'HIGH TIMES' POST-9/11

Richard Stratton knows what it's like to run a magazine with
unconventional demographics. Before he took over as publisher and
editor-in-chief of High Times, he ran Prison Life, a beloved but now
dead journal for men and women behind bars.

A fascinating subject, for sure - but not exactly the upscale
population that most advertisers seek. "The readers didn't have much
money to spend," Stratton conceded with a smile. "And they couldn't
get out to the store."

Well, compared to that captive audience, how hard can the just-say-yes
crowd be?

So Stratton, who himself did eight years in prison on a
marijuana-smuggling conviction, has now turned his attention to the
venerable marijuana magazine. This is one readership that has a proven
history of spending on its cravings, legal and otherwise. The mission:
Deliver High Times, kicking and screaming if necessary, into the
post-9/11, John Ashcroft world.

"The High Times sensibility is libertarian - more than left-wing or
right-wing," Stratton was saying at week's end. "It's a lifestyle
magazine for people who don't think the government should tell them
how to live," whether they choose to get high or not.

"It's the whole outlaw attitude," added his editor, Annie Nocenti.
"And it's a fundamental part of the American character."

The two of them, Stratton and Nocenti, are sitting together in the
magazine's lofty office on Park Avenue South. Stratton is solid and
squinting and his face is well-lined. The past few years, he's made a
serious name for himself at the gritty end of the TV-and-movie world.
(Showtime's "Street Time," the film "Slam.") He tends to mumble.

Nocenti, a screenwriter and celebrated comic-book author who was an
editor at Scenario magazine and Prison Life, is the extrovert in the
room, tossing off ideas and quick opinions. Along with executive
editor John Buffalo Mailer, a budding playwright and the famous
novelist's 26-year-old son, they are asking themselves: Can a pot
magazine still matter today?

"We have this 30-year-old brand name known around the world," Stratton
says. "But we have to be more than a pot magazine."

So comedian Dave Chappelle is on the cover this month, anchoring a
package on race. Other pieces touch on white supremacists and the
terrorist-detention center at Guantanamo Bay. Yes, there are still ads
for rolling papers and grow lights.

Stratton and his crew have decided to split the old High Times
franchise into two magazines: The newly launched Grow is a tightly
focused trade magazine for the serious marijuana cultivator, packed
with helpful hints on seed selection and irrigation techniques.

That has freed High Times to broaden its scope.

"We want to elevate our argument beyond 'Yo, babes, bongs and the
right to smoke,' " Nocenti said.

"The question is: What kind of world do you want to live in?" Stratton
said. "A world where people go to prison for small amounts of drugs?"

In 1974, he was part of the informal brain trust around the magazine's
late founder, fellow pot smuggler Tom Forcade. "The magazine was
really created as a marketing tool," Stratton said. "A load of
Colombian pot had come into the city. The challenge was, 'How are you
going to educate the market about what this stuff is?' Start a magazine!"

Over the years, High Times became a Hagstrom's for the youth culture,
a practical road map for stoners and their friends, treading a wavy
line just this side of the drug laws. The magazine created and
continues to host the Cannabis Cup, an Oscars for pot growers held
each fall in Amsterdam.

The magazine was almost silenced several times by various branches of
Washington's War on (some) Drugs. Police and prosecutors circled,
using terms like "ancillary criminal enterprise." Advertisers were
squeezed. But the magazine puffed on.

Since Stratton and his group took over late last year, they've thrust
High Times back into the broader countercultural buzz. The magazine is
opening a Los Angeles office next week. There's talk of High Times
movies and TV projects. The magazine is publishing a protest guide to
this summer's Republican National Convention in New York. On Thursday
night, the editors hosted a hip-hop summit, tied to pieces on race.

And marijuana becomes almost a metaphor.

Comedian Tommy Chong was sent to jail last year for manufacturing
smoking paraphernalia, Richard Stratton recalled. "A lot of people
have a real problem with government power being used that way, even
people who don't use drugs. We'll keep highlighting that kind of thing."

"You can almost compare the magazine to marijuana itself," said
Nocenti, before heading back to work. "People have tried to stamp it
out. They've never been able to. It's a weed that grows naturally. It
just keeps coming back."