DabDash EditorialHigh Times has chronicled cannabis culture since 1974. Here is the factual story of how a one-off Playboy parody became the movement's most recognizable magazine, from the Cannabis Cup to bankruptcy and a 2025 revival.
High Times is an American magazine founded in 1974 that became the most widely recognized publication covering cannabis culture, legalization, and growing. Started as a single-issue parody of Playboy, it grew into a monthly with hundreds of thousands of readers, launched the Cannabis Cup competition, and shaped how the public talked about marijuana for nearly five decades.
High Times was created by Thomas King Forcade (1945 to 1978), an underground journalist and cannabis activist who had previously helped run the Underground Press Syndicate, a network of countercultural newspapers. According to reporting by Rolling Stone and Forcade's biographers, the first issue was conceived in the summer of 1974 as a one-off lampoon of Playboy that swapped marijuana for sex, carrying the tagline "The Magazine of High Society."
The joke landed. The debut issue of roughly 50 pages sold out its initial print run and was reprinted, and what was meant to be a single gag became a regular publication. Forcade, a U.S. Air Force veteran who reportedly used his aviation background in cannabis smuggling, helped fund the early magazine himself. He died in 1978, leaving trusts that benefited both the magazine and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).
High Times grew quickly through the late 1970s and into the 1980s. Contemporary accounts and the magazine's own retrospectives describe a circulation that climbed into the hundreds of thousands of copies per issue, with the Audit Bureau of Circulations recording roughly 500,000 copies per issue by the late 1980s. At its commercial peak it was one of the best known counterculture titles in the United States.
Editorial direction shifted over the years. Early issues covered a broad range of recreational drugs, but under editor Steven Hager, hired in 1988, the magazine refocused squarely on cannabis advocacy, cultivation, and the politics of legalization. That focus defined the brand for the next generation of readers.
The Cannabis Cup is a competition and festival created by High Times editor Steven Hager in 1988. The first event was held in Amsterdam, where Dutch coffeeshops had been tolerated since the mid-1970s, allowing growers, judges, and enthusiasts to gather and sample entries openly. The inaugural cup is widely reported to have been won by the Skunk No. 1 variety.
For decades the Amsterdam Cannabis Cup was an annual fixture, typically held around November, and it later expanded into U.S. editions as legalization spread state by state. At one point the company reported that Cannabis Cup events accounted for roughly 70 percent of its revenue, which made the brand's later struggles to stage them a serious financial problem.
In the summer of 2017, the magazine and its longtime publisher Trans-High Corporation were acquired by an investor group led by Adam Levin of Oreva Capital, in a deal reported in the tens of millions of dollars. The new owners pursued an ambitious plan to take the company public and expand into events and retail dispensaries.
The plan unraveled. A proposed reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company fell through in 2018, and a Regulation A+ public offering that drew tens of thousands of small shareholders never resulted in a clean stock listing. Acquisitions and festival deals were litigated or abandoned, and the company stopped staging its flagship Cannabis Cup after 2019. As Wikipedia's account of the company summarizes, years of unpaid bills, overdue loans, and a troubled offering left the business near collapse, and Levin later pleaded guilty to a federal charge tied to a stock scheme.
Financial difficulties forced High Times to wind down its operations in 2024, with the website ceasing regular updates and the company entering receivership. In 2025 the brand was sold out of bankruptcy. Industry outlets including MG Magazine reported that Josh Kesselman, founder of the RAW rolling papers company, bought the publication and its assets, including the Cannabis Cup, for about 3.5 million dollars in June 2025.
Under the new ownership the brand began rebuilding, relaunching a podcast and signaling plans to return to print with limited, collectible editions. The story of High Times remains a useful lens on the wider arc of cannabis in popular culture: from underground taboo to mainstream business, with all the legal, financial, and cultural turbulence that came with it.
For nearly fifty years High Times was the most visible voice normalizing a plant that was illegal almost everywhere when the magazine launched. It published cultivation guides, covered legalization politics, put cannabis on glossy covers, and built the competitions and rankings that growers chased. Whatever its business fortunes, its archive is one of the most complete popular records of how cannabis moved from the counterculture toward the mainstream.
Quick answers to the most common follow up questions readers search after exploring this topic.
High Times was founded in the summer of 1974 by underground journalist Tom Forcade. The first issue was conceived as a one-off parody of Playboy that replaced sex with marijuana, but it sold out and became a regular magazine.
High Times was founded by Thomas King Forcade (1945 to 1978), a counterculture journalist and cannabis activist who had previously helped run the Underground Press Syndicate. He helped fund the early magazine himself and died in 1978.
The Cannabis Cup is a competition and festival created by High Times editor Steven Hager in 1988. The first event was held in Amsterdam, and it later expanded to U.S. editions as legalization spread. It became one of the most recognized awards in cannabis.
Yes. After years of financial trouble and a 2024 wind-down, the brand was sold out of bankruptcy in 2025 to Josh Kesselman, founder of the RAW rolling papers company, for about 3.5 million dollars. New ownership has signaled plans to revive the publication and the Cannabis Cup.
Circulation reached roughly 500,000 copies per issue by the late 1980s, and during a 2018 public offering the company was valued on paper at around 340 million dollars. Those figures were never fully realized, and the company later entered bankruptcy.
After a 2017 sale to an investor group, an ambitious plan to go public and expand into dispensaries and events failed. A SPAC merger collapsed, a public offering never produced a clean listing, and the company stopped staging its main Cannabis Cup after 2019, leaving it near collapse by 2024.
As of 2025, High Times is owned by Josh Kesselman, the founder of the RAW rolling papers company, who purchased the magazine and its assets, including the Cannabis Cup, out of bankruptcy for about 3.5 million dollars.
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