Some stories don’t need dressing. They just land. G Herbo sits back, cracks a grin and lets it fly. A story you can picture.

“Probably with Snoop,” he says when asked about his most memorable sesh. “I was like 18. I left a bunch of Swishers on the table, came back and Snoop was already rolling my [expletive] up. I was like, ‘Yeah.’ He let me hit the blunt. It was my blunt.”

That’s the energy of this sit-down, hosted by Shirley Ju for High Times and presented by Slapwoods. Herbo is calm, funny, direct. He talks like a guy who’s seen the miles and still remembers the corners.

Work rate stays high. “You just dropped the ‘Reason’ music video. One million in 4 days,” Shirley notes. Herbo nods: “Yeah, that’s crazy. I feel like the energy is picking up. The support I’m getting from my core fans and the new fans behind this… I thought it would get a million in a week or two, but four days was different. I think that’s the fastest I’ve ever hit that.”

Chicago pride shows up like a reflex. On the highlight of the shoot he adds, “Nobody really did that. No artist went back to Chicago and in 24s riding around in drop-tops and [stuff] like that. So I knew it was going to get some attention.”

Then comes the era fans always ask about. How much was he smoking back then?

“Probably like a zip,” Herbo says. With the homies it went faster, but solo it was still heavy. “By myself I know I smoke at least a seven to a fourteen a day for sure, ’cause I wake up and roll like four blunts and my blunts were big.” The routine was simple: “I get up, brush my teeth, smoke weed, then eat.”

When the jar dips below a threshold, it’s time to move. “Any time you go lower than a seven, you got to go get more,” he says. Strain-wise he kept it modern: “I really like smoking a lot of Runtz, Gumbo, [stuff] like that.”

Etiquette matters. Biggest pet peeve in a sesh? “Making a blunt wet.” The lip-gloss scenario comes up and he laughs: “Yeah, that’s terrible. That’s my second most for sure. With the lip gloss I don’t even want it no more. He can have it at that point.”

Herbo’s taste is classic. Favorite smoking song: “Styles P, ‘Good Times’.” (“Good Times (I Get High),” 2002.) Favorite stoner movies: “Between Friday and How High. I still watch either if I’m high and laugh all day. Or The Wash. I like watching The Wash when I’m high.” (Friday, 1995; How High, 2001; The Wash, 2001.)

Snoop again. The memory returns in full. “We were at Tree Sound in Atlanta. I left a bunch of Swishers on the table, came back and Snoop was just rolling my [stuff] up. I was happy. I hit the blunt a couple times and went to work. I was super star-struck, so I left him alone.”

Growth sits next to the flex. Holding the old Lil Herb cover, he reflects: “I’ll be 30 in six days. I don’t even remember what I got locked up for, but I look very frustrated… I was wild for sure back then, man. And I’m grateful to be in this headspace, to have matured and grown up from being that kid.”

The music is rolling. “The energy behind that record is insane right now. I got to give credit to Southside. He was like, ‘Drop this record. This the record you need to drop.’ He does it every time. It never fails.” There’s more coming too: “Lil Herb the album 1/17.” (Slated for January 17.)

For now, he’s taking a break from the smoke. “A few more months and I’ll be back smoking weed. I can’t wait.” CBD flower never grabbed him. “No, I haven’t.” Edibles are a no: “I never really got in tune with edibles. You’ll be glued to the couch. When I’m too high and can’t think, I’m trying to think for other people. I don’t like that. I try to sleep it off, but on edibles, your mind be going crazy. I can’t really rap off it either ’cause I’ll be too high. I overthink.”

Chicago slips back in through the munchies door with a hyper-local gem. “Have you had a pickle with chips at the same time? It’s like some Chicago [stuff]… Hot Flamins in a pickle.” The room backs it up. If you know, you know.

The conversation closes where it started, with work and collaboration. On Coi, he lights up: “That [stuff] is fire. Coi is super talented. She makes great music for sure. Any time she sends me something I’m on it quick.”

That’s the thread. The kid in the mugshot found his center. The fan who was star-struck at Tree Sound became the artist with a million-view sprint and a city on his back. The weed tales are part of it. The discipline is the other part. And the music keeps coming.

Interview by Shirley Ju for High Times.

Presented by Slapwoods.

A coalition of marijuana companies has filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up their case challenging the constitutionality of federal prohibition.

About two months after the court accepted an application for an extend the filing deadline, the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP that’s representing the companies submitted the petition for writ of certiorari on Friday.

The case from Massachusetts-based marijuana companies and industry leaders—Canna Provisions, Gyasi Sellers, Wiseacre Farm and Verano Holdings–argues that the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution precludes the federal government from enforcing criminalization laws against intrastate cannabis activity.

To that end, they want justices to reevaluate a landmark 2005 case, Gonzales v. Raich, wherein the Supreme Court narrowly determined that the federal government could enforce prohibition against cannabis cultivation that took place wholly within California based on Congress’s authority to regulate interstate commerce.

The new Supreme Court petition argues that the Raich decision was “an aberration” in the court’s precedents on the Commerce Clause and Necessary and Proper Clause, and represents “a drastic departure from the federalism principles those clauses embody.”

The ruling two decades ago permitted a “dramatic intrusion on the exercise of the States’ police powers,” it says.

The Controlled Substances Act’s (CSA) “significance to the exercise of the States’ police powers is massive and even greater today than it was in Raich’s time, when only nine states had legalized marijuana,” the petition says. “Thirty-eight states have now decided that the health and safety of their citizens is better served by making marijuana available through regulated channels than through prohibition. The CSA displaces those states’ choices and imposes Congress’s own views on intrastate policy. The serious federalism questions raised by that intrusion warrant the Court’s attention now, as they did in Raich.”

The petition says that after the Raich decision was issued, the federal government has “undermined the notion of any link between the CSA’s interstate goals and its intrastate prohibitions.”

“Since 2014, Congress has barred enforcement against state-regulated medical marijuana but not adult-use marijuana (while leaving both prohibited under the CSA). State-regulated medical marijuana is therefore less regulated, from a federal perspective, than the least-controlled Schedule V substances in the CSA. The DOJ has taken non-enforcement even further, with a policy of not enforcing the CSA as to either state-regulated medical or adult-use marijuana… This long period of desuetude has severed any link between controlling state-regulated marijuana and regulating interstate commerce, thereby rendering the CSA’s intrusion on the States’ policymaking even more stark.”

A U.S. appeals court rejected the arguments of the state-legal cannabis companies in May. It was one the latest blows to the high-profile lawsuit following a lower court’s dismissal of the claims. But it’s widely understood that the plaintiffs’ legal team has long intended the matter to end up before the nine high court justices.

Four justices must vote to accept the petition for cert in order for the court to take up the case.

While it remains to be seen whether SCOTUS will ultimately take the case, one sign that at least some on court might be interested in the appeal is a 2021 statement from Justice Clarence Thomas, issued as the court denied review of a separate dispute involving a Colorado medical marijuana dispensary.

Thomas’s comments at the time seemed to suggest it’d be appropriate revisit Raich—a move that could upend federal prohibition.

The statement pointed to policy developments since the earlier case was decided, such as the hands-off enforcement approach taken by the Department of Justice as more states legalized cannabis and a congressional budget rider protecting state-legal medical marijuana programs.

“Whatever the merits of Raich when it was decided, federal policies of the past 16 years have greatly undermined its reasoning,” Thomas wrote, describing the government’s approach to cannabis enforcement as “a half-in, half-out regime that simultaneously tolerates and forbids local use of marijuana.”

“Though federal law still flatly forbids the intrastate possession, cultivation, or distribution of marijuana…the Government, post-Raich, has sent mixed signals on its views,” the justice continued, saying the situation “strains basic principles of federalism and conceals traps for the unwary.”

The initial complaint in the current case now known as Canna Provisions v. Bondi, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, argued that government’s ongoing prohibition on marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) was unconstitutional because Congress in recent decades had “dropped any assumption that federal control of state-regulated marijuana is necessary.”

At oral argument on appeal late last year, David Boies told judges that under the Constitution, Congress can only regulate commercial activity within a state—in this case, around marijuana—if the failure to regulate that in-state activity “would substantially interfere [with] or undermine legitimate congressional regulation of interstate commerce.”

Boies, chairman of the firm, has a long list of prior clients that includes the Justice Department, former Vice President Al Gore and the plaintiffs in a case that led to the invalidation of California’s ban on same-sex marriage, among others.

Judges, however, said they were “unpersuaded,” ruling in an opinion that “the CSA remains fully intact as to the regulation of the commercial activity involving marijuana for non-medical purposes, which is the activity in which the appellants, by their own account, are engaged.”

The district court, meanwhile, said in the case that while the there are “persuasive reasons for a reexamination” of the current scheduling of cannabis, its hands were effectively tied by past U.S. Supreme Court precedent in Raich.

This comes in the background of a pending marijuana rescheduling decision from the Trump administration. President Donald Trump said in late August that he’d make a determination about moving cannabis to Schedule III of the CSA within weeks, but he’s yet to act.

Meanwhile, this week the Supreme Court agreed to hear a separate case on the constitutionality of a federal law prohibiting people who use marijuana or other drugs from buying or possessing firearms. The Trump administration has argued that the policy “targets a category of persons who pose a clear danger of misusing firearm” and should be upheld.

Read the Supreme Court petition below:

The Odds Of The Feds Making A 2025 Cannabis Change explored through politics, markets, and investor predictions.

As the races toward the finish line, investors, policy wonks and marijuana consumers are asking the same question: what are the odds of the Feds making a 2025 cannabis change? Short answer: possible, but far from certain — prediction markets and recent signals put the odds in the low-double digits, while loud political and legislative headwinds keep the outcome uncertain.

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Two dynamics are driving optimism. First, signals from the executive branch — including public comments from White House-adjacent figures and renewed attention from the administration — have signaled openness to reform, keeping the rescheduling conversation alive. Second, high-profile statements and advocacy (and even polling) have pushed cannabis onto the political agenda, prompting some lawmakers and officials to call for a clearer federal framework.

But the path to action is narrow. Key congressional players have moved to constrain agency flexibility: the House Appropriations Committee has advanced language aimed at blocking Department of Justice funding for reclassifying marijuana, a direct check on executive action. That kind of legislative resistance reduces the chance the DEA or DOJ can unilaterally reschedule this year.

The DEA’s own process and timing add more friction. Rescheduling entails administrative reviews, hearings and legal steps typically take months — and while the agency has periodically updated stakeholders, there’s no guarantee a final rule can be completed and implemented before year-end.

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Equities and cannabis ETFs have been volatile in response to policy chatter. Major pot names — Tilray, Canopy Growth, Cronos and others — have seen price swings tied to headlines, earnings and policy signals; some firms even reported notable gains after pro-reform statements and positive quarterly results. Market trackers and analysts continue to flag these stocks as sector plays to watch, but caution regulatory uncertainty keeps valuations jittery.

Combine a roughly 18% market-implied chance, vocal White House signals and strong investor interest, but also legislative pushback and a slow administrative process, and the most realistic forecast is modest odds of federal movement before December 31. In plain terms: meaningful federal change this year is possible — not impossible — but bettors and investors should expect bumps, delays and political counter-moves rather than a clean, guaranteed policy win.