cannthropology
PRESENTS
The Guru of Gan ja
leafmagazines.com
Ed Rosenthal has authored (or co-authored) nearly 20 books on Cannabis which have collectively sold over 2 million copies. The eccentric cultivator, activist and educator is also credited with discovering Durban Poison and cofounding both High Times magazine and Amsterdam’s Hash, Marihuana and Hemp Museum. It’s no wonder he’s come to be known as “the guru of ganja.” PLANTING THE SEEDS Born in the Bronx on December 2, 1944, Edward Rosenthal had a “very unhappy” childhood growing up in a “typical dysfunctional family of the ‘50s era.” As an escape, he developed a passion for horticulture that would later become his life’s work. Though he doesn’t specifically recall the first time he smoked marijuana, he knows he was around 21. “I first started in 1966,” he said in a 1984 interview with High Times. “I bought a lid and smoked it with my college roommate … and I remember thinking, ‘This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened in my life.’” Soon after, he bought some fluorescent lights, planted a few seeds he found in some Mexican weed, and started growing his own smoke in a spare room of his apartment. THE YIPPIES In 1967, Rosenthal dropped out of college and moved to the East Village to become a hippie and immerse himself in the city’s thriving counterculture.
NOV. 2022
“I went to a ‘Be-In’ in Central Park, Tom Forcade in 1971. The two quickand Abbie Hoffman was onstage. He ly sparked a friendship, and one day jumped down, started handing out while getting high together, they came acid. He put a tab on my tongue, and up with a brilliant idea. I swallowed it and went through a “Tom, a fellow by the name of really powerful, horrible experience,” Ron Lichty and myself were all living Rosenthal recounted to HT. “After that, in a collective down on 11th Street,” I never suffered from serious dysfunche recounts. “We were all part of tional depression again.” the Underground Press Syndicate, Around the same time, he fatefuland we had a bit of money in that ly encountered another soon-to-be organization, so we decided to start Yippie activist icon. a magazine, and that magazine “One day, I walked out of my apartbecame High Times.” ment and noticed there was a march Unfortunately though, Rosenthal Rosenthal speaking at a was never credited as a cofounder, going on. I said, ‘What’s it about?’ rally in Madison, Wisc. And they said, ‘This guy has been because shortly after coming up with during the 1990s. arrested for selling acid and taken to the idea, a questionable acquainthe federal building.’ I thought, ‘Well, tance convinced Forcade to threaten that’s a good thing to march for.’” Rosenthal and throw him out. The person who’d been arrested was Dana Beal. “There was a friend of Tom’s that was working After his release, Beal befriended Rosenthal and undercover for the government,” Ed alleges. “He recruited him into the Yippies. It was through Dana tried to destroy the magazine, and he’s the one and the Yippies that Rosenthal met pot smuggler who split us apart.”
LIZZY COZZI
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