A new collaboration brings together iconic functional glass, carefully selected cannabis genetics and a mission to get consumers looking beyond THC percentages.

For more than three decades, Jerome Baker Designs has occupied a unique place in cannabis culture. Founded by Jason Harris, the company helped transform functional glass into an art form and became one of the most recognizable names associated with the culture surrounding the plant.

For more than three decades, Jerome Baker Designs has occupied a unique place in cannabis culture. Founded by Jason Harris, the company helped transform functional glass into an art form and became one of the most recognizable names associated with the culture surrounding the plant.

Harris’s story recently got the documentary treatment in “Bong Voyage,” the finale of Hulu’s 4X20: Quick Hits. The film traces his path from the Grateful Dead scene and the rise of Jerome Baker Designs through Operation Pipe Dreams, the federal crackdown that targeted Harris and other glassmakers in the early 2000s.

Now, Jerome Baker Designs is bringing that legacy together with The Kaleidoscope Collective for a collaboration centered on another kind of craftsmanship: cannabis cultivation.

The limited release brings together carefully selected genetics, premium New York flower and the kind of attention to detail that both brands have built their reputations around. The collection will feature limited-edition cultivars, including award-winning genetics, as well as selections developed through The Kaleidoscope Collective’s ongoing work with breeding, phenotype hunting and backcrossing.

The partnership pairs the premium cannabis with bespoke glass and limited-edition merchandise. At the center of the experience are exclusive, numbered box sets—limited to just 250 per collection—featuring a handcrafted Jerome Baker glass pipe, 1, 3.5, & 7 grams of premium, hand-selected New York flower, rolling papers, a matchbook and collector packaging.

Alongside quarter-ounce flower and one-gram pre-rolls positioned at the premium end of the market, the collaboration represents a natural evolution for a brand that has spent decades turning cannabis accessories into collectible works of art.

The partnership with The Kaleidoscope Collective takes that idea one step further, connecting the artistry of Jerome Baker glass with the artistry, genetics and cultivation behind the cannabis itself. It is an opportunity to remind consumers that great cannabis cannot be reduced to one number on a package.

“I’d say Kaleidoscope is the best in New York, and Dave Bavinka is one of the best growers out there I’ve seen on the East Coast,” Harris says of his collaborator. “I just wanted to align with the best.”

Their focus is what they describe as full-flavor, full-bodied cannabis—flower that is evaluated not simply by potency, but by genetics, aroma, flavor, cultivation and the overall experience.

“Everybody’s wondering where you get chronic these days,” Harris says. “We know that these jars hold the chronic.”

The Kaleidoscope Collective’s approach draws inspiration from the traditional cannabis connoisseur experience, when consumers often evaluated flower by the way it looked, smelled and smoked. The goal is to bring that same attention to quality into the regulated marketplace.

“It’s going to be a full-flavored smoke,” Bavinka says. “It’s going to stick to your fingers. It’s going to be perfectly cured.”

The Genetics Behind the Drop

Rather than treating genetics as a static menu, The Kaleidoscope Collective approaches each release as an opportunity to showcase something different.

The collection will draw from exotic genetics, limited-edition cultivars and selections shaped by years of breeding and phenotype hunting. That will include standout award-winning genetics alongside lesser-known selections and proprietary crosses that are still being developed.

For consumers, that means the collection won’t necessarily look the same from one drop to the next. Some selections may be announced ahead of time, while others will remain under wraps until they appear on dispensary menus.

That element of discovery is intentional.

“We’re always working on something new,” Bavinka says. “You never know what’s going to come out of the next round.”

The approach also reflects a broader philosophy shared by the two brands: craftsmanship is often about the details that consumers don’t immediately see. From the genetics selected at the beginning of the process to the cultivation, curing and final presentation, each step contributes to the finished experience.

The Craft Behind the Flower

For Bavinka, cannabis cultivation remains a process of constant experimentation and learning. After decades of growing, he is still exploring new techniques, including under-canopy lighting designed to bring more light to lower portions of the plant. The goal is to improve flower development throughout the canopy and produce more consistent results.

“As a grower, after 25 years, I’m still learning today,” he says.

That commitment to experimentation and craft is part of what makes the collaboration with Jerome Baker feel natural. Jerome Baker has spent decades elevating functional glass beyond its utilitarian purpose. The Kaleidoscope Collective is applying a similar philosophy to cannabis cultivation.

Together, the partners are exploring ways to connect the art surrounding cannabis with the plant itself.

A Return to the Full Experience

Ultimately, the Jerome Baker × Kaleidoscope Collective collaboration is about encouraging consumers to experience cannabis more completely. They want people to look beyond THC percentages and consider the many factors that shape a cultivar, from genetics and terpenes to flavor, aroma and cultivation.

“There’s so much more to the plant,” Bavinka says.

That message is at the heart of this release.

Exotic genetics. Limited-edition drops. Carefully cultivated flower. Bespoke collectible art. And a shared belief that the best cannabis experience is about more than chasing the biggest number on the jar.

For Jerome Baker Designs and The Kaleidoscope Collective, the goal is simple: bring full-flavor chronic back to the conversation.

Photos courtesy of The Kaleidoscope Collective

Sponsored Content Disclosure: This article was published as part of a paid commercial arrangement with [Brand/Sponsor]. It is not independent editorial content. References to products, cannabinoids, formulations, services, 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 Jerome Baker and Kaleidoscope Chase Full-Flavor Weed first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Jerome Baker and Kaleidoscope Chase Full-Flavor Weed appeared first on Paradise Found.

This interview by Micah Johnson originally appeared in High Times Local, produced under license by Cannapages.

Twenty years after the cult stoner classic, the “Tom Brady of vodka” has quit drinking, switched to low-dose edibles and is back with “Mini War,” a new R-rated comedy co-starring Luke Wilson and Vanessa Hudgens.

If turn-of-the-century stoner cinema had a hall of fame, Nick Swardson’s portrait would hang alongside Dave Chappelle, Kevin Smith and Ice Cube. Twenty years after co-writing and starring in the undisputed millennial cult classic Grandma’s Boy—a film that defined an era of Blockbuster late fees, couch-locked gaming and laugh-out-loud degeneracy—Swardson remains a titan of unapologetic, hard-R comedy.

From his unforgettable run as the roller-skating Terry on Reno 911! to his decades-long creative partnership with Adam Sandler, Swardson built a career on a specific, boundary-pushing comedic frequency: wildly outlandish, deeply silly, but always grounded in a surprisingly sweet, authentic heart.

Now, Swardson returns with clarity. He’s back in the creative driver’s seat with Mini War, an upcoming indie comedy co-starring Luke Wilson and Vanessa Hudgens, directed by Grandma’s Boy alum Joel David Moore. The film revives an idea Swardson first cooked up right after Grandma’s Boy, proving that his signature brand of chaos is as sharp as ever. But the road back to set hasn’t been without its hurdles. After retiring his legendary “Tom Brady of vodka” jersey following a series of harrowing health scares—including a burst appendix mid-shoot that had him issuing script notes on Percocet—Swardson has embraced a new, clear-headed chapter of life.

Trading heavy drinking for a more mindful routine (and his very own line of functional mushroom and hemp-infused “Terry’s Berries”), Swardson joins High Times to reflect on his wild ride as he turns 50. We dive into the chaotic genius of Grandma’s Boy, the fine art of writing dialogue for weed-smoking grandmas, surviving emergency surgeries on set, and why sobriety has unleashed the most productive creative streak of his career.

High Times: We’re 20 years out from Grandma’s Boy. This is a cult classic, especially for the millennial stoner. Any awesome memories stand out?

Nick: Yeah, I’ve got a lot of great memories from it. With Grandma’s Boy, it was great because I was already a screenwriter. I had a screenplay credit on Malibu’s Most Wanted, and then Adam brought me in because of jokes he saw on Comedy Central about my grandma. The greatest thing you can do as a writer is be handed a script—which I was with Grandma’s Boy by Adam Sandler and Allen Covert. They were like, “This movie is too lame and it’s PG-13, so we need you to rewrite it and make it rated R and do whatever you want.” I was like a kid in a candy store because they were like, “There are no rules.” It was a low-budget movie with no expectations. So it was super fun. I just sat down with Allen Covert—who was the lead—opened my brain up, and created my part.

They were like, “You can write yourself however you see yourself.” Then I created the robot guy and added the monkey and the lion. Like I said, kid in a candy store creatively, just doing whatever I wanted. And they let me be crazy and weird.

HT: The robot guy? It sounds like you wrote half the movie, then.

Nick: I wrote a lot of it. One of the things I love is dialogue; I like writing dialogue. The robot guy—it was funny because it was hard to audition the role, because nobody really understood the split personality of the JP character. I was the only one who knew how to execute it. There was actually a moment where nobody could get it right, and they talked about me playing that part, because nobody could get it in the auditions.

We auditioned really good actors—really great, famous people—and they just couldn’t wrap their head around the tone of it. It was pretty funny.

HT: Did you find Joel David Moore, or did he just say, “I think I’m the dude”?

Nick: He was a recommendation from the studio. Fox, who was distributing the movie, recommended him because he had done Dodgeball. I said no at first because he was too old—the role was supposed to be a teenage prodigy. But the executive, who was a friend of mine, Debbie, was like, “No, trust me, you have to read him.” So we read him and he nailed it. It was so immediate that we were like, “Oh yeah, we’ll just make him an older dude,” and it actually worked. It’s one of those serendipitous movie stories where somebody was totally wrong and then they came in and nailed it. Like Henry Winkler on Happy Days with the Fonz.

HT: The film also perfectly captured the “Stoner” versus “Geek” gamer culture that seems to be lost these days. Did you get any pushback from the geeks after Joel’s performance?

Nick: I got zero push back from Grandma’s Boy. It was this sleeper cult hit. We’re not mocking anyone. Just showing a different world. We did our best to make it authentic to the gaming world. No robots came after us.

HT: Speaking of dialogue, how was writing stoner dialogue for a bunch of grandmas?

Nick: It was super fun because you just treat them like anybody else–you just write it as dialogue for people that are stoned.

I was really hesitant at first because we made the mistake of treating them like sweet old ladies and forgetting that every old lady was once a degenerate. They kind of called us out on that. They were like, “No, we’re real people.” They loved the movie because they never get offered parts like that. They were all so excited to do it because normally they get the grandmother role and things that are very PG. So they were very excited to do this.

Mike (a friend sitting in): Doris Roberts was amazing.

Nick: She was a legend. They were all great. The credits and awards that they’ve all received are insane. If you look at their accolades throughout their career, it’s mind-blowing. They’re all legends.

HT: To those of us in our 30’s or 40’s, this is what we know them for.

Nick: Yeah, totally. That’s kind of how they’re leaving their mark in a way for the younger crowd, which is great.

HT: You’ve got another movie in development. Did you start writing this at the time of Grandma’s Boy? How did Mini War come about?

Nick: It was an idea I had in high school. After Grandma’s Boy went really well, I pitched the idea to Allen Covert and the people that paid us to write Grandma’s Boy, and they loved it. But that was before Grandma’s Boy did not do well at the box office. They bought the movie, we wrote it, and it was super funny, but nobody would make it because Grandma’s Boy didn’t do well. Then we kind of moved on, and I started working with Sandler full-time.

So I kind of forgot about it. Years and years went by, and the company, Level 1, that paid for it kept going, “Hey, what’s up with that mini-golf movie?” I was like, “I don’t know, I’m busy.” I had a TV show at the time and I was touring, so I didn’t think anything of it. Then this spring, Joel, who was JP in Grandma’s Boy, was like, “Let’s do a movie together.” I sent him that script and he was like, “This is great.” I said, “This is what I wrote after Grandma’s Boy,” and he was like, “Let’s do it.” So we quickly got money—he had filmed in Kentucky a lot—and we threw it together. It was great, but then my appendix went to shit, so I missed several days on set. That’s brutal because I’m the main writer and producer of the film.

I’m curious to get into the edit, but I know what we have and I know what the script was, so we should be in good shape. It’s fucking crazy, but it’s grounded. That’s the best kind of comedy. Grandma’s Boy is like that—a crazy movie, but there’s a real sweetness to the dynamic between Allen, his grandmother, and her friends.

HT: You talk about dialogue and going deeper and more heartfelt. When you’re the writer of these scripts, if you’re not the director, how do you make sure the tone and your vision are actually brought to life? Do you sit down with the director, or does the director have final say?

Nick: You have to establish a collaboration, and Joel is a good friend of mine. I went into it with, “This is my vision,” and Joel was like, “My job is to execute your vision.” That’s not from an ego standpoint—it’s just I know the tone of what I like in comedy, I know what my fans like, and I know the Grandma’s Boy crowd.

It was very stressful to be in a hospital while my movie was being filmed. But I gave Joel notes and I gave the actors direction from the hospital. I’m excited to see what it looks like.

HT: Did you pick Luke Wilson, or was he a studio pick?

Nick: We have no studio—it’s an independent film. I cast it on my phone, basically. Luke was a friend of mine, and I called a lot of these people up and asked, “Hey, want to do this crazy rated-R movie?” And they all trusted me. Luke Wilson, Dave Sheridan, Brett Gelman, Kevin Nealon… so many great people. The only people I didn’t really know were Vanessa Hudgens, who was amazing, and Rob Morgan, who was incredible—he was in Mudbound, he’s a legend. A lot of it was people coming together to make something fun and crazy.

HT: Are you usually on set the whole time if you wrote it?

Nick: I’m on set the whole time. I’m overseeing every line of dialogue, how the line is executed, and how the joke is being filmed. When I’m producing, I’m there 110%.

HT: That must have been super stressful then.

Nick: It was wicked stressful, and I’m trying to recover physically and not lose my mind. And I’m also on pain meds, so I’m giving notes on Percocet.

Joel’s directed several films; this wasn’t his first movie. This was like his sixth or seventh movie, so he knows what he’s doing. But I’m a control freak about my comedy so I was stressed.

HT: You’ve got a certain brand of comedy; you wrote this completely perfect thing, and unless someone interprets it the exact same way, it’s not going to be as funny.

Nick: Yeah. It’s like anybody—Wes Anderson or Tarantino or anybody that has a really clear vision of what they want, and then you hand it off to somebody else and you have to miss time.

And some people’s instincts are instincts of other movies they’ve seen, to shoot something that somebody else would have done, like Will Ferrell or Sandler or Seth Rogen. Where I’m like, “No, I have my own vision and my own style.”

HT: That might be key to your meteoric rise. You became famous pretty freakin’ quick, compared to most other people.

Nick: It happened really fast, and I also did it pre-internet. I started stand-up in 1996, so I didn’t have the luxury of any help technology wise outside of making VHS tapes and getting them to clubs. I had to sleep in my car. I had to do one nighters all over the midwest. I had to do everything I could. I got a giant cell phone in 1997. It was like a brick in your pocket.

HT: If you were starting over again today, do you think you would have the same desire?

Nick: Yes. Comedy is the only thing I could do. And ironically I always said that if I didn’t do stand up or acting professionally I’d be a bartender. You have a revolving, daily audience.

Back in the day, me and my friend Colton Dunn—who was on Superstore—we made sketches in high school, but we had a full-on VHS camcorder that was like a fucking news camera. We had to use VHS tapes and go into an edit bay in our high school. It was way more complicated, as opposed to whipping out your phone. You can edit a whole fucking feature movie on your phone.

One of the funny things, though, is I quit smoking weed in high school, so I wasn’t even smoking weed during Grandma’s Boy or anything. Yeah, I stopped smoking weed a while ago and I take edibles.

HT: You’ve overcome pancreatitis and sepsis. Do you feel like if you never got into show business we’d be having this conversation, or was that lifestyle inevitable with a Midwest upbringing?

Nick: That’s hard to say. I doubt I would have gone that extreme if I was a teacher but if I was a midwest bartender, yeah, I’d be fucked. But I just know that I did the party thing, and then I basically retired my jersey. There was nothing more I could do with drinking—I basically won drinking.

I was the Tom Brady of vodka, so there was nothing more I could do. I wanted to go into my later years getting back on camera and focusing on what I have left to say and give to comedy. I was the life of the party, and I was never a big drug guy—I just loved drinking and it was super fun. But once you’ve been there and done that, it gets uninteresting. There’s nowhere else to go.

HT: Our parents’ generation brought us up with this idea that life is hard, and you either mollify it with church or with beer.

Nick: Yeah, alcohol is a major Midwest thing. It’s a key element to a lot of people’s lives, and it was a major element to my life. The funny thing about smoking weed is I was part of that generation where I was a big weed smoker in high school and sold weed. I smoked weed in the ’90s where it was really mellow. Then I quit smoking weed because I got expelled from school for class clown shit and pulling fire alarms to smoke weed. I talked my way back in, but I was court-ordered to go to rehab for marijuana. When I dried out and decided to get back into weed years later, the weed had gotten exponentially stronger and I couldn’t function on it.

There was this weird time gap of about five years, from 1998 to the mid-2000s, where all of a sudden it was wild. Where I used to smoke a blunt, now I would be bonkers off two hits off a one-hitter. The weed went warp speed. I don’t like smoking, where I take a hit and all of a sudden, I was normal and then immediately too high within seconds. That is alarming to me.

HT: You’ve mentioned eating brownies with [former roommate] Zach Galifianakis — that sounds like an epic time! So your path has been edibles for a while then?

Nick: Yeah. I always liked it for the reasons people hate it: I actually like that it slowly creeps up on you. I think it’s cool and soothing, whereas a lot of people don’t like that. Zach and our friend Bobby ate pot cookies and then went to the grocery store. We loaded up on foods that would give us gas. Then we went back to Zach’s and had a farting contest. True story. Bobby won cause he could light them. To be an adult and be jealous of that skill makes me laugh.

HT: On Grandma’s Boy, was it a bunch of stoners on set, or was everyone professional? I heard Dante used real weed. Was it a pot party?

Nick: Unless he didn’t tell us, legally you can’t smoke real weed on set. The thing people forget is that we’re filming a movie for 20th Century Fox. They’re not paying us to have a party; we have to deliver a movie. When we would wrap, Dante and the director would smoke weed—they’re big weed smokers. But everybody else would just go home and maybe have a beer. Working with all those guys and Adam Sandler, people think it’s a party, but we have a job to do and we have to deliver. You’re working long hours.

HT: You can’t be smoking weed doing 20 takes.

Nick: That would be miserable. I’d be like, “What is that camera? Is that a spaceship?” I would freak out.

HT: Was it originally that much of a weed movie, or did you make it more into that?

Nick: Allen Covert wanted to make a stoner comedy, so he was fired up about making a weed movie that was grounded and not too crazy. He was a big weed smoker at the time.

HT: Were you thinking, “This is my big break,” or was it just fun? What was your mindset?

Nick: I was excited to meet Adam Sandler because I was a massive fan. I still am. It was a catch-22 because you’re meeting one of your heroes. He’s super cool and giving you the keys to a movie, but then you’re also like, “I don’t want to fuck this up.” There’s a lot of pressure because you want to deliver. They handed me the script and said, “Read it and come in with ideas.” I did, they liked the ideas, and then I had to sit down and execute all of it. They were nice enough and trusting enough to let me do that.

I was and am a huge film fan. And I came from a writing background cause my dad was a writer. I did a gig with Jamie Kennedy and he had this idea for a white rapper character that he did in his stand up act. He said he thought it could be a movie. I pitched him a couple scenes I saw in my head and he loved it and said “Dude, write it!” So I got a screenplay book and crashed with Jamie. What came from that was a rated R, Dumb and Dumber for me and him called Suckaz. It was super raw and crazy. We almost got it made independently but it wasn’t until he got his show on the WB, which was amazing, that the studio asked him for a movie. He gave them mine and they were basically like “this movie is too crazy. We need it PG-13.” So they got some writers to make it PG-13–and they did a great job–and that became Malibu’s Most Wanted.

HT: Between that, Jamie Kennedy Project, and Reno 911!— that was really your launchpad.

Nick: Reno 911! was mostly improv; that wasn’t writing.

HT: Did they just tell you the topic and you go? You’re coming up with that shit off the cuff?

Nick: Yeah, it’s pretty insane. I started doing improv in high school, so I was pretty savvy with it.

HT: You make it look easy, almost scripted.

Nick: Thank you. People are blown away that it was not scripted. There was never one line of dialogue ever written on Reno 911!. Never.

HT: What do the outtakes look like?

Nick: It was a lot of laughing. Our goal was to make each other laugh—to say things that were so weird and outlandish that we’d break the other cast members. We live in a world without DVDs now, but at the time there were extras that I’m sure are on YouTube. That’s where I miss DVDs—the bonus features.

On a side note, when Reno 911! got canceled, I actually wanted to do a Terry spin-off. I pitched Comedy Central a show called Terry P.I.—it was Terry as a private investigator—and they didn’t want to do it. I was really bummed out about that.

HT: I can’t imagine. That’s the kind of thing Netflix would jump at now. Do you have plans on getting Terry’s Berries into dispensaries after the hemp law changes?

Nick: Yeah, I think we’ll definitely explore that. I talk about being sober and not drinking, but there are different levels to sobriety. Edibles really help me a lot. My edibles are very minimal and mellow—they’re only 5 milligrams. They have CBD, CBN, ashwagandha, lion’s mane, and cordyceps mushrooms that help with natural calming. There’s so much anxiety in the world, and these really help me.

HT: How did that collaboration come about?

Nick: I had always thought about it, and people had approached me. Then my friend connected me with somebody in Minnesota from Nothing But Hemp—which is now NothingButCanna.net —and we talked it out and collabed on it, and they were totally down. It’s great that they’re local too, so that made me happy.

HT: They’re perfect for the aging stoner.

Nick: Edibles were a good thing for me. Whenever I’m in the mood for it to chill me out. I took one before an MRI because I was stressed, and it alleviated my anxiety. Edibles are better than pharmaceuticals and better than alcohol. You’re not going to get cirrhosis from a fucking Terry Berry.

And with edibles you have a legitimate cutoff for yourself, psychologically and for your body. You don’t want to push yourself to 1,000 milligrams, whereas people who drink push themselves to finish a whole bottle of alcohol. The repercussions are really bad for pills and alcohol.

Mike: It really is amazing what you’ve done. As a friend seeing you over the years and how you were able to kick it—you found a good medium for yourself where you can relax, it’s non-addictive and doesn’t bring you down that dark path. That message is super important.

Nick: Thanks, yeah, my goal now is just to get original comedy out there. I love going to the movie theater, and I think this generation is into going to theaters again. Look at what horror movies and original content are doing. I’m very inspired by this young generation of filmmakers across every genre. I think it’s really cool.

There was a window where I was going to retire ‘cause the business is really frustrating. To get your vision executed is really hard even with connections. I looked back and was proud of what I had accomplished and thought I’d move on and maybe write a book. Then I would run into fans and tell them I might retire, and the look on their face was completely horrified. Nobody thought it was cool. They were like, “What do you mean? You’re done making people laugh?” I felt like an idiot for saying that because why am I retiring? That doesn’t even make sense; I’m not that old.

HT: Do you have any favorite shoots or projects from throughout the years?

Nick: This is a cheesy answer but I love all the stuff I’ve done. I’m lucky to have worked with great people and people that challenge and inspire me. Logistically, Just Go With It, I love. The character was really fun and we shot in Hawaii for a couple months. Jennifer Aniston is the best. Truly.

HT: Mini War is done filming. But that’s not the only project you’ve got going on right now?

Nick: I have three original screenplays, and I created and wrote six episodes of a TV show that we’re out with now. I’m writing another stand-up hour that I think might be my last one; I’m workshopping it in the fall, called Dear Diarrhea. And then I had a meeting about an animated concept I want to pursue. So yeah, I’ve got a bunch of stuff.

HT: That’s a great lesson about sobriety: it opens your mind up to being productive. You’re more present and leaving more of a mark on the world.

Editor’s note: This interview reflects Nick Swardson’s personal experience with alcohol, prescription medication and cannabis. It is not medical advice. Cannabis affects people differently and can be habit-forming for some. Talk to a qualified healthcare professional about your own health and medications.

<p>The post Nick Swardson Co-Wrote ‘Grandma’s Boy.’ He Wasn’t Even Smoking Weed. first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Nick Swardson Co-Wrote ‘Grandma’s Boy.’ He Wasn’t Even Smoking Weed. appeared first on Paradise Found.

Congress’s watchdog confirmed the DEA has no complete written procedures for drug scheduling. Learn why opponents are using this to freeze marijuana rescheduling.

The post DEA Exposed: The Bombshell GAO Report Freezing Cannabis Rescheduling appeared first on Paradise Found.

This column originally appeared in Cultivated, a cannabis industry newsletter. Subscribe here.

You know the old saying: There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

That’s how Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), the anti-cannabis group pushing the campaign to repeal recreational cannabis sales in Massachusetts, operates. Take a kernel of truth, strip it of all context, and present a new, skewed context that makes it seem like SAM’s interpretation is settled fact. 

Here’s a clear example from The Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts’ website, funded almost entirely by SAM Action, SAM’s 501(c)(4) lobbying arm, which doesn’t need to disclose donors.

The coalition tells voters on its website there was “an almost fourfold increase in cannabis use for adolescents” after legal sales began. It cites a 2025 study but doesn’t link it. 

The fourfold increase they cite, as best I can find, comes from an analysis of the urine drug tests of 12- to 17-year-olds who came through the psychiatric emergency service at Massachusetts General Hospital between 2017 and 2019. THC positivity in that group went from 5% to 17.3%. 

Of course, there are many reasons why it’s unwise to extrapolate this number to the whole state. Chief among them, it would be totally incorrect. 

Data from the CDC’s biennial federal Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) shows the exact opposite case: past-month cannabis use among high schoolers in Massachusetts fell from 24.1% in 2017 to 12.0% in 2025. Cannabis sales in the state began in 2018. Use among high schoolers peaked back in 1995 at nearly 32%, which clearly had nothing to do with regulated sales to adults. 

To be clear, I don’t dismiss the study’s findings. It’s absolutely true about a vulnerable group of teenagers. But it’s nowhere near the claim on the coalition’s website.

And I’m not implying causation here. There are lots of complex reasons why teen use is down, many of which have little to do with cannabis policy itself. Regulated sales to adults could be one small piece of a big sociological puzzle. Nationwide trends are also down, to about 12.9% last year from 19.8% in 2017. 

Either way, it’s a very different story than SAM, the well-funded organization behind many of the efforts to both repeal and rein in cannabis reform around the U.S., is selling voters.

It’s important to scrutinize that. Voters head to the polls on November 3. For what Question 8 would actually do, read our Question 8 explainer.

Jeremy Berke is the founder and editor-in-chief of Cultivated Media. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of High Times. This column has been lightly edited.

<p>The post The Campaign to Repeal Cannabis Sales in Massachusetts Uses Slippery Stats first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post The Campaign to Repeal Cannabis Sales in Massachusetts Uses Slippery Stats appeared first on Paradise Found.

The DEA has opened a new registration process for state-licensed medical cannabis manufacturers, distributors and analytical laboratories seeking to operate under Schedule III. The move brings qualifying medical cannabis businesses into a federal controlled-substances framework while potentially offering major tax advantages by ending the Section 280E deduction ban for those businesses.

Schedule III is starting to come with paperwork.

On October 5, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) opened a new registration process for state-licensed medical cannabis manufacturers, distributors and analytical laboratories seeking to operate under Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act, according to Cannabis Business Times. 

Businesses can now apply through DEA Form 225, the agency’s standard application for manufacturers, distributors and certain other handlers of controlled substances.

The portal comes months after the Justice Department placed FDA-approved marijuana products and marijuana products subject to qualifying state medical licenses into Schedule III, a change that took effect in April. Cannabis outside those categories, including adult-use products, remains Schedule I under federal law.

For manufacturers, the registration may cover cultivation, production, processing, packaging, labeling, and transfers. Distributors can register to receive and transfer medical cannabis, while analytical laboratories can seek authorization to test it.

The DEA had been signaling for months that updated applications specifically tailored to medical marijuana manufacturers, cultivators, distributors and labs were coming. Businesses that had already filed Form 225 applications to handle Schedule III medical cannabis do not have to start over; the agency previously said it would contact those applicants to continue processing their registrations.

Schedule III Is Coming With Federal Paperwork

The new process follows an initial 60-day registration window that opened after the April rule took effect. Applicants who filed by June 26 qualified for expedited treatment, with the DEA directed to make every effort to process those applications within six months. The rules also gave qualifying early applicants the ability to continue state-licensed medical operations while their applications were pending.

That deadline is over, but the door is not closed. The DEA says it will continue accepting medical cannabis registration applications after June 26; those later applications simply will not qualify for expedited processing.

The application asks companies to provide their business information, applicable controlled-substance schedule, state license details, background information and payment. Applicants handling medical cannabis must identify the relevant substances and disclose details about the activities they intend to conduct.

The background portion may prove particularly significant for an industry that spent decades operating in the gap between state authorization and federal prohibition. Applicants are asked about previous controlled-substance convictions, federal or state registration problems and disciplinary actions involving professional licenses.

Under federal law, Schedule III manufacturers and distributors are generally eligible for registration unless the DEA determines that granting it would be inconsistent with the public interest based on factors including state-law compliance, diversion controls and past controlled-substance convictions.

There’s Also the 280E Question

For cannabis businesses, however, the stakes go well beyond a federal registration number.

One of the biggest consequences of moving qualifying medical marijuana into Schedule III is the treatment of Section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code. The provision prevents businesses that traffic in Schedule I or II substances from deducting ordinary business expenses. The April federal rule expressly states that state medical marijuana licensees covered by the change will no longer be subject to that deduction disallowance. Treasury and the IRS have separately announced plans for guidance on the tax consequences of the rescheduling action.

Congressional researchers have also concluded that businesses handling covered medical cannabis will need DEA registration to operate in compliance with the Controlled Substances Act. In other words, Schedule III may offer major benefits, but it comes with federal oversight attached.

That oversight is not exactly cheap. Current annual Form 225 fees are $3,699 for manufacturers, $1,850 for distributors and $296 for analytical laboratories.

After years of cannabis companies operating almost entirely inside state regulatory systems, the portal represents something genuinely new: a pathway for portions of the existing medical market to step into the federal controlled-substances framework instead of simply existing alongside it.

And with that pathway now open, the next question is how many businesses will actually choose to walk through it.

<p>The post DEA Opens New Schedule III Registration Portal for Medical Cannabis Businesses first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post DEA Opens New Schedule III Registration Portal for Medical Cannabis Businesses appeared first on Paradise Found.

This November gathering will bring psychedelic education into conversation with music, visual art, comedy, philosophy, and the culture surrounding altered states.

Nashville has never had trouble bringing music, art, and a little rebellion into the same room. Psychedelics, however, remain a less public part of the conversation.

Phoenix Rising Psychedelic Speakeasy wants to change that. Set for November 5 at Analog at Hutton Hotel, the event will bring together artists, musicians, psychedelic educators, and figures working across science, spirituality, and culture for an evening built around something broader than the standard conference-panel approach.

For organizer Edward Crowe, a music business executive and psychedelic guide, Nashville is interesting precisely because it isn’t an obvious center of the contemporary psychedelic movement.

“The community here in Nashville is severely curious, but equally misinformed,” Crowe told High Times. “When you mention mushrooms in Nashville, the understanding usually stops at chocolate bars and micro-dosing—but there’s so much more to the psychedelic experience.”

Psychedelics Outside the Conference Room

Phoenix Rising is leaning heavily into the cultural side of psychedelics. The lineup includes author and philosopher P.D. Newman, artists Rime MSK and Dr. Dax, Eleusis co-founder Charles Patti, ceremonial guide Andy Sudbrock, comedy from Dennis Walker, live painting by Chris Dyer, a sound bath from Demi Greider, and music from Nutritious. Crowe will also participate.

The event is sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), which marks its 40th anniversary this year. Organizers say the night is intended for education, culture, and entertainment, and no psychedelic substances will be provided, sold, or consumed at the event.

That mixture of disciplines is intentional. Rather than separating psychedelics into medical, spiritual, scientific, or cultural camps, Crowe said he wants those perspectives bumping into one another.

“I’m excited to have all these perspectives in one room, because where one drops off, another picks up,” Crowe said. “But when I sit with a mycologist, a doctor, or a scientist, the conversation gets so much more interesting.”

Music will be part of that conversation rather than simply entertainment between speakers. Nutritious, who is scheduled to perform, said the event’s open-ended premise fits his improvisational approach.

“Phoenix Rising makes curiosity part of the invitation,” he told High Times. “That’s exciting to play into. We can arrive somewhere neither of us could have imagined alone.”

Bringing the Conversation to Music City

Phoenix Rising arrives as psychedelics increasingly occupy overlapping worlds of research, policy, wellness, underground practice, and popular culture. The Nashville event isn’t trying to collapse those distinctions so much as put people who approach psychedelics differently into the same room.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. on November 5, with programming beginning at 7:30 p.m. The event will also be livestreamed globally through Volume.com.

For Crowe, bringing that conversation to Nashville is part of the point.

“We named it the Phoenix Rising Psychedelic Speakeasy because we’re still living through prohibition—one that requires us to move quietly and speak easily,” he said.

Tickets are available at PRPS369.com/event.

Images courtesy of Phoenix Rising Psychedelic Speakeasy.

Content Disclaimer: High Times is a media partner of Phoenix Rising Psychedelic Speakeasy. Event details, lineup information, participating organizations, and programming information were provided by the event producers. 

<p>The post Phoenix Rising Is Bringing Psychedelic Culture to Nashville first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Phoenix Rising Is Bringing Psychedelic Culture to Nashville appeared first on Paradise Found.

Ten p.m. on a Glendale balcony, two floors above the theater that just screened the movie, in the apartment where it was written. Five of the cast and crew, one two-gram doink, and the first joint Mike Mitchell has smoked in twenty years. Awkwafina has already signed on for the sequel.

Los Angeles. Top floor of the Americana at the Brand Residences. 10:05 p.m. on a Saturday night.

After wrapping up a screening of The Napa Boys, I find myself outside sharing a balcony joint with the core cast of the new film, all while overlooking Glendale’s most famous Cheesecake Factory.

We’re up at director and co-writer Nick Corirossi’s apartment, in the residential tower that sits on top of the Americana at the Brand, an open-air mall in Glendale. The AMC is at most a two-minute walk door-to-door, straight down from where we’re standing. You know you’ve got a future cult classic on your hands when there’s an official “drunk screening” Q&A with the crew. Wading through groups of fans repping their own handmade costumes on the way out further solidifies this.

Now, is living at Americana at the Brand the film equivalent of the world’s most famous comedians living above the Comedy Store in the ’70s and ’80s? No, not really. But the fact that Corirossi co-wrote The Napa Boys on this very balcony alongside Armen Weitzman makes it a piece of cinema history. At least in my book.

Before we begin, let’s call it like it is: I’d put the odds at 50/50 that you’ll even like this movie. When it premiered at TIFF, there were some walkouts. The fact that you’re reading this in High Times bodes well, but unless you also sit smack-dab in the middle of the virtual Venn diagram covering alt-comedy lovers and stoners who still drink, you might have missed The Napa Boys theatrical run.

For the uninitiated:

• This is now the 4th Napa Boys movie. 1 through 3 don’t actually exist.
• Imagine Sideways but give it the American Pie straight-to-DVD cinematic universe treatment. Even the Blu-ray is an “Unrated & Uncorked” edition.
• Cameos include everyone from frequent David Lynch collaborator Ray Wise to Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes in full Jay & Silent Bob regalia. David Wain pops up, so does DJ Qualls, Natasha Leggero, Ivy Wolk and Euphoria‘s Chloe Cherry.
• They have their own cannabis collab: merlot-flavored rosin gummies from SuperChill.

As the two-gram doink slowly burns down to ash, I have my opportunity to dig into the production process with Nick and Armen, along with cast members Mike Mitchell (IFC’s The Birthday Boys, the Doughboys podcast) and Paul Rust, who steals the movie in his role as Squirm, but whom many know from his music or as the creator and lead of Netflix’s stellar series Love. I probably spend the most time with producer Mike Rosenstein, best known for his work with Ben Stiller and Eric Andre, and for producing Have a Good Trip, the psychedelics documentary that landed on streaming mid-pandemic. Personally, though, I’m geeking out over his show Another Period, which appears to be where many of these collaborators first met.

Sure, none of these guys are household names.

But in my house, where we just finished our annual rewatch of Another Period and Nick’s Funny or Die webshort “Don Cheadle is Captain Planet” from back in 2011 is still being constantly quoted, they’re comedy heroes.

Mike Mitchell called it best: this experience is kind of like Almost Famous for me. It’s a chance to feel like one of the guys, while also realizing that they’re a pack of lovable, pop-culture-obsessed weirdos just like, well, most readers of High Times.

A half-finished bottle of Espolón sits on the kitchen counter.

Shot over the course of nine days during the height of the LA wildfires, there is truly nothing else like this movie.

The plot is simple. The Napa Boys gang reunites to help their friend Mitch (Mitchell) best rival Squirm (Rust) in a local wine competition. They’re joined by new addition Puck (played by Sarah Ramos, a journalist and superfan who dreams of becoming a Napa Boy) and Stifler’s Brother (Jamar Neighbors) as they seek out the fabled Sommelier’s Amulet to help give Mitch’s wine the winning edge.

Absurdist, gross-out and often cringe-inducing “anti-joke” humor reigns supreme. It’s poking fun at an industry’s nonsense while simultaneously showing a deep reverence for what they love about it. Oddly wholesome, for a movie where a guy shits in a wine bucket for five minutes, uninterrupted.

Eric Andre nailed it in a blurb for the film’s press campaign, calling it “Sideways if they were drinking bong water instead of Merlot.” A24’s master of modern horror Ari Aster finds it “deeply hostile and weirdly sincere. A joyous comedy seething with hatred. I laughed at every part.” I wasn’t even sure that Ari Aster could laugh.

Per Corirossi: “A lot of people later admitted that they had no idea what the script was. They had no idea what the hell they were reading at all, and Jamar [Stifler’s Brother] had to get ChatGPT to summarize it over and over again to tell him the context of the script.” Rust is grinning next to him, nodding in affirmation.

If your favorite scene from Wet Hot American Summer is when the counselors decide to visit the local town, order the Blu-ray immediately, as this will be right up your alley. It’s Dazed & Confused, but if someone spiked their joints with PCP.

I tend to love stuff like this. But The Napa Boys cast and crew arguably do even more. And that comes through in the work.

Nick lights another Marlboro 27 and it’s time to get into it.

Is It Still a “Stoner Movie” if No One Smokes Weed?

Yes, and I’d challenge that some of the best stoner movies don’t show any consumption. Paul compares it to Wayne’s World in that regard, which is spot on.

The influence of cannabis is all over this thing. This movie may never have existed, certainly not in its current incarnation, without a steady stream of balcony blunts fueling Nick and Armen’s creativity on the exact spot where we’re now standing. I showed up to the interview with a case of joints and a few edibles, only for those gifts to be immediately reciprocated in kind. Two Napa Boys branded wine bottles, which have been converted into fully functional glass bongs, greeted me on the way in.

And thus we’re here. In honor of this interview, Mike Mitchell just took his first hit off a joint in “many years,” which was met with universal applause. Rosenstein said he hasn’t seen him touch the plant in about 20 years, and suddenly the pressure is on to make sure my questions for the guys aren’t a total bust.

From the second my recorder starts rolling, it’s clear that Nick, not unlike his role in the film, is willing to take the lead. Nick plays “Jack Jr.,” a walking charisma bomb with all the brashness and bravado of a young Vince Vaughn or Seann William Scott. Think Jax Taylor from Vanderpump Rules but somehow even douchier.

As a graduate of Florida State’s film school, his love for cinema shines through in most conversations you’ll have with him. I mean, the guy has a prop from Minority Report sitting in his living room, right next to the wall of film canisters and binders of alphabetized movies. Everywhere you look there is a movie, with loose DVDs scattered across surfaces like reflective drink coasters. The depth of his knowledge is truly staggering. At one point during the interview, we get off on a tangent about Jurassic Park.

“Harland Williams’s brother did the T. rex in Jurassic Park. That’s real. Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams. It was going to be Phil Tippett stop motion, but Steve Spaz Williams made it on his own in CG and showed Kathy Kennedy and Steven Spielberg without anyone’s permission, and they convinced them not to do stop motion. And later he was excommunicated by ILM for being such a ‘crazy guy’ or whatever.”

And here I thought that I was a walking IMDb trivia section. I was wrong.

Right off the bat, I question the guys on their inspirations, specifically other creators whose work helped shape TNB. Immediately, Nick chimes in with David Lean, the Marx Brothers and Monty Python.

“Look at George Lucas, who took a disrespected genre, which was the radio series of, like, Flash Gordon, he elevated them with David Lean and Kurosawa. So we took the disrespected genre of the sort of American Pie direct-to-video sequels, and imagined a world which we then injected the Terrence Malick and John Ford into that. So sometimes, scene by scene and line by line, you’re switching between them.”

Paul adds: “Yeah, I do think there is a new world where people are accusing us of being very, very extra raunchy, but there are other movies who have way more.”

Okay, we’ve got the classics covered. But I want to hear about the up-and-comers. Someone who has been really impressing them, who isn’t on anyone’s radar yet. Mike Rosenstein is quick to name-check Ivy Wolk, who we all agree has seemingly been popping up in everything these days, including The Napa Boys, along with The Shards, Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.

It turns out Nick was in another film with Ivy, The Code, which is from my fellow Ukrainian brother Eugene Kotlyarenko, the same guy behind Spree. Nick and Ivy are featured alongside Ruby McCollister, an emerging actress to keep an eye on, who is up next in Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid.

We’re roughly halfway through the joint.

I start to dig into the culture of cameos they were able to establish on set. Awkwafina has already signed on for their upcoming sequel, The Napa Girls. Truly half the fun is wondering who is about to pop up next. The big reveal is Bluntman and Chronic themselves, Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith, who appear with messages of hope and support for the gang while they’re mid-moose hunt (not a euphemism).

Unlike many of the other cameos, Mewes and Smith weren’t friends or past collaborators. “I think they felt in their souls that we did weird things,” Paul muses. “Then I think they read it and they felt it.”

Now, the Riki Lindhome, Natasha Leggero and David Wain cameos aren’t wholly out of left field. All starred in Rosenstein’s Another Period, which featured Armen in a leading role as lovable potato scrubber and manservant Garfield.

Armen plays more of the straight man role in TNB as Miles Jr., which helps to anchor the film’s absurdity. Throughout our conversation, he’s name-checking the ensemble spirit of Dazed & Confused and Can’t Hardly Wait as what they were aiming to capture. He’s a big Jerry Maguire guy, and we align on it being a movie you’re willing to cancel your plans for.

I can’t really tell if Armen is more responsible for the film’s underlying sense of heart and optimism or if that’s more Nick’s ilk.

Nah, I’m kidding, it’s Armen, 100%.

Addressing my point on cameos, he clarifies that this is a movie made by a group of friends who are all up-and-comers, or as he phrased it, “secret shiners,” and naturally his script was crafted to help them play to their strengths. “We were born out of a feeling of wanting to make these guys shine, and you know, we were trying to break through, to ‘break the wheel’ as Khaleesi once said. We wanted all our friends to shine.”

Mike shares that he’s already heard countless friends claiming how they now want to go make a movie “because these guys went out and did it.” There’s even been a sense of post-filming paralysis: “So how do you make something as funny as that?”

“Yes, you’ll see many Napa Boys posers coming out after this,” Nick deadpans.

Ray Wise, Wildfires and Poison Oak

We’re about down to the roach and I have a final question: regale me with one story from production that hasn’t ever been shared before.

They wouldn’t have been able to finish the shoot if not for the LA wildfires. Everyone came down with poison oak as they were filming in the woods exactly when the fires started up. Half of Armen’s face actually blew up à la Hitch or The Elephant Man, depending on who you ask, making filming impossible until he recovered.

“It actually worked out in a beautiful way. This is now part of the lore,” says Nick.

Speaking of The Elephant Man, we can’t forget the cameo of Ray Wise. Nick used to work with him on Funny or Die, which worked wonders to secure him at a reasonable rate. In a cruel twist of fate, his longtime collaborator and friend David Lynch passed away the day before he was expected on set.

Ray showed up like a true professional and knocked his scene out of the park. The guys made sure to put out donuts in honor of his late friend. And in something right out of a movie script, a large statue of Bob’s Big Boy, famously Lynch’s favorite haunt, was discovered in a corner of the ranch they filmed on that day.

I stub out the joint, thank the guys, and head home to watch Jerry Maguire.

Eat your heart out, Cameron Crowe.

The Napa Boys is now available on DVD, Blu-ray and home digital, and streaming free on Tubi, Kanopy and Prime Video. Take it from Nathan Fielder, whose contribution to the film’s press campaign was four words: “It’s even better the second time.”

<p>The post We Smoked a Joint With The Napa Boys Cast in the Apartment Where the Movie Was Written first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post We Smoked a Joint With The Napa Boys Cast in the Apartment Where the Movie Was Written appeared first on Paradise Found.

We analyzed seven different 2026 rankings to find the true top 10 cannabis strains in America. See why Blue Dream, Permanent Marker, and Runtz lead the ultimate consensus list.

The post The Ultimate Top 10 Weed Strains: 2026 Data & Rankings appeared first on Paradise Found.

A land-rooted look at the growers reshaping cannabis through living soil, ecological intelligence and regenerative cultivation.

This article originally appeared in High Times’ Spring/Summer 2026 print edition. Get yours here.

The story of modern cannabis cultivation often begins the same way: a garage, a single grow light and a determination to coax a plant into thriving in a place it was never meant to be. Dave LaFlamme remembers those early days clearly, hauling in bags of soil, feeding with whatever bottles and powders were pulled from the grow store shelves, training plants through ScrOGs, the screen-of-green method that forces a canopy flat, and tossing spent dirt after every harvest. It was the era of control, dialing in temperature, humidity, CO₂, nutrients and light cycles until the whole operation ran like a sealed ecosystem built by hand. It felt a lot like playing God, except God would have never grown cannabis indoors.

For many growers, this wasn’t a creative choice; it was survival. Indoor grows were born from necessity. A way to stay out of sight, dodge landlords and avoid attention in the years when even “legal” cannabis was still whispered about behind closed doors. The medical era isn’t ancient history, but in cannabis years it feels like lifetimes ago, and there was very little protection for anyone growing, whether you had a Rolodex of patients or not.

As Dave later learned, no matter how refined the system, an indoor room could only ever mimic what the natural world perfected long before prohibition and fear forced the plant inside. Soil microbiology, seasonal rhythms, ecological intelligence and natural sunlight, these were things no bottle or bulb could replicate.

As more cultivators adopt natural methods, a clear truth emerges. Cannabis expresses itself more fully outdoors and in living soil, where growers are learning to work with the land instead of against it. Not because the past was better, but because nature already carries the instructions we’ve spent years trying to engineer.

Back to the Land, Fifty Years Later

Half a century ago, long before legalization and lab testing or the language of “regenerative agriculture,” a wave of young people left the cities and headed for the hills of Northern California. They were looking for something simple. Something honest. A life shaped by soil, seasons and self-sufficiency rather than speed and concrete. In places like Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties, they built cabins, planted gardens, learned to live with the land, and quietly grew cannabis alongside their vegetables and fruit trees. No one called it regenerative. At best, it was sustainable. Mostly, it was just how you grew things when the earth was your teacher.

That history lives on in people like Nya Hessler, who still cultivates on the same Humboldt County property his parents homesteaded fifty years ago. His childhood memories are wrapped in forest air, the smell of soil and the improvisational agriculture of people who learned by paying attention.

The stories he carries from those early days are not romanticized. They are practical. His parents learned to read weather instead of forecasts, to work with the soil instead of against it, and to trust the rhythms of a landscape that asks for patience. Today, Nya blends those inherited instincts with a deeper understanding of our impact on the earth and how to work in tandem with its native intelligence. His approach at Amaranth Farms is rooted in the same humility his parents practiced: tend the land, listen to it, and let it teach you.

Much of Humboldt’s soil is fertile, rich and already alive. “You’re not remediating out here,” he said. “You’re tending, caring, not poisoning.” He avoids rototillers to preserve native soil life, relies on local manures, brews compost teas from rice hulls, and plants cover crops, legumes and locust trees around the perimeter of his fields to build nitrogen naturally. “It’s beautiful earth here,” he said. “The native mycorrhizae are very much alive in the soil.” Mycorrhizae are the fungi that attach to roots and trade nutrients with the plant.

That harmony-with-the-land mindset guides how he sources his inputs. Nya is always calculating the invisible impact behind every amendment he brings onto the farm. “How far are your inputs coming from? How many fossil fuels are burned just to get your supplies?” he urges growers to ask. Nya focuses on reducing his carbon footprint wherever he can. “Use as much solar as you can generate. Use rain-catchment water stores. Cut down on shipping,” he said.

For Nya, sungrown cannabis isn’t just feasible. It’s superior. “Outdoor burns better and tastes better,” he said. “Test results show much larger terpene profiles on sungrown.” That sensory difference is backed by research. A 2023 study published in Molecules compared genetically identical cannabis grown indoors and outdoors and found significantly higher levels of oxidized and degraded cannabinoids in the indoor samples, while outdoor flower grown in living soil produced a richer terpene profile.

“You’re not remediating out here. You’re tending, caring, not poisoning.”

Nya Hessler, Amaranth Farms

And while Nya’s family story reaches back generations, the path of growers like Dave and Blaise LaFlamme stretches in the opposite direction.

The LaFlammes, a father-son team based in Bend, Oregon, co-founded NW Kind in 2013. After years of indoor trials, warehouse grows and mastery of the medical-era playbook, they are one of Oregon’s longest-standing extraction brands. Their early focus on crafting high-quality concentrates eventually led them outside, where the plants, and the land, began to reshape their thinking about cultivation.

Blaise explains it simply. “We’ve tried just about everything. We grew with synthetics, we grew synganic, we ran indoor no-till or low-till beds. We really tried it all over the years, and when we made the switch to full organics, there was no question we would ever return to synthetic practices.” Synganic is the hybrid approach, synthetic inputs run alongside organic ones; no-till means the beds are never turned over, so the soil life underneath is left intact from season to season. For him, the difference was immediate. “The overall plant vigor and terpene production are night and day.”

Dave’s shift came from the same place but through a deeper fascination with biology. After years spent dialing in the precise conditions of an indoor warehouse, he realized the limitations were baked into the walls. “Trying to create a natural environment inside a building was never going to be the same as an actual natural environment,” he said. Studying soil microbiology opened an entirely new frame. Microbes, mycorrhizae and mineral-exchange networks were doing work that no feeding schedule could imitate.

Their commitment to outdoor cultivation deepened when they found their property in Williams Valley in Southern Oregon, a place where the terroir practically announces itself. The valley is narrow and flat, ringed by mountains that have been shedding minerals into the soil for thousands of years. The community carries an older ethos too, shaped by homesteaders, herbalists and growers who built their lives around land-based living long before cannabis legalization arrived. Williams has a kind of quiet electricity to it, a sense that people here still view the earth as collaborator rather than substrate.

Blaise noted that they acquired the farm from Siskiyou Sungrown, longtime partners who had nourished the soil for years. The LaFlammes took that stewardship seriously. “We’re grateful for the mineral-rich soil the Williams Valley provides,” Blaise said. “We add companion plants, build a natural integrated pest management program, and lay cover crops each season so the soil improves every year.”

Dave shares the same reverence. “We feel humbled and grateful to be stewards of this land,” he said. Part of his devotion to the soil includes amendments like sea minerals, algae and mycorrhizal inoculants. He also uses straw mulch and seasonal cover crops, which help protect moisture, support microbial communities and add natural sources of nitrogen back into the soil ahead of spring planting.

Their farming ethos mirrors their extraction philosophy: purity, expression and respect for the plant. “We try to focus on terpenes over everything,” Blaise said. “We solely grow for hash production, so the biggest factor in running a strain again is how the terps shine through to the final hash.” Outdoors, those terpenes come alive. Their live resin has earned multiple accolades, including a 2020 High Times Cannabis Cup, but for the LaFlammes, the rewards run deeper than trophies. “Our company has become a reflection of the natural world,” Dave told me. “Responsible stewardship gifts us the biomass that becomes the cleanest, highest quality products in the Oregon marketplace.”

Why Regeneration Matters

Modern agriculture has left a long shadow across the planet. In pursuit of yield and efficiency, we’ve stripped away the topsoil that holds life together, poisoned rivers and groundwater, and grown food so depleted it can barely nourish us. Cannabis hasn’t been exempt from this trajectory. It can be cultivated in ways that drain water, burn energy and leave behind a trail of residual toxins in both soil and final products. The plant may be medicinal, but the systems surrounding it are not always built to heal.

As the legal industry expands, that tension grows sharper. Cannabis now sits at the crossroads of two global realities: a warming world in need of ecological repair, and a newly aboveboard industry suddenly responsible for its own footprint. The choices growers make today ripple far beyond the garden. They influence local ecosystems, watershed health, carbon cycling, biodiversity and the chemistry of the medicine that consumers ultimately inhale or ingest.

This is why regenerative practices matter. Unlike conventional or even organic methods, regenerative cultivation does more than avoid harm. It restores. It rebuilds. It repairs what industrial processes depleted. Organic amendments alone do not guarantee sustainability. Many are mined unsustainably, shipped across continents, or are disruptive to native biodiversity. Even pest controls labeled “natural” can harm pollinators or destabilize local ecosystems.

Regenerative cultivation asks a different question entirely: What would it look like to grow cannabis in ways that make the land healthier, more alive and more resilient than it was before we touched it?

For many growers, that question leads back to the soil. Living soil systems, thick with fungi, bacteria and organic matter, create a nutrient cycle far more intelligent than any bottle or program can replicate. They hold water, self-regulate, suppress pathogens and respond dynamically to a plant’s needs. When growers nurture those microbial relationships, the plant reflects it. Terpenes sharpen. Cannabinoids shift. Resin becomes richer and more expressive.

In this sense, regenerative cultivation is not an aesthetic preference. It is a direct investment in the quality and safety of the medicine itself. Flowers that pass testing may still create concentrates that fail. Soil grown with integrity creates medicine grown with integrity. The chain is unbroken.

The growers choosing this path, whether they come from multi-generational homesteads or science-driven extraction labs, aren’t just opting for a different production method. They’re working within ecological systems instead of trying to override them, rebuilding soil structure, supporting pollinators and biodiversity, and reducing the inputs that strain local environments. Their work shows that cannabis can be grown in a way that supports the land it depends on.

Letting the Land Lead

Across the country, regenerative cannabis looks different depending on the climate, the culture and the constraints growers face. In Biddeford, Maine, the work is shaped by shorter seasons, harsher swings and policies that often favor large indoor businesses over small family farms. But for Nikos Papachristo, owner of Daedalus Craft Cannabis, the foundation is the same as it is for growers out West: let the land do what it does best.

Nikos didn’t set out to become a cannabis farmer. When he moved to Maine in 2018, he unexpectedly found himself standing on a 20-acre property he hadn’t planned to buy. “I guess I took a leap of faith. It was meant to be,” he said. What followed was a sense of obligation not simply to grow cannabis, but to grow into the land. “I felt the obligation to be a good steward of the land. When I decided to start growing cannabis, I would say the plan was to use it as a foundation to further develop my farm, where we could eventually grow organic vegetables and cut flowers, raise chickens, open a farm stand, and truly live in connection to the land. Romantic idea, I know.”

His approach was shaped early by longtime Maine cultivator Scott Dalton, who helped him establish his first outdoor beds and introduced him to no-till living soil cultivation. Nikos didn’t experience a sudden shift toward regenerative thinking because, for him, this was the only philosophy that ever made sense. “All we did was try to create an environment for those things to happen, and then foster that through its evolution over the years,” he said.

Daedalus grows in massive 500 to 600-gallon beds built with peat, perlite, loam, compost, sand, worms and worm castings. Over time, the soil has matured into something alive and unmistakable. “There’s just a granular, airy feeling to it. You can kind of tell it’s full of life, like there’s millions of things happening in there,” he said. “It really smells good to me. It’s kind of clean and crisp.”

Nikos points to two early experiences that confirmed he was on the right path. The first came during a late-October storm in his first cannabis season, when four days of 40-mph winds and heavy rain pummeled the garden. The plants bent, fell and were battered, but when the weather cleared, “they were absolutely fine and eventually finished up great.” He realized how much more was involved than his own effort. “They didn’t need me to survive and flourish,” he said.

The second moment came in spring, when he pulled spent stalks from overwintered beds and noticed that worms had tunneled through and the roots had completely decomposed. “The soil had changed so much… its smell, its texture, its consistency. It was just really impressive to me to see how much everything had changed and incorporated together into this new ecosystem.”

Daedalus now grows with compost topcoats, kelp meal, straw, spent barley from a local brewery, gypsum, onsite compost and water pulled directly from ponds and wells. “All the water we use is coming straight from the land,” he said. “We don’t use any synthetic nutrients or fertilizers or pesticides. We generally only use what we can produce on the farm or source from other local farmers and suppliers.” Microbes sit at the center of his philosophy. “I think microbes are pretty much the whole deal,” Nikos said. “We’ve definitely used TeraGanix EM-1 and EM-5, which have been great.”

Success, for him, is measured not in pounds, but in evolution. “Continued improvement year after year,” he said. His plants, now often eight to fourteen feet tall, reflect that long arc. Root health, stalk health, pest resistance and biomass have all strengthened as the soil has matured.

But farming regeneratively in Maine also means contending with a policy landscape that often works against the very growers who are producing the cleanest cannabis. Many of the state’s testing requirements, he said, are copied from indoor-heavy markets and “would fail all outdoor grown cannabis in Maine, just because of what’s found outside in the natural environment.” The result? Highly skilled regenerative cultivators in the medical program are effectively shut out of the adult-use market. “It’s really unfortunate, because it makes it impossible to get better quality products to a broader market,” he said.

“Working the land is a two-way street. The natural world is bigger and better and more complex than you can even imagine.”

Nikos Papachristo, Daedalus Craft Cannabis

Still, Nikos remains rooted in the relationship that brought him here. What keeps him committed is the intimacy of the work. “You kind of find yourself living in this symbiotic relationship with your plants when you grow like this,” he said. “Your plants grow each year and your gardens develop each year, and I think you kind of grow along with that process.”

The Science Behind the Soil

To understand where regenerative cannabis is heading, it helps to look at the ecological principles that support it. Soil agroecologist Eric Landen frames it simply: the defining strength of Earth’s biosphere is its ability to sustain and regenerate life. For nearly four billion years, nature’s intelligence has emerged and organized itself into living regenerative networks from the relationships and patterns within ecosystems, microbes, minerals, water, fungi and roots, not from human intervention.

His systemic perspective mirrors what regenerative farms observe every season. When soil biology is intact, it feeds, protects and communicates with plants in ways no synthetic program can replicate. Microbes build soil structure, cycle nutrients, regulate moisture, repel pathogens and help plants fully express their chemistry. Fungal networks expand the reach of roots. Organic matter becomes energy, which transforms back into organic matter.

The future of cannabis cultivation rests in that recognition. The plant can either be grown through systems that strip soil, drain and pollute water, and consume enormous energy, or it can be grown through ecologically sustainable systems that restore landscapes and deepen our relationship and reconnection with the natural world. Regenerative cultivation is a reminder that cannabis is not separate from ecology. It is shaped by it.

When growers build living soil, reduce outside inputs, protect biodiversity and allow microbial life to flourish, they are participating in an ancient primeval rhythm, one that heals rather than harms. And as the industry continues to mature, the choices we make will determine whether cannabis follows the extractive path of industrial agriculture or becomes part of a broader movement toward ecological repair and regeneration.

The science is clear, and so is the opportunity. The more we align with the intelligence of the soil, the more this plant can reflect its full potential for the earth, for the ecosystem and for the people who depend on it.

The future, as the past quietly reminds us, belongs to the soil.

<p>The post Feeding the Dirt, Not the Plant: Inside the Farms Betting on Living Soil first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Feeding the Dirt, Not the Plant: Inside the Farms Betting on Living Soil appeared first on Paradise Found.

Jowell & Randy member Randy is expanding into cannabis with La Zaza, a brand built around Caribbean identity, premium positioning and legal compliance. With commercial agreements in Puerto Rico and Mexico and plans for South America and Europe, he wants La Zaza to compete internationally while proving that Latin urban culture can enter the corporate world without giving up its authenticity.

History is history. Urban music and the cannabis industry, particularly in Latin America, have shared a space of marginality and countercultural energy. That is how it has always been—probably less and less so now, but that was the momentum carrying it forward, with all this flow and all its twists and turns: somewhere in there lies a bond forged between the clandestine nature of the streets and the vibes of the rhythm—of that rhythm. However, because stories are never linear and perfectly neat, the current global landscape is undergoing a structural transformation in which legalization and the medicinal approach are redefining some basic rules.

And so, in this new scenario, figures who once embodied gestures and trappings of rebellion are now taking on more corporate roles. A clear example of this metamorphosis is Puerto Rican artist Randy, known as Randy Nota Loka and one half of Jowell & Randy, the duo that helped build reggaeton before it went global, with more than two decades of records and features alongside Daddy Yankee, Wisin & Yandel and Bad Bunny. Now he is formalizing his expansion: from urban music icon to cannabis entrepreneur.

What’s this all about? Well, specifically, Randy has just launched La Zaza, his own international brand. With this move, another chess play in its own right, yet another break emerges in the foundations of the traditional 420 showbiz narrative, making way for an approach in which sophistication, design and, fundamentally, the legal framework take center stage. Here we go.

Randy frames the project not as a marketing strategy or a celebrity-driven product line, but as a manifesto of cultural evolution and professionalism. Some context, just to calm the beasts: the high-end market has historically been dominated, almost exclusively, by brands from the West Coast of the United States, which went on to establish their aesthetic and quality standards globally.

So, faced with this kind of aesthetic and conceptual monopoly, the proposal seeks to challenge the sector’s established leaders by injecting Caribbean identity and some of the authenticity of the Puerto Rican lifestyle. The bet is that consumers in this market want an emotional connection. It can’t all be business. On that note, the singer analyzes the international 420 landscape and draws a clear distinction: “Many premium West Coast brands have quality, but lack cultural soul. La Zaza comes with a real story behind it. It comes with music, lifestyle, Caribbean creativity and a modern Latin vision. That creates a much stronger emotional connection with the consumer.”

The transition from underground culture to leading a project that is more, let’s say, corporate and legal requires a paradigm shift on both a personal and collective level. Looking back on his own journey, Randy reflects on how the years changed his perspective on the plant and the culture surrounding it: “Look, I grew up seeing cannabis as part of an underground culture, something tied to music, creativity and the streets. But over time I understood that there was a huge difference between disorder and evolution. Today the world has changed. Medicine has changed. The industry has changed. And we as artists also have to evolve.”

According to his vision, the development of his company is rooted in the need to transform a street vibe into a serious, legal and responsible platform, where cannabis use is no longer understood in isolation, but through the lenses of wellness, quality, experience and education. His underlying objective? To build a proposition that represents Latin culture while meeting strict international standards. There is a kind of territorial pride in this gesture, in this whole proposition.

In that sense, this maturation is galloping alongside the evolution of the urban scene itself, which gradually stopped being exclusively a musical phenomenon and became a larger, much broader stage encompassing fashion, technology, business and entrepreneurship. And, in parallel, today’s consumer is guided by far more conscious, demanding and sophisticated expectations. The argument from the brand’s side is that consumers no longer seek impulsive consumption, but instead demand premium standards, traceability and specific therapeutic experiences designed to care for their minds and their energy.

Riding that wavelength, the musician says today’s public has notably shifted its priorities compared with past decades: “Before, maybe everything was more rebellious. Now people want to know what they consume, how it’s produced and what kind of experience it gives them. That’s where La Zaza comes in. We want to represent that new generation. I feel urban music is entering another stage. And medicinal cannabis is too. Both industries are learning to coexist from a more professional, more elegant and more responsible place.”

To ensure the brand can carry its own weight in international dispensaries and not simply be perceived as promotional merchandise, something that often happens to celebs who poke their noses into the cannabis cosmos, the team has prioritized a balance between aesthetic discipline and technical rigor. From there, through strategic alliances with specialized firms such as Hannabis, Paradise, PNDA VAPES and TOPGROWSOLUTIONSPR, the company built a rigorous production chain spanning everything from genetic selection to the final packaging design, achieving a modern and elegant image.

That is why, far from limiting his involvement to licensing his likeness, another common path among famous people who lend their image to these ventures, the musician put his heart and guts into the operational side of the business: “As an entrepreneur, I got fully involved in learning about processes, laboratories, genetics, terpenes, manufacturing and legal compliance. Because when you put your name and reputation on a brand, you have to do it right. And for me that was important: to show that an urban artist can also lead high-level corporate projects without losing his essence.”

The corporate goal is clear at the point of sale: to establish a firm boundary between the music and the business: “The key is brand discipline. From the beginning we understood that La Zaza had to feel like an international brand, not like an artist souvenir. That’s why we worked so much on the design, the packaging, the visual experience, the color selection, the finishes and the communication. We want someone who sees La Zaza in a dispensary to say: ‘this looks serious, modern and exclusive.’ Obviously my identity and my story are present because that gives it authenticity, but the brand has a life of its own. It does not depend only on Randy Nota Loka. It depends on quality, consistency and credibility. We do not want to sell only an image. We want to build trust within the industry.”

The initial product offering reflects this meticulous search for balance between cannabis science and urban identity. Among the launches are one-gram distillate vapes and ten-piece fruit gummy bars. Each variety reflects a specific narrative and function that, the brand says, were exhaustively tested.

Regarding his role in the laboratory, the singer insists that his involvement is extensive and meticulous: “I get very involved. A lot of people think an artist just lends their image, but in my case I’m obsessive about details. I take part in testing, aromas, flavors, effects and experience profiles. With products like AkolatroniK Haze we wanted a more creative, more energetic and more futuristic vibe. A terpene profile with personality, one that would elevate you mentally without losing clarity. Something that connected with creativity, music and positive focus.”

And he continues: “By contrast, NotaLoka Blend has a much more personal identity. There we were looking for a more balanced, relaxing and immersive experience. Something that represented my essence, my story and my way of connecting with music and with people. We don’t choose names at random. Every blend has a narrative, an emotion and an experience behind it. And we work with professional teams because quality is the absolute priority.”

The ambitious main goal is to position Latin products at the forefront of the international market, demonstrating the potential of urban music figures to run top-tier companies. “La Zaza was born from a clear vision: to change the perception of cannabis and take it to another level, one that is more professional, more responsible and more focused on wellness and quality of life,” Randy says, arguing that medicinal cannabis is becoming less taboo and establishing itself as a legitimate global industry. And, amidst that tangle, he expands on his vision, saying that “this is not just about selling a product. It is about creating an experience, a community and a brand with real impact within this new generation.”

These days, the international expansion plan is being rolled out in stages to ensure a solid legal footing in each territory. Of course, every country is a world of gray areas, regulations and contradictions. With commercial agreements already consolidated in Puerto Rico and Mexico, the brand is planning its entry into markets in South America and Europe. Alliances with local partners allow the company’s growth to adapt to specific regulatory frameworks, capitalizing on the enormous global influence that, at this precise moment in history, is carried by the Latin spirit.

That is why, when considering the international direction of the business, the singer lays out the brand’s immediate geographic goals: “Yes, we see La Zaza as a global brand. Puerto Rico is the base, Mexico is a super important market and obviously we are looking at opportunities in South America and eventually Europe. The advantage of working with strategic alliances is that it allows us to grow intelligently and legally in each territory. We don’t want to rush. We want to build something solid and lasting. We know Latin culture has global influence. So we see a lot of potential in countries where Latin urban music already has a strong connection with people. That’s where La Zaza can enter not only as a product, but as a cultural experience.”

And so, looking to the future of the brand and the social impact of his entrepreneurial side, Randy concludes with a declaration of principles and, along the way, passes the baton to the new generations. Read: “I want La Zaza to represent evolution, discipline and vision. I want the new generation to understand that you can come from the streets, from urban music and from a strong culture… but you can also build companies, create jobs and leave a positive legacy. I want people to see that yes, we can professionalize our culture without losing authenticity. That yes, we can create a premium Latin brand that competes globally. And above all, I want La Zaza to inspire.”

<p>The post Reggaeton Pioneer Randy Wants to Beat California at Its Own Game With a Puerto Rican Weed Brand first appeared on High Times.</p>

The post Reggaeton Pioneer Randy Wants to Beat California at Its Own Game With a Puerto Rican Weed Brand appeared first on Paradise Found.