1974 was the year Tom Forcade began publishing High Times magazine, which focused on the growing marijuana culture. The first issue of the magazine was published out of a basement office on West 11th Street in New York. It was created as a sort of lampoon of Playboy magazine. Featuring photographs of marijuana instead of naked young women, it had no paid advertisers, but quickly sold out of its first printing. Advertisers soon signed on, the offices were moved to Broadway, and the magazine grew to have a readership in the millions and distribution that spread into other countries. It was the first national magazine to provide an advertising venue for marijuana paraphernalia accompanied by some rather impressive journalism. Some thought High Times was corporate-backed and Wall Street’s way of making money off the hippies.
The Underground Press Syndicate became the Alternative Press Syndicate and began publishing Alternative Media out of the offices of High Times. Forcade also helped to start Punk magazine and produced a documentary on the Sex Pistols punk group. It is said that Forcade continued to smuggle marijuana into the U.S. He also contributed money to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
High Times became more and more successful as it spoke to people in ways that other publications didn’t. It carried articles written by investigative reporters and covered topics not found in corporate media. It gave voice to those who believed the War on Drugs was a waste of money, an invasion of personal freedom, based on lies and political corruption, and responsible for the death of many people.
The War on Drugs was escalating while companies that made so-called legal prescription pills that also were being used recreationally were knowingly manufacturing hundreds of millions more pills than could possibly be used by the medical profession. This was great for stockholders because the pharmaceutical companies made more money with every pill they sold. These pills, including methaqualone (Quaaludes [downers]) and the diet pills (speed) known as “black beauties,” were ending up on the underground market. When speed and downers are mixed together, and/or with alcohol, the result can be kidney failure, coma, or death.
While the prescription pill underground was flourishing there were those who were figuring out the difference between highly addictive street drugs, prescription pills, and the relatively tame, nonaddictive, and medicinal qualities of cannabis.
In 1975 the Supreme Court of Alaska ruled that residents of the state could possess marijuana for personal use in their own homes. In Ravin v. Sate the court ruled: “It appears that [the] effects of marijuana on the individual are not serious enough to justify widespread concern, at least as compared with the far more dangerous effects of alcohol, barbiturates, and amphetamines.”
Meanwhile, the corporate media kept reporting on the Drug War with the cop and criminal mentality that sold newspapers.
However, news coverage of the U.S. government’s activities to eradicate domestic marijuana gardens and to arrest those who broke marijuana laws worked to increase the public’s awareness of marijuana. The knowledge of marijuana was saturating the culture. While the news was reporting on marijuana with restraint, other TV shows were not so frigid about the matter. With a wink, wink, marijuana was joked about on national TV, often so subtly that only those-in-the-know could understand the joke. Other times, such as on talk shows of the era, including Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin, guests, especially comedians, would show up a little too happy and the show hosts would slyly glance at the audience letting those with an understanding of what was happening know that they understood the situation.
Anyone going to a rock concert anywhere in the U.S. during the 1970s could easily understand that huge numbers of people were smoking cannabis, and enjoying it, and that tremendous amounts of marijuana were being grown and sold within U.S. borders.
On January 1, 1976, residents of Los Angeles awoke to see the landmark mountaintop Hollywood sign transformed. Daniel Finegold, an art major at Cal State Northridge, gathered three friends and used fabric and rope to alter the sign to read “HOLLYWEED.” The story was covered in the international news.
In 1976 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration started a Compassionate Investigative New Drug program that allowed for certain patients to use government-issued marijuana. Six patients were accepted to the program and were sent marijuana grown at the Marijuana Research Facility at the University of Mississippi. A man with glaucoma, Robert C. Randall, became the first legal pot smoker in the U.S. since 1937. Originally, Randall had discovered that smoking marijuana improved his vision, which he had been told he would lose because of his glaucoma. When he began growing marijuana he was arrested. Under the Compassionate Investigative New Drug program, Randall continued smoking marijuana, and was able to preserve his vision until he passed away in 2001.
Under Gerald Ford’s administration the government supported operations to find and spray marijuana fields in Mexico. The toxic substance they used to do this was Paraquat (a human carcinogen that is also known as Gramaxone). The chemical wilted and killed the plants. The poison can cause a variety of adverse effects in humans, including respiratory lesions, lung scarring, convulsions, and death. In 1976 the U.S. spent $60 million on the marijuana field spraying program. Meanwhile, Ford’s kids were not unfamiliar with weed, and his wife was famously addicted to prescription pills and alcohol.
In the late 1970s the state of New Mexico passed the first medical marijuana law in the U.S. This was after a cancer patient brought the medical marijuana issue to the attention of the state legislature. A number of cancer patients and their doctors testified in favor of the medical benefits of marijuana. In 1978 the law passed with restrictions. It allowed for chemotherapy patients to use marijuana to relieve nausea and for glaucoma patients to use it to lower the eye pressure associated with that disease which can lead to blindness. Lynn Pierson, the cancer patient who initiated the issue, died before the law took effect.
Taking the Shafer Commission Report into consideration, in 1977 President Jimmy Carter asked Congress to eliminate the criminal penalties for possession of less than one ounce of marijuana. Instead, the Carter administration proposed a $100 fine, which was backed by the American Medical Association and the American Council of Churches.
Carter’s stance on drugs was damaged in 1977 when his administration’s director of the National Drug Control Policy, Dr. Peter Bourne, was seen snorting cocaine with gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson at a Christmas party for the staff of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). Bourne later left his position after getting in hot water for writing a prescription for Quaaludes for a White House secretary. Some people say he meant this to happen so he would have an excuse to leave the administration after damaging Carter’s drug policy plan.
In 1979 Carter eliminated funding for the Paraquat spray program, but the Mexican government continued the practice. Carter spoke out against this because marijuana sprayed with Paraquat could cause serious health problems for those who smoked it.
“Punishment for using a drug should not be more harmful to an individual than the drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against the possession of marijuana in private for personal use.”
– Jimmy Carter
The Carter administration was not successful in changing the law. Many attribute this to the cocaine use by Dr. Peter Bourne. After Bourne resigned, the Carter administration increased funding for drug eradication efforts in Mexico.
“In the years to come the rhetoric of the Dope War will replace rhetoric of the Cold War as the justification for foreign military intervention. Instead of sending in the marines, Washington will send in the narcs.”
– Robert Singer, in his prophetic article Dope Dictators, High Times magazine, March 1977; HighTimes.com
Despite the laws against it, marijuana culture blossomed. The TV show Saturday Night Live first started airing (as NBC’s Saturday Night) in October 1975 with humor that was often aimed directly at those who were stoned on Saturday nights. Among the performers was Bill Murray, who had been arrested on marijuana charges when he was 20.
During one 1978 episode of Saturday Night Live while Chevy Chase was giving the Weekend Update he reported the FBI had announced that a large amount of marijuana had been smuggled into New York City. Chase informed viewers that Saturday Night Live had decided to perform a public service by conducting analysis on the marijuana. He encouraged viewers who may have any of the marijuana to place a small amount of it in an envelope and anonymously send it to Chevy Chase, Apartment 12, 827 West 81st Street, New York, NY 10053.
Also in 1978 the Cheech and Chong movie Up in Smoke was released and became a huge hit. Stoner humor was in the mainstream.
A koala was sitting in a gum tree while smoking a joint when a little lizard walked past, looked up, and said, “Hey koala! What are you doing?”
The koala said, “Smoking a joint, come up and have some.”
So the little lizard climbed up and sat next to the koala where they enjoyed a few joints.
After a while the little lizard said that his mouth was dry, and that he was going to get a drink from the river.
The little lizard was so stoned that he leaned too far over and fell into the river.
A crocodile saw this and swam over to the little lizard and helped him to the side. Then he asked the little lizard, “What’s the matter with you?”
The little lizard explained to the crocodile that he was sitting smoking a joint with the koala in the tree, got too stoned, and then fell into the river while taking a drink.
The crocodile said that he had to check this out, then walked into the rain forest and found the tree where the koala was sitting while finishing another joint.
The crocodile looked up and said, “Hey you!”
So the koala looked down at him and said, “Shiiiiiiiiiiit dude… How much water did you drink?”
The party was on. Large rock concerts held in baseball stadiums sold out largely to fans who smoked so much pot that the smoke heavy with the scent of burning cannabis wafted through and above the crowds. FM radio and stereophonic sound systems became a necessity. Just as it had been mentioned in blues and jazz songs in the 1920s-40s, marijuana was mentioned in many rock songs, and some image or reference to cannabis was often included in the art of album covers. There was no more hiding the fact that large numbers of people were smoking weed on a regular basis. It was regularly mentioned in publications including Playboy and Penthouse magazines as well as more conservative news magazines like Time and Newsweek. Marijuana influenced jewelry, clothing, and furnishings, some of it designed with a place to hide a marijuana stash. Some people spent thousands of dollars having their cars, vans, and motorcycles painted by airbrush artists in ways that suggested the coolness of marijuana culture. A bumper sticker from the era featured the phrase, “Ass, Gas, or Grass, Nobody Rides for Free.” Burton Rubin was making millions from his company, E-Z Wider, which produced double-wide “cigarette” papers designed specifically for rolling marijuana cigarettes (joints).
On November 16, 1978, political activist, marijuana smuggler, and High Times publisher Tom Forcade’s life ended with a gunshot wound to the head in his bedroom in New York. The official story is that he committed suicide. Some people believe it was homicide. He was 33. He had been troubled since the death of his friend Jack Coombs earlier that year. A plane Coombs was flying crashed or was somehow brought down into a ball of flames in Florida as Coombs was smuggling a load of Colombian marijuana into the U.S. This smuggling operation was to be part of a documentary film Forcade was making. High Times magazine was also in trouble because the company that had been distributing it became dysfunctional. The distribution company was owned by Hustler porn magazine publisher Larry Flynt. In March 1978 Flynt was shot and paralyzed outside a Georgia courthouse where he was being tried on obscenity charges. Some people believe Flynt was targeted for assassination by the government.
After Forcade’s death, High Times struggled for years with its focus unfortunately drifting away from marijuana and unwisely into hard drugs. During the early Reagan years the magazine seemed to foolishly glorify cocaine, which triggered an investigation by the Justice Department to explore charges of conspiring to distribute drug paraphernalia. Under the Reagan administration, companies that sold or manufactured products that could be used in conjunction with drugs, such as marijuana pipes, bongs, rolling machines, fancy roach clips, and grow room equipment, were targeted for intimidation or closure. Many companies that had been advertising in High Times struggled with legal issues, or closed shop.
Eventually a new editorial staff in the late 1980s cleaned up High Times and brought the editorial focus back to marijuana. But many say that High Times had lost its editorial edge, which seemed to have moved to a rival Canadian publication, Cannabis Culture.
Some of the more interesting articles from High Times can be found in a 2004 book titled High Times Reader.