The life and Times of High Times\' enigmatic founder Thomas King Forçade, an underground newspaper editor and marijuana kingpin who battled both the U.
S.
The tragedies and triumphs of Tom Forçade mirror the cultural transformations of 1970s America, wrought by forces that continue to clash in the spaces between unrest, activism, and power..
Agents of Chaos is a fast-paced tale about attacks on journalism, disinformation campaigns, governmental secrecy, corporatism, and political factionalism.
But High Times soon threatened to become nothing more than the hip capitalism that he\'d railed against for so long, and Forçade felt his enemies closing in.
Its editorials--which warned against corporate interests descending upon legalized weed, and international drug wars serving as cover for imperialist adventures--would prove to be prophetic.
With regular updates on legislation, entrepreneurial advice, and charts of price fluctuations, the glossy magazine simultaneously legitimized and commodified drug culture.
Bankrolled by drug-dealing profits, the magazine was a travelogue of globe-trotting adventure and a wellspring of news about the business from a worldwide network of sources.
What Playboy had done for sex, High Times would do for marijuana, dragging a taboo subject into the mainstream.
Forçade saw a new path forward--marijuana, he believed, could be used as a tool for cultural and economic revolution.
He claimed that he was just trying to advance international surrealism.
But his outrageous stunts--pieing Congressional panelists, stealing presidential portraits, and picKing fights with other activists--led to charges that he was an agent provocateur.
As he weathered government surveillance and harassment, he embarked on a landmark court battle to obtain White House press credentials.
At the end of the 1960s, the mysterious Tom Forçade suddenly appeared, insinuated himself into the top echelons of the political counterculture, and assumed control of the Underground Press Syndicate, a coalition of newspapers across the country. government and fellow radicals, in a whirlwind narrative of police raids and smuggling runs--assembled from exclusive interviews, archived private correspondences, and declassified documents.
The life and Times of High Times\' enigmatic founder Thomas King Forçade, an underground newspaper editor and marijuana kingpin who battled both the U.
S
