Filed Under: Counterculture Architects
When I sat down with Ed Rosenthal, he did not arrive carrying nostalgia. He arrived with impatience for it.
A pipe in his hand, measured in tone, but direct from the start, he has little interest in the way cannabis history gets polished into something cleaner than it was.
High Times was founded in 1974. Over time, it picked up one of the most persistent origin myths in cannabis culture, that Tom Forçade dreamed it into existence in an acid-fueled flash of inspiration.
Rosenthal does not entertain it.
“That’s a really nice story, but it has nothing to do with reality.”
What he describes instead is not a moment. It is a process.
“I like to put things into numbers, and then from there you can reason out from that.”
The idea for the magazine did not come from a vision. It came from data, publishing experience, and a realization that the federal government had badly misjudged the size of the cannabis audience.
The first signal came from something mundane.
Rolling papers.
At the time, nearly all rolling papers used for joints were imported from Europe, including Zig Zag from France and multiple Spanish brands. American cigarette papers were not commonly used for cannabis, and imported papers were not widely used for tobacco.
“So if you look at the sales of rolling papers, it would correlate with sales of marijuana.”
The numbers told a story no one in government was willing to say out loud.
“Beginning in 1961 or 62, there was this uptick. Almost a vertical line going up.”
Rolling paper imports surged throughout the early 1960s, which Rosenthal viewed as an indicator that cannabis use was rising just as quickly.
Rosenthal recalls meeting with a researcher he identifies as Peter Canock, whom he believes was affiliated with the University of Florida.
From there, Rosenthal, Tom Forçade, and Ron Lichty began building a model.
“What was the weight of the average joint?”
“These were all guesstimates by the three of us.”
“But you know what? These were the best guesstimates in the United States.”
They worked through variables. Joint size. Frequency of use. The percentage consumed in pipes instead of paper.
Individually, the numbers were rough. Together, they pointed to something much larger.
“We came up with a figure of how many people were using cannabis at that time, and it was far, far higher than the DEA estimate.”
This analysis took place in 1972 and 1973, before the magazine launched.
Once that number was understood, the rest followed.
There was an audience. A large one. Large enough to support a publication.
The magazine was not a leap. It was a calculation.
At the time, all three were already working inside the underground press network. Publications like The East Village Other and the Los Angeles Free Press formed a loose national ecosystem. They understood publishing, distribution, and audience behavior.
They built a mock-up.
A list of roughly one hundred article ideas followed, enough to sustain the magazine well beyond a first issue. Many of those ideas would later appear in print.
Then they tested it.
The National Fashion and Boutique Show at the Hotel McAlpin in New York served as the closest thing to a trade show for the counterculture economy.
Rosenthal and his collaborators arrived with their mock-up and a pitch.
The response was immediate.
“We were deluged. It was unbelievable. We knew we had a hit.”
In Rosenthal’s telling, the origin was not an accident. It was market recognition.
The structure did not hold.
Rosenthal describes Forçade as someone who could be influenced by people he characterizes as questionable. Rosenthal believes at least one of those individuals may have had government connections, though he is clear he cannot prove it.
What he does remember is the break.
“Somebody riled him up about me. And he threw a fit and threw me out of the collective.”
Forçade took control. The original collaboration fractured before the magazine fully took shape.
Rosenthal’s relationship with High Times continued in different forms over the years. His writing and cultivation work remained part of the magazine’s identity until it ended.
“My last time I wrote for them was March of 2000.”
His reputation, however, was not built in publishing offices. It was built in conflict with the law.
In 2002, Rosenthal was deputized by the City of Oakland to cultivate cannabis under California’s medical marijuana program. Federal prosecutors intervened anyway.
He was convicted.
After the trial, jurors publicly stated they had not been informed that Rosenthal had been acting under city authorization.
His conviction was later vacated.
Federal law would override local reform whenever it chose to.
Rosenthal’s view of High Times itself is less romantic than its reputation.
“It was geared to two groups. Hippies, and a more intellectual group of people who smoked pot.”
That combination defined its voice.
“It had really serious essays. Serious writers. Serious research that it did.”
That audience, in his view, no longer exists in the same way.
“There’s a different culture now than there was then.”
Cannabis has moved into the mainstream. The conditions that once justified a specialized magazine have changed.
“Cannabis has permeated the culture so much that you don’t necessarily need a specialized magazine for it.”
The question, as he frames it, is simple.
“What niche is that magazine going to hold?”
Before publishing, Rosenthal was already operating inside the movement itself.
“I was in the Yippies. At one point, we were literally the only organization doing anything.”
Their methods were not symbolic.
“Mocking and disruptive. That’s also a description of my personality.”
Public smoke-ins became one of their most effective tools. Not just a protest, but a demonstration.
Participants looked around and realized something they had not been told.
They were not alone.
“They had to look around and found out that they weren’t the only ones. That they were the majority.”
Those gatherings created momentum.
“We left little cancers wherever those Smokins took place. And that is effectively what created the marijuana movement.”
Later, his work took him outside the United States.
“In 1981, I was traveling through India, and I saw this gigantic marijuana field.”
The field was located near Khandwa in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and was legally producing cannabis for retail sale at the time.
Rosenthal obtained permission from Bhopal officials and documented it.
Decades later, the significance became clear.
“If I hadn’t photographed it, that entire knowledge would have been lost.”
The plants were regional landrace strains, part of a system that no longer exists in the same form.
Markets shift. Laws change. Narratives harden into myth.
Rosenthal’s version of the origin of High Times does not rely on myth at all. It rests on numbers, observation, and a simple conclusion.
The audience was already there.
Someone just had to recognize it.
What came next was something else entirely.
Ed Rosenthal’s work didn’t stop with High Times. He continues to advocate for cannabis reform globally, including efforts to re-legalize cannabis in India and preserve native landrace strains that are increasingly threatened by commercialization and eradication policies.
Through his ongoing writing, research, and public work, Rosenthal remains one of the most active voices connecting cannabis culture, policy, and cultivation.
Readers can explore more of his work, including books, articles, and current projects, at EdRosenthal.com.
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