Remembering Gatewood (1947 - 2012)

by Richard Cusick, Thu Jan 5, 2012

By Rick Cusick       

The legendary Gatewood Galbraith – attorney, author, five-time candidate for Kentucky governor and one of the best-known marijuana and hemp law reform activists in the world – died early Wednesday morning at his Lexington home of complications from chronic emphysema. Often described as a colorful, larger-than-life character, Gatewood was also a deeply innovative politician, a relentlessly gallant man and a hardcore American Original, resplendent in a white hemp suit and a Stetson hat.                 

Best known for his tireless efforts to bring hemp and cannabis cultivation back to Kentucky …READ MORE

tags: hemp, activism 8    « add a comment

A Day In The Life – Megan E. LaBonte

by Richard Cusick, Thu Nov 17, 2011

By Rick Cusick

Northampton, Massachusetts’s multi-media artist Megan E. LaBonte spent the last eight months snapping daily self-portraits and digitally manipulating the images to create a series of photographs collectively called the 366 Project. Although much of her work focused on the recurring themes of femininity, mythology, fantasy and nature, on April 20, 2011 Megan took a side step into our world and produced a stoner self-portrait (see below) that expressed her respect for our favorite pastime.

“When I first started this project I had no idea the deep impact it would have on me, and even those around me,” Megan said. “I’ve experienced days of creative frustration and physically challenged myself building sets and costumes or learning to create and hold poses. There were days when I just didn’t feel …READ MORE

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John Sinclair Wins the HIGH TIMES Lester Grinspoon Lifetime Achievement Award

by Richard Cusick, Tue Oct 18, 2011

John Sinclair is an American expatriate, Detroit poet, band manager for the proto-punk MC5 and founder of the White Panther Party – a militant group of anti-racists – which supported the Black Panthers during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. That resume alone would be enough to secure Sinclair’s place in American counterculture history – but when it comes to marijuana law reform, John Sinclair is a pivotal figure.

Sinclair’s revolutionary activities put him in the crosshairs of the ‘60s culture wars and the government sought to suppress his free speech by targeting his marijuana use. A lifelong devotee of the plant, Sinclair suffered a series of convictions for cannabis possession that culminated in a 10-year prison sentence for passing two joints to a narc in 1969.

John Lennon stepped in and wrote his seminal protest song “John Sinclair,” put it on his album Sometime In New York City, and performed it in …READ MORE

tags: medical cannabis cup, medical marijuana, michigan, headline news, activism news 9    « add a comment

Seattle Hempfest: The 20th Time’s the Charm

by Richard Cusick, Tue Aug 30, 2011

By Rick Cusick

Beneath constant sunshine and beside the blue waters of the Puget Sound the 2011 Seattle Hempfest was flawlessly accomplished over three days of record crowds and peaceful protest. The 20th Anniversary of the world’s largest ongoing protestival was celebrated by a stellar line-up of speakers that included the Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, PBS travel host and author Rick Steves, state Representative Mary Lou Dickerson (D-Seattle), state Representative and U.S. Congressional candidate Roger Goodman and Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich gave a vibrant speech before ten of thousands of staunch marijuana supporters, comparing cannabis law reform to the civil rights movement, the Arab Spring and more.

“This is how Gandhi's march to the sea …READ MORE

tags: seattle hempfest, activism, festival, legalization 7    « add a comment

Happy Birthday Cheech

by Richard Cusick, Wed Jul 13, 2011

There was a time when I thought Cheech Marin jumped the shark. I mean, when I heard his unmistakable voice as Banzai The Hyena in The Lion King in 1994, I thought I was hallucinating. And Nash Bridges? Come on! Cheech Marin, one half of the quintessential stoner duo, Cheech & Chong, played a cop in Nash Bridges… in San Francisco, no less! What the fuck?!! Then in 2000 when he showed in Spy Kids I was sure that one of the heroes of my youth was gone forever!

In 1972 when I was seventeen I saw Cheech Marin & Tommy Chong in their prime at the legendary Bitter End in Greenwich Village. That was back when you could smoke weed and eat ice cream and sit four feet away from comedy heaven. I remember being surprised to see how hard they were working, sweating, scrambling and making us laugh. I could have watched Cheech & Chong forever except Cheech took a detour to la la …READ MORE

tags: cheech chong, tommy chong, comedy, celebrities, headline news 16    « add a comment

Just A NORML Guy

by Richard Cusick, Wed Jan 19, 2011

Allen St. Pierre was born in Belfast, ME to an upper-middle-class blue-collar commercial fishing family. He had an almost cinematic upbringing on scenic Cape Cod, where his family continues to own a variety of water-born businesses. To this day, he says, “my father doesn’t know where the front-door key is.”

Ironically, although he studied wildlife at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, he graduated there in 1989 with a degree in legal studies. While working at a Washington, DC–based law firm, St. Pierre was asked to do some volunteer legal work for NORML; he accepted, he says, “because I was a stakeholder with marijuana use back then, as I am today.”

Following an employee purge, St. Pierre was asked if he’d accept a consolidated position at the organization – for 70 percent less than his law-firm salary. He said yes, thinking he would be there for …READ MORE

tags: norml, interviews, activism, obama, proposition 19, california, legalization, medical marijuana 12    « add a comment

Willie Nelson Busted In Sierra Blanca

by Richard Cusick, Mon Nov 29, 2010

On Friday morning, November 26 – the day after Thanksgiving – country music legend Willie Nelson was charged by the U.S. Border Patrol with possession of marijuana when officers found six ounces of Willie Weed aboard his tour bus at a Texas checkpoint.

On Saturday night, Willie e-mailed CelebStoner.com and suggested the creation of the Teapot Party: "Tax it, regulate it and legalize it," Nelson said, "And stop the border wars over drugs…. Thousands of lives will be saved."

On Sunday a fan-created Facebook page - "Willie Nelson’s Teapot Party" – garnered over 5000 "Likes" within twenty-four hours with no press and no publicity. The page count continues to increase exponentially.

And on Monday morning, November 29, Willie …READ MORE

tags: march 2011, willie nelson, celebrities, entertainment exclusive, entertainment news, busted 48    « add a comment

The State of The Garden

by Richard Cusick, Mon Oct 25, 2010

By Rick Cusick

Last year, while walking down the street in Newark, New Jersey, I was approached by a camera crew and asked if I would like to ask a question of the three candidates for Governor in the upcoming gubernatorial debate. I first I demurred and began to walk away but then, realizing the opportunity, I turned back and posed a question for the camera.

“There’s a bill before the state legislature right now to allow medical marijuana New Jersey,” I said. “Do you support this measure and as governor would you sign this bill into law?”

The incumbent, Governor Jon Corzine, said with blunt certainty, “I’ll sign …READ MORE

tags: new jersey, new jersey norml, activism, medical marijuana, music 2    « add a comment

Peter Lewis Resigns from the Marijuana Policy Project

by Richard Cusick, Tue Jun 15, 2010

By David Bienenstock and Richard Cusick

Billionaire philanthropist Peter Lewis has left the Board of Directors of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), after resigning his position as Chairman of the Board. In a related development, yesterday ten out of twenty-nine MPP staff members were laid off. MPP Executive Director Rob Kampia told HIGH TIMES, "The purpose of the downsizing was to ensure MPP's long-term health and financial stability.”          

According to multiple sources, Lewis has already assembled a panel including former Executive Director of the ACLU Ira Glasser, Americans for Safe Access Executive Director Steph Sherer and former Nebraska Governor Bob Kerrey, and tasked them with advising him on moving forward as a supporter of marijuana law reform.   

Lewis was the primary financial …READ MORE

tags: headline news, rob kampia, activism, activism news, news exclusive 64    « add a comment

Dennis Hopper Remembered

by Richard Cusick, Sun May 30, 2010

When I was fifteen years old I had a poster on my bedroom wall, an extraordinarily popular poster that, in 1969, could be bought in any head shop in the country. A hippie was riding on a tricked-out motorcycle with a dangerously chopped front wheel extension. He had long stringy brown hair cinched with an Indian headband, a thick mustache and a gloriously fringed brown suede jacket. He was casually flipping the finger at the camera, which specifically represented the point-of-view of a redneck killer but more generally and with great relevance, the POV of the rest of the world. My mother hated that poster for the same reason I loved it: the man in the picture was the person I wanted to be. Dennis Hopper is dead at the age of 74 of prostate cancer.

Easy Rider, which Hopper co-wrote starred in and directed, began the second quarter of an extraordinary career that spanned over a half-century. He studied acting under Lee Strasberg at the Actor’s …READ MORE

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Willie Nelson Turns 77

by Richard Cusick, Fri Apr 30, 2010

HIGH TIMES would like to wish Willie Nelson a happy 77th birthday! In honor of the occasion, we’re making available for the first time online two complete Willie Nelson HIGH TIMES interviews. Enjoy!

(From October 2005)

Willie Nelson goes reggae for his latest album and talks to HIGH TIMES about his favorite subject.

Everybody knows Willie Nelson has a big heart, but you probably don’t know that he keeps it on a polished mahogany shelf next to the sturdy leather chair in the back of his fabled tour bus. ”The big red heart,” as Nelson calls it with a warm smile, is made of battered tin and once held a two-pound assortment of sandwich cookies; but when Willie pops the lid now, the sweet scent of marijuana hits you like a fragrant trade wind. Inside his heart, at any given moment, may be a half-ounce of pre-cleaned, finely ground cannabis. No sticks, and certainly no …READ MORE

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The Timely Arrival of Amber Ladd

by Richard Cusick, Wed Apr 21, 2010

Montreal-based DIY Triphopper Amber Ladd releases her debut album on 4/20 and delivers an astonishing sound soaked in green.

“This is stoner music, made by stoner personas, because I get high and I make music, and I kinda make what sounds wicked when I’m stoned,” Amber Ladd laughs on April 20, the long-awaited day tRip, her first collection of high-quality triphop is available to the public. “4/20 was the perfect day,” she told HIGH TIMES. “It was just coming on to be finished and I was like, ‘Yeah’.”

Over two years in the making, tRip is 13 songs that hang together like a single highly textured piece of music. Ms. Ladd wrote, produced and the engineered everything on the disc, sings every vocal, plays every instrument and injects each recording with composed subtext, a reason for …READ MORE

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Cheech & Chong Light Up the Screen in Hey, Watch This!

by Richard Cusick, Tue Apr 20, 2010

It was forty years ago when I was sixteen years old. It was going to be another night at the Bitter End, the legendary Greenwich Village coffeehouse where I gloriously misspent my youth. It was the very beginning of that process. Two months earlier I smoked pot for the first time and a month later I bought my first bag of weed and went to the Bleecker Street club to watch George Carlin reinvent the comedic wheel. Carlin was a known quantity, a veteran funny man familiar to me for years from many television appearances who finally grew his hair, listened to the weed and gave his craft over to the counterculture.

Tonight was different. We were going to the Bitter End to watch a pair of unknown comedians whose shtick was soaked in weed. They had one album out but were still relatively unknown. Whereas Carlin was a comedian who turned into a hippie, it seemed as if Cheech & Chong were hippies who had turned into comedians. …READ MORE

tags: comedy, reviews, movies, movie review, 420, cheech chong 7    « add a comment

The HIGH TIMES Interview: Tommy Chong

by Richard Cusick, Tue Apr 20, 2010

HT: I know there was a lot of pressure on you guys to reunite over the years. What finally made you guys say yes?

TOMMY CHONG: Well, our careers kind of petered out together, you know? It was kinda like Cheech never had any more Nash Bridges in the offering and suddenly my wife and I were looking for new venues, you know, new avenues of expressing ourselves and it just came up. My son actually orchestrated it.

Yeah, Paris. My daughters started it – Robin and Rae Dawn. They started the ball rolling back before I went to jail.

Well, they wrote a script. They had a movie deal and everything but we weren't really that ready yet, and then my son got involved and that's when we realized that we had to go on tour and do our live act first before we could do a movie, and then everybody could see if the magic was still there. So we did that …READ MORE

tags: interviews, cheech chong, tommy chong, movies 10    « add a comment

Cheech & Chong Plan 4/20 Film Release 25 Years in the Making

by Richard Cusick, Thu Apr 15, 2010

April 20 is a day of celebration for stoners throughout the world, and this year the High Holiday will be made even more special by the cinematic return of the most popular comedy act in marijuana history. Cheech & Chong’s first movie in 25 years, Hey, Watch This!, is being released in select theaters over the weekend and on DVD, Blue Ray, Video On Demand, and digital download the following Tuesday on – you guessed it! – 4/20.  The film documents the best buds’ 2009 triumphant return to the stage and offers new sketch comedy centered on stoner antics surrounding the show. 

“We had an amazing time last year reconnecting with each other and our fans in a way that felt like it was part of our DNA,” said Cheech Marin. “We were meant to be …READ MORE

tags: 420, cheech chong, movies, comedy 3    « add a comment