[PRESS RELEASE] – DALLAS, June 17, 2025 – In a troubling action by law enforcement against the federally legal hemp industry, officers raided three licensed distribution warehouses in the Harry Hines district of Dallas: Monster, Frontline Wholesale, and Cannafy Distribution. All three companies distribute fully federally compliant hemp-derived products, sold nationwide and verified by certificates of analysis (COAs) from certified laboratories. These products help thousands of Texans, including veterans, cancer patients and individuals with chronic pain.

Each product includes a QR code that links directly to its COA—a legally binding document, signed by a DEA-registered, ISO-accredited lab director, confirming that the product meets the legal requirement of less than 0.3% delta-9 THC. These tests follow validated scientific methods.

“Monster Distribution has complied with the law in every way. They relied in good faith on licensed, accredited labs to verify that the products meet all legal standards,” said David Sergi, attorney for Monster. “This raid was not based on facts. It was based on political theater. And when law enforcement acts outside its authority to deprive businesses and individuals of their rights and property, it raises serious legal concerns.”

The Texas Forensic Science Commission (FSC) has repeatedly cautioned law enforcement and prosecutors about the limitations of certain lab methodologies used in cannabinoid testing, including the improper use of gas chromatography without derivatization, which can convert nonpsychoactive THCa into delta-9 THC and produce misleading results. Despite these warnings, the state continues to build cases on questionable science.

For nearly five decades, High Times stood as the unapologetic voice of cannabis counterculture. More than just a magazine, it was a platform that elevated music, politics, psychedelics, activism, and the plant itself. It was a symbol of rebellion, freedom, and community. Then came the spectacular fall, the kind that made it feel like High Times might be gone for good. Until now.

Today, High Times returns under new ownership, new leadership, and a renewed purpose. RAW Rolling Papers founder Josh Kesselman, a lifelong reader and supporter of the brand, has taken the lead in acquiring the core assets of High Times, including the magazine, the Cannabis Cup, and its affiliated media properties. Alongside him is Matt Stang, a former High Times executive and co-owner and longtime cultural operator who helped build the Cannabis Cup into a global institution. Their plan: restore the soul of a brand that shaped generations, and set a new course rooted in the values that first built it.

“I get to bring back a piece of history that has played such an important part in culture and impacted so many lives, including my own,” Kesselman said. “This feels like a dream.”

But the dream comes with real work. And a complicated inheritance.

High Times’ recent history has been anything but stable. After its 2017 acquisition by an investor group led by Adam Levin, the brand shifted its focus to aggressive expansion, launching an investor crowdfund, pursuing a public offering, and acquiring retail cannabis businesses across the U.S.

The pitch was seductive: own a piece of the world’s most iconic cannabis brand. Over 20,000 investors bought in. Many never got shares. Few got answers. And when High Times missed SEC filing deadlines and continued to accept investments, it triggered investigations. In 2023, Levin was charged with securities fraud. By early 2025, he had pleaded guilty to conspiracy.  

During those years, the magazine printed intermittently, debts mounted, and a string of failed business deals drained the company’s momentum. The brand was out of cash, out of leadership, and out of time.

“It was heartbreaking,” said a former editor who asked not to be named. “We saw something we loved turned into a business plan. A bad one.”

By mid-2024, a court-appointed receiver was actively shopping the High Times trademarks, events, and licenses to the highest bidder. Among the bidders: private equity firms, dispensary groups, and even a psychedelics company hoping to rebrand the magazine entirely.

Instead, it landed in the hands of someone at the very core of Cannabis culture.

Josh Kesselman didn’t enter the cannabis space through Silicon Valley or Wall Street. His path started in Gainesville, Florida, with a head shop, a van, and a deep love for rolling papers. What began as a storefront called Knuckleheads became the launchpad for a decades-long mission: to make better papers and treat smokers with respect.

RAW Rolling Papers officially launched in 2005 and quickly gained a loyal following among people who cared about purity, craft, and culture. The product was different; unbleached, vegan, and made with a natural connection to what smokers truly wanted yet had never experienced. But what set RAW apart was the man behind it. Kesselman connected directly with the community through videos, meetups, giveaways, and support for causes that mattered. He didn’t just build a brand. He earned a following.

Kesselman’s approach made him one of the most respected figures in the space: a founder with mass reach and underground credibility. And as RAW expanded worldwide, his loyalty to the roots of cannabis culture never wavered. He didn’t exit. He reinvested. In products. In people. In the culture itself.

Josh is a character. Charismatic, outspoken, and unapologetic. A throwback to the wild inventors and idealists who once ran underground empires. People like Thomas Forçade, the outlaw founder of High Times, who launched the magazine in 1974 while smuggling cannabis and funding radical newspapers. There’s a poetic symmetry to it: two long-haired misfits, decades apart, both driven by obsession and a refusal to sell out.

Kesselman had watched from the outside as the magazine he grew up on lost its way. The voice was gone. The magazine, when it was published at all, felt like a big paid ad. Cannabis Cups had stopped.

So when the opportunity arose to acquire the assets after the brand fell into receivership, the opportunity to rebuild it felt personal. “It wasn’t about flipping something,” he said. “It was about saving something. High Times always stood for more than the plant,” Kesselman told us. “It stood for truth. For freedom. For not apologizing about who we are.” To help save High Times he brought back part of the legacy to help.

Matt Stang is no stranger to the High Times story. Starting as an intern in the late 1990s, he spent nearly two decades inside the brand, eventually rising to Chief Revenue Officer and helping expand the magazine’s reach during the early days of legalization.

But his biggest contribution was the Cannabis Cup. When he first joined, the event was still a small gathering in Amsterdam. Under Stang, it evolved into a multi-city, international celebration of cannabis culture. “It was never just about the trophies,” Stang told us. “It was about recognition. Community. Celebration.”

In 2017 the company was purchased by private equity owners. Matt vehemently disagreed with the way High Times was being turned into a private equity run business and departed soon thereafter. During his time away he watched from the sidelines as the Cup and the magazine lost their footing. “When we saw what was happening, it wasn’t just disappointing,” he said. “It was painful.”

Now, many years later Stang returns as a partner to help restore High Times to its cultural and historical importance adding, “It’s time to bring back and revive the community we built together.”

From the sound of it, new ownership plans to bring back what made High Times special in the first place. The print magazine will return in small, collectible runs with deeper stories, and a focus on quality.

The archives: including covers, articles and art will be brought back to life, too.

The Cannabis Cup is also being rebuilt with third-party judging, real transparency, and new ways for the public to participate. 

“Some of the greatest times of my life happened at those Cups. And I will bring them back. They’ll be just as much fun, because that’s the point,” Kessleman said. “When you remove private equity and investors, when it’s just a couple of people trying to do something for the culture, the possibilities become limitless.”

The new High Times website will roll out podcasts, video features, and longform storytelling again, mixing veteran contributors with new voices who live and breathe the culture.

Kesselman (who has millions of followers of his own) also wants the platform to serve as a home base for the most important cannabis voices on social media, rerouting users to hidden or new accounts to keep the community connected amid shadow bans and deletions. He thinks this will help save and rebuild our fractured community because in his words, “nobody can stop the truth.”

And yes, there will be merch. Apparel. Rolling papers. All done right. All done in the spirit of keeping the platform alive without selling it out.

The road back won’t be quick. But that’s the point. “I don’t care if it takes five years,” Kesselman said. “I’d rather go slow and build something real.”

“Most importantly?” Kesselman added. “Have fun while doing it.”

We can’t help but think that if Thomas Forçade could see High Times now—passed from the suits back to the true believers—he’d be lighting a joint and saying, finally.

Daily consumers exhibit tolerance to the acute psychomotor-influencing effects of cannabis, according to driving simulator data published in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention.

Researchers affiliated with the University of Colorado Anschutz. Medical Campus assessed simulated driving performance in a cohort of daily cannabis consumers, occasional consumers, and controls (non-users). Daily users consumed either high-potency cannabis flower or concentrates containing, on average, 78 percent THC. Occasional consumers only inhaled cannabis flower. All consumers used cannabis ad libitum for up to 15 minutes. Study participants drove on a computer simulated course 20 minutes following cannabis consumption and once again 80 minutes later.

Consistent with prior studies, daily consumers exhibited few changes in psychomotor performance compared to controls. Specifically, daily consumers demonstrated improvements in SDLP (standard deviation in lateral positioning) following cannabis ingestion. Both daily and occasional cannabis consumers reduced their speed following cannabis use, whereas those in the control group typically increased their speed.

Unlike daily users, occasional cannabis consumers exhibited minor detriments in SDLP performance following cannabis inhalation. However, these changes were not statistically significant compared to controls (whose follow up SDLP performance also deviated from their baseline).

“The relative absence of significant differences in driving performance after cannabis across participants groups was somewhat surprising, given the high THC concentration of product used, and the relatively high level of self-reported drug effect,” researchers reported. “It was notable that the daily use group who inhaled concentrates showed the least number of significant differences as compared to the control group, having little to no change in the average SDLP and speed across the three drives. The absence of decrements in driving performance (assessed by lane departures or SDLP) among the daily-concentrate group is consistent with tolerance to acute impairing effects of cannabis.”

Researchers also failed to identify any correlations between THC/blood concentrations and impaired driving performance – a finding that is also consistent with other studies. “These findings reaffirm that the presence of THC in blood is an inconsistent and largely inappropriate indicator of psychomotor impairment in cannabis consuming subjects,” NORML’s Deputy Director Paul Armentano said. Accordingly, NORML has long opposed the imposition of per se THC limits for motorists and has alternatively called for the expanded use of mobile performance technology like DRUID.

The study’s authors concluded: “Taken as a whole, these findings indicate that acute cannabis use impaired driving performance more among the participants with a pattern of non-daily use (less than 4 times per week). … The absence of decrements in driving performance in the daily use groups support a role of tolerance in mitigating acute impairment. When changes in driving performance were observed, the effect size was notably small. These findings underscore the challenges of developing standardized impairment thresholds in the presence of large inter-individual variability in driving performance, and tolerance to cannabis with daily use.”

An abstract of the study, “Impact of cannabis use on lateral control and speed: A driving simulator study,” appears online. Additional information is available in the NORML fact-sheet, ‘Marijuana and Psychomotor Performance.’