Legalize It, but Don’t Advertise It: High Times Fights Colorado’s Restrictions on Marijuana-Related Speech

The 40th-anniversary issue of
High Times, which hits newsstands next week, includes ads
for two Colorado-based marijuana businesses. As I explain in my
latest Forbes column, those ads may violate
Colorado’s onerous restrictions on pot-related speech, which the
magazine is challenging in federal court. Here is how the piece
begins:

High Times, the flagship publication of a cannabis
counterculture that is rapidly going mainstream, celebrates
its 40th anniversary this year. “We have been steadfast soldiers in
this so-called War on Drugs,” writes Editor in Chief Chris Simunek
in a special issue that will appear on newsstands next week, “with
truth as our sword and the First Amendment as our shield.”

The First Amendment has protected High Times,
and High Timeshas tried to return the favor. Last
year the magazine was the lead plaintiff in
a lawsuit challenging a Colorado law that required
merchants to keep marijuana-focused publications behind the
counter. The sponsor of that provision, a Republican representative
from Colorado Springs named Bob Gardner, likened such periodicals
to pornography. The law was so clearly unconstitutional that
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers decided not to
enforce it. Now High Times is seeking to
overturn Colorado’s onerous restrictions on marijuana
advertising, which ostensibly are aimed at protecting
impressionable children but probably have more to do with
protecting disapproving adults.

Read the whole thing.