[Watch] Josh Kesselman on Rebuilding High Times: ‘This Is Not a Money-Making Op’

On the Senior Savvy Cannabis podcast, the RAW founder and High Times owner talks about rebuilding the magazine, bringing back the Cannabis Cup and why he wants every grower to stock up on seeds before Dec. 11.

When word got out that Josh Kesselman had bought High Times, investors started calling. The RAW founder offered every one of them the same deal: they couldn’t touch their money for 20 years, and then they’d get back exactly what they put in. Nobody took it, and that was the point. For Kesselman, High Times is about the community, not the returns.

Kesselman sat down with Catherine Goldberg on the Senior Savvy Cannabis podcast for a 37-minute conversation about how he came to buy the magazine, what he wants it to be and what he thinks the cannabis business is getting wrong.

A Joint at a Grateful Dead Show

Kesselman’s first joint came at a Grateful Dead show, with Linda, the woman he calls his mom, standing behind him. “They passed the joint around and I looked up at her and she just turned her head and laughed,” he said. “She let me hit the joint.”

His first High Times came a little later, from a shop he thinks was called Village Cigar, in Manhattan’s West Village. Back then, he said, buying it “was scarier than buying a porno.” The clerk put it in a brown bag and he hid it under his trench coat. His parents “wouldn’t have gotten mad about the porno, but they would have gotten mad about the High Times,” he said, “even though they were stoners.”

These days the plant has a more practical job. Kesselman said he was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year. “They cut it out of me and I think it’s all gone,” he said, but he now has to get eight hours of sleep, and with factories around the world and part of the year spent in Spain, he travels constantly. He said he uses cannabis, including RSO, to recover from jet lag.

The diagnosis also pushed him to formalize his philanthropy. He said he has put about $2.3 million into a 501(c)(3) he named the Josh Kesselman Foundation for Making the World a Better Place, a title borrowed from Zoolander. The point, he said, is for the work to keep going “when you’re gone.”

‘Nothing Left but a Stump’

Kesselman described High Times before he bought it with a children’s book. “I called it the giving tree,” he said. “First they took the leaves, then they took the branches, then they took the trunk until there was nothing left but a stump.”

He said he put in “a couple million” to rebuild it and brought back people who loved the brand. When would-be investors called, he gave them one offer: “Whatever money you put in, you can’t take it back for 20 years, and in 20 years, you can only get back exactly what you put in.” Nobody said yes. “This is not a money-making op,” he said.

The goal, he said, is for High Times to break even. He even looked into turning it into a nonprofit so it could outlast him, but said the accountants told him it couldn’t be done because the magazine sells ads.

Bringing Back the Cup

Kesselman recalled the first Cannabis Cup in New York under the new ownership, held at Sony Hall on one of the coldest nights of the year. He expected a small crowd. “The line was down the block,” he said. “That’s when I realized, oh, I’m not the only one who misses and loved High Times.”

He also wants younger consumers to experience what a Cup used to feel like. Today’s cannabis events “are very special, but they’re not what we did,” he said. “It’s not a celebration of community.”

Asked how readers can help, his answer was one word, repeated: “Engage. Just engage.”

Kesselman is also no fan of where much of the dispensary shelf has gone. “Combustion is entirely different than vaping,” he said, though he gave credit to some vapes made with solventless rosin: “Some of the guys have gotten some incredible effects.” He’s more wary of solvent-extracted resin, citing concerns about residual parts per million left over from butane extraction.

‘Seeds Are Freedom’

The most urgent part of the conversation came near the end. Kesselman urged listeners to buy seeds before Dec. 11, when the federal government’s new definition of hemp takes effect. Critics of the law, including Sen. Rand Paul, have warned that it could reach plants and seeds, not just finished products.

“Stock up now. You have till December 11th,” he said. “Things might change. Maybe it’ll get extended.” Then: “Stock up on your seeds because seeds are freedom.”

Sun-Grown, Back Pain and a Bigger Boat

Kesselman, who said he deals with back pain, also shared a personal observation for the show’s older audience. “Plants that have not seen the sun do not relieve my back pain anywhere near as much as plants that have,” he said, adding that he is “still trying to figure it out.”

He closed with a pitch for print. High Times is back in Barnes & Noble, and Kesselman said the first shipment sold out.

Then he came back to the idea that ran through the whole conversation: money isn’t the point. Earlier, he had joked about telling himself, “Cool. I got a bigger boat. Yay,” only to realize “it means nothing.” His parting advice followed the same line. “You don’t need a bigger boat, bro,” he said. “You need bigger friends… Just a couple friends and some sunlight.”

Josh Kesselman is the owner of High Times.