High Times

American magazine founded in summer 1974 in New York City by Thomas King Forçade (September 11, 1945 – November 16, 1978), born Gary Goodson. A University of Utah graduate, Air Force veteran, and former Mexico-to-U.S. cannabis smuggler, Forçade had run the Underground Press Syndicate (renamed Alternative Press Syndicate in 1973) and was known for confrontational political theater, including the first documented activist pieing (of Obscenity Commission chair Otto Larsen in 1970). Formally launched at a Gramercy Park Hotel party on May 23, 1974, High Times presented cannabis as a consumer subject with lush full-color "centerfolds" of flower, cultivation coverage, investigative journalism, and counterculture commentary. Distribution was seeded through underground newspapers and dealer networks. Circulation reached roughly 500,000 per month by 1977, rivaling Rolling Stone and National Lampoon, with revenues near $10 million. Forçade funded NORML and bankrolled Punk magazine. He died by self-inflicted gunshot on November 16, 1978, bequeathing trusts to High Times and NORML. The magazine continued as the principal trade and cultural journal of the American cannabis movement, spawning the Cannabis Cup and the Counterculture Hall of Fame, and serving as a de facto institutional memory of the reform movement.