Vape hardware is one of the cannabis industry’s most persistent waste problems. Fernway launched the first take-back program in 2022, and this summer opened its dropboxes to any brand’s device.

The New York episode of Kicking Back, High Times’ World Cup road series, includes a brief stop at The Travel Agency on Fifth Avenue, where a member of the Fernway team walks the crew through a recycling dropbox positioned near the register. Many participating retailers offer incentives to customers who recycle, and Fernway collects the devices for processing.

The moment passes quickly in an episode built around soccer and cannabis culture in New York City, but it points to one of the more persistent operational problems in legal cannabis: what happens to vape hardware once the oil runs out?

The Waste Problem Behind the Vape Category

A used cartridge or all-in-one device is not made of a single material. It combines a lithium-ion battery, a metal housing, a heating element, and trace amounts of cannabis oil. That mix places it in a regulatory gap, because battery waste is governed by one set of rules and cannabis waste by another, while a spent vape qualifies as both.

The consequences are practical. Most curbside recycling programs will not accept these devices, and many consumers are unsure how to dispose of them, so the hardware ends up in household trash. Beyond landfill impacts, lithium-ion cells can ignite when they are crushed in a compactor or on a sorting line, making proper disposal a workplace safety issue as much as an environmental one.

The industry has been asking whether vape pens can go green and dispensaries have been experimenting with incentive-based take-back and retailers have built recycling programs from scratch in the absence of industry standards. The assessment has remained consistent. The materials are recoverable, but the collection infrastructure has not kept pace with the category’s growth.

How the Fernway Program Works

According to Fernway, the company launched the cannabis industry’s first vape recycling program in 2022 and has collected more than 250,000 used devices since then. Dropboxes are placed in participating dispensaries across New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Missouri. Collected hardware is transported to a certified facility, where component materials including steel, lithium, cobalt, and nickel can reenter the supply chain rather than a landfill.

Fernway also cites a broader statistic. Roughly 95% of the world’s rechargeable batteries are thrown away in household trash. The cannabis industry did not create that problem, but a product category built on small lithium-ion cells has inherited a portion of it.

The program is designed to ask very little of the consumer. A return trip to the dispensary is already part of the purchase cycle, finished devices are small enough to carry, and retailer incentives supply a direct reason to bring them along. Removing friction, rather than raising awareness, is the variable most take-back programs are built around.

Why New York Matters Now

New York is where the collection question has moved from voluntary to institutional. The state has launched a pilot collection program for e-cigarettes and vaping devices, developed through the Product Stewardship Institute and SUNY ESF’s Center for Sustainable Materials Management and scheduled to run through August 2026. 

The pilot supports a Department of Environmental Conservation target of recycling 85% of the state’s waste stream by 2050, and its premise aligns with that of the dropbox. Disposal has to be made at least as convenient as throwing a device away.

The timing coincides with an unusual moment for the city. New York is hosting World Cup matches in the largest sporting event in the world while operating a retail cannabis market roughly three years old. Visitors are arriving from countries where cannabis remains illegal and purchasing it legally in Manhattan dispensaries. In the episode, a French fan tells host Ethan Zohn that consumers in France still conceal their use, while in New York it is possible to consume openly.

Those customers are unlikely to receive any guidance about disposal at the point of sale. The Travel Agency has built its identity around addressing exactly that kind of gap. From the beginning, a member of the shop’s team explains in the episode, the goal has been to destigmatize cannabis through the retail experience itself, presenting the store as a place that invites customers in and encourages them to learn something rather than one they should approach with caution. A recycling dropbox placed beside the register extends that approach past the sale and into what happens after it.

Reusable Hardware and the 510 Standard

Collection addresses only part of the issue. The other part is hardware that does not require replacement as frequently.

Fernway’s cartridges use a universal 510 thread, which allows them to work with most standard batteries, and the company’s STYLUS system is a rechargeable battery intended to outlast the cartridges that attach to it. A rechargeable battery that stays in service for years reduces the volume of hardware entering the waste stream, and it lowers long-term cost for the consumer.

Recycling accounts for the remainder. Fernway’s flavor line has produced a range of releases, including the pickle vape featured earlier in the series, and every device eventually reaches the end of its useful life. The dropbox exists for that stage.

Both efforts sit alongside Squad Goals, Fernway’s summer program, which is built on the premise that cannabis is a social product and that shared occasions, from watch parties to cookouts to pickup games, are worth returning to. A company organized around repeat gatherings has a corresponding interest in the condition of the places where they happen.

What It Would Take to Solve

A single take-back program will not resolve the problem. Regulations remain inconsistent from state to state, many consumers are unaware of the rules in their own jurisdictions, and the volume of hardware leaving dispensary shelves continues to increase.

The elements of a broader solution are already established, however. They include take-back programs that accept hardware regardless of brand, reusable hardware that outlasts a single cartridge, and state collection pilots that make disposal convenient enough to become routine. Collecting more than 250,000 devices does not represent a solved problem, but it does demonstrate that the model functions when the infrastructure is made available.

Consumers who want to participate can ask a budtender whether their dispensary hosts a dropbox, and bring their finished devices along on the next visit.

Photos courtesy of Fernway

Sponsored Content Disclosure: This article was published as part of a paid commercial arrangement with Fernway and is not independent editorial content. Information about Fernway’s vape take-back program, collection totals, participating retailers, recycling process, customer incentives, reusable hardware, and related brand initiatives was provided by Fernway and has not been independently verified by High Times. Broader information about vape disposal, battery waste, and New York’s collection pilot is included as contextual reporting based on the sources cited in the article.

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At a packed Boston pub, Ethan Zohn and Levia co-founder Kristin Rogers skip the beer, add a measured serving of THC to their ginger ales, and give BYOB a new meaning. 

In the first episode of Kicking Back, High Times’ new World Cup docuseries hosted by Survivor winner and former pro soccer player Ethan Zohn, the day winds down in a packed Boston bar. The USA is playing Paraguay, every screen in the place is locked on the match, and the room is loud in the way only a tournament crowd gets.

Zohn is there with Kristin Rogers, co-founder of Massachusetts cannabis brand Levia. They are fully in the mix, right there with everyone else. They are also drinking ginger ales.

Not beer. Ginger ale, with a few Levia Drops stirred in. When the USA scores, the bar erupts and so do they. By the final whistle, with the Americans through, Zohn calls the night something close to a homecoming. Nobody around them needs to know what’s in their glass. 

That’s the point.

It is a small moment, and it lands because there’s no lecture, no wellness sermon, no separation from the crowd. Just two people watching a match, holding drinks they chose for themselves. A decade ago, that version of a night might have happened in a backyard or a parking lot. Now it happens at the bar, in the middle of a World Cup crowd. 

Cannabis isn’t offsides anymore. It’s in the room.

The Toast Was Never About the Beer

For a long time, joining the party meant drinking what the party was drinking. The clink, the cheers, the round bought for the table, all of it ran on alcohol by default. If you weren’t drinking, you were explaining why, usually more than once.

That default is loosening. More adults are turning up to bars, cookouts, and watch parties wanting to be fully in on the night without being fully into a six-pack. And the thing they have worked out is that the connection was never really about the beer. It was about being in the room, raising a glass, riding the same highs and groans as everyone around them. 

The drink was mostly a prop.

You can see it in the rest of the bar menu, too. Mocktails have their own section now. Non-alcoholic beer went from a punchline to a shelf people actually shop. “What are you drinking” stopped being a loaded question and became a genuinely open one. Cannabis fits right into that same opening, just another way to hold a drink and be part of the night on your own terms.

BYOB used to mean bring your own beer. It is quietly turning into something else: bring your own buzz.

Turning a Familiar Drink Into Your Own

This is where Levia Drops slot so easily into a scene like that Boston bar.  Levia‘s water-soluble drops are built to disappear into a drink you already reach for, a ginger ale, a lemonade, a seltzer, a glass of iced tea, turning an ordinary nonalcoholic beverage into a measured cannabis drink for adults in legal markets.

There is no separate ritual and no production to it. You aren’t stepping outside, you aren’t passing anything around, you aren’t announcing a thing. You add a few drops to the drink already in your hand and stay exactly where the action is. For a crowded bar or a watch party, that is about as seamless as it gets: 

Same glass. Same toast. Your own buzz.

For anyone who would rather grab and go, Levia also makes ready-to-open seltzers built to be noticed in a cooler full of the usual options, the kind of can that starts a conversation rather than disappearing into the background. They come in three effects designed to match the occasion: Achieve (awake and active) for tackling a to-do list, Celebrate (social and upbeat) for a backyard barbecue, and Dream (relax and unwind) for a date night on the couch. New and seasonal flavors turn up on the brand’s Instagram as they land. Either way, the move is the same. You pick what fits the moment, and the gathering never has to pause for it.

It Travels Well

That Boston bar is one version of it, but the idea stretches across a whole summer of occasions.

Picture a backyard cookout where one person is the designated driver, a second is training for something, and a third just doesn’t feel like drinking tonight. Every one of those people is looking for a way to be social that doesn’t revolve around alcohol, and a drink they mixed themselves lets them hold a glass and clink it without a single follow-up question. That is the real shift.  Not that cannabis is replacing the toast, but that the toast no longer decides what goes in everyone’s cup.

It also quietly retires the most tired part of not drinking: the explanation. Nobody mixing a drink at the cooler owes the table a reason. The designated driver isn’t stuck with a plain soda while everyone else has something they actually chose. Whatever the reason for skipping the beer, and there are plenty of good ones, the result looks the same from across the room.  A glass, a clink, and a person clearly having a good time.

A Different Kind of Night Out

What that Boston bar captured, ginger ales and all, is a shift that’s been building quietly in the background of nightlife for years. Not a replacement of alcohol, or a rejection of it either. Something closer to expansion. More ways to show up fully without defaulting to the same drink in everyone’s hand.

Cannabis fits into that widening space, not as a disruption, but as another option in a growing spectrum of how people choose to socialize. Levia Drink Drops slip into that shift almost invisibly. A drop or a few in a ginger ale, a seltzer, a lemonade. No separate ritual. No announcement. No stepping away from the moment. Just a familiar drink carrying a different kind of experience, measured and personal.

That flexibility matters most in the real-world mix of nights out.  The goal isn’t to stand apart—it’s to stay in it. To clink glasses, stay for the story, and not feel like you’re on the margins of the night.

And that’s the quiet shift underneath all of it: participation no longer has a single format. BYOB used to mean bring your own bottle. It’s starting to read differently now. Bring your own buzz.  Bring your own way of being in the room.

Photos courtesy of Levia

Sponsored Content Disclosure: This article was published as part of a paid partnership with Levia and is not independent editorial content. Descriptions of Levia’s drops and seltzers, including dosing, effect categories, and suggested social uses, are based on information provided by the brand. High Times has not independently tested the products or verified those claims.

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Many growers treat CalMag as an emergency correction for a plant that is already showing symptoms. In soft- and RO-water systems, its more important role happens earlier: conditioning the water into a stable foundation before nutrients are added.

In most commercial grows, a bottle of CalMag sits near the reservoir and gets reached for almost automatically. Growers running coco with reverse osmosis water add it as a matter of routine, and many add more at the first sign of interveinal yellowing. It has become one of the inputs growers dose with the least deliberation, and that is precisely where a common misconception takes hold.

The assumption behind the routine is that CalMag exists to rescue a plant that is already deficient, and that any product will do the job equally well. In practice, that framing overlooks what calcium and magnesium are actually doing in a low-mineral system, and it can lead to decisions that create new problems rather than solve existing ones.

Calcium and magnesium are not only a correction applied after a deficiency appears. In a soft- or reverse-osmosis-water system, they help establish the foundation the entire feeding program is built on, and the time to address them is before the base nutrients are added to the tank rather than several days into a deficiency.

Why the Misconception Persists

The cultivation community tends to compress complicated decisions into simple rules of thumb, and “CalMag is a deficiency fix” is one of the more durable examples. It persists because it is partly true. CalMag does correct calcium and magnesium deficiencies, and the results are visible when it does. What the shortcut leaves out is everything that happens before a plant shows a symptom, beginning with the water itself.

An important detail that many feed charts omit is that electrical conductivity (EC) alone does not reveal what is dissolved in a water source. Two sources can register the same EC while behaving very differently, because the reading reflects the total quantity of dissolved ions without identifying which ones are present. Sodium and bicarbonate influence that number as readily as calcium and magnesium. Dosing CalMag against a symptom without understanding the underlying water composition can therefore address one issue while introducing another.

The Role Upstream

Soft water and reverse osmosis water share a defining characteristic: they contain very little dissolved mineral content. Reverse osmosis strips a source down to nearly nothing, which is often the reason growers choose it, and the resulting water has few of the calcium and magnesium ions a plant needs. When that water is run into coco, a substrate that binds calcium and magnesium before the plant can take them up, a shortfall is effectively built into the system before any nutrients are introduced.

This is the primary function of a CalMag supplement in these systems. Rather than serving as a late correction, it conditions low-mineral water into a stable, balanced starting point, so that the nutrients added afterward dissolve into a consistent solution. When this step is skipped, growers often spend the remainder of the cycle responding to an unstable foundation that was never addressed at the outset. 

CANNA positions its CalMag Agent as a water conditioner rather than an emergency additive. The product is designed to increase water hardness while maintaining nutrient balance within the system and stabilizing pH in the reservoir over time. The pH behavior is worth noting: the solution naturally decreases and then rises again over the first day or two after mixing, which is why the directions recommend waiting 24 to 48 hours before making further pH adjustments. In this framing, conditioning the water is a deliberate first step rather than a supplement added in response to a visible problem.

Why More Is Not Better

Treating CalMag as a corrective carries a second, less obvious cost: the tendency to overapply it.

When a product is understood as a fix, the natural response is to keep adding it until the symptom disappears. Calcium and magnesium, however, do not remain neutral in solution at any concentration. When their levels climb too high, the result is not simply a surplus; it can distort the ratios that the rest of the feeding program depends on. Oversupplying calcium and magnesium can throw off the nutrient ratios delivered to the plant. The excess does not disappear; it can interfere with the availability of other nutrients, which may produce a lockout that resembles a new deficiency.

This is the risk inherent in dosing by observation alone. A plant that appears slightly deficient receives a heavy correction, the nutrient ratios shift, and a new set of symptoms can appear days later that bears little resemblance to the original issue. Conditioning water to a defined target, rather than adding product until a symptom resolves, is what keeps the full solution predictable from one reservoir to the next.

Questions Worth Asking

A more useful approach than asking which CalMag corrects a deficiency fastest is asking whether the water is being conditioned intentionally or simply patched after the fact. Three questions help clarify that distinction.

First, what is actually present in the source water? EC indicates how much is dissolved, not whether it is beneficial calcium or unwanted sodium. Understanding the composition before adding anything provides a clearer picture than the reading alone.

Second, is the goal conditioning or correction? Establishing a stable foundation before feeding is a different task than addressing a plant that is already deficient, and the two call for different timing and intent.

Third, is there a risk of overshooting? If the response to every deficiency is to add more, there is a real possibility of distorting the nutrient ratios the program relies on. A defined target is more reliable than adjusting toward a disappearing symptom.

These are cultivation questions rather than marketing ones, and the better a grower can answer them, the more consistently a program tends to perform across harvests.

A Routine Input Worth Reconsidering

Commercial cultivation has become highly precise. Growers monitor vapor pressure deficit, track substrate moisture throughout the day, and fine-tune spectrum and irrigation frequency. Yet the step of conditioning the water that every nutrient dissolves into is often treated as an afterthought, reserved for moments when a plant begins to show stress.

Two growers using the same CalMag, the same substrate, and the same base nutrients can still see different outcomes, depending on whether the water was conditioned deliberately or corrected reactively. As margins narrow and consistency becomes more valuable, understanding what a routine input is designed to do can matter as much as adopting new equipment.

Improving a nutrient program is not always a matter of the product reached for once a problem appears. Often it depends on the step taken before any problem develops.

Images courtesy of CANNA Nutrients.

Sponsored Content Disclosure: This article was published as part of a paid commercial arrangement with CANNA Nutrients. It is not independent editorial content. References to formulations, product features, cultivation practices, or company claims reflect the sponsor’s perspective unless otherwise noted and have not been independently verified by High Times.

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The World Cup crowned a champion. The World Series of Poker (WSOP) handed out its bracelets. Summer’s basically over. Nobody told Alex Foxen, and thank god, because he just handed us the best plot twist of the year.

A few weeks ago, we told you about a summer where an ACR Poker Pro, a Norwegian goal-scoring machine, and a 50-year-old cannabis magazine were all somehow running the same play: risk it, flaunt it, make it look easy. The World Cup crowned its champion. The Vegas bags are unpacked. The confetti’s swept up.

ACR Pro Alex Foxen didn’t get the memo that the story was over. Good. Because he was just getting started.

The Recap Nobody Needed, But Everybody’s Going to Enjoy Anyway

Let’s do the numbers real quick for Foxen in Las Vegas: fourth career WSOP bracelet, locked. Outright lead in the Global Poker Index Player of the Year race, locked. For 99% of poker players alive, that’s a career-defining summer, a highlight reel, and an excuse to disappear to a beach for a month.

Foxen took one look at that résumé and basically shrugged.

So… What Actually Beats a Bracelet and Player of the Year Run?

Genuine question. A WSOP bracelet is the closest thing poker has to a championship belt. Player of the Year is an entire season, distilled into bragging rights. Stack them together and you’ve got about as good a year as this sport allows.

Foxen didn’t post a highlight reel of either one. Instead, he dropped a photo on X with a caption that instantly out-charmed both trophies combined:

“Finally received the coolest trophy I have ever won. Getting in some post-WSOP recovery and ready to get back in the online streets for Venom in a couple of weeks. @ACR_POKER”

Read it again. A four-time bracelet winner, leading this year’s Player of the Year race, just told the entire poker world that neither one is his favorite piece of hardware. The photo backs it up: a gleaming gold bong-shaped trophy stamped “THE HIGHFIVE,” a fan of poker cards fused to the base, and a plaque that reads “Nosebleed Stakes, First Place.” Not a bracelet. Not a plaque with his name and a leaderboard rank. A trophy shaped like a bong — and by his own account, the single coolest trophy he has ever won.

That’s not a humblebrag. That’s a mic drop.

Where the Bong Came From (Because You’re Wondering)

This isn’t a novelty item somebody 3D-printed for the vibes. It’s real, official ACR Poker hardware, awarded for first place in the Highest Five nosebleed lineup — the top tier of The High Five Tournament Series, ACR’s gloriously 420-friendly signature series and one of its three marquee events every year alongside the OSS (Online Super Series) and The Venom.

The High Five runs 50 events across five days, split between high- and low-stakes fields, and this year’s edition rolled out “The Highest Five” — a run of nosebleed buy-ins stretching up to $25,500. ACR Pro and former world champ Chris Moneymaker committed to playing every single Highest Five event, which means Foxen didn’t stroll through a soft field to grab this thing. He outran the guy who was poker’s original underdog legend to win poker’s most delightfully ridiculous trophy. That’s not luck. That’s a statement.

A couple of details about the High Five that we’re contractually obligated to mention are definitely, probably, a total coincidence: it runs every April, and every single tournament in the series pauses for a scheduled break at exactly 4:20pm sharp. We won’t insult anyone’s intelligence by pretending we don’t see it. Neither, clearly, does ACR.

High Times readers, of all people, should appreciate a poker series that hands its champion a bong instead of a handshake.

And no, you don’t need a $25,500 buy-in to get in on the fun right now at ACR Poker. The Run Up Series is running a $66 buy-in Mystery Bounty tournament for $1,000,000 GTD, with a $100,000 top bounty hiding inside every single knockout.

It’s the exact same math that turned Chris Moneymaker’s $86 satellite into a $2.5 million WSOP Main Event title back in 2003 — small ante, massive ceiling, zero requirement that you show up already famous. Moneymaker himself is livestreaming the $66 this Saturday if you want a front-row seat to the chaos, or just some inspiration before you fire your own bullet.

Next Up: Back to the Online Streets for the Venom

Foxen’s “couple of weeks” countdown points straight at ACR’s biggest event of the year. The Venom returns this August as a Dual Mystery Bounty monster, guaranteeing a combined $15 million across NLH and PLO events — the largest Venom series ever run. The online streets don’t care whose trophy shelf is fuller. Foxen’s headed back in anyway, presumably still riding the high of his new favorite bong.

Poker’s still a game of variance and skill, and no trophy, bracelet, or tweet changes the fact that players should understand the risks and always play responsibly. But that’s never really been the point of stories like this one.

The point is that after a summer that included a fourth career bracelet and a Player of the Year run, the thing Alex Foxen actually wanted to talk about was a gold bong. Somewhere, that’s poetry. Everywhere else, it’s just really, really good marketing.

Sponsored Content Disclosure: This article was published as part of a paid commercial arrangement with ACR Poker and is not independent editorial content. Claims about tournaments, promotions, prizes, services, or player experiences reflect sponsor-provided or publicly available information and have not been independently verified by High Times. Online poker laws, eligibility, and availability vary by jurisdiction. Poker involves financial risk. Play responsibly and never wager more than you can afford to lose.

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From Skunk #1 to Acapulco Gold, Barney’s Farm is putting foundational cannabis genetics back in breeders’ hands.

Some strains don’t chase trends; they set the standard against which everything else is measured. This collection features eight of the most influential names in cannabis history: Hindu Kush, Acapulco Gold, Northern Lights, Skunk #1, White Widow, G13 Haze, Master Kush, and Afghan Hash Plant. Explore legendary genetics, from pure landraces gathered in the mountains of Afghanistan and the hills of Mexico to Amsterdam coffeeshop icons that defined an era.

Choosing regular seeds is a deliberate decision. Producing both males and females, they give breeders the raw material to select phenotypes, stabilize crosses, and maintain robust mothers. Regular seeds support greater genetic diversity in breeding populations and allow for the careful selection of traits across generations, ensuring long-term line stability and adaptability. For purists, they offer a direct, uncut connection to heritage genetics untouched by modern hybridization.

Across the range, you’ll find the full spectrum: pure Indica landraces such as Hindu Kush and Northern Lights for deep, sandalwood-and-citrus calm; balanced classics such as Skunk #1 and White Widow with pungent aromas and sociable highs; and Sativa-leaning icons such as G13 Haze and Acapulco Gold for tropical sweetness and soaring clarity. Whether you’re breeding, preserving, or simply growing legends, choose the strain that fits your goal and keep cannabis history alive.

Skunk #1 Regular is the benchmark against which every strain is measured, putting the raw genetics that revolutionized the 1970s into your hands.

A cross of Afghan, Acapulco Gold, and Colombian Gold, it’s an ideal breeding canvas with vigorous plants bearing dense, lime-green colas under a silver sheen of resin. Skunk #1 adapts well to a variety of growing environments, thriving both indoors and outdoors, as well as in greenhouses. It performs best in temperate to warm climates, where consistent sunlight and moderate humidity support optimal growth, but it is also known for its resilience and reliability even in less-than-ideal conditions.

True to its name, it announces itself with sweet, sour, undeniably skunky pungency, underpinned by hints of earth and musk; good air filtration is essential. The dominant terpenes include myrcene, which contributes earthy and musky undertones; caryophyllene, which adds a subtle spice; and limonene, which adds bright, citrusy notes. The flavor is gloriously old-school: a sweet, earthy base with sharp bursts of sour citrus, balancing Afghan depth with the brightness of tropical gold.

The high is often described as balanced, opening with an energetic, cerebral jolt of creativity and euphoria before settling into a comfortable body high, making it versatile for social and creative moments alike. Uniform and reliable, it responds eagerly to topping and LST while supporting generous yields.

Northern Lights Regular

Northern Lights Regular is a celebrated cannabis name, bred from Thai and Afghan landrace genetics. These regular seeds preserve their award-winning pedigree, producing dense, bushy plants with thick colas that are coated in frost so heavy it resembles spun sugar. Choose Northern Lights Regular when you want a proven classic.

A quiet virtue is its low odor during cultivation—a stealth grower’s dream, making it easier to keep grows discreet. Up close, the buds release a sweet aroma of pine woods and damp earth, with undertones of honey and musk. The smoke is smooth, sweet, and spicy, with pine and wood notes giving way to a sugary, earthy finish that enhances the appeal for buyers seeking flavor. Select it for discreet growing and a rich smoke.

The effect is often described as relaxing, euphoric, and deeply sedating, making it a popular choice for unwinding. It’s also one of the most forgiving strains to cultivate, thriving in Sea of Green systems and yielding generous, frost-laden returns, making it a practical choice for growers seeking ease and reward. Grow Northern Lights Regular for easy cultivation and deeply calming results.

Hindu Kush Regular

Hindu Kush Regular is a holy grail for purists, a pure landrace originating from the rugged Afghanistan-Pakistan border in the mythical Hindu Kush mountains, untouched by hybridization. Choose these regular seeds to preserve rare heritage or add stability, potency, and resin to your crosses, yielding dense, sticky buds ideal for hand-rubbed hash.

The terpene profile is warm and complex, dominated by myrcene, limonene, and caryophyllene, which create layers of sandalwood and citrus over earthy, woody charas notes with a subtle, emerging sweetness. That richness carries over to the palate, where lemon and fruit peel cut cleanly through the heavy Kush base, giving you a bold, layered flavor and a lingering coat of resin.

The high is often described as profoundly calming and physically meditative, balanced, and clear-headed, without the heavy mental fog some consumers associate with evening strains. Many reach for it as an evening companion. It is also an exceptionally hardy, forgiving plant that shrugs off temperature swings and mold.

Afghan Hash Plant Regular

Afghan Hash Plant Regular comes from seeds gathered in the 1970s from master hashish makers of Mazar-i-Sharif, the heartland of world-class hashish. Careful selection isolated the most resinous, flavorful phenotypes, yielding a compact, bushy champion with classic Indica hallmarks and trichome-drenched buds. Afghan Hash Plant is well-suited to both indoor and outdoor cultivation, thriving in a warm, dry climate and showing strong resistance to pests and mold.

The aroma is complex and satisfying, with a warm, earthy, resinous sandalwood base and a bright citrus note cutting through. These notes carry through to the palate, where a smooth, hash-like sweetness gives way to a lingering, gently spiced, unmistakably Afghani finish.

When smoked or vaporized, consumers often describe the experience as exceptionally smooth and velvety, with a clean burn and little perceived harshness, allowing aficionados to fully appreciate its intricate flavor profile.

The effect is often described as deeply relaxing and full-bodied, with some consumers reporting a sense of physical ease and a quieter mind. Thanks to these pronounced soothing qualities, Afghan Hash Plant is a popular evening strain and a prized building block, lending its resin, structure, and aroma to many of Barney’s Farm’s celebrated hybrids.

White Widow Regular

White Widow Regular carries a name recognized around the world, and these regular seeds capture the original vigor of this Brazilian-South Indian cross. Perfect for hash makers and frosty-phenotype hunters, the plants flaunt trichome coverage so dense that the buds appear almost white, as if dipped in icing sugar.

White Widow is well-suited to both indoor and outdoor cultivation, thriving in mild and temperate climates. Indoors, the plants respond especially well to controlled lighting and humidity, while outdoors, they perform best when protected from excessive moisture late in the season.

White Widow’s key appeal lies in its savory, instantly recognizable aroma, fresh and piney, with strong earthy notes and a sharp pungency, softening into floral, citrus, and spice as it cures. The flavor remains crisp: pine and fruit with citrus sweetness, finished with a spicy, pepper-like kick.

Despite its Indica lean, the high is often described as a powerful cerebral buzz that sparks conversation and creativity before easing into a relaxed, unhurried calm, making it a consummate social strain. Its key strength is dependability: naturally resistant to mold and pests, and responsive to every training method, yielding bumper crops.

Master Kush Regular

Master Kush Regular is cannabis in its most authentic form—a stabilized Indica from Hindu Kush landrace genetics, perfect for selecting strong phenotypes or maintaining reliable mothers. Broad and bushy, it carries large, chunky, intensely resinous flowers and a direct line to Himalayan hash tradition.

The terpenes are pure Hindu Kush heritage: pungent, earthy Kush brightened by citrus zest and deepened by traditional incense. The flavor mirrors it—sweet notes leading into distinctive charas tones, with earthy depth and exotic spice.

The experience is often described as beginning with happiness and contentment before deep physical calm and gentle euphoria take over, making it a popular choice for evening unwinding. Vigorous, resin-rich, and forgiving, it’s a joy for hash makers.

Acapulco Gold Regular

Acapulco Gold Regular is a true counterculture icon, offering an unbroken lineage to the Mexican landraces that defined “high grade.” Authentic genetics like these are rare, and the shimmering gold-and-green, resin-flecked colas make this a living piece of cannabis history.

The aroma stands out—sweet fruit cocktail and warm toffee, with fresh pine and a hint of wild earth, pungent yet welcoming. On the palate, it turns citrusy and creamy with a touch of coffee, the aftertaste revealing clean citrus and wood.

The effect is often described as clear, energizing, and cerebral, lifting the mood into a happy, upbeat headspace that invites productivity and conversation while the body remains light and relaxed. Refined for patient growers, it rewards low-stress training with truly exotic flowers.

G13 Haze Regular

G13 Haze Regular is a modern legend, marrying the dense, mysterious G13 with the soaring qualities of Haze. Regular seeds let you hunt for the phenotype that fuses Indica resin with Sativa elegance, yielding compact, sticky, resin-glazed buds that delight breeders.

The aroma is a tropical holiday—sweet fruit and bright citrus over spicy, herbal undertones. The flavor follows suit: candy-like sweetness and tropical fruit salad lifted by pine and spice, finishing crisp and fruity rather than cloying.

The high is often described as a classic creeper, building from a cerebral lift into euphoria, creativity, and motivation—making it a popular daytime option for some consumers, with enough physical ease to keep the experience grounded. A generous, vigorous choice for the Sativa lover working in a limited space

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All photos courtesy of Barney’s Farm.

Sponsored Content Disclaimer: This article was published as part of a paid commercial arrangement with Barney’s Farm. It is not independent editorial content, and product and effect claims have not been independently verified by High Times.

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They come from the same plant. What separates them is a distinction in federal law that many consumers don’t fully understand.

Picture two THC gummies sitting side by side. Both contain five milligrams of THC, produce the same effect, and would appear identical under laboratory analysis. Yet one can only be purchased inside a licensed dispensary, subject to state taxation and seed-to-sale tracking, while the other can be ordered online and shipped directly to a consumer’s home—in states where no dispensary exists at all.

The plant itself does not account for that difference. The chemistry is effectively the same. The distinction was established through federal legislation rather than biology, and for the growing number of Americans purchasing THC products online for the first time, it has become one of the most confusing aspects of the market.

That confusion is precisely the problem Edibles.com set out to solve. 

Launched in 2025 and based in Atlanta, the wellness-focused marketplace was built around consumer education first, on the premise that people entering the modern THC market deserve to understand what they are buying before they buy it. Operating under a “health, not high” philosophy, the platform organizes hemp-derived products by the outcome they support—sleep, recovery, energy, relaxation, or social occasions—rather than by strain or potency.

But before a shopper can choose an outcome, they often have to get past the market’s most basic point of confusion.

Hemp and Marijuana Are the Same Species

For many consumers entering the category, understanding the difference between hemp and marijuana is the first lesson. It is also one of the most widely misunderstood.

Hemp and marijuana are not two different plants. They are both classifications of Cannabis sativa L.—the same species categorized under two different legal definitions.

That legal distinction comes down largely to a single measurement. Under current federal law, cannabis containing no more than 0.3% Delta-9 THC by dry weight is defined as hemp. Cannabis that exceeds that threshold is classified as marijuana and regulated as a controlled substance, even in states where adult-use cannabis is legal.

As a result, two plants can look identical, share a similar aroma, and produce comparable effects while being governed by entirely different regulatory systems. What is being regulated here is a molecule and a threshold, not the plant itself.

The determining factor is not the plant. It is the law.

How One Plant Ended up With Two Markets

The current framework traces back to the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized hemp at the federal level and, in the process, helped establish a new cannabinoid economy built around hemp-derived Delta-9 THC gummies, beverages, and a range of newer compounds sold across state lines.

Products such as THCA flower have further blurred the line. THCA is non-psychoactive until heat converts it into THC, which means a product can meet the federal definition of hemp at the point of sale—the law measures Delta-9 content as the product ships, not after a lighter touches it.

At the same time, state-regulated cannabis has continued to operate on a separate track, with its own licensing, taxation, and retail systems. The result is a marketplace that can appear contradictory. A hemp-derived beverage ordered online and an edible purchased at a local dispensary may originate from the same species yet fall under two distinct sets of rules.

Those rules continue to evolve. Congress has folded hemp restrictions into broader legislation, while individual states pursue their own approaches, ranging from Kentucky’s move to regulate Delta-8 to Florida’s effort to restrict hemp cannabinoids , or Georgia’s codifying of hemp sales where Edibles.com is based. Proposed federal revisions would redefine hemp based on total THC rather than Delta-9 alone, a change that could significantly reshape the market once again.

Shopping by Outcome, Not Category

Many hemp consumers who are not in legal cannabis markets don’t have the same shopping distinctions as those who go to dispensaries. Hemp has reached a broader market where cannabis policy, functionally, doesn’t exist. These consumers are more interested in access, outcomes, and efficacy for alternative approaches to wellness. Accordingly, the hemp-versus-cannabis distinction matters far less than it does to regulators.

A shopper looking for a product to support better sleep is generally less concerned with whether a cannabinoid is hemp-derived or marijuana-derived than with whether the product works, whether it has been tested, and whether the label accurately reflects the contents.

That gap between how products are legally classified and how consumers actually shop is central to the Edibles.com model. 

Rather than organizing products around the traditional indica, sativa, and hybrid framework, the marketplace sorts them by the solution they support and stocks established names in the category, including Wyld, Wana, and Camino. For much of the country, it represents one of the first times industry-leading brands can be ordered and shipped directly to the door, outside of a dispensary.

“Our goal is to demystify the access point,” the company explains, “to help people understand what they’re buying, why it’s legal, and how to shop by outcome rather than just potency. We want consumers to shop the outcomes, not the THC alone.”

The approach is designed with a specific consumer in mind: the canna-curious or canna-familiar shopper approaching the category with intention rather than established tolerance. For these consumers, a marketplace that vets and curates in advance does the sorting work that an open, national market otherwise leaves to the shopper.

Why Testing Matters More Than the Label

Both markets are tested. What differs is who mandates it and where the results live.

State cannabis programs fold testing into licensing and seed-to-sale tracking, and the results stay inside a closed system—the state has already read them by the time a product reaches the shelf. Compliant hemp is verified against the federal 0.3% standard by accredited third-party labs, and those results travel with the product.

Which is why a certificate of analysis, or COA, is the single most useful document a THC consumer can learn to read. It verifies cannabinoid content, confirms total-THC calculations, and screens for contaminants including pesticides, residual solvents, and heavy metals. In a dispensary, someone has read it on your behalf. Online, you read it yourself—and the good operators make that easy to do.

Third-party testing and product vetting are central to the Edibles.com model, which delivers vetted, lab-tested products discreetly to the consumer’s door, each one curated to fit a wellness-backed outcome.

As hemp products increasingly resemble dispensary cannabis in both potency and consumer expectations, transparency—rather than a product’s legal origin—is what distinguishes a confident purchase from an uncertain one.

Family, Not Competitors

The distinction at the center of the hemp debate may not remain as sharp as it is today. Lawmakers continue to revisit the rules, and the line between the two markets narrows with each new product and each new piece of legislation.

For now, consumers are left to navigate two versions of the same plant, sold under different names and governed by different regulations. The most useful starting point is also the simplest. Hemp and cannabis are not competitors. They are the same plant, separated by legislation rather than biology.

Photos courtesy of Edibles.com Instagram

Sponsored Content Disclaimer: This article was published as part of a paid commercial arrangement with Edibles.com. It is not independent editorial content. References to cannabinoids, formulations, product features, consumer use cases, or company claims reflect the sponsor’s perspective unless otherwise noted and have not been independently verified by High Times.

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The industry’s attention still gravitates toward the legacy states. But through operators like SWADE Cannabis and its parent, BeLeaf Medical Co., Missouri has become one of the most dynamic cannabis stories in the country.

Ask most cannabis insiders which states matter, and you’ll hear the usual suspects: California. Colorado. Maybe Michigan or New York. Missouri rarely makes the first cut. That may be the industry’s biggest blind spot. 

Yet on the measures that count right now—sales, stability, the ambition of the operators building there—it has quietly become one of the country’s most compelling markets, and one of the few still climbing while others stall.

Much of that story runs through a single company. SWADE Cannabis, the retail brand owned by BeLeaf Medical Co., opened in 2021 as one of Missouri’s first dispensaries and has spent the years since scaling into one of the state’s defining operators. They are vertically integrated, statewide, and built for a market that keeps maturing around it.

A Market That Keeps Setting Records

Missouri launched adult-use sales in February 2023, and the numbers since have been hard to argue with. State retailers reported a record $1.5 billion in cannabis sales in 2025, up about 4% over the year before, with adult-use purchases making up nearly 90% of the total, according to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. 

That figure lands harder in context. While several established markets contract, like how Colorado’s annual sales slid to $1.32 billion last year, and Michigan’s legal sales dropped sharply after a January tax hike, Missouri has kept growing, pushing cumulative sales past $4.9 billion since legal sales began in 2020.

Part of the state’s edge is structural. Because Amendment 3 wrote legalization directly into the Missouri constitution, operators work from a legal foundation that local or state officials can’t easily unwind, allowing companies to plan and expand without bracing for sudden political reversals. 

Another part is homegrown, literally: every gram of cannabis sold in a Missouri dispensary has to be grown in the state, keeping cultivation, jobs, and tax dollars inside its borders. For a market barely three years into adult use, that combination of steady demand and legal durability has made Missouri a magnet for new and established brands alike.

Why Vertical Integration Matters Here

The clearest sign of how Missouri’s operators built for this moment is vertical integration. Rather than specializing in one link of the supply chain, companies like BeLeaf Medical Co. handle the whole run of cultivation, manufacturing, and retail in-house.

“We are a vertically integrated cannabis company, which is super beneficial in the industry, as we have the ability to do all functions necessary to operate,” says Kevin Riggs, CEO of BeLeaf Medical Co. “This means we can grow, sell, and transport our products anywhere in the state.”

The approach has drawn notice across the state’s cannabis industry. Greenway Magazine named BeLeaf Medical Co. its 2025 Company of the Year, while Sinse earned Brand of the Year recognition and picked up 2026 product honors, including a Best Pre-Roll win for Blueberry Muffin and Best Vape AIO for Pink Lemonade. The recognition extends beyond the shelf, too: BeLeaf Medical Co. co-founder Mitch Meyers was named to Inc.’s 2025 Female Founders 500 for her leadership in cannabis. 

Integration also lets a company invest in the parts of retail that pure resellers tend to skip. SWADE’s Overland store runs a 24/7 preorder drive-thru pickup window, the first of its kind in St. Louis, and its same-day, discreet delivery reaches customers across its service areas, with the full menu available to browse and order online. It’s the sort of modern-retail access still uncommon in much of the country, and easier to pull off when one company controls the product from seed to sale.

Scaling Across the State

Reach is its own signal of a maturing market, and SWADE has been building it quickly. The company now operates 12 dispensaries across Missouri, and much of its Kansas City footprint came from taking over a group of former BesaMe Wellness locations. An expansion that carried a St. Louis-rooted brand clear across the state.

That pattern says something about the market itself. When established operators are scaling into new metros through acquisition rather than a market being flooded with first-time entrants, it’s usually a sign the industry is consolidating and professionalizing—maturing, in other words, the way older consumer categories eventually do. Missouri, only a few years into adult use, is already showing that shape.

Where the Money Goes

The maturation shows up in the state’s ledgers, too. Missouri’s legal cannabis industry generated a record $255.57 million in sales-tax revenue in 2025, divided between state government and the local jurisdictions that host a licensed store. By constitutional design, the state’s share of adult-use tax dollars is then routed to a specific set of beneficiaries: health care and services for military veterans and their families, the state’s public defender system for low-income residents, and substance-use treatment programs. 

That structure ties every legal purchase to services a lot of Missourians depend on, and it recasts the dispensary as a civic contributor rather than a merely tolerated business.

For an operator like SWADE, that becomes part of the case it makes to customers. Buying from a licensed store isn’t only about product safety and quality; it’s about where the dollars land once the sale is done.

A Market Worth Watching

Missouri’s cannabis story is still being written, and no single company defines it. But SWADE Cannabis and BeLeaf Medical Co. make a useful case study for why the state has climbed into the top tier. A homegrown operator using in-state cultivation, vertical integration, and steady expansion to build something meant to outlast the early rush.

The runway ahead looks long, too. Several of Missouri’s neighbors still lack a legal adult-use market, which keeps regional demand pointed squarely at the state’s dispensaries, while an ongoing rollout of microbusiness licenses reserved for disadvantaged owners stands to bring a wave of new craft operators into the mix.

The legacy markets will keep drawing the headlines. Missouri, in the meantime, just keeps setting the records. For companies like SWADE, that’s the opportunity. Not simply to grow alongside Missouri’s cannabis industry, but to help define what its next chapter looks like. 

All photos courtesy of SWADE Cannabis

Sponsored Content Disclaimer: This article was published as part of a paid commercial arrangement with SWADE Cannabis. It is not independent editorial content. References to products, services, cannabinoids, formulations, consumer use cases, or company claims reflect the company’s perspective unless otherwise noted and have not been independently verified by High Times.

<p>The post Missouri’s Cannabis Market Grew Up Fast first appeared on High Times.</p>

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The summer’s biggest cultural stories are not just about winning. They are about pressure, passion, and the strange magic that happens when underground energy meets the main stage.

Some summers arrive with a clean storyline. Others show up holding a stack of chips, a half-burned matchbook, and a striker built like a cheat code.

This is one of the weird ones. Erling Haaland has Norway crashing deeper into the 2026 FIFA World Cup than history expected. Alex Foxen, an ACR Poker Pro, added a fourth World Series of Poker bracelet to a résumé that already reads like a warning label, while reclaiming the lead in the Global Poker Index (GPI) Player of the Year race. High Times, after years of turbulence, is back in the mix as one of the few counterculture brands old enough to remember when rebellion did not come with a media kit.

On paper, a World Cup pitch, a Las Vegas poker table, and a cannabis magazine do not have much in common. Look closer and the overlap is obvious: risk, spectacle, devotion, myth, and the kind of audience that does not casually watch. They sweat it.

The Summer of High Stakes Culture

The mainstream has always had a funny relationship with subculture. First it ignores it. Then it borrows the language. Then it builds an industry around it.

Poker knows that cycle. Cannabis knows it too. Soccer, for all its global power, still runs on tribal feeling that looks a lot closer to street culture than polished entertainment. Every chant, every scarf, every bad beat, every strain name with a local legend behind it carries the same charge: this matters because people decided it matters.

That is why this summer feels bigger than a sports calendar. The 2026 World Cup has turned North America into a temporary football planet. The WSOP is once again turning Las Vegas into the center of the poker universe. High Times is reemerging at a moment when cannabis culture is legal in some places, criminalized in others, and still fighting over who gets to profit from a movement built by outlaws, growers, patients, artists, and people who took real risks before the suits showed up.

The connection is not that these worlds are the same. They are not. It is that all three understand the value of stakes. Not branding stakes. Real stakes. The kind where one touch, one card, one raid, or one ruling can change the whole story.

Haaland Breaks the Bracket

Norway’s 2-1 win over Brazil in the Round of 16 was the sort of result that makes a tournament feel alive. Brazil entered carrying the weight of football history. Norway came in with Haaland, belief, and the dangerous freedom of a team that had already surpassed expectations.

Haaland scored both goals, sending Norway into the World Cup quarterfinals for the first time, and was named Player of the Match (MVP). That is not just a stat. That is a national memory being made in real time. For fans, it is the exact reason these tournaments still hit so hard. The global machine can be massive, commercial, and overproduced, but the game still leaves room for the irrational.

That is where the cultural power lives. Not in the sponsorship boards or the broadcast packages, but in the moment a favorite looks vulnerable, and an underdog realizes the door is open.

Poker players know that feeling. So does anyone who has ever watched a culture move from the margins into the light.

ACR Poker Pro Alex Foxen and the Bracelet Summer

While Haaland was putting Norway on his back, Alex Foxen was building another chapter of his own in Las Vegas.

Foxen captured his fourth career WSOP gold bracelet this summer, adding another major marker to one of poker’s most consistent modern résumés. In a game where variance can humble anybody, staying dangerous year after year is the real flex. Poker has never only rewarded nerve. It rewards memory, discipline, patience, selective aggression, and the ability to look calm while the floor drops out from under you.

That is why the WSOP still matters. First held in 1970 at Binion’s Horseshoe, the World Series of Poker has become the game’s mythology factory. The bracelet is not just jewelry. It is proof that a player survived a specific kind of pressure in a room full of people who all believe they are the one meant to win.

The modern poker dream still owes a lot to Chris Moneymaker, who famously turned an $86 online satellite into a 2003 WSOP Main Event title and $2.5 million. That story did not just make one player famous. The Moneymaker Effect cracked open poker’s imagination. Suddenly, the distance between the poker weekend warrior and the biggest stage in the game felt shorter.

That same underdog current runs through ACR Poker’s summer programming. The Run Up Series features more than $10 million GTD, the biggest Venoms ever guarantee a combined $15 million across two Mystery Bounty events, and the schedule also includes a $66 buy-in, $1 million guaranteed Mystery Bounty event. It is a very modern version of an old poker promise: the next story can come from almost anyone, anywhere.

That does not mean poker is easy money. It is a game of variance and skill, and players should understand the risks and play responsibly. The appeal is not hard to understand. Poker turns pressure into theater. Every decision is public. Every mistake has a receipt. Every win feels like a confession that the player saw something the rest of the table missed.

Why High Times Belongs in the Conversation

High Times has always lived around that same edge. Founded in 1974 by Tom Forçade, the magazine emerged from a counterculture world where cannabis was not a lifestyle vertical. It was illegal, political, funny, dangerous, communal, and deeply tied to music, art, protest, and underground economies. High Times treated weed like culture long before much of the mainstream could say the word without smirking.

That history matters because cannabis is now surrounded by the same tension poker knows well. What happens when a scene built in back rooms becomes an industry? What gets preserved? What gets sold? Who gets welcomed in after the heat dies down, and who paid the price when the heat was still real?

The brand has not had a clean, frictionless path. It has been through financial trouble, ownership changes, and print pauses. In 2025, Josh Kesselman acquired the High Times brand and assets in a $3.5 million deal, setting up a new chapter for one of cannabis culture’s most recognizable names.

The Point Is Not the Odds

There is a reason poker, football, and cannabis culture keep producing legends. They all understand suspense.

A football match can turn on one touch. A tournament can turn on one river card. A cannabis movement can turn on one election, one court case, one grower willing to risk freedom, or one publication willing to say the quiet part out loud before the rest of the media catches up.

That is the thread running through this summer. Haaland and Norway are giving the World Cup a fresh underdog charge. Foxen is adding another bracelet to a career built on precision and nerve. ACR Poker is leaning into the summer tournament grind, where amateurs and killers sit inside the same digital ecosystem chasing their own version of the big score. High Times is stepping back into a landscape it helped shape, older, stranger, and still carrying the fingerprints of the underground.

Strip away the broadcast gloss and the same truth shows up in all three: they reward passion over predictability. Whether you are betting your stack on the river, launching a cross-field volley in front of millions, or treating a plant like culture in the face of federal bans, the moment belongs to whoever is willing to risk the most and flinch the least.

The clean corporate version of culture wants everything to be smooth and safe. But the stories people actually remember come from somewhere messier. A bad beat. A miracle goal. A magazine that should not have survived. A player nobody wants to face when the blinds get ugly.

That is the summer of high-stakes culture. Not a slogan. Just three worlds reminding everyone that the edge is still where the story lives, and it still belongs to the bold.

Puff Puff Pass: It’s 4:20 Somewhere

For decades, 4:20 has been more than just a time—it’s been a ritual, a signal, and a shared moment across cannabis culture. Now, ACR Poker is bringing that same spirit to the virtual felt.

Puff Puff Pass is a new daily rebuy tournament built for players who like action, value, and a little extra time to build a stack. With a $420 guaranteed prize pool, players can jump in every day at 4:20 PM Pacific, 4:20 PM Central, and 4:20 PM Eastern, because when it comes to 4:20, it’s always somewhere.

More chips. More chances. More action. Just good poker and good vibes.

Join the Puff Puff Pass and take your seat at the table.

All photos courtesy of ACR Poker

Sponsored Content Disclaimer: This article was published as part of a paid commercial arrangement with ACR Poker. It is not independent editorial content. References to the company, its services, events, offerings, or business claims reflect the sponsor’s perspective unless otherwise noted and have not been independently verified by High Times.

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For years, growers filed autoflowers under “easy but weak.” Hypno Seeds is one of the breeders rewriting that rule, applying the same rigorous selection to its autos as its photoperiod line, and posting potency numbers to prove it.

Ask a grower about autoflowers a decade ago, and the verdict rarely changed: easy to grow, not worth the trouble. They finished fast and stayed small, but the buds came in light on both yield and THC. That reputation stuck for a reason, though it no longer describes what a modern auto can do, and Hypno Seeds is among the breeders making the old assumption look dated. The appeal of the format was never in question. 

Autoflowers flower based on age rather than light schedule, which strips away the most error-prone part of a grow: there’s no vegetative-to-flower light flip to time, and no timer or light-leak worries to manage. A plant moves from seed to harvest in roughly 8 to 10 weeks and largely runs itself. For someone new to cultivation, that’s the easiest possible entry point, and a big part of why autos have become the on-ramp for so many first grows.

Not Always a Choice

Plenty of growers don’t reach for autos because they’re easy. They reach for them because their space or their season leaves no other option. 

Short summers, punishing heat, and cramped indoor footprints all push cultivators toward a plant that finishes fast and stays small. Someone with a two-month window before the weather turns can’t afford a long vegetative stretch; someone growing in a closet doesn’t have the height for a photoperiod plant to stretch out. Outdoor growers in northern latitudes run on the same math, squeezing a finished harvest (sometimes two) out of a season too short to ripen a photoperiod crop.  For those growers, the auto is simply the only genetics that fit the room they have.

That practicality is why the “weak” label did so much damage. A grower boxed into autos by their environment was, by the old logic, also accepting a ceiling on potency and weight. The format’s greatest strength came bundled with an apparent penalty, and that tradeoff shaped how a generation of cultivators thought about their options. 

If your situation forced you into autos, you were also, supposedly, resigning yourself to a weaker harvest.

Where the Reputation Came From

The weakness had a genetic root. Autoflowering behavior traces back to cannabis ruderalis, a hardy subspecies from the cold climates of Russia and Central Asia that evolved to flower with age rather than in response to light. Ruderalis gives autos their resilience and compact stature, along with the ability to flower regardless of the light cycle. 

But the same genetics that made the format possible also carried naturally low THC, and the earliest crosses inherited that limitation.

For years, that was the accepted tradeoff. 

The genes that triggered automatic flowering tended to drag potency down with them, and breeders who wanted both the convenience and the strength had to work at it. Selecting carefully across generations to lift cannabinoid content back up without losing the automatic trait that made the plant an auto in the first place. Plenty of early breeders didn’t put in that work, and the market filled with quick but underwhelming seeds that hardened the reputation.

None of that was a fixed ceiling, though. It was a breeding problem, and it stayed unsolved mainly because so few breeders bothered to solve it. Most of the market’s early autos hadn’t been pushed hard enough, and the ones that had were rare enough to read as exceptions rather than proof of what the format could become.

Same Standard, No Exceptions

This is where Hypno Seeds draws its line. The breeder says it runs its autoflowering line through the same phenotype hunting it uses on its photoperiod genetics—growing plants out, evaluating them for growth habit, terpene expression, yield potential, and cannabinoid content, then culling hard and keeping only the phenotypes that deliver on every front. 

That hunt is the slow, invisible part of the job. The step that weeds out unstable plants and off-types before they reach customers and throw scattered results in someone else’s room. The standouts become mothers and the rest get cut.  The autos get the same scrutiny as the flagship photoperiod cultivars, not the lighter vetting a beginner tier might expect.

The numbers carry the argument.

Hypno Seeds’ Sticky Kitty Auto reaches up to 35% THC, while its Blackberry Kush Auto reaches roughly 30%. Most growers would have called those figures impossible for an autoflower a few years ago. Photoperiod-level potency, by the breeder’s account, in a plant that’s hard to mess up. 

Hypno bills itself as a high-THC brand first, and that standard runs across everything it produces, not just its photoperiod line.

What “Beginner-Friendly” Actually Buys You

The convenience that once seemed to cost potency is real. Because autos flower on age, they fold the two-stage light schedule most grows depend on into a single hands-off cycle. A grower never has to flip the lights and hope the vegetative stage was timed right, one of the most common ways a first grow goes sideways. That’s a big reason grow guides aimed at the aspiring home cultivator now start people on autos before anything else.

The short cycle brings its own advantages. An 8-to-10-week turnaround lets a grower run several harvests in a season, learn faster from each one, and recover from a mistake in weeks instead of months. Speed cuts both ways, of course: a stunted seedling has almost no time to bounce back, which makes stable, well-bred genetics the thing that matters most when the margin for error is this thin. The compact frame that suits a tight tent also keeps the plants easy to manage and easy to keep discreet.

The End of the Tradeoff

For most of the format’s history, growers had to choose: a plant that was easy to grow, or one that was potent. Environmental limits often made the call for them, and the result was a lot of forgiving grows that finished light. Ease and power sat on opposite ends of the tradeoff, and the format’s reputation was built on that split.

That’s the assumption Hypno Seeds is built to retire. Its autos are designed to deliver what the format has always promised—speed, a small footprint, a forgiving learning curve—without asking a grower to trade away power for it. Growers can browse the breeder’s full high-THC catalog to see how the autoflower line stacks up against the rest of the lineup. The easy plant and the potent plant, the brand argues, can finally be the same plant.

For anyone who wrote autoflowers off years ago, the plant they dismissed isn’t the plant on the shelf anymore.

All photos courtesy of Hypno Seeds

Sponsored Content Disclaimer: This article was published as part of a paid commercial arrangement with Hypno Seeds. It is not independent editorial content. References to products, services, cannabinoids, formulations, consumer use cases, or company claims reflect the sponsor’s perspective unless otherwise noted and have not been independently verified by High Times.

<p>The post Autoflowers Aren’t Weak Anymore: Inside Hypno Seeds’ High-THC Autos first appeared on High Times.</p>

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During the Philadelphia leg of Kicking Back, Ethan Zohn follows soccer and cannabis from Massachusetts to the Jersey Shore and into the city, finding the people who turn a road trip into a squad.

Ethan Zohn loves pickles enough that he had a pickle bar at his wedding. So when he walks into Shore House Canna in West Cape May, New Jersey, and spots Fernway’s Pickle Traveler PRO Vape on the shelf, the reaction is immediate.

This is not polite sponsor enthusiasm. The man is genuinely thrilled.

It is a brief, funny moment in the second episode of Kicking Back, High Times’ World Cup road series, but it also captures what makes the show work. Soccer provides a destination. Cannabis opens doors. The people and unexpected discoveries along the way turn the drive into a story.

The series began in Massachusetts, familiar ground for both Zohn and Fernway. Zohn grew up there, while Fernway built its identity around the idea that good food, music, scenery, and company are better when they are shared. Then Kicking Back left home and headed south, following the energy surrounding the tournament from Cape May to Philadelphia.

The pickle vape is one stop on the road. The squad forming around it is the larger point.

The Road Leaves Massachusetts

Fernway’s Squad Goals campaign begins with a simple idea: summer is better when people make time to gather. The brand describes it through watch parties, cookouts, soccer, and the collective energy that turns an ordinary afternoon into something people remember.

Kicking Back gives that idea somewhere to go. Rather than staying inside stadiums or treating the World Cup as a string of scores and fixtures, the series follows Zohn through the places where soccer culture actually takes shape. That means neighborhood fields, local businesses, crowded bars, beaches, food, and conversations with people who may not have started the day expecting to end up on camera.

Massachusetts provides the starting point in episode 1. The next episode stretches the map.

Before reaching Philadelphia, Zohn heads to Cape May to reconnect with Dave Christian, an old friend whose path has crossed Zohn’s through adventure racing, hemp farming, and now legal cannabis. Christian helped build Shore House Canna, a veteran- and women-owned dispensary that feels less like a polished chain than a surf shop that happens to sell weed.

That distinction matters. The store reflects where it is. Surfboards hang overhead. Local references run through the menu. A roll-up window lets customers make a purchase without losing the rhythm of a day spent near the beach. Then Zohn sees the pickle vape.

The Pickle Vape Finds Its Person

Fernway describes its Pickle Traveler PRO as bright, briny, tangy, and herbaceous. Zohn requires less analysis. He is a pickle guy, and he knows what he wants.

The scene lands because it is personal. Fernway does not need to interrupt the episode with a long product explanation. The flavor catches Zohn’s attention, the wedding story comes out, and the vape becomes another odd, memorable discovery collected along the route.

It also fits the larger Fernway idea better than a formal product showcase would. Squad Goals is built around shared experiences, and Kicking Back keeps finding them in places where sports, cannabis, and local identity overlap.

At Shore House, the conversation quickly widens beyond what is on the shelf. Zohn meets operators, veterans, and a former West Cape May mayor who supported bringing legal cannabis to the area. West Cape May does not collect the beach-tag revenue that helps fund nearby shore towns, she explains in the episode, which made cannabis tax revenue more than an abstract policy question. It offered a practical way for the borough to bring in money.

That is where legalization becomes local. Not in a press release or an industry panel, but in a small town deciding what kind of business belongs there and what it can contribute.

The veterans Zohn meets add another layer. One Shore House co-owner describes spending decades on the other side of the drug war, boarding boats and helping seize cannabis by the ton before eventually becoming part of the legal industry himself. His story is not presented as a clean conversion narrative. It is a reminder that legalization has forced plenty of people to reconsider what they were taught, what they enforced, and what they now believe.

Then everybody heads to the sand. Beach soccer turns the dispensary visit into something participatory. Portable goals go up, teams form, and the line between host, guest, business owner, customer, and local starts to blur. It is exactly the kind of scene Squad Goals is built for: the game matters, but mostly because it gives people a reason to show up.

The City Is Bigger Than the Match

From the Jersey Shore, Kicking Back continues into Philadelphia, where the episode picks up another Survivor winner, Wendell Holland, and finds a city with no shortage of opinions about food, sports, or how either should be done.

The local delicacy arrives in the form of an infused cheesesteak. The serving catches up with Zohn on camera, adding an unscripted lesson about respecting edible potency and giving THC time before consuming more. Adults using cannabis should always follow labeled serving guidance, wait before taking more, and never drive while impaired.

But the food is only another stop. The episode keeps moving toward the people behind it.

By the time Zohn reaches Odunde, the annual Philadelphia celebration of African and African diasporic culture, soccer has become less about a single national team and more like a common language. He speaks with fans connected to Nigeria, Ecuador, and Ivory Coast, trading stories, names, and the different words people use for cannabis around the world.

“Put a ball down anywhere on earth,” Zohn says, “and you have friends instantly.”

That line carries the episode. Soccer creates the opening. Cannabis gives the show another way into conversations about community, policy, health, culture, and how people relate to one another. Neither needs to dominate every scene for the connection to work.

Fernway’s role follows the same logic. The brand does not need to sit at the center of each encounter. Its Squad Goals campaign works best when the people remain in focus and the product appears naturally inside the experience.

Sometimes that means a watch party. Sometimes it means a pickup game on the beach. Sometimes it means finding a pickle vape in a West Cape May dispensary and reacting as though the road trip has finally understood you.

The Squad Forms Along the Way

Kicking Back may use World Cup cities as its route, but the series is interested in everything surrounding the tournament: the places people gather, the businesses they build, the food they insist you try, and the stories that come out when somebody takes the time to ask.

The Philadelphia episode begins before Philadelphia. That is part of what makes it work. Communities do not stop at city limits, and neither do soccer culture or cannabis culture. They travel down highways, across bridges, onto beaches, and into whatever room has space for one more person.

Fernway started from a belief in good company. On this leg of the trip, good company includes dispensary operators, veterans, local leaders, beach players, chefs, festivalgoers, soccer fans, and one host whose commitment to pickles finally pays off.

The match may be the reason to set out. The vape may be the souvenir. The squad is everyone met in between.

All photos courtesy of Fernway

Sponsored Content Disclosure: This article was published as part of a paid commercial arrangement with Fernway. It is not independent editorial content. References to products, formulations, consumer use cases, or company claims reflect the sponsor’s perspective unless otherwise noted and have not been independently verified by High Times.

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