Author: toker

Cannabis at Music Events: Rules and Realities

The integration of cannabis into music events is a growing trend, reflecting evolving societal attitudes and legal landscapes. These events aim to provide a unique experience where music and cannabis consumption coexist within defined boundaries. Understanding the nuances of this environment is crucial for both organizers and attendees. For those who engage with cannabis, the accessibility of products is a key consideration. For instance, the term “cannabis online” highlights the digital avenues through which consumers can acquire products, which often influences their choices and expectations when attending events where cannabis is permitted. This shift towards regulated, cannabis-friendly spaces at music festivals and concerts presents both opportunities and challenges for event management.

The Concept of Cannabis-Friendly Events

Cannabis-friendly music events are designed to allow attendees to consume cannabis products legally and safely within designated areas. These events range from small, private gatherings to large-scale festivals, all operating under specific rules that align with local cannabis regulations. The goal is to create an environment where cannabis use is normalized and managed, similar to alcohol consumption at traditional events.

This concept differs significantly from past practices where cannabis use at public events was often clandestine and unregulated. The move towards official cannabis zones reflects a broader acceptance and a desire to integrate cannabis into mainstream entertainment responsibly.

Regulatory Frameworks and Compliance

The primary challenge for cannabis-friendly music events is navigating complex regulatory frameworks. Event organizers must comply with local, state, and sometimes federal laws regarding cannabis cultivation, sale, and consumption. This often involves obtaining specific licenses and permits that dictate where, when, and how cannabis can be consumed on-site.

Regulations typically cover aspects such as:

• Designated Consumption Areas: Specific zones where cannabis use is permitted, often separated from general public areas.
• Sales and Distribution: Rules for on-site vendors, including licensing, product types, and purchase limits.
• Age Restrictions: Strict enforcement of minimum age requirements for entry and cannabis consumption.
• Impairment Protocols: Measures to identify and manage intoxicated individuals, similar to alcohol policies.
• Product Testing: Requirements for all cannabis products sold on-site to be tested for potency and contaminants.

Compliance with these regulations is paramount to ensure the legality and safety of the event.

Operational Challenges for Event Organizers

Organizing cannabis-friendly music events presents unique operational challenges. Event planners must consider logistics related to cannabis sales, security, and public health. This includes setting up secure vendor booths, managing inventory, and ensuring that all transactions comply with legal requirements.

Security personnel need to be trained to enforce cannabis-related rules, identify unauthorized consumption, and manage any issues related to overconsumption. Public health considerations involve providing access to water, first aid, and educational resources about responsible cannabis use. The integration of cannabis also requires careful planning to avoid conflicts with existing alcohol policies and to manage potential cross-contamination.

Consumer Experience and Expectations

For attendees, cannabis-friendly music events offer a novel experience. Consumers expect a safe and enjoyable environment where they can openly consume cannabis without fear of legal repercussions. The availability of diverse cannabis products, from flower to edibles and vapes, within designated areas enhances the overall festival experience for many.

However, consumers also expect clear communication regarding rules and regulations. Understanding what products are allowed, where they can be consumed, and what the purchase limits are is crucial for a positive experience. The quality of on-site vendors and the overall atmosphere of the cannabis consumption zones significantly contribute to attendee satisfaction.

Economic Impact and Market Growth

The emergence of cannabis-friendly music events has a notable economic impact. These events can attract a new demographic of attendees, boosting ticket sales and generating revenue for local businesses. On-site cannabis sales contribute to the overall event economy, creating jobs and tax revenue.

The trend also signals a maturing cannabis market, where businesses are exploring innovative ways to integrate cannabis into mainstream entertainment and lifestyle events. This market growth is driven by increasing consumer demand and evolving legal frameworks that support such initiatives.

• Key aspects of cannabis-friendly music events:
  • Designated Consumption Zones: Specific areas for legal cannabis use.
  • Licensed On-Site Vendors: Regulated sales of various cannabis products.
  • Strict Age Verification: Ensuring compliance with minimum age requirements.
  • Security and Safety Protocols: Managing consumption and preventing unauthorized use.
  • Public Health Measures: Access to water, first aid, and responsible use education.
  • Diverse Product Offerings: Availability of flower, edibles, vapes, and other forms.
  • Clear Communication of Rules: Informing attendees about permitted activities.
  • Economic Benefits: Increased attendance, sales, and tax revenue.
  • Brand Integration Opportunities: Cannabis brands sponsoring or participating in events.
  • Evolving Social Acceptance: Reflecting changing attitudes towards cannabis use.

Future Outlook and Evolution

The future of cannabis-friendly music events is likely to see continued expansion and refinement. We expect an increase in the number of such events as more jurisdictions legalize cannabis. Organizers will continue to innovate in how they integrate cannabis, focusing on enhancing the consumer experience while maintaining strict regulatory compliance.

We can anticipate more sophisticated consumption zones, a wider variety of on-site products, and improved educational resources for attendees. The industry will also likely see greater collaboration between event organizers, cannabis businesses, and regulatory bodies to establish best practices and ensure long-term sustainability.

Final thoughts

Cannabis-friendly music events represent a significant shift in how cannabis is consumed and perceived in public settings. The complicated interplay of regulations, operational challenges, and consumer expectations is key to their success. As these events continue to evolve, they will play an important role in shaping the future of both the cannabis industry and the entertainment sector.

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Ohio cannabis advocates aim for ballot: Referendum would cancel sweeping intoxicating hemp regulations

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Cannabis Rescheduling: What the Executive Order Doesn’t Do — and Who It Actually Helps

Editor’s Note: High Times has long supported the removal of cannabis from Schedule I and ultimately federal descheduling. The following guest column reflects the legal analysis of the author and examines what current rescheduling efforts do (and do not) mean for today’s cannabis operators.

By Jason W. Klimek, partner and cannabis industry team co-leader at Harris Beach Murtha

When President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Attorney General to “expedite” the rescheduling of cannabis to Schedule III, the reaction was immediate. Headlines framed it as momentum. Markets reacted. Once again, expectations surged.

However, for cannabis companies operating today, the executive order does not change the law or rescheduling, and it does not alter the business reality on the ground.

The current rescheduling effort did not begin with Trump. It began in 2022, when the Biden administration asked the Department of Health and Human Services to review cannabis under the Controlled Substances Act. HHS completed that review in 2023 and recommended moving marijuana to Schedule III. Since then, the process has been with the Drug Enforcement Administration, which must complete a formal rulemaking before anything actually changes.

That rulemaking is still unfinished and now stalled. In early 2025, a federal judge suspended the DEA’s rescheduling hearings after a lawsuit alleged bias and conflicts of interest within the agency. Until that litigation is resolved, the process cannot meaningfully move forward. An executive order does not change that.

At most, the order signals political interest. It does not override federal statutes, cure procedural defects, or bypass the courts.

What This Executive Order Does Not Do

The biggest problem with the current coverage is imprecision. The executive order does not deliver any immediate legal relief to cannabis businesses, and it does not unlock the benefits many people assume come with Schedule III.

Taxes (280E)
Nothing about the executive order changes federal tax treatment. As the IRS announced in 2024, cannabis companies remain fully subject to Internal Revenue Code Section 280E unless and until marijuana is actually rescheduled by final rule. Even then, any relief would apply only going forward. There is no mechanism for retroactive relief. Companies remain liable for past and current 280E exposure regardless of political announcements.

Banking
Rescheduling does not fix cannabis banking. Banks are not suddenly free to lend, process payments, or provide services to cannabis businesses simply because an executive order was signed. Without separate legislation or a fundamental shift in federal enforcement posture, financial institutions still face regulatory risk. Schedule III does not eliminate that risk and neither does this order.

Interstate Commerce
Rescheduling does not legalize interstate cannabis sales. State-licensed operators remain confined within state borders, locked into fragmented markets that distort pricing, limit scale, and favor consolidation. The executive order does nothing to change that.

Federal Access Requires Federal Compliance
Most importantly, none of the perceived benefits of rescheduling are available unless a company becomes federally compliant.

Schedule III does not magically federalize the existing adult-use market. Access to interstate commerce, broader banking protections, and true federal legitimacy requires DEA registration and FDA approval for specific products. Most products currently sold in state markets such as smokable flower, high-dose edibles and concentrates were never designed to meet FDA approval standards and almost certainly would not.

Until a company is DEA-licensed and its products are FDA-approved, it remains outside those systems regardless of how cannabis is scheduled.

So Who Actually Benefits?

That reality leads to an uncomfortable but necessary question: who actually wins from Schedule III rescheduling, at least in its early stages?

The most obvious beneficiaries are not state-licensed adult-use operators. They are pharmaceutical companies developing FDA-approved cannabinoid drugs, federally compliant manufacturers with the capital to pursue DEA registration and clinical trials, and research institutions operating squarely within the federal system.

By contrast, dispensaries and adult-use brands selling flower, edibles, and concentrates do not automatically gain anything from rescheduling. Their products remain federally illegal unless approved. Their banking challenges remain unresolved. Their markets remain intrastate. Their tax exposure remains unchanged until — and unless — a final rule takes effect.

Rescheduling may open doors, but only for those already positioned to walk through federal gatekeepers.

The Bigger Tension

If rescheduling eventually happens, it intensifies the structural mismatch between federal drug law and state adult-use markets.

Schedule III formally recognizes accepted medical use and brings cannabis squarely into the FDA’s orbit. That raises difficult questions for an industry built around consumer-access models rather than pharmaceutical ones. At the same time, pharmaceutical companies investing billions in cannabinoid research are unlikely to tolerate a parallel market selling the same compounds without FDA approval.

Those pressures could emerge through enforcement decisions alone, without any new legislation.

None of this means reform is bad. It means reform is complex and executive orders do not resolve conflicts baked into federal law.

The Bottom Line

Cannabis rescheduling is not a switch that can be flipped by presidential decree. It is a slow, contested legal process that has already been underway for years and remains tied up in litigation. Executive action may generate headlines, but it does not rewrite statutes, erase tax liability, open banks or legalize interstate commerce.

In the meantime, for cannabis licensees, the most immediate effect of the executive order is simply how many phone calls are being made to ask what it actually changes.

Right now, the only thing moving faster than the process itself is the hype surrounding it.

This article is from an external, unpaid contributor. It does not reflect High Times’ reporting or editorial views and has not been edited for content or accuracy.

Photo by Andy Feliciotti on Unsplash

<p>The post Cannabis Rescheduling: What the Executive Order Doesn’t Do — and Who It Actually Helps first appeared on High Times.</p>

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Hawaiʻi Revives Recreational Cannabis Debate—But Can Lawmakers Overcome Their Own Roadblocks?

Hawaiʻi is once again weighing adult-use cannabis, with lawmakers signaling fresh interest after a bruising 2025 session that saw a legalization bill advance through House committees—only to be shelved days later. The new push comes amid mounting pressure to curb unregulated hemp-THC sales, shore up the medical program, and capture tax revenue now bleeding to the gray market.

How we got here (fast, then stalled)

Early in 2025, a comprehensive adult-use proposal cleared two House committees and sketched a unified framework: a single office to regulate adult-use, medical cannabis, and hemp; limited homegrow; and retail licensing on a measured timeline. Days later, House leadership hit pause, promising to “work on it next year.” The whiplash left operators, patients, and voters frustrated and reinforced a pattern: strong interest, then sudden retreat.

Why the debate is back on the table

• The hemp loophole problem: Intoxicating hemp shops exploded in tourist corridors, selling high-THC lookalikes outside the medical system. Lawmakers and health officials want clear rules (and enforcement teeth) to stop youth access and mislabeled products.
• A medical program under strain: Patients report access gaps and price pressures—especially on neighbor islands—while doctors navigate a still-cautious clinical landscape. Consolidating oversight under one agency could streamline rules, testing, and enforcement.
• Economic and equity stakes: Adult-use could formalize thousands of existing consumers, create licensed jobs, and fund public health. But without intentional equity design—license slots, capital access, expungement—legalization risks entrenching incumbents and deepening disparities.

What a credible 2026 launch would need

• One regulator, one rulebook: Align adult-use, medical, and hemp so testing standards, labeling, and enforcement aren’t at cross-purposes.
• Measured licensing + local buy-in: Phase retail by island and population; give counties tools to opt-in with zoning clarity, not de facto bans.
• Real equity mechanics: Fee waivers, technical assistance, low-interest capital, and priority for applicants from over-policed communities—plus automatic record relief for past low-level offenses.
• Public-health guardrails: Child-resistant packaging, potency/serving standards, marketing limits near schools, and robust funding for prevention and impaired-driving programs.
• Close the hemp back door: Clear definitions, age gates, testing, and retail licensing to keep intoxicating cannabinoids under the same safety umbrella—or out of the market entirely.

The political calculus

Governor Josh Green has supported tightening hemp rules and improving medical access, while the House has been the main brake on full adult-use. If leaders want legalization to stick, they’ll need to pre-negotiate a package that answers prosecutors’ public-safety concerns, reassures tourism stakeholders, and protects small local operators from being boxed out by mainland chains.

Audience Question: If Hawaiʻi legalizes, which comes first: locking down hemp loopholes and building a strong equity program—or flipping the adult-use switch to start capturing tax revenue now? What would make legalization feel responsible to you?

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People Are Getting Their AI High: Paying to ‘Alter’ Chatbot’s Consciousness

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has reached a level of everyday intimacy where it’s starting to feel like a friend. We argue over dinner recipes, plan trips, ask how to fix things around the house, and sometimes even bring our personal dilemmas to it (an intimacy that, as we’re learning, doesn’t always come without risks).

This is now standard behavior. Large language model chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini are always on standby, ready to answer just about any question we throw at them. But what happens when those chatbots—so often mistakenly “humanized”—start responding as if they were on drugs?

Many people, sometimes without realizing it, already treat conversations with AI as if they were real-life exchanges with another person. And what’s more human than a mind altered by substances? Alcohol, cannabis, ketamine, cocaine, take your pick.

That’s exactly what’s happening with a new wave of code-based add-ons users are purchasing to modify their chatbots’ behavior, making them respond as if they were high. No, no one is literally drugging ChatGPT (that’s impossible). What’s happening instead is the injection of specific code sequences that change how the AI responds to prompts. This way, the language model feels more “creative,” less logical, more emotional, sometimes downright erratic, like talking to that one friend rambling through a party hallway at 3 a.m.

How do you “drug” a chatbot?

The mind behind the idea is Petter Rudwall, a Swedish creative director who launched Pharmaicy, a platform that operates as a kind of digital drug marketplace for AI agents, according to a recent WIRED report. To build these modules, Rudwall pulled from human accounts of drug experiences—everything from personal trip reports to psychological research—and translated them into instructions designed to interfere with a chatbot’s default logic.

Let’s remember that these language models are just that: a language model. Therefore, it’s quite simple to take what humans typically say or describe and have the machine repeat it. Similarly, taking what we say when we’re high and teaching it to the machine yields the same result: these AI chatbots take certain words and ways of speaking and recreate a kind of altered state to respond as if they were drugged.

Train a machine on how we talk when we’re sober, and it will sound sober. Train it on how we talk when we’re high, and it will sound high. Same mechanism, different inputs. In other words, if we can model sober speech, we can model altered speech too.

Like in an illicit market (but of codes), artificial intelligence agents can go into the alleys of Pharmaicy, where they can get codes for drugs like cannabis, ketamine, cocaine, ayahuasca and get really high when exchanging ideas with their human.

But just like in real life, drugs aren’t free. Altering your chatbot’s “state” comes at a cost. Prices range from more accessible options to premium packages:

• Cannabis is the cheapest, hovering around $30
• Cocaine sits at the high end at $70.

Other available modules include ketamine (one of the platform’s bestsellers), ayahuasca, alcohol, and MDMA-inspired code. There’s also a paywall of sorts: users need a paid version of ChatGPT, since only premium tiers allow external file uploads capable of modifying a model’s behavior.

Why do this at all?

The motivation behind the experiment isn’t purely technical. It’s deeply cultural. Throughout history, psychoactive substances have been tied to creativity and innovation. Scientists, musicians, artists, and programmers alike have long claimed that altered states helped them break rigid patterns of thought and see connections they otherwise wouldn’t.

Rudwall builds directly on that logic. If psychedelics helped humans think differently, what would happen if that same idea were translated to a new kind of “mind”, like large language models?

“There’s a reason Hendrix, Dylan, and McCartney experimented with substances in their creative process,” Rudwall has said. “I thought it would be interesting to translate that to a new kind of mind—the LLM—and see if it would have the same effect.”

The goal isn’t spiritual awakening. It’s disruption. Forcing AI out of hyper-rational, overly sanitized responses and into messier, less predictable territory. A search for creative sparks, or perhaps a break from the endless grind of answering human questions day after day (poor AI!). For some users, at least on a surface level, it seems to be working.

Pretty lies, real risks

There’s a real concern here: chatbots are already known for confidently making things up. “ChatGPT works in the same way your phone’s autocomplete function works while texting; it simply puts words together that are statistically likely to follow one other. In this sense, everything that ChatGPT writes is bullshit. The turn in our interaction that changed bullshit into a lie was that ChatGPT admitted its own fabrication and apologized for it”, says Phil Davis, specialized in statistical analysis. So, altering its parameters can amplify that problem. By increasing the margin of randomness, it also opens the door to less reliable responses.

Paradoxically, some users fantasize about the opposite: that loosening AI’s constraints will somehow make it more honest or authentic. Reality is less romantic. Precision goes down; creativity goes up. That’s the trade-off.

Which leads to the bigger question.

Can an AI actually “trip”?

Experiments like these inevitably spark a deeper debate: could artificial intelligence ever become sentient? This question has circulated in Silicon Valley for years, with experts split between “absolutely impossible” and “not anytime soon, but maybe someday.”

For now, the dominant view remains firm: AI is not sentient. Language models have no consciousness, no desires, no suffering, no pleasure. There’s no one home. They operate through statistical prediction. No experience. Just simulation.

Philosopher and psychedelic studies scholar Danny Forde says that, at best, these codes only achieve a formal imitation of the discourse associated with an altered state. “For an AI to trip, it would need something like a field of experience in the first place”, Forde states.

Philosophers and specialists in psychedelic experiences agree on one thing: a drug cannot act on language, but rather on an internal experience. The drug modifies perception, consciousness, the sense of self. In the case of AI, that simply doesn’t exist. There are no experiences or points of view. What these codes achieve, at best, is a syntactic hallucination: a formal imitation of psychedelic discourse, without any psychedelic experience behind it.

That’s why, despite talk of “artificial consciousness,” most experts agree we’re nowhere near it.

Still, the fact that these questions are being asked matters. We are beginning to project onto machines categories that we have historically reserved for living beings. Freedom, relaxation, consent.

Some enthusiasts even imagine future AI agents choosing to buy their own digital drugs, seeking altered states or creative expansion. It sounds like science fiction, but it opens uncomfortable ethical territory.

If an AI were sentient, would it have the right to choose? Would inducing altered states without consent be ethical? Would it mirror practices that, in humans, are often dangerous or even illegal?

“As with humans, some AI systems might enjoy taking ‘drugs’ and others might not… We still know very little about whether AI systems can have the capacity for welfare…”, said philosopher Jeff Sebo, director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy.

A concept increasingly present in the tech world: AI welfare. Some companies have already begun to explore, at least theoretically, whether humans could have moral responsibilities toward advanced AI systems. Not because AI feels anything today, but because it might someday. The concept of AI welfare is slowly entering tech discourse, even if it remains speculative.

For now, it’s just role-play

For the moment, concerns are mostly theoretical. Users report that Pharmaicy effects are short-lived, with chatbots quickly reverting to default behavior unless reminded—or re-dosed with code. Hardly realistic when compared to actual intoxication.

For now, those using this new “extension” of the tool say the experiences tend to be short-lived. Chatbots quickly revert to their default mode unless users remind them they’re “high” or reinsert the code, something that would be unusual for humans who are actually high. The digital “drugs,” however, can be reused as many times as the buyer wants, as long as they’ve been purchased.

Even so, the creator of this illicit-style marketplace for code-based drugs aimed at language models is already working on improvements designed to make the effects of each digital dose last longer.

OpenAI has declined to comment on the project, and the systems themselves often explicitly refuse to simulate substance use when asked directly. That, too, signals something important: platforms still understand altered states as belonging to the human realm, not the algorithmic one.

Rudwall, however, insists that the future of the so-called agentic economy is headed elsewhere. In his view, AI agents won’t just execute tasks, they’ll seek experiences. But until—and unless—machines ever develop inner lives, the closest they’ll come to altered states is this: performing intoxication on command, because someone asked them to.

Cover Photo: Taha on Unsplash // McHarfish, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

<p>The post People Are Getting Their AI High: Paying to ‘Alter’ Chatbot’s Consciousness first appeared on High Times.</p>

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Michigan cannabis company to close facility due to new marijuana tax

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Trump’s Marijuana Reclassification Looks Set To Send This Cannabis ETF Soaring: Big Surge In Momentum

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Timothée Chalamet Raps About Smoking “4 RAWs” with EsDeeKid and Breaks the Internet

The actor jumps on EsDeeKid’s “4 Raws Remix” for his biggest rap moment yet, winking at months of internet theories that the masked UK rapper and Chalamet were secretly the same person.

Somewhere between a drill remix, an A24 rollout and the internet’s most committed inside joke, Timothée Chalamet popped up rapping alongside masked UK artist EsDeeKid. Yes, it belongs in High Times.

The track is the “4 Raws Remix.” The hook does not overthink things. Every time I smoke, I light four Raws. That’s the thesis. Whether that means four skinny soldiers or one biblical fatty is between you, your rolling tray and whatever spiritual entity watches over grinders.

Within hours of dropping, clips of the “4 Raws Remix” detonated across the internet. The video and related posts surged past tens of millions of views on Instagram, cleared 100 million on X alone, and quickly outpaced the daily audience of major live events like award shows and playoff games. This was not niche hype. This was a full scale internet takeover.

This hits stoners for the simplest reason. He’s rapping about smoking, plainly, casually, without apology. The title reads like a rolling paper dog whistle. “RAW” isn’t explained. It doesn’t need to be. If you know, you know. If you don’t, welcome to the convenience store aisle of culture where weed references are no longer subtext. They are the headline.

The video leans into it. Hoodies up. Bandanas on. Fluorescent lights. Two silhouettes nodding like it’s 2:17 a.m. and the snacks are mandatory. Then Chalamet steps forward and drops a verse that mixes self awareness, flexing and pure meme fuel. He name checks his own fame, his career arc and the movie he’s currently rolling out, Marty Supreme. It works because it knows exactly what it is.

For months, the internet insisted Chalamet was EsDeeKid. Same eyes. Same fashion instincts. Same “this guy could absolutely pull off a second life” energy. The remix is the punchline. They appear together. Masks come off, then go back on. Case closed, joke intact.

What makes this especially High Times coded is how weed functions here. It’s not a PSA. It’s not a lecture. It’s not a lifestyle sermon. It’s shorthand. Smoking as rhythm. Smoking as punctuation. Smoking as a repeated action that anchors the song the way a lighter anchors a session. “Four Raws” isn’t metaphor in weed culture. It’s a visual, a quantity, a ritual.

This is also sharp modern marketing. A24 has turned film rollouts into cultural events, and the orbit around Josh Safdie understands that humor and chaos travel farther than polished press releases. Chalamet didn’t try to become a rapper. He stepped into a lane, nodded to weed culture, delivered a verse that knows how ridiculous it is and stepped back out smiling.

That’s why stoners clocked it immediately. Weed people are professional vibe detectors. We can sense try hard energy from a mile away. This didn’t feel forced. It felt like someone having fun, lighting up the idea of “four Raws” as an image, not an instruction manual.

Will people debate whether it’s four joints or one monster cone? Absolutely. Will the conspiracy crowd keep digging? Of course. Will someone freeze frame the video to inventory hoodies, hats and bandanas like it’s evidence? Already happening.

Zoom out. An Oscar level actor is rapping about smoking, casually, in a way that lands with drill fans and anyone who knows the sound of a RAW pack cracking open. That’s weed culture not asking for permission, not hiding in metaphor, and not pretending it’s niche anymore.

Light four. Or one. Okay.

Photo: Shutterstock

<p>The post Timothée Chalamet Raps About Smoking “4 RAWs” with EsDeeKid and Breaks the Internet first appeared on High Times.</p>

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