Few people embody the collision between cannabis, radical politics, underground journalism and 1970s counterculture as completely as Tom Forçade. Best remembered as the founder of High Times magazine, Forçade was far more than a marijuana publisher. He was an underground newspaper organizer, First Amendment activist, political provocateur, businessman and large-scale cannabis smuggler who believed alternative media could be used as a weapon against established political and cultural power. During a remarkably short career, he helped connect hundreds of underground publications, fought for press access, financed struggling counterculture projects and eventually created a magazine that transformed marijuana from something discussed in coded language into a subject displayed proudly on newsstands.
The contradictions in his life were as striking as his accomplishments. Forçade criticized capitalism while building an extraordinarily successful publishing business. He fought government secrecy while maintaining multiple identities and protecting the details of his own illegal activities. He promoted free expression but frequently clashed with fellow activists. Most dramatically, he financed journalism with money earned through marijuana smuggling while simultaneously campaigning against the laws that made his business illegal. When he died in 1978 at only 33, High Times had already become one of the great publishing surprises of the decade. His life was short, volatile and often mysterious, but the publication he created helped shape global cannabis culture for generations.
From Kenneth Goodson to Tom Forçade
Forçade was born Kenneth Gary Goodson on September 11, 1945, in Phoenix, Arizona. He grew up far removed from the Greenwich Village radicals and marijuana activists with whom he would later become associated. In 1963, he left Arizona to attend the University of Utah, where he studied business administration. He graduated in 1967, giving him a conventional business education that would later prove unexpectedly useful. Beneath his revolutionary rhetoric, Forçade possessed a sophisticated understanding of circulation, advertising, distribution and organizational structure. Those skills helped him transform idealistic counterculture projects into functioning networks and eventually build a magazine capable of competing commercially with mainstream publications.
His path became much less conventional after college. He spent a brief period in the United States Air Force but was discharged, and he soon immersed himself in the emerging counterculture. Around this period, Goodson reinvented himself as Thomas King Forçade, a name pronounced much like “facade.” Changing his name allowed him to distance his increasingly public countercultural activities from his family name while creating a memorable identity of his own. Reinvention would become a recurring theme in Forçade’s life. He moved between activism, publishing and illegal marijuana commerce with a secrecy that made even many of his associates uncertain about how much of his life they truly understood.
Orpheus and the Underground Press
Before High Times, Forçade became deeply involved in the underground press, the sprawling network of independent newspapers and magazines that emerged alongside the anti-war movement, civil-rights activism, psychedelic culture and the New Left. These publications provided an alternative to conventional newspapers, covering subjects that mainstream editors often ignored or treated dismissively. They wrote openly about marijuana, psychedelics, police misconduct, sexual politics, rock music and opposition to the Vietnam War. Their editorial freedom was extraordinary, but their finances were frequently disastrous.
Forçade recognized that hundreds of small publications facing the same problems could become stronger if they cooperated. He became heavily involved with the Underground Press Syndicate, a network that allowed alternative newspapers to exchange articles, photographs and cartoons while increasing their ability to attract national advertising. It functioned in some ways as a countercultural wire service. Instead of every underground newspaper operating as an isolated local project, stories published in one city could circulate throughout the movement. Forçade eventually became one of the organization’s most important figures and pushed aggressively for underground journalism to be treated as legitimate press rather than political propaganda.
Earlier, he had also been involved with an Arizona counterculture newspaper called Orpheus. The publication reflected the mixture of politics, art and cultural rebellion characteristic of the era. Experiences like Orpheus taught Forçade something that would later become essential to High Times: readers did not separate politics from lifestyle as neatly as traditional publications assumed. A magazine could discuss marijuana law, music, travel, drug smuggling, government surveillance and humor within the same issue because, for its audience, these subjects belonged to the same cultural world.
The Pie Heard Around the Underground Press
Forçade believed strongly in freedom of expression, but his style of activism was rarely restrained. One of his most famous confrontations occurred in May 1970, when he appeared before the President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. Invited to represent the underground press, Forçade attacked the commission itself, arguing that authorities attempting to define obscenity posed a threat to free expression. He then escalated his protest in spectacular fashion by throwing a cream pie into the face of commission member Otto Larsen.
The incident became one of the earliest widely documented examples of political pieing, a tactic later adopted by activists targeting public figures. To Forçade, the performance was political theater: a deliberately absurd act designed to expose what he considered the absurdity of censorship. Critics saw it as evidence that he was reckless and more interested in disruption than persuasion. Both interpretations contain something of the truth. Forçade understood that political arguments compete for attention, and he had an instinct for creating scenes journalists could not ignore.
His tactics frequently created tension within the counterculture itself. He clashed with other activists, including prominent figures associated with the Youth International Party, or Yippies, and became involved with the more confrontational faction sometimes known as the Zippies. Some contemporaries even suspected him of being an infiltrator or provocateur because of his secrecy, money and willingness to push situations toward confrontation. No definitive evidence established that he was a government agent. What is established is that federal authorities themselves monitored him and other underground journalists, contributing to an atmosphere in which genuine surveillance and countercultural paranoia continually reinforced one another.
Fighting for the Legitimacy of Underground Journalism
Behind Forçade’s theatrical protests was a serious argument about journalism. He believed independent publications deserved the same access to government institutions as establishment newspapers and broadcast networks. The underground press had millions of readers, yet its journalists were often treated as activists rather than reporters. Forçade challenged this distinction and fought for official press access, including access connected with the White House.
These battles mattered because government recognition was symbolic as well as practical. If alternative journalists could attend briefings, obtain credentials and question officials, the government would effectively be acknowledging that journalism was defined by the act of reporting rather than by membership in an established corporate media organization. Forçade’s legal battles over press access contributed to a broader debate about whether officials could exclude reporters simply because they disliked a publication’s politics.
This struggle reveals an important side of Forçade that can be obscured by the smuggling stories and publicity stunts. He genuinely believed in building an alternative information system powerful enough to challenge mainstream institutions. That philosophy eventually became central to High Times. Marijuana would provide the magazine with its subject and audience, but the publication inherited its distrust of official narratives directly from the underground press movement.
Marijuana Smuggling and the Financing of a Revolution
At the same time that Forçade was organizing journalists and confronting government officials, he was involved in another world entirely: large-scale marijuana smuggling. Accounts from associates describe an operation involving substantial quantities of cannabis transported into the United States, including shipments associated with aircraft and maritime routes. Forçade reportedly joked that there were two kinds of marijuana dealers—those who needed forklifts and those who did not—and that he belonged to the first category.
The smuggling money gave him something most radical publishers lacked: capital. Underground newspapers routinely collapsed because ideology could not pay printers, rent or staff. Forçade used proceeds from cannabis trafficking to subsidize media projects, support activists and rescue publications facing financial trouble. The arrangement created one of the strangest business models in publishing history: marijuana prohibition generated enormous profits for smugglers, and some of those profits were then used to finance media campaigning against marijuana prohibition.
Forçade never fit neatly into the image of either a selfless activist or a conventional drug trafficker. He could be generous toward political causes while simultaneously accumulating money and operating an illicit enterprise. His life demonstrated how thoroughly the cannabis underground of the period mixed commerce with political resistance. For people who believed marijuana laws were unjust, selling cannabis could be interpreted not simply as crime but as participation in an alternative economy. Forçade took that concept to an extraordinary scale.
Creating High Times
In 1974, Forçade launched the project that would define his legacy: High Times. The traditional creation story describes the magazine as something of a marijuana version of Playboy, replacing glamorous centerfold models with equally glamorous photographs of cannabis. According to accounts from the magazine’s early years, the idea emerged during a session involving nitrous oxide and was initially expected to produce little more than a novelty issue. Whether that origin story captures the entire intention is doubtful. Forçade understood publishing too well for High Times to be merely a joke.
The genius of the concept was its directness. Marijuana publications existed, but High Times treated cannabis as a complete lifestyle subject worthy of sophisticated photography, investigative journalism, consumer information, politics, travel writing and celebrity culture. Instead of apologizing for marijuana, it celebrated it. Beautiful close-up photographs of cannabis plants became the equivalent of centerfolds, allowing readers—many of whom had never seen a living marijuana plant—to examine varieties in extraordinary detail.
Forçade reportedly began the magazine with roughly $20,000, much of the financing connected to marijuana proceeds. Distribution was difficult because mainstream companies were reluctant to handle such an openly pro-cannabis publication, forcing the early magazine to depend heavily on head shops and alternative networks. The obstacle quickly became irrelevant. Readers embraced High Times, and circulation rose dramatically from issue to issue.
High Times Becomes a Publishing Phenomenon
Within only a few years, High Times had become one of the most remarkable magazine successes of the 1970s. Circulation climbed into the hundreds of thousands, while estimates of total readership reached into the millions. The magazine generated millions of dollars in annual revenue and began appearing alongside mainstream publications despite its unabashed focus on an illegal drug. What had begun as an outlaw project suddenly became a serious publishing business.
High Times succeeded because it offered information readers could obtain almost nowhere else. Articles covered cannabis cultivation, international smuggling routes, drug laws, psychedelics, political campaigns and underground culture. The magazine also attracted respected writers and countercultural personalities, building a literary identity that went beyond marijuana photography. Cannabis remained the center of the publication, but its larger subject was the world surrounding cannabis.
The magazine also performed an important act of normalization. Every issue implicitly argued that marijuana consumers were a legitimate audience worthy of their own sophisticated publication. High Times treated cannabis growers as agricultural experts, reform advocates as political participants and marijuana users as consumers rather than criminals. Decades before legalization allowed cannabis companies to advertise openly, Forçade had already built a national media brand around the plant.
Politics, NORML and the War on Marijuana
Forçade maintained close ties to the emerging marijuana reform movement. He supported NORML, founded in 1970 to advocate for reform of American marijuana laws, and High Times gave legalization activists a national platform. The magazine reported on arrests, decriminalization proposals, government drug policy and the activities of law-enforcement agencies while openly siding with those challenging prohibition.
This advocacy was especially significant during the Nixon and Ford years, when federal drug enforcement was becoming increasingly institutionalized. The Controlled Substances Act had classified marijuana alongside the most restricted drugs, while the Drug Enforcement Administration was created in 1973. High Times responded by ridiculing federal enforcement, investigating drug policy and giving readers information about their legal rights. Marijuana politics was not separated into a small editorial page; it ran through the magazine’s entire identity.
Forçade saw information itself as part of resistance. Teaching readers about cannabis cultivation reduced dependence on illicit supply networks. Reporting on laws made users better informed about enforcement. Publishing photographs of healthy marijuana plants undermined decades of imagery that portrayed cannabis exclusively as a social menace. High Times therefore became both a commercial magazine and an instrument of cultural opposition to prohibition.
A Complicated Personality and an Increasingly Dangerous World
Success did not make Forçade’s life simpler. His involvement in smuggling, radical politics and underground publishing placed him in environments where police surveillance, informants, raids and betrayal were genuine concerns. Associates frequently described him as intensely secretive and increasingly suspicious. It is important not to turn those descriptions into a retrospective medical diagnosis. Forçade operated in a world where the federal government really did monitor radical activists and where his own illegal activities exposed him to legitimate risks of arrest.
At the same time, High Times was becoming the kind of profitable enterprise that seemed to conflict with some of his earlier anti-capitalist rhetoric. The magazine represented the commercialization of the counterculture even as it continued attacking mainstream institutions. Forçade had spent years criticizing establishment power only to discover that a successful countercultural business could develop its own money, hierarchy and internal conflicts.
His later years also included ambitious media projects beyond the magazine, including filmmaking and additional publications. He continued to operate at a frantic pace, balancing business, political activities and the dangerous networks connected with marijuana trafficking. The same relentless energy that helped create High Times also made his life increasingly difficult to sustain.
Death at 33
Tom Forçade died by suicide on November 17, 1978, in New York City, at the age of 33. His death came only weeks after his close friend and associate Jack Combs died in a plane crash connected with marijuana smuggling. Accounts from people around Forçade describe the loss as deeply affecting him, but no single event can fully explain another person’s suicide, and his death should not be reduced to a simple cause.
The shock was magnified by the extraordinary position High Times had reached. Within four years, Forçade had created a publishing institution with millions of readers while still remaining largely mysterious to much of its audience. He had rarely made himself the public face of the magazine in the way later media founders often would. His death therefore left many readers learning about the man behind High Times only after he was gone.
The magazine survived him, which may be the strongest evidence of what he had built. High Times continued publishing through changing drug laws, political backlash, the Reagan-era drug war, the emergence of medical marijuana and eventually the legalization movement. The organization would change repeatedly, but the basic premise Forçade established—a media platform created unapologetically for cannabis culture—remained recognizable.
Tom Forçade’s Legacy
Tom Forçade never lived to see medical marijuana dispensaries, state legalization, legal cannabis farms or billion-dollar marijuana companies. He died decades before cannabis photographs became ordinary advertising imagery. Yet much of the language and culture surrounding modern cannabis media can be traced to the world he helped create. High Times demonstrated that marijuana consumers represented an enormous audience and that cannabis could support journalism, photography, events, cultivation education and political advocacy.
His legacy is not uncomplicated. Forçade was an activist who financed his work through criminal enterprise, a free-press advocate capable of disruptive and confrontational behavior, and a revolutionary who created a highly profitable business. Those contradictions are not distractions from his biography—they are the biography. He emerged from an era when marijuana culture existed outside legal institutions and when alternative media often relied on people willing to operate far beyond conventional boundaries.
Most importantly, Tom Forçade understood the cultural power of making cannabis visible. High Times placed marijuana plants on magazine covers, treated growers as experts and told cannabis consumers that their culture did not need to hide. What began in 1974 as an improbable outlaw publishing experiment became one of the most recognizable names in cannabis history. Forçade lived only long enough to see the beginning, but the idea survived him: if governments and mainstream media insisted on defining marijuana culture from the outside, cannabis users could build a press powerful enough to define themselves.
