vision. And now I think he is incredibly proud of what I have been able to build in such a short amount of time. I am sure he doubted it at moments. I am sure my family doubted it. A lot of people did. But I never did. I always knew this would become something real, and I never put a timeline on it. I did not need instant results. I just believed it would happen because I was willing to show up for it every day. That detachment from the timeline is what made this grow as fast as it did. His support mattered. Not everyone gets that. And I know how lucky I am to have someone who believed in me even when the vision was not clear yet. Now he sees what I always saw, and we get to build this life together.

Your audience feels a real emotional connection to you. What do you think people are truly coming to your page for?

People are not coming to my page for perfect content. They are coming because they finally feel like they can breathe. They feel seen. They feel understood. They feel less alone in a world that expects them to pretend all day long. My audience is full of people who have been hiding parts of themselves for years. Moms who feel guilty for needing a break. Women who have been holding their families together with zero support. Creators who feel lost. People who love cannabis but have never had a safe place to say it out loud. They come to my page because I talk about the things they whisper about in private.

I think people connect with me because I do not show up as a highlight reel. I show up as a real human. I show up messy, spiritual, sarcastic, emotional, growing, learning, healing, failing forward, figuring it out, being bold, being loud, being myself. And that gives people permission to be themselves, too. People are coming to my page for honesty. For comfort. For humor. For a break from the pressure to be perfect. For a sense of community that feels safe and nonjudgmental. For someone who is not afraid to say the things they are afraid to say. At the end of the day, they are not coming for me. They are coming for how they feel when they are here: seen, validated, free. And that is the whole point of everything I post.

Cannabis affects everyone differently. How would you describe the version of yourself that emerges when you consume?

The version of me that comes out when I consume is the version of me that finally feels safe to exist. Cannabis quiets the noise in my mind and brings me back into my body. It softens the edges. It pulls me out of survival mode. It slows the world down just enough so I can actually hear myself think.

And honestly, I have never been good with alcohol. It never made me feel like myself. It never grounded me. Cannabis was always the thing that made me feel better, calmer, more centered, and more connected. It supports me instead of throwing me off balance.

When I consume, I become more patient, more present, and more playful. I am a better mom because I am not operating from stress. I am a better partner because I can listen instead of react. I am a better creator because my ideas flow without overthinking. I feel regulated instead of overwhelmed.

Cannabis enhances the parts of myself that I love the most. My creativity. My humor. My intuition. My ability to slow down and actually enjoy my life. It reminds me that I am allowed to feel good. I am allowed to take up space. I am allowed to show up exactly as I am. And that is the version of me I choose every time.

What part of your real life influences your content the most: your relationships, your routines, your mindset, or something else?

My real life influences everything I create because my content is literally my life. I am not performing. I am documenting. If I had to choose the part that influences me the most, it would be my mindset. Mindset is the reason I show up the way I do. It is the reason I am able to turn my everyday chaos into something relatable and funny. It is the reason I can take the most stressful parts of motherhood or marriage or running a business and turn them into content that makes people feel understood. My relationships and my routines definitely shape my content, too, but they shape it because they keep me accountable to who I want to be. My marriage keeps me grounded. My kids keep me honest. My routines keep me sane. But my mindset is what helps me navigate all of it and still show up online with clarity and confidence.

I think people connect with me because I create from real life, not a highlight reel. I talk openly about the mess, the overwhelm, the self-doubt, the mom guilt, the cannabis shame that so many people still feel, and the work it takes to grow out of that. My content is influenced by the version of me who refuses to shrink, who refuses to hide, and who knows that being honest about my life gives other people permission to be honest about theirs. So yes, my relationships and my routines matter, but my mindset is what drives all of it. It is what keeps me anchored in the middle of motherhood, marriage, business, and everything else. It is the reason my content feels like a safe space for people. And it is the reason I show up the way I do every single day.

Social media is unpredictable and demanding. How do you stay authentic in a world obsessed with trends and virality?

Honestly, staying authentic is easy for me now because I have already lived the phase of trying to be what the internet wanted. I chased trends, I copied what everyone else was doing, and none of it felt good. The second I started creating from who I am instead of what was popular, everything shifted. I do think trends can help. If a trend feels good and it fits who you are, do it. It can boost growth. But it is not the end-all-be-all of building something real online. Most of my viral posts are the ones I spent the least amount of time on anyway. That is why I always tell people to throw spaghetti at the wall in the beginning. Try everything, test everything, and when you find what works, double down on it.

A lot of people start posting for themselves first, which is understandable, but if you want real growth, you have to create content for other people first. The goal is to make someone feel seen, heard, understood, less alone. And the magic is that once you do that, you end up creating for yourself too, because the content still has to feel good and aligned or people know instantly. Repetition kills all doubt. The more you post, the better you get. The more you post, the more analytics you have, and the easier it becomes to see patterns and understand what people truly respond to. But there is also something powerful about creating a piece of content simply because it feels like you, regardless of whether you think it will go viral. I have a good balance of both. You have to trust that your content will reach the right people, even if you do not see results right away. The internet will tell you very quickly what it likes and what it does not. That is why trying a bunch of different things matters so much. You need the information. You need the data. You need the feedback.

But at the end of the day, the content has to feel good to you or it will never be sustainable. I stay authentic because I only create what feels aligned, what feels fun, and what feels true to who I am. That is the balance. That is the secret. And that is why my audience connects the way they do.

What has cannabis taught you about yourself that you may not have learned otherwise?

Cannabis has taught me more about myself than anything else ever has. It taught me how to slow down. It taught me how to listen to myself instead of reacting to everything around me. It taught me how to get out of survival mode and actually be present in my life. I think the biggest thing it taught me is that I do not have to be the strong one all the time. I do not always have to push through everything. I do not always have to carry everything alone. Cannabis showed me that I am allowed to take up space, breathe deeper, feel good, and exist without guilt. It also taught me how creative I really am. It unlocked parts of my mind I never gave myself permission to explore. It showed me that I can build a life, a business, a community, simply by being myself. I do not think I would have learned that without cannabis. And honestly, it taught me acceptance. It taught me to accept who I am instead of trying to fit into what society or even my own family expected from me. Growing up around law enforcement, there was always this unspoken pressure to be a certain way. Cannabis helped me break that mold. It helped me realize that I am allowed to choose my own path and I am allowed to build a life that makes sense to me, even if it looks nothing like what I was raised around.

If you weren’t creating cannabis content, what other path or passion do you think you naturally would have followed?

If I were not creating cannabis content, I would still be creating something. I have always had that drive in me. I have always been creative, always been entrepreneurial, always been the type of person who cannot sit still and just accept a life that does not light me up. I also have a background in beauty and graphic design, so I know I would have still been creating. But honestly, I think I would have found my way into the online world no matter what. I have always been drawn to creating, building, connecting, and making people feel understood. Cannabis just gave me the clarity, the confidence, and the community I had been searching for all along. So even if the path would have looked different, the mission would have been the same. Helping people feel seen, helping them feel less alone, and building a space where they can show up exactly as they are.

You’ve built a loyal community. What values matter most to you when it comes to nurturing that connection?

I think the biggest value in my community is that I am simply myself. I am not afraid to speak my mind. People come to me because I am honest about my experiences and I am not here to sell them on anything. I am here to tell the truth, or really my truth. And I always remind people that they should never take my advice as absolute. What works for me might not work for them. Everyone has their own path. Everyone has their own timing. I think people feel connected to me because I give them permission to be themselves. I show them that it is okay to have a different opinion. It is okay to go against the norm. It is okay to live your life in a way that other people might not understand. The real work is having that confidence in yourself and trusting that you are doing what is right for you.

I am big on coaching yourself through life. Parenting yourself. Being your biggest fan. Reminding yourself that everything is working out for you, maybe not in the way you expected, but always in the way it is meant to. To me, faith is believing in something you have never seen but choosing to believe in it anyway. That is how I built this. That is how I kept going even when no one understood what I was doing. I think that is also why my community feels so loyal. People can feel my authenticity, but they also feel the freedom to form their own opinions. I never force anything on anyone. I share my life and they take what resonates. That is the value I care most about. Creating a space where people feel safe, where they feel seen, and where they feel empowered to believe in themselves, too.

Every creator has moments of doubt. What keeps you centered when the pressure of visibility becomes overwhelming?

I have moments of doubt just like everyone else, but for me, the doubt usually shows up when the platforms take something away that I worked so hard to build. Cannabis is still a huge gray area online. So when you create something beautiful, when you grow a big community, when you pour your heart into it, and then your account gets suspended or restricted or deleted, it is a real gut punch. It makes you question everything. Is this a sign? Am I supposed to be doing this? Is it worth it? But that is also the moment you either give up or you lean in.

And every time it has happened to me, I chose to lean in. My account has been suspended three times. I got kicked out of Stan Store as an ambassador for my cannabis content. I have had content flagged for absolutely no reason. I have had every odd stacked against me in this space, like so many of us have. But I never let that stop me. If anything, it made me push harder. That is why I built so many outlets outside of one platform. My Skool community, the Garden Tok podcast, multiple Instagram accounts, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube. I learned very early on that in the cannabis space, you have to cast a wide net because visibility is never guaranteed. And when you already know that is part of the journey, the hits still hurt, but they do not knock you down the same way.

What keeps me centered is remembering why I started. I did not do this to be perfect or to go viral. I did this to help people feel seen. I did this to give a voice to people who feel like they cannot speak openly. I did this to create a space where people can be themselves without shame. So when things get overwhelming, I ground myself in that truth. This work is bigger than me. It is about the community. It is about the people who feel seen because I showed up. And as long as that stays my focus, no suspension, no algorithm, and no platform can take away what this truly is.

What do you think is the most misunderstood part of being a woman in the cannabis space?

I think the most misunderstood part of being a woman in the cannabis space is that people still assume we are lazy, unmotivated, unsuccessful, uneducated, unattractive, or sitting around in pajamas all day doing nothing with our lives. There is this stereotype that if a woman consumes cannabis, she must be a bad mom, a bad partner, or someone who does not have her life together. So when people see a normal woman or an educated woman or an attractive woman or a successful woman who also consumes, it shocks them. It challenges everything they thought they knew. They do not expect a woman who handles her home, her family, her business, her mental health, and her life to also be someone who tokes. And I think that is exactly why this space needs more women speaking up.

I have all sides to me. I am a mom, a wife, a business owner, a creator, someone who showers, someone who gets ready, someone who takes pride in her life, someone who loves cannabis, and someone who is successful because of who she is, not in spite of it. Showing all of those sides is empowering because it forces people to question the outdated version of what a cannabis consumer looks like. To me, the most misunderstood part is that women who consume are somehow less than. And it could not be further from the truth. We are smart, driven, ambitious, attractive, educated, loving, present, and powerful. We just also happen to love cannabis. And that does not diminish us. It amplifies us.

As your platform grows, how do you maintain balance between public persona and private identity?

The way I stay balanced between my public persona and my private identity is by remembering that I get to choose what I share. People think I put my whole life on the internet, but the truth is, I only share what I want to share. I let people see the parts of me that feel aligned, honest, real, and helpful. The rest stays with me, my family, and my home. I also remind myself that my online self and my real self are not two different people. I do not play a character. What you see online is who I am in real life. I think that is what makes balance easier. When you are not performing, you do not have to manage two identities. I am the same person whether I am on camera or off. I am just more selective with what I allow the world to witness. Setting boundaries has been huge for me. My marriage is sacred. My kids are sacred. Certain parts of my daily life are sacred. The internet does not get access to all of that, and it never will. People see what I give them, not everything that exists. And that is what keeps me grounded.

I also think cannabis helps me stay connected to myself. It keeps me present. It keeps me regulated. It helps me hear my own thoughts instead of everyone else’s opinions. That makes it easier to show up online without losing myself in the noise. At the end of the day, I know who I am when the camera is off. I know my values. I know my intentions. I know my worth. And as long as I stay rooted in that, I can show up publicly without ever feeling like my private identity is at risk. The key for me is simple. Share honestly, but not everything. Protect what matters. And never let the internet define who you are.

What have been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced in the cannabis world, and how did you push through them?

The biggest challenges in the cannabis world have always been the restrictions and the stigma. My content gets taken down for no reason. My accounts get suspended. I get shadowbanned. I have had my store shut down. I have had platforms delete things I worked months on. And the frustrating part is that people posting the same thing never get touched. It feels like the rules are constantly shifting and women especially get hit the hardest. The other challenge has been the assumptions people make. The judgment. The idea that moms who consume cannot also be great moms or successful businesswomen. I have had to fight that stereotype the entire time I have been in this space. But honestly, it only made me louder. I knew that the only way to break the stigma was to exist publicly as a normal woman who loves cannabis and is still a phenomenal mom, wife, and entrepreneur.

I pushed through all of it by refusing to give up. Every time a platform took something from me, I built something new. When Instagram suspended me, I started growing on TikTok. When TikTok slowed, I built my Skool community. When Stan Store kicked me out, I turned to other platforms and made them work. I learned very fast that in the cannabis space, you cannot rely on one outlet. You have to cast a wide net. You have to build a real community that lives beyond just one app.

What kept me going was knowing that this is bigger than me. It is not just about my content. It is about the people who tell me they feel less alone because I show up. It is about giving a voice to people who feel like they cannot speak openly. When I remember that, I do not break under the pressure. I adapt. I push harder. I innovate. Every challenge taught me something important. Even if the platforms try to silence us, the community keeps growing. As long as I stay rooted in why I started, nothing can stop me.

For people who want to follow in your footsteps, what advice would you give to aspiring cannabis influencers who are just starting their journey?

My first piece of advice is to just start. Do not wait to feel ready. Do not wait for the perfect lighting, the perfect background, the perfect confidence. You only get better by doing. Repetition kills all doubt. The more you post, the better you get. The more you post, the more data you have. And the more data you have, the easier it is to see what works and what does not. You also have to be honest. People can feel when you are performing. People can feel when you are chasing attention. People can feel when you are hiding parts of yourself because you are scared of judgment. If you want to grow in the cannabis space, you have to be willing to show up as who you really are. Not the polished version. Not the version you think the internet wants. The real you. Try everything in the beginning. Do humor. Do educational content. Do storytelling. Do day in the life. Do mindset. Do whatever feels good. The internet will tell you very quickly what people connect with. And when you find the thing that works, double down on it. Protect your mindset. This space is not easy. Your content may get taken down. Your account might get flagged or suspended. Brands might be hesitant. People may judge you. And you will question yourself at some point. Expect that. Know that it is part of the process. When it happens, do not quit. Lean in. Build across multiple platforms. Build a community that exists outside of one app.

Create content for other people first. Make them feel seen, heard, understood, safe. When you create from connection instead of ego, your growth will be faster and more meaningful. But at the same time, make sure the content also feels good to you. If it does not feel aligned, you will burn out. And lastly, have faith. Real faith. The kind where you believe in something you have not seen yet. Believe in yourself when no one else does. Believe in your path even when it makes no sense. Believe that everything is working out for you, even when it feels like things are falling apart. If you keep going, keep posting, keep learning, keep adjusting, and keep trusting yourself, you will be shocked at how fast your life can change. The world needs more people who are not afraid to be themselves. Be that person.

When you think about everything you’ve created so far, what do you want people to feel or understand after reading this interview?

What I want people to feel after reading this interview is possibility. I want them to understand that I did not build any of this because I had the perfect plan or the perfect confidence. I built it because I finally stopped hiding who I was. I leaned into the parts of myself I was taught to quiet. And I trusted that there were people out there who needed exactly that version of me. I want people to understand that you do not have to fit a mold to deserve a good life. You do not have to be perfect to be successful. You do not have to wait for permission to be yourself. You can be a mom, a wife, a creator, a leader, a cannabis user, a spiritual person, a messy person, a growing person, all at the same time, and still build something you are proud of.

I want people to know that their voice matters. Their story matters. Their truth matters. Even if it scares them. Even if the world misunderstands them. Even if the odds feel stacked against them. I want them to walk away knowing that the moment you stop performing and start being who you actually are, everything in your life starts to align. And most of all, I want them to feel seen. Because that is the whole reason I started. I want people to know they are not alone. I want them to know there is nothing wrong with them. I want them to know that cannabis does not make them less than. It does not make them a bad parent or a bad partner or a bad person. It is simply part of who they are, and they deserve to feel safe in that truth. If someone leaves this interview believing in themselves a little more, trusting their path a little more, or feeling a little less alone, then I did exactly what I came here to do.

This article is from an external, unpaid contributor. It does not represent High Times’ reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.

Photos courtesy of Stephanie Trenkamp

<p>The post The Gardener Who Got Cannabis Moms To Breathe: A Q&A With Stephanie ‘thegardentok’ Trenkamp first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post The Gardener Who Got Cannabis Moms To Breathe: A Q&A With Stephanie ‘thegardentok’ Trenkamp appeared first on Paradise Found.

Interviewing the Torches team was like talking to one person while chatting with four.

First came José, license holder and big-picture hustler from Jamaica, Queens. Then, Jonathan Santana, a former financial advisor who walked away from banking to bet on weed. Pedro Antonio pops in, the Colombian “spice” of the crew, half-strategist, half-hype man. Finally, there’s William Evans, the “honorary Dominican” and in-house buyer, juggling the call while checking on his sick daughter.

They start the conversation the way a lot of good weed stories begin in New York: in two languages, with jokes and a little bit of biography.

“We’re all Dominican,” Jonathan says.

“And I’m Colombian,” Pedro adds. “Got a little Colombian spice.”

Pedro explains how he was born in the U.S., sent back to Colombia as a kid, came back to New York at four, speaking only Spanish, then got swallowed whole by hip hop and the city.

“My mom says I told her I’d never speak English,” he laughs. “Then New York happened. I learned English, loved hip hop, and never turned back.”

When I tell them the true language is the one you use to curse, everybody cracks up. It’s a throwaway line, but it fits. Torches, which is in Manhattan, is bilingual, bicultural, and very much New York: immigrant roots, street logic, and a really elegant address. A social equity dispensary built by these amazing people.

Torches lives inside the former Nat Sherman Townhouse on 42nd Street, one of the most legendary cigar spaces in the city. And this month, it will become a flagship pickup location for the High Times Cannabis Cup Judges Kits.

If you’ve ever dreamed of what it would look like when legacy New York cannabis finally took over the old money cigar lounges, this is it.

“We always had weed in our story.”

Ask who the Polanco Brothers are and José starts in the most honest place possible.

“As New Yorkers, cannabis has been part of our lives for a very long time,” he says. “I’ve been consuming since I was young, and I’m pretty sure everybody on this call has some kind of experience with cannabis growing up.” 

They grew up in Queens in the 90s.

“Some neighborhoods, they got different choices,” José says. “In ours, it was cannabis, mostly. That was the environment. We enjoyed smoking together, and as we saw the game growing, legalization in other states, we knew one day it could be a possibility for us too.”

José came to the U.S. in 1993, at nine years old, not knowing the language. School wasn’t his strong suit. So instead of chasing degrees, he did what a lot of immigrants do when they want to earn their place: he started businesses. He built a family construction company from nothing. He ran car-sharing operations years before the big names took over. At one point, he and his circle had around 35 employees. All of that would turn out to matter in ways none of them could predict.

Because when New York’s social equity program for cannabis finally opened, the criteria were pretty specific: you needed

1.⁠ ⁠a cannabis-related charge, and

2.⁠ ⁠a proven track record of running a business for at least a couple of years.

José had both.

“It wasn’t easy,” Jonathan says. “That’s why some big players were kind of upset we got in before they did. They spent all this money lobbying for legalization, and then we show up with more power than they have, because they’re limited in how many stores they can open and how they can enter the rec program.”

They applied in the first round, sweating it out, thinking they might rank high and get in, but they didn’t. Then in 2023, in the second round of licenses, the Polanco Brothers’ name came up.

“Some of my friends thought I was crazy,” José says. “But they helped anyway. Some believed it could happen. The rest is history.”

“Giuliani had a locker down here.”

The hard part wasn’t getting the license. It was everything that came after.

First, they had to find a location in a city where cannabis-friendly landlords were rare, and zoning rules around churches, schools, and other dispensaries made compliant real estate feel like “a needle in a haystack.”

Then they found the former Nat Sherman Townhouse on 42nd Street, a three-story cigar temple just steps from Grand Central. “It has so much history,” Pedro says. “It’s its own story. The who’s who of New York used to be down there in that lounge where José is sitting right now.”

We’re talking hedge funds, banks, clergy, mobsters, politicians, celebrities. There’s a hidden entrance from Fifth Avenue where dignitaries would sneak in without being seen. The lockers in the basement once held private cigar stashes for the city’s elite.

“Giuliani had a locker down here,” they tell me. “The same guy pushing stop-and-frisk laws that ended up impacting so many in our communities was probably smoking cigars in that lounge, thinking through those policies.”

Now, those same rooms are being reclaimed by the very people those policies targeted—through a social equity license, in a legal cannabis shop.

Destiny is a word they use more than once.

When they chose the townhouse, there was a problem with MedMen. The collapsing cannabis giant had a store 860 feet away, and under the rules at the time, that proximity gave MedMen exclusivity. 

If MedMen converted from medical to recreational, Torches could never open at Nat Sherman.

“We were stuck for seven months,” Jonathan says. “We couldn’t open. We had to decide: do we walk away and pick another location, or do we wait them out?”

The Office of Cannabis Management even tried to nudge them away from the building, warning them they were passing on easier opportunities.

“They told us, ‘Real estate is so hard to come by. Pick another location. You won’t regret it,’” Pedro recalls. “They said if we stayed, it could be detrimental to the business. But we kept the dream and the vision.”

It really did come down to the shot clock.

If MedMen had filed to convert before the deadline, Torches wouldn’t exist in this format and the landlord might have demolished the building for a skyscraper. 

Instead, the floodgates opened in early 2024. Torches secured its proximity and started building.

Built by the same hands that grew up on the legacy side.

Torches wasn’t dropped in by a corporate general contractor, but built by the same family and friends who used to hustle to get by.

“We came in as builders,” José says. “We have a construction company. My brothers are the builders. Everything you see here was built by us.”

The townhouse already had something no other building on 42nd Street had: industrial-grade ventilation, designed for heavy cigar smoke. One of only three buildings in the entire state with that level of air circulation, they tell me. A structure literally built for people to consume something in comfort.

“It was meant to be a consumption lounge,” Pedro says. “The bones of the building were destined for cannabis.”

For now, the lounge is used for private events and meetings while New York slowly figures out its consumption regulations. But the infrastructure is there, locked and loaded.

“Like Bob Marley said, ‘what’s profitable’?”

William, the buyer, is the one with the deepest hands-on cannabis history. He started in the legacy market as a teenager, moved with the plant, watched the evolution from cheap corner bags to modern branded eighths and solventless everything.

“We really got our ears to the streets,” William says. “We’re nice people, but we’re not pushovers. People come to show us products. We can tell what’s good and what’s trash. We’ve learned a lot about marketing, too. Some folks come in trying to get over on us, and we close the door. Then two weeks later, they crawl back like, ‘We can do 50% off.’”

For Torches, “Torches-worthy” is a combination of Quality, Price and Relationship: brands that show up, do activities, educate, and give something back to the community.

“There are products for everybody,” William says. “Some people want the best of the best. Some just want a good deal, like a cigarette. We want to make sure the $25 eighth is actually decent, and the $50 eighth really earns that price.”

“Profitable” for José, though, goes beyond the ledger.

“Like Bob Marley said, what’s profitable?” He remembers Marley’s philosophy. “The relationships we’re building here, the currency we’re building for the culture—that’s more than just financial. We’re paying our bills, we’re growing, we’ll open more locations, sure. But profit for me is being in this space, having this conversation, building something for our people.”

“You shouldn’t be buying weed from the same guy you’re buying a sandwich from.”

New York has been cracking down hard on the unlicensed market for the past year, raiding smoke shops, padlocking corner stores selling gummies and mystery “zaza” out of glass cases.

The Polanco crew has complicated feelings about it.

“If you’re asking about enforcement on illegal stores on 42nd, we weren’t too impacted,” Jonathan says. “Here, rent is very high. Most of the raids hit community stores and corner spots in rougher neighborhoods. But if you’re asking about the legacy market, that’s where we all come from. We did the right thing to get here, and we pay a lot of tax. But I still respect legacy growers that take pride in their product, people who built real communities before legalization.”

The line for them is clear: they don’t support people flooding the market with contaminated, unsafe, or purely opportunistic products.

“It’s like what’s happening with some of the hemp stuff,” José says. “People putting anything out there, no pride in the product. If you’re doing that, unregulated, without caring, I don’t stand with you. But the legacy people who’ve been growing, who care, I wish them nothing but the best. I hope they all find a way into licensing and bring that fire to the legal market.”

Then Jonathan drops the line that should probably be printed on a poster somewhere:

“You shouldn’t be buying weed from the same guy you’re buying a sandwich from.”

Fair enough.

“We are the torch.”

Their relationship with High Times started at a cannabis expo and through Josh Kesselman.

“William spotted him,” Pedro says. “‘Yo, Josh is here.’ We went straight over. He was super cool, very real. We showed him a video of the store before renovations, with Nat Sherman still intact. He was blown away.”

Later, Josh came to visit Torches in person, unannounced. He filmed a tour of the entire space and posted it on Instagram, giving them a massive boost with zero ask in return.

“For us, that was huge.”

So why Torches as the flagship pickup location for the High Times Cannabis Cup Judges Kits?

“We really come from this,” says William. “We’re connected to the streets, but we also have this beautiful location in the heart of the city. There are smaller stores with culture, but they don’t have what we have. I feel like we really shine a light on the culture. And we’re still the little guys compared to the big companies. It’s a David and Goliath story.”

Then José brings it home.

“The reason you chose us is because we are Torches,” he says. “We are the light for the ones before us and the ones after us. When you accomplish something, we want to hand you your torch. We picked a name that means something to share, something to celebrate. We want to be like the Olympics. The Cup is the Olympics, and we’re the torch right behind it.”

He’s not exaggerating about location, either. This isn’t just Times Square tourism. It’s 42nd and Grand Central, a literal gateway where the whole world passes through.

“Every tourist, every businessperson, every kind of New Yorker comes through here,” José says. “We’re not just saying cannabis is coming. We’re saying it’s coming elegant, strong, smart, with swag and substance.”

“The people get to decide.”

“We always heard about the High Times Cannabis Cup,” William says. “We’d be like, ‘Oh my God, that brand won it.’ But we were never a part of it. It was all West Coast. Now we get to host the kits in New York.”

They’re showcasing the kits in custom glass cases upstairs, surrounded by the kind of old-world architecture that wasn’t built with weed in mind but somehow fits it perfectly.

“We’re curators,” Pedro says. “We’d love nothing more than to test every kit. But what we love about the Cup is that the people get to decide. No politics. No backroom deals. Just the community judging.”

What they want people to feel when they pick up their Judges Kits:

When I ask what vibe they want people to feel walking into Torches to grab their Cannabis Cup kits, José keeps it simple.

“The same thing they already feel when they come in,” he says. “We want them to know the level of quality in our menu is the same level of quality in the kits. We’ll have budtenders ready to educate, so people know what they’re picking up and can judge better.”

William adds the emotional side.

“I want people to be excited,” he says. “It’s fun. It’s different. You’re part of history. This townhouse is already historic, and now we’re launching something historic again.”

“The people get to decide,” adds Pedro.

“We want to inspire people like us to not give up”

At the end of the interview, I asked if there was anything they wanted to add.

“We just want to inspire people,” says José. “People like us to not give up, to get up and do things. To see that there are professional careers in this industry. We happen to be first right now, but we want to be good at it so other people feel like, ‘We can all do it.’ The more people do it, the better the space is going to be, the better the cannabis, the better the products.”

Pedro sees it as a responsibility.

“You’re talking to people at ground zero,” he says. “New York is still in its infancy as a legal market. We’re just crossing a billion in sales, pushing toward two, aiming at six. It’s still stigmatized. But we’re not going anywhere. We’re going to leave a legacy in New York cannabis.”

If you’re in New York, this is the moment. 

The High Times Cannabis Cup is officially in the 212, and Torches is the place to grab your Judges Kit. 

Step inside the old Nat Sherman townhouse, pick up your box, and make history this year.

Photos by Kyle Rosner.

<p>The post From Queens to the Cannabis Cup: Inside Torches, the Social Equity Dream Taking Over NYC’s Most Iconic Cigar Townhouse first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post From Queens to the Cannabis Cup: Inside Torches, the Social Equity Dream Taking Over NYC’s Most Iconic Cigar Townhouse appeared first on Paradise Found.

Joshua Kesselman, the man behind the RAW® brand of rolling papers and other smoking accessories, didn’t name his brand after a process. He named it after a feeling. A feeling of realness, energy, and truth. The word came to him “through the emotion in a classic hip-hop track’s lyrics; a raw expression of honesty and intensity that captured exactly what I wanted the brand to stand for… Papers are about how it feels when you light up with people you love.”

If you want to understand him, start at the beginning. A New York kid collects rolling papers and learns that a thin sheet can carry feeling. That spark leads to a factory in Spain, a million-dollar bet, and a few hip hop co-signs. That path sets the stage for the brand that would make his name.

Also read: The Tattoo Test: The One (Secret) Question That Reveals If Your Brand Is Iconic

Sit with Josh Kesselman and it becomes clear: his drive isn’t money. It is a rare obsession with rolling papers, down to details most people skip past.

He collected them. Before he was a world-famous businessman in the rolling-paper industry, he was an eccentrically dressed guy with binders of more than 2,000 packs from around the world, trading with a handful of equally obsessed collectors. And this was before the internet.

So, where did this drive for rolling papers, smokeskins, rolls, wraps, sheets, roll-ups, leaves, rice-style papers, and more come from?

The shop that made him belong

“I remember my dad doing magic tricks with rolling papers,” Kesselman says of late-’70s family holiday parties. “He’d light one, throw it up in the air, and it would just vanish. Nothing came down. When you’re a little kid and you see that, you’re like, ‘Magic is real.’ That was my first real experience with rolling papers.”

Back home, things were complicated. “It was harder for me to make friends,” he says. “My birth mother had serious struggles and was out of the picture a lot. My dad was a very good guy, but he was constantly working. I was raised more by my grandparents and by my beautiful Linda, from Trinidad. If you ask why I’m always laughing and smiling, that’s Linda in my soul; she knew joy like no other. My grandfather taught me business; my grandmother taught me resilience and unconditional love. I wouldn’t be me without them.”

Growing up in a complicated home, Kesselman dreamed of building a space where outcasts, introverts and odd people like himself belonged.

“As a teenager, I’d go to these smoke shops and witness coolness—long hair, round glasses, a hopped-up Camaro out front—and those guys looked free,” he says. “I admired them and wanted to be like them.” By then, he was already trading packs with collectors and cataloging his own.

In 1993, during his senior year at the University of Florida, he turned a class project into a real store: Knuckleheads Tobacco & Gifts in Gainesville. “I sold everything I owned and maxed out all my credit cards. Kept a $500 van and a Harley I built myself, and moved into a friend’s storage shed to save on rent,” he says. “I’d have to jump over the lawnmower to get to bed, so I wouldn’t get clippings on my feet.”

He had no vendors, so he went to a famous South Florida head shop, flirted, begged and asked for old catalogs. “She gave me a stack. I ran to a payphone and called the first one: Adam’s Apple,” he recalls. “From there, I built relationships.” He kept the front door open during build-out with a sign — Coming soon — and filled the shelves by asking walk-ins what they wanted. “The Tom Sawyer fence method,” he laughs. “Let the community paint.”

The shop became a local hub. “I kept the Gainesville store open 24 hours because I was happy there and always wanted a place to connect with people—and because I’d grown up lonely. A shop makes you part of a community. Every stoner within 100 miles came just to feel not alone.”

Eventually, Josh put stores in five college towns. But then, the growth dynamic was interrupted by angry feds and old laws against paraphernalia.

A raid came.

“My store sold a bong to the adult daughter of a U.S. Customs Service special agent in charge. Next thing, helmets, machine guns, and threats to shoot my sweet dogs,” he says. “One thing they made very clear: rolling papers were legal; bongs weren’t. That ended my stores.”

He left Florida, moved west, and made a decision: I love rolling papers, rolling papers are legal, and the universe wants me to concentrate on making the best papers in the world!

Beauty Is the Eye of the Collector

The next step in his journey, the paper itself, came from disappointment. Back in 1993, he began selling a certain brand of ‘Natural American’ cigarettes in his store after a customer asked for them and ranted about how natural they were. The customer offered Josh one and he was shocked to see it was wrapped in a typical thick white bleached chalked paper. “I’m expecting unbleached, translucent…and it’s bright white,” he says. “I can taste the calcium carbonate—the chalk—on the back of my throat. Harsh. Ruins the flavor and makes me cough.”

That night, he thought about his collection.

“By then I had around two thousand packs—one of the biggest collections in the States—organized in binders and Ziplocs,” he says. “I realized: the thin translucent brown natural paper I’m envisioning doesn’t exist. That’s when I had the idea for RAW.”

His formula was simple and uncompromising: just two ingredients (plant cellulose plus a touch of plant starch that’s been positively charged to form a strong paper web). No bleaching. No calcium carbonate. No ammonia-dyed gum. Nothing extra. He would accept the trade-offs. “If it’s harder to work with on the machines, run the machines slower! Patch what you have to. Cut around what you can; each sheet should be unique like the smoker that rolls them.”

A Spaniard Named José Emilio

Collectors learn where the good stuff comes from. For Kesselman, the trail led to Spain’s Valencian region and to José Emilio, who had revived an old rolling papers factory with machines and workers from the former Bambú plant after losing a long legal fight with a Chicago-based huge tobacco megacorp. At first, José was reserved; seeing Josh, a young, long-haired American, talking about papers wasn’t enough. That changed when Kesselman mentioned the family magic trick and the Marfil papers that his father loved.

“He says, ‘Josh, my father, my grandfather, my great grandfather, all on my wife’s side—we made Marfil.’ We agreed we had to bring it back,” Kesselman recalls, but they eventually realized they couldn’t use the name due to that mean old Chicago lawsuit.

“So we named it Elements after the elements used to create the plants for the paper, a rice-style paper thin enough to be translucent.”

The partnership widened. “José also had old machines and techniques for flavored papers. We made Cool Jay’s menthol, then Juicy Jay’s watermelon, and more,” he says. The operating model set then still holds: work with the best paper mills in Europe to mill a custom base sheet, ship that huge mother roll to José’s factory in Spain, where he would press, dry-calender watermark, sonder, and finish the paper with a gum José mixed from acacia tree sap and heat-applied to the sheet, and interleaving everything into a booklet. “We tried other factories. José’s work just hit different. You notice his perfectionism in the small details of the way the paper burns and tastes.”

In 2019, with José nearing 80 and grieving his late wife María, who was instrumental in sourcing what became RAW, the factory was sold to Kesselman’s family. “He liked that my wife would own it,” Josh says. “On his side, too, women held the majority.”

José still pops into Josh’s life to advise, and Kesselman is still collecting history, like a single-wide machine he estimates is from 1870 that he’d been begging a collector for.

“I finally got it,” he smiles. “Not relevant to production, but relevant to the soul.”

You see. A collector.

Million Dollar Bet

The real resistance to producing the unique sort of natural, unbleached rolling paper that everyone knows RAW for came from the mills.

“I’m pitching a translucent, unbleached sheet with minimal additives,” he says. “Most mills laughed— And my runs were too small.”

Every mill has a number, an order size big enough to make them say yes. Eventually, a smaller mill put a price on the table. “They said, ‘Commit to a massive buy,’ which amounted to what seemed like all my savings,” he says. He had done it before, risking everything and going all in on a dream. The amount was different, but that did not stop Josh.

He committed and ordered the giant mother rolls, tens of thousands of feet long, probably worth over a million dollars.

He was also pushing against centuries of conditioning. “Historically, white paper meant ‘pure.’ Early Spanish labels even said ‘higiénico [hygienic],’” he says. “RAW flipped that. The point wasn’t whiteness; it was rightness—the kind of natural paper that feels human and real, closer to how you might imagine feeling in olden times if you were sitting around a campfire with your tribe, burning hemp, and taking in the smoke.”

How RAW actually spread

Josh, who studied marketing at the University of Florida in the early 90s, prepared a tactical launch. “We bought ads—even in High Times—hit every main trade show and sesh event, and most importantly, I shared a lot,” he says. “If you want the truth about a paper, place it in a sesh circle and let the paper do the talking.”

He was trying to switch consumption habits among cigarette and weed smokers, not used to seeing, let alone smoking with translucent brown papers.

Then culture did what culture does.

“Curren$y rapped about RAW—‘it’s a RAW paper, not a blunt’—and that opened a lot of doors. I went on tour dates with him, met many people,” he says. “Wiz Khalifa is a real smoker and a good dude. I never paid him to sing about my stuff. He made a song called ‘RAW’ on ‘Black Hollywood’ because he loved it. That was the rule: no hired guns. If you don’t actually roll RAW, we’re not doing a deal. Consumers can tell a check from a choice.”

A canceled co-appearance with Wiz in Arizona led to an unexpected lane. “People were already lined up, but Wiz got sick. I showed up anyway with some of the Taylor Gang guys,” he says. “We signed, told stories, took photos. Nobody left the line. After that, I started doing appearances. My social media blew up.”

When the pandemic hit, he pivoted to teaching. “I thought it was going to last three weeks,” he laughs. “I did daily videos: how to smoke out of an apple or a banana, make tips from index cards, roll with the grain—old tricks no one had talked about in ages.” He also used the platform to fact-check industry myths. “A huge tobacco company started pushing a history that didn’t match my knowledge, to promote their papers,” he says. “So I flew to Seville, Spain and filmed where Encyclopaedia Britannica says we humans first rolled up in paper in the 1500s! If I have to teach, I’ll teach.”

A public figure who still acts like a shop guy

Kesselman is frank about enjoying the attention — but he frames it as a cure for a long, lonely arc. “Being kinda famous for smoking means I can make friends anywhere,” he says. “If they know me, they’re probably smokers, so we already have common ground. In Bali, I posted, ‘I’m here—meet me at this bar,’ and locals showed up on scooters. I had friends that night and a great time!”

The flamboyance is real, the collector mentality is real, and so is the willingness to hop on a plane to chase a story or an antique press. The operating style is grounded: a paper without yucky additives, a Spanish factory, a deep respect for the craft he found in the Valencian region, and an absolute insistence on true independence and authenticity in marketing.

“We’ve always kept final manufacturing of our booklets in Spain,” he says. “Mills can change just like the yarn that was spun into your shirt, but the real magic is Spanish. That specialized craft is why the paper burns so beautifully.”

He’s also unromantic about copycats. “People make papers that look like RAW,” he says. “But they don’t use our techniques, skills, nuances and lord only knows about their ingredients. Their imitations come out different, it feels different, and it doesn’t connect with the soul. That’s the difference.”

If you’re looking for a tidy origin myth, he won’t give you one. What you get instead is a chain: a child watching a paper vanish, a lonely student opening an all-night shop to build a community, a collector who didn’t see the paper he envisioned in 2,000 packs, a Spaniard whose family made Marfil, a million-dollar order for mother rolls, and a name pulled from a mixtape in the refrigerator.

Kesselman’s life reads like it was lifted straight from a novel. And of course, there’s plenty more drama ahead — we’ve only scratched the surface so far. To find out what happens next, you’ll have to turn to part two.

<p>The post Meet the Publisher: ‘Give It to You Raw’ — The True Story of Josh Kesselman, RAW Papers and the Spanish Factory That Shaped a Rolling-Paper Empire (Part I) first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Meet the Publisher: ‘Give It to You Raw’ — The True Story of Josh Kesselman, RAW Papers and the Spanish Factory That Shaped a Rolling-Paper Empire (Part I) appeared first on Paradise Found.

There’s a moment, somewhere past the hour mark, when Trinidad James leans back and drops it without drama: “I’m not fighting for my life. I’m fighting for my flow state.” It’s quiet, almost offhand, but it lands like someone who has spent years stripping away noise until only the essentials remain.

In the third episode of the High Times Podcast, Josh Kesselman sits across from the Trinidadian-American artist, songwriter and creative architect for a long, open conversation about smoke, discipline, vulnerability, work, and the strange ways people learn to live with themselves.

Watch the full podcast here.

A Conversation That Moves

James shows up the way he sounds on his best records: present, grounded, funny, observant. Josh opens the door and, instead of a Q&A, the episode settles into something slower and more lived-in, like two old friends comparing notes in the middle of the smoke.

Early on, they slide into the emotional weather report of the times: anger, frustration, this feeling that everything is at a boil. James cuts through it: “Anger is really just aggravation,” he says. “If you’re not going to do nothing, you’re not fed up.” It’s a small line with big consequences, especially in a world where everyone feels pushed to pick a side and start swinging.

Josh responds with a family memory instead of theory. He talks about his grandfather, shot three times fighting Nazis, once in the head, and how he came home without hate, even going back after the war to visit the people who had once been “the enemy.” Then he quotes his grandmother: “There are no good people. There are no bad people. There’s just people.” It doesn’t need unpacking. It just sits there, like a joint in the ashtray, changing the air in the room.

Cannabis, Enhancement And The Limits We Imagine

Of course, they talk about weed. But not as a brand deck or a flex; more like a tool that can help or hurt depending on how you hold it. James is clear: “Do not be dependent on cannabis… let it enhance your life experience. I don’t believe in dependency. I believe in enhancement.”

From there, the theme settles in: the difference between using something to run away and using it to come back — to yourself, to your work, to the people around you. James talks about taking tolerance breaks just to feel like his “raw kid” self again for a day or two, and how that version of him still designs whole collections and albums in one inspired stretch.

Josh counters with pandemic flashbacks, when the whole world was locked inside and he turned his feeds into rolling school. “You’re running out of tips?” he says, remembering those days. “Let me show you how to an index card and fold it the right way… If you fold it the wrong way, it’ll square up. No, you got to go with the fibers. You can see them. Hold on to the light, maybe you can see the fibers.”

At first, it sounds like a stoner how-to. Then it lands as something else: a memory of improvising under pressure, of trying to keep people connected and uplifted when everything outside felt like a bad trip.

Vulnerability, Craft And The Long Road To Mastery

Midway through, the talk slows down and goes inward. They crack open vulnerability: how it works, how long people avoid it, and the strange triggers that finally kick those doors down. James doesn’t overcomplicate it. “Sometimes trauma breaks down walls,” he says. Simple. Heavy. True.

From there, they get deep into craft. Josh walks through the discipline behind things most people never think about: microphones, rolling papers, all the objects that quietly hold up a culture. He talks about studying the history of papers, the old mills, the forgotten brands, the people who came before. “Don’t be scared to study the step that you skipped,” he says. It’s half advice, half confession.

James brings it back to people and places. If you don’t study the culture or the community you’re trying to speak to, he says, your work might still sound good, but it won’t hit the same. Without that grounding, “you only hear the talent but you don’t feel the soul.”

That back-and-forth — materials and music, factories and feelings — is where the episode really breathes. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being honest with the path.

The Scale Of Life

Late in the episode, Josh reaches for one of his favorite artifacts: an old pack of rolling papers printed with a chart of life, from childhood to old age. He explains how, after turning 50, he decided to smoke one sheet from that pack every birthday. “There will come a time when I’m either going to run out of sheets, the sheets beat you, or the sheets are going to run out of me.”

It’s a metaphor you can hold in your hand. A countdown you can actually taste. James lets the moment sit. You can almost hear the pause in the room before they move on.

Living Your Life Is Your Job

Again and again, the conversation comes back to how to live: not online, not on paper, but in real time. James says it in one of the episode’s most grounded lines: “Living your life is your job. That’s what you’re obligated to do.” You’re not a saint or a villain, he reminds people. “You’re not a good human. You’re not a bad human. You’re human. The things you do are good. The things you do are bad.”

Josh echoes it with his own angle on responsibility and legacy: not trying to be remembered as rich, but as someone who actually tried to help, someone who didn’t “subscribe to hate” even when life gave him every excuse to.

Why This Conversation Matters

The strength of Episode 3 lies in its pace. It doesn’t chase clips or controversy. It lets ideas arrive the way they do in real life: slowly, with detours, jokes, tangents and sudden clarity. It’s a long, smoke-filled talk between two people who actually care about craft and spirit: about anger, memory, mastery, cannabis, survival and what it takes to feel fully alive in a time that keeps asking you to shrink.

High Times has always been at its best when it makes room for those conversations. This is one of them.

Guest

Trinidad James is a Trinidadian-American recording artist, songwriter and creative director whose work moves across music, fashion, storytelling and media.

Watch The Full Episode

Episode 3 of the High Times Podcast with Josh Kesselman, featuring Trinidad James, is now available on the High Times YouTube channel.

<p>The post WATCH: Trinidad James & Josh Kesselman On Flow State, Cannabis And The Art Of Living (High Times Podcast) first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post WATCH: Trinidad James & Josh Kesselman On Flow State, Cannabis And The Art Of Living (High Times Podcast) appeared first on Paradise Found.