After five years, two applications, six figures in expenses, and a maze of shifting rules, one New York cannabis entrepreneur finally secured a retail license—and learned how legalization can still punish the people it was supposed to help.

The process to get to this point has been, in a word, farcical. From shifting goalposts to inexplicable delays, New York’s recreational cannabis license rollout has come with significant teething pains.

Despite my best efforts to do everything by the book—and most of the time there was no book to follow—roadblock followed roadblock with little way to push back. Now that my license is approved, I finally feel comfortable lifting the lid on what this bureaucratic nightmare has been like from the inside.

This Felt Like an Opportunity Made for Us

New York approved recreational cannabis in 2021 and announced its legal sales framework the following year. Kudos to lawmakers for this policy, but unfortunately, legalization and regulation didn’t move in lockstep.

The plan was to first launch retail dispensaries under Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary (CAURD) licenses—special permits that prioritize those convicted of a state marijuana-related offense. The intention here was good: prioritize people most harmed by prohibition, get them into the legal market first, and then open regular licensing to everyone else.

But there was a catch. At the time, the state planned to source and sublease a space to you under CAURD. For an entrepreneur, that sounded less like owning a business and more like being handed the keys to someone else’s. In any case, it was our best shot and we took it.

My business partner spent three years in prison on state and federal cannabis charges, which meant we were, on paper, exactly who the program was designed for. We hired an attorney, got our ducks in a row, and applied in 2022. For us, it felt like the state was finally righting past wrongs, and this was our opportunity for the taking. Then the lawsuits started.

Roadblock After Roadblock

The first delay came in 2023 after a federal judge blocked five regions in New York (including ours, of course) from opening dispensaries. An out-of-state applicant alleged they were unconstitutionally disadvantaged by cannabis regulations that “favor” state residents. The courts soon lifted that CAURD block, but others followed, leading to a cat-and-mouse game of injunctions that froze everything.

After six months of stalemate, we started to perceive changes at the Office of Cannabis Management (OCM). My attorney’s reading, and he wasn’t alone, was that the conditional program was effectively being wound down in favor of processing everyone in the normal round. The OCM rushed to open that window and we rushed with it, resulting in another application and another round of legal fees.

The regular license requirements—released with barely two months’ notice—introduced new hoops to jump through. This application round required site control, meaning we needed to prove ownership or an active lease for our proposed cannabis business. This left us scrambling to sign a lease that not only made commercial sense in Buffalo but also complied with distance requirements from schools, churches, and parks. We applied just before the end of the year only to find our luck was going from bad to worse.

Unlike CAURD, which seemed to operate on a first-come, first-served basis, the regular round was a lottery. Out of 2,200 hopeful applicants in New York, we were around position 2,100. There was nothing to do but wait and pay for an empty storefront in the meantime, 2500 dollars a month and counting.

Congratulations, Now Give It Back

Then, in the fall of 2024, there was a breakthrough. Without word or warning, the original conditional license was approved at random. But it was too good to be true: OCM wouldn’t allow us to use the conditional license at our leased location. Their position, communicated to my attorney in writing, was that a CAURD license couldn’t be used to open at a storefront already attached to a pending regular application. Both applications were identical in every other detail, but it didn’t matter.

Our options: Keep the conditional and withdraw our regular application, which would have meant losing our proximity protection at that location. Proximity protection is a board-granted status that places your storefront on an official map and prevents any future licensee from opening within 1,000 feet. Losing it would mean reapplying from scratch, going to the back of the line, and hoping it would be granted again. Or, we wait to open our preferred location with the regular license. So, we handed back our hard-fought conditional license and spent another year-and-a-half in limbo.

Last summer marked the final, painful stretch. An analyst from OCM picked through our application and flagged minor deficiencies one at a time, with two weeks between responses. Then, after three more months of radio silence, there was one last problem in October: a single wrong digit in the address on our municipality notification letter—a required filing that gave the local government 30 days to raise objections to the proposed dispensary. Sure, it was a different unit but still in the same plaza, and yet it triggered a mandatory month-long response window anyway. 

That timeframe expired in December, which in turn was too close to the next board meeting to make the agenda. January’s meeting was canceled without explanation. We finally won our regular recreational cannabis license in February of this year.

All of This Just To Sell Some Weed

It’s a mix of emotions to be on the other side of this process. Honestly, the most overwhelming feeling is anger because it really didn’t need to be so hard or expensive. Two rounds of legal consultation and two years of rent aren’t chump change. And that’s without factoring in taxes, utilities, administrative costs, and the sheer time investment. Applicants shouldn’t be expected to front up that kind of money just to have a shot, particularly when the whole point was to give people like my partner their chance in the legal market. The kicker when approval finally came? The congratulations email arrived alongside a $7,000 fee to issue the certificate for in-store display.

There’s also a feeling of disappointment that we’ve lost a lot of opportunity in the interim. We were on track to be a first adopter for New York recreational cannabis. Now competitors have years of online reviews, customer loyalty, and brand recognition. The headstart the CAURD program was supposed to give us has been completely inverted.

Meanwhile, amid the countless stops and starts in trying to follow the letter of the law, the gray market grew exponentially. Sticker shops popped up on seemingly every other corner across New York, letting customers purchase stickers or other small goods and receive cannabis as a “gift”. Enforcement is slowly ramping up, but a $10,000 fine isn’t much of a deterrent to $100,000 in illicit sales, especially when customers who go the legal route face added taxes and higher prices. We were drowning in paperwork while the unlicensed market went on comparatively freely, and that same market still threatens to eat into our customer base before we’ve sold a single gram.

But despite everything, surprisingly, I remain hopeful. I know the ins and outs of this industry—founding Vitality CBD in a largely unregulated hemp market, advocating for clearer rules, and always believing that the barriers would eventually come down. Now, having seen the iterations of cannabis over the years, legalization has arrived in my state and I’m licensed to legally sell the same plant that my business partner was locked up for. Even though it was painful, and even though there are many kinks to iron out, that fact alone makes it worth it. Perhaps the hope is misplaced but it’s still there all the same.

This article was written by an external contributor based on their firsthand experience navigating New York’s cannabis licensing process. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of High Times. Regulatory details were accurate to the best of the author’s knowledge at the time of publication.

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This article was originally published in 2023.

From the hash and honey oil of the hippie era to the array of consistencies today, concentrates have evolved over time and they’ve come a long way. The 420 holiday, celebrating all things cannabis, gave way to another holiday: 710.

The Brotherhood of Eternal Love first smuggled in hash oils from Kabul, Afghanistan in the late ‘60s before concentrates were being made domestically. Honey oil methods were refined by the early ‘70s, with a few notorious concoctions that were made by pressing bricks of hash with an industrial press. A book entitled Cannabis Alchemy: The Art of Modem Hashmaking, written by David Hoye, was published in 1974, selling 100,000 copies. Another book, providing the same procedures, is Marijuana Potency, written by Michael Starks, was published 1977. Both books were available from book dealers who advertised in High Times at the time.

Butane honey oil (BHO) and alcohol-derived oils were constantly evolving, and Starks took it further to describe various solvents. In the May 1989 issue of High Times, there are wild instructions of how to build your own vaporizer for oil-based concentrates, with three methods including an adjustable model: Just grab household items like a rotary light-dimmer, a 12-volt auto bulb, and a transformer.

Sean Black wrote for High Times that its founder Tom Forçade was instrumental in generating interest in cannabis concentrates during the early days. The consistencies of hash, oils, and various other concentrates continued to evolve in steps.

Its origin is definitely up for debate, but rosin was introduced to the cannabis community through ICMag in 2006 by forum member Compashon, Weedmaps reports.

“Up until 2009, mostly water hash (or bubble hash, as it came to be known) and various kief products could be found on dispensary shelves in the U.S.,” Black wrote. “Some concentrates made with solvents were available, but most were subpar and stayed fairly unnoticed. It wasn’t until 2010, when the first U.S. Cannabis Cup was held in San Francisco, that these newer types of concentrates first appeared in a Cup competition, thereby introducing ‘dab’ culture to a broader audience.”

Tinkering with temperatures and processes gave way to many forms, much in the way that sugar can be converted into endless consistencies. Enter crumble, honeycomb, wax, sauce, diamonds and sauce, you name it.

710 As a Holiday

710 is the concentrate holiday that we’ve come to know and love, and it’s a time when brands offer their 710 deals. “For personal use, I turn to concentrates when I want a quick, effective hit, but don’t want to smoke,” says 22Red Arizona Territory Sales Manager Gustavo Briseno. “Concentrates are really great at preserving the full flavor and effects of the flower, while avoiding inhalation of the pyrolytic compounds that come with smoking. Cannabis fans are becoming more educated about how concentrates work and new tech is making them easier than ever to use. So from a professional standpoint, while they’re still a niche category, we see it growing and are taking full advantage of 710 with promos and PADs. The other part of that is making sure your products are of high quality, as we notice concentrate users know their stuff. At 22Red, that means pulling from top shelf flower and creating concentrates that are full-spectrum, packed with natural flavor, and are additive, pesticide, and solvent free.”

420 is a much older holiday, and the most credible story centers on five students at San Rafael High School in Marin County, California in 1971 who would meet at 4:20 p.m. by the campus’ statue of chemist Louis Pasteur to toke up. 710 as a holiday didn’t become a thing until about ten years ago. The first time that High Times featured dabs (and called by that name) on the cover of the magazine was in the October 2012 issue.

In 2013, cannabis-friendly outlets like High Times, Weedmaps, and LA Weekly started reporting on 710 as a holiday for the first time. Then, the first official 710 celebration—The 710 Cup, took place that year in Denver, Colorado. 

“710 means a lot to us at The Artist Tree and to our customers,” says Lauren Fontein, co-founder of The Artist Tree. “The holiday is an excellent opportunity to expose the concentrate curious to cannabis oil items, while showing devoted fans new strains and products. We’ll be offering 30% off all concentrate and vape products on 7/10 at all of our retail locations. At our West Hollywood consumption lounge, The Studio Lounge, guests will be able to create their own freshly pressed concentrates from flower and sample limited edition drops from 710 LABS. The Studio Lounge is an especially great space to celebrate 710, as we offer a wide selection of premium dabbing devices and our team can help guide those new to dabbing on correct dosing and rig temperature. Last year, we saw 2.5 times the amount of concentrate sales than on a typical weekend across all our locations, so we know people are celebrating 710. Concentrates are the ideal way to consume cannabis for purists that enjoy the flavor and terpenes of the flower, while mitigating some of the health factors of smoking.”

In 2015, Phil “Soilgrown” Salazar accidentally made rosin after oil leaked out of wafer-thin sheets of poor quality hash he was pressing, and started posting photos. It caught on, though people were probably doing similar processes earlier.

Concentrates are continuing to evolve. In 2019, a new form of solventless concentrate emerges: Piattella. Hassans710, a European hash brand has been producing Piattella since 2019 and described it as the result of “cold curing full-melt [hash] to achieve a premium level of terpene retention.” The next future consistency to hit big is just around the corner.

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Berner pulled a strain back from the scrap pile, then stood on the Mary Jane Berlin floor with 80,000 people and felt something the weed business had misplaced somewhere along the way.

One of the loudest strains Berner is putting his name on this year almost didn’t make the cut. It got written off in selection as a throwaway. He pulled it back out just in time.

That is how Berner works. The best weed does not always survive the first cut, and the people worth betting on do not always look like the obvious choice either. He trusts instinct over paperwork, a way of thinking that runs against where the weed industry has been heading.

Blueberry Caviar, his newest collaboration with Jason Gellman of Ridgeline Farms and a recent High Times Strain of the Month, came out of that instinct. Gellman bred it by crossing his LANTZ with a terpy cut of Compound Genetics’ Grape Gas, and it has already turned up in New Mexico, California and beyond.

“It was actually a throwaway. We didn’t select that at first,” Berner says. He was back in Los Angeles, smoking through the box of cuts, when one number stopped him. “I’m like, ‘Jason, this number right here is going to be Blueberry Caviar.’” Nobody agreed. “No way, it’s not even a keeper,” Gellman argued. Berner shrugged. “Watch,” Berner answered. “And it was.”

He picks people the same way he pulls strains. “First thing, he’s a great guy. I look for good energy, just good people,” he says of Gellman. Someone who had been at it for generations and stayed humble, a small craft family Berner wanted to back.

The Test

That same instinct decides who Berner lets in. He describes the old version of the weed business as handshake-based: someone fronting someone else a ten-pack on trust, everybody squared up in a few days. What he watches for now is the opposite, the people he calls the “Chads,” who turn up with contracts and agendas and no feel for the plant. His filter for them is simple.

“I’d ask them what their goal is with the business,” he says. Then he hands them a joint. “If they can’t smoke one with me, if they can’t tell me what their agenda is, what their goals are in the weed space, if they don’t understand the community, they don’t understand the culture, they don’t understand the unity,” then he has his answer.

Berlin

That mix of people is what pulled Berner to Mary Jane Berlin, where he spent the weekend rolling two-gram joints of California flower packed with Lebanese hash, a habit from his late teens on trips to Amsterdam, chasing a strange, drifting high most people never look for. What got to him was the room. Tens of thousands of people from everywhere, breeders and doctors and growers and kids who just love to smoke, packed into one hall for the same plant.

“Berlin’s fucking insane,” he says. “I love to see everyone from all over the place coming into one place to boost each other on the weed business. It’s just cool to see so much unity. Everyone’s so excited. I kind of miss that excitement in the weed space.”

He can put a year on it. “It feels good, dude. What we used to have [in America] in, like, 2016.” Somewhere between then and now, the business changed on him, and Berlin gave the feeling back, a hall of people who showed up for nothing but the plant.

What Never Changed

Earlier this year, Berner published a book through Penguin Random House, in part to put his own account on the record about what happened with Cookies, the brand he built into one of the most recognizable names in weed. He does not walk through the specifics here, but he does not pretend it was painless.

“What I’ve been through is just mental torture, bro,” he says. He describes being hit from several directions at once, by people he had once trusted and looked up to, over a company he built that others wanted a piece of. The way back, he says, was to stop staring at the fight and start paying attention to the parts of this he still loves, connecting with people, sharing weed and standing in rooms like the one in Berlin.

The friendships came from the plant, too. He points to Wiz Khalifa, who has credited Berner with teaching him much of what he knows about flavor. “Wiz is my guy,” Berner says. “We bonded right away over weed, and that’s how some of my best friendships started.”

Ask Berner what he is proudest of, though, and for all of it, Cookies and the Forbes cover and the music, the answer is his family. He has an eighteen-year-old daughter in college and, with his wife Ashley, two babies back to back and a third on the way at the time of this interview. “Three babies in three years,” he says.

“Leave it at the office. That’s it. I smoke weed all day. When I get home, I’m with the family.”

Berner

On where cannabis is headed in the US, he keeps it short. “We need to legalize 100%,” he says. “It’s kind of goofy what’s happening.” Fewer taxes, sooner.

Then he disappears back into the 80,000 people who flew to Berlin for the one thing he has never lost the plot on. “We’re all here for one thing,” he says, “and that’s fucking weed.”

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The independent, Black-owned New Jersey cannabis retailer is opening its second location with a focus on hospitality, community, and a retail experience built to feel less corporate and more personal.

Premo is taking its next step in New Jersey cannabis with the opening of Premo Dover, the company’s second retail location and its first expansion beyond Keyport. Located at 330 S. Salem St., Ste. 6, the new shop brings Premo into Morris County after two years of building a following around customer service, curated menus, community programming, and a family-run approach to cannabis retail.

For CEO Darrin Chandler Jr., the move is not just about adding another storefront. It is about seeing whether the model Premo built in Keyport can travel without losing the personal charge that made people care in the first place.

“Dover felt like the right fit because we saw an opportunity to bring something different to the market,” Chandler said. “We built Premo around culture, hospitality, education, and community, and we believed this area was ready for that experience.”

Why Dover Made Sense for Premo

Premo Dover is technically located in Victory Gardens, near Dover, but the company is thinking bigger than one address. Chandler said the goal is to serve the broader Morris County community, including Dover, Randolph, and surrounding towns.

That matters because cannabis retail can sometimes feel like it lands in a neighborhood without ever really becoming part of it. Premo is trying to take the opposite approach. The company wants the new store to function as a local business first, not a dispensary dropped into town with a flashy logo and no roots.

“Just as importantly, we want to become a true community partner by creating jobs, supporting local organizations, participating in community events, and being a business the entire region is proud to have,” Chandler said. “We didn’t come here just to open a dispensary, we came here to become part of the community.”

That community-first language is not new in cannabis. Every brand says some version of it. The difference is whether it shows up when there is not a grand opening banner outside. In Keyport, Premo has organized Thanksgiving turkey drives, clothing drives, school supply donations, and support for local organizations. Chandler said the company plans to bring that same approach to Dover while listening to what the community actually needs.

“Premo was founded by people whose lives were directly impacted by the War on Drugs, so giving back isn’t a marketing strategy, it’s part of who we are,” he said. “Our goal is to be remembered for more than cannabis.”

The Lessons From Keyport

Premo opened its flagship dispensary in Keyport in 2024, building its reputation as an independent, Black-owned, family-owned retailer led by two father-son duos: Darrin Chandler Jr. and Sr., and Skye and Donald Blanks. That family structure is not just a nice origin-story detail. It shapes how the company talks about growth, hiring, service, and the kind of energy it wants customers to feel when they walk in.

“Building Premo with family has been one of the greatest blessings of our lives,” Chandler said. “Family is at the center of everything we do, and that culture extends beyond ownership. We want every employee to feel valued, supported, and empowered to grow. That family atmosphere is something our customers feel when they walk into our stores.”

The first two years in Keyport also gave the team a working education in what customers respond to beyond price and product. Cannabis retail is crowded in New Jersey, and the novelty of legal stores is not enough anymore. For independent operators, survival depends on giving people a reason to come back.

“The biggest lesson is that great retail isn’t just about selling cannabis, it’s about creating an experience people want to come back to,” Chandler said. “Over the past two years, we’ve refined everything from customer service and menu curation to operations and community engagement. We’re bringing those lessons to Dover on day one so customers receive the best possible experience from the moment they walk through the door.”

A Store Built From More Than Cannabis

Premo’s founders bring backgrounds in music, real estate, fitness, and the legacy cannabis market, and Chandler sees all of that reflected in the company’s retail style. That mix helps explain why Premo’s brand does not read like a sterile chain trying to reverse-engineer culture from a conference room.

“Every chapter of our lives influenced Premo,” Chandler said. “Music taught us how to build culture. Real estate taught us how important location and community are. Fitness taught us discipline and consistency. The legacy cannabis market taught us to respect the plant and the people who built this industry before legalization.”

That last part is especially important in a legal market still sorting out who gets to benefit from cannabis becoming aboveboard. New Jersey’s industry has grown fast, but independent and minority-owned retailers still have to compete against larger operators with deeper pockets, bigger teams, and more corporate machinery. Chandler said Premo’s advantage is speed and proximity to the customer.

“Independent operators have one major advantage: we can move quickly,” he said. “We can listen to our customers, adapt faster, and make decisions without layers of corporate bureaucracy. We’ve built Premo from the ground up, and that connection to our customers allows us to innovate and evolve much faster than larger organizations.”

Premium Without the Velvet Rope

Premo uses words like premium, but Chandler is careful not to define that as expensive or exclusive. The company wants the shop to feel elevated without making newer customers feel like they need a cannabis glossary just to buy an eighth.

“We believe cannabis should be accessible to everyone,” Chandler said. “Whether someone is an experienced consumer or walking into a dispensary for the first time, they deserve the same level of service and respect. That’s why we’ve built a menu that offers products at every price point while never compromising the customer experience.”

That philosophy shows up in Premo Dover’s opening month programming. From July 1 through July 31, the store is offering 30% off a special menu featuring Garden Greens, Fernway, Find, and Select. During Grand Opening Weekend, July 17–19, that discount increases to 40% off the same menu, with $1 eighths of flower available to the first 750 customers each day, one per customer, per day, while supplies last.

On Saturday, July 18, Premo plans to turn the opening into more of a neighborhood introduction, with The Colonial Grill food truck on site from noon to 3 p.m., a live DJ, and vendor activations throughout the day.

The promotions will bring people in. Chandler’s goal is for the experience to make them stay.

Asked what he wants someone to feel in the first five minutes inside Premo Dover, Chandler did not reach for a retail buzzword.

“Love,” he said. “That’s the easiest way to describe it. We genuinely appreciate every customer who chooses to shop with us because without them there is no Premo. We want people to feel welcomed, comfortable, and excited to be here.”

The Next Chapter for Premo

Premo Dover is also a sign of where the company wants to go next. The store gives Premo a second market, a larger regional footprint, and another stage for in-house products and exclusive launches, which Chandler sees as an increasingly important part of the brand’s identity.

“Our in-house brands allow us to offer products that customers can only find at Premo,” he said. “They also give us greater control over quality, consistency, and value. As we continue to grow, our exclusive products will become an even bigger part of what makes Premo unique.”

For now, Dover is the immediate focus. But Chandler is not framing the expansion as a one-off.

“Dover is another milestone in a much larger vision,” he said. “From the beginning, our goal wasn’t simply to own dispensaries. We’re building a vertically integrated cannabis company with strong retail operations, proprietary brands, and long-term partnerships. Dover represents the next chapter in that journey.”

In an industry where expansion can sometimes flatten a brand, Premo is betting that growth does not have to mean losing the personal touch. The Dover opening will test that belief in real time. If Keyport was proof of concept, Morris County is the next question: can a family-run cannabis retailer grow without starting to feel like everyone else?

Premo seems ready to find out.

Photos courtesy of Premo

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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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A case of mistaken identity and an experimental psychedelic compound give two best friends telepathic powers, setting off a bizarre chain of events involving talking cats and Danish scientists. Blending absurd humor, queer storytelling, and sci-fi elements, the film is set to hit theaters on August 14, 2026.

What happens if you mix Kristen Stewart, Alia Shawkat, Kate McKinnon, a briefcase full of experimental psychedelics, and talking cats? The answer is The Wrong Girls, NEON’s new comedy, which has just released its first-look images and already has all the ingredients to become a new cult classic.

Directed by Dylan Meyer—Kristen Stewart’s wife—in her feature directorial debut, the movie follows Frankie (Stewart) and Molly (Shawkat), two best friends who are as inseparable as they are disastrous. After spending a decade drifting through a haze of smoke, bad decisions, and a near-professional inability to take responsibility, a case of mistaken identity leaves them with a briefcase containing a powerful experimental compound in their hands.

After trying one of the substances, the two develop telepathic abilities. Not only can they hear each other’s thoughts, but they can also communicate with their cats. The problem is that the compound belongs to Dr. Olsen, a Danish scientist played by Kate McKinnon, who wants her creation back. As a result, they end up being chased by a group of Danish scientists determined to recover the compound at any cost.

The cast is equally impressive. LaKeith Stanfield plays the mysterious man who sets the entire chain of events in motion; Zack Fox plays Molly’s boyfriend; Tony Hale appears as an insufferable real estate developer; and Geena Davis rounds out the scientific duo, playing Dr. Olsen’s love interest. As if that weren’t enough, Seth Rogen and Kumail Nanjiani lend their voices to the talking cats, who are also quite critical of the protagonists.

Beyond its outrageous premise, Meyer says the film was inspired by her own friendship with producer Maggie McLean and describes it as “a love letter to wayward chaotic women and the essential platonic partnerships that prop them up.” According to the director, there may be “giant squid, Danish hitmen, and supernatural abilities,” but the heart of the story remains deeply personal.

Kristen Stewart had previously revealed that she was working on a “really stupid” “stoner girl comedy,” in the best possible sense. If the first look is any indication, The Wrong Girls seems to deliver on that promise: an absurd, psychedelic, queer, and completely unhinged comedy. It is scheduled to be released in theaters on August 14, 2026.

Cover photos: Sarah K Joyce / WikiPortraits + Elena Ternovaja, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons + Daniel Benavides from Austin, TX, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons // Edited with AI

<p>The post Kristen Stewart, Psychedelics, Talking Cats, and Queer Science: The Wrong Girls Could Be This Year’s Most Promising Stoner Comedy first appeared on High Times.</p>

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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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For decades, governments assumed poor people couldn’t be trusted with unconditional cash. A wave of new evidence says they were wrong.

There is a documented phenomenon in the research literature: drug-related hospitalizations spike measurably in the first days of the month, when government disability and welfare checks land. Among SSI recipients with preexisting addictions, within-hospital mortality rises by roughly 22 percent. The data is real.

So is the leap politicians made from it — and that leap is what’s collapsing.

For decades, the fear that poor people will waste unconditional cash on drugs and alcohol has shaped welfare policy across the Western world. A wave of new evidence suggests the fear was never grounded in the reality most people actually live.

A 2007 study in the Journal of Public Economics tracked California hospital admissions and found a 23 percent spike in drug-related hospitalizations in the first five days of the month, driven almost entirely by SSI and disability check arrivals. Among recipients with preexisting addictions, within-hospital mortality rose by 22 percent. The checks weren’t creating new addicts. They were giving existing ones the means to go further. 

Policy Built on a Punchline 

In honor of the despicable, low-life, perturbing, hilarious, and unavoidable character from the TV show Shameless, I’m calling this phenomenon “The Frank Gallagher Thesis,” because in the earlier seasons of the hit show, we watch Frank defraud the system by collecting welfare checks from a late aunt before going to the local watering hole to run his tab. Just like some people did in this most recent study around a Vancouver community-based cohort of people who use drugs.

But what’s now collapsing under a pile of new evidence is the leap from the above-discussed conduct among some check receivers to an entire philosophy of governance.

The Frank Gallagher Thesis is the reason a single mother in Ohio may be subjected to drug screening requirements tied to assistance programs, and a twenty-year-old sleeping in his car in Portland can access a shelter bed but not the cash that would let him secure a deposit on a room.

In the U.S., at least 15 states have passed laws requiring drug testing for welfare recipients, nearly all of which have produced positive rates indistinguishable from the general population and probably cost more to administer than they saved. 

In Australia, the government proposed random drug testing of youth welfare recipients in the name of “love.” In New Zealand, benefit claimants can be required to take drug tests as a condition of job referrals. In the United Kingdom, where the original Shameless ran for 11 seasons, and the tabloid press has perfected the “scrounger narrative,” drug testing provisions were written into the 2009 Welfare Reform Act but never implemented — the political theater of the proposal being the point. In Ontario, a Conservative government drew up plans for mandatory drug testing and abstinence requirements… and so forth. You get the point. 

But what if we were to provide financial assistance to homeless people without a counterpart? Will they go and spend it all on drugs, like the doctrine largely assumes?

In fact, it’s being done — and the evidence against that assumption is mounting quickly.

What Actually Happens When You Give People Cash 

In February 2023, without much national attention, the state of Oregon began wiring $1,000 a month to 120 young people between the ages of 18 and 24 who were living on the streets.

The program, called Direct Cash Transfer Plus, was a collaboration between the Oregon Department of Human Services and Point Source Youth. This national nonprofit had already piloted a similar model in New York City. It operated in three counties — Multnomah, Clackamas, and Deschutes — through partnerships with local organizations, including the Native American Youth and Family Center in Portland.

The payments ran for two years.

Results were published in January 2026: of the 63 participants (out of 120) who completed both baseline and follow-up surveys, 94% reported being in stable housing. Nearly three-quarters were employed or enrolled in school. The rate of high school diploma completion had risen measurably.

Participants described using the money for rent deposits, car insurance, groceries, laptop computers for community college classes, the bus fare, or gas money to flee domestic violence.

One participant, in an anonymous survey response published by the state, put it plainly:

“The DCT program is how I’m still alive. If I did not have such support in the beginning of the program I would still be stuck in a homeless pit.”

Another wrote that she had left sex work, enrolled in school, and started a small beading and art business with the financial breathing room the payments provided.

And there’s a broader pattern from other experiments like this one. 

Oregon’s program was the second state-level implementation of a model first tested in New York City, where 29 young adults received $1,100 a month for two years through the Trust Youth Initiative. At the end of the program, 92% reported that the payments helped them secure stable housing.  In Washington State, a different model — based on one-time emergency payments of $1,000 to $2,000 — kept 93% of recipients from returning to homelessness within a year.

In Denver, where more than 800 homeless adults received monthly transfers, the share of participants reporting that they live in their own housing rose from low single digits at intake to roughly 45% within a year, depending on the group. 

By January 2025, at least 160 guaranteed income pilot programs had been launched across the United States.

The studies varied in design, population, and scale, but the central finding kept replicating: when you give people in crisis unrestricted cash, the overwhelming majority spend it on the unremarkable necessities of survival, such as food, shelter, transportation, utilities,  and their circumstances measurably improve.

What they don’t do, with striking consistency, is what the Frank Gallagher Thesis predicts. 

The Evidence Is No Longer Anecdotal 

No conversation about unconditional cash ever gets very far before someone asks:
“Won’t they just spend it on drugs?”

The most-cited evidence against that assumption comes from the 2020 New Leaf Project, a randomized controlled trial conducted in Vancouver. Researchers gave 50 recently homeless individuals a one-time cash transfer of 7,500 Canadian dollars and tracked outcomes over twelve months. The cash group moved into stable housing faster than the control group and spent the majority of their money on rent, food, and clothing. There was no increase in spending on alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs. In fact, early reporting from the project suggested a decline. 

At a global scale, the evidence is even harder to dismiss. A World Bank review of cash transfer programs across low- and middle-income countries found no systematic increase in spending on alcohol or tobacco, and in many cases, consumption actually declined.

In the United States, the pattern has held. 

The Baby’s First Years study, a rigorous multi-site trial that gave 1,000 low-income mothers either $333 or $20 per month, found no significant increase in alcohol, cigarette, or opioid use among the higher-payment group.

And then there is the Chelsea program in Massachusetts, which provided some of the most striking data of all. Participants who received unconditional transfers of up to $400 a month saw an 87% reduction in substance-use-related emergency room visits, a 62% reduction in behavioral health visits, and a 27% reduction in emergency department visits overall.

So, the bottom line is that across every major study, in every city that has tried some version of this experiment, the Frank Gallagher scenario — the one in which recipients take the money and self-destruct — has not materialized.

And at this point, that absence is no longer anecdotal. It is empirical.

<p>The post The Frank Gallagher Thesis Shaped Welfare For Decades. The Data Just Demolished It. first appeared on High Times.</p>

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The Washington State Department of Health just published a health advisory for FIFA World Cup visitors. It includes the standard warnings: start low, go slow, don’t drive, don’t mix with alcohol, edibles can take three hours and last up to 24. It is responsible, accurate, and completely inadequate for anyone who has never encountered what’s on dispensary shelves here.

The post A Field Guide to American Weed for World Cup Visitors appeared first on Paradise Found.

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.

<p>The post Pickle Vapes, Beach Soccer, and the Road to Philly first appeared on High Times.</p>

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