Scene
Everything people built around it. The San Rafael students whose meeting time became 420, High Times and the Cannabis Cup, NORML and the marches, the Amsterdam coffeeshops and the Dutch tolerance policy, Rastafari, the counterculture, and the language a subculture invented to talk about itself.
Part of Marijuana
56 moments in this segment.
- - Stoned young Americans on national television, 1967. David Hoffman's archival footage of 1967 network TV interviewing young cannabis users, a period document of how the mainstream framed them.
- - Universal Newsreel: 1967 marijuana legalisation rally in Los Angeles. Newsreel footage of roughly three thousand demonstrators at one of the earliest American marijuana legalisation rallies, held in Los Angeles in 1967.
- - Hippies in Haight-Ashbury, 1967 to 1969. Documentarian David Hoffman's period footage of the Haight-Ashbury scene and its confrontations with the authorities.
- - Summer of Love - hippies of San Francisco, 1967. ITN's archival documentary footage from Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love, the setting in which cannabis became a generational marker.
- - Los Angeles Easter Sunday Love-In, 1967. Kinolibrary archival film of the 1967 Los Angeles love-in, the outdoor gatherings where open cannabis use became a public act.
- - The Hippie Temptation, CBS News 1967. The complete CBS News special broadcast on 22 August 1967, reporting on the Haight-Ashbury counterculture and its drug use for a national audience.
- - AP Archive: hippie culture in Haight-Ashbury, November 1967. AP newsfilm shot in San Francisco in November 1967 on the drug trade around the Haight-Ashbury hippie scene.
- - 1968 television special report - Marijuana. A full 1968 American network special on marijuana, capturing the moment mainstream broadcasting first took the counterculture's drug of choice seriously.
- - Amsterdam hemp nursery, 1969. Cannabis cultivation in Amsterdam photographed by Anefo in July 1969.
- - Kees Hoekert with hemp plants, 1969. Dutch activist Kees Hoekert among cannabis plants in 1969; his Lowlands Weed Company openly cultivated hemp to test Dutch law.
- - DOCUMERICA, Texas 1973. A young couple smoking cannabis in cedar woods near Leakey, Texas, photographed for the EPA DOCUMERICA programme.
- - Smoking pot in the cedar woods, 1973. Two young women smoking cannabis on an outing near Leakey, Texas, from the EPA DOCUMERICA project by Marc St. Gil.
- - Legal hashish shop, Kathmandu 1973. A then-legal hashish shop in Kathmandu in June 1973, a landmark of the hippie trail. Nepal banned the trade later that year.
- - Hash Bash, Ann Arbor, 1 April 1988. Full video of the 1988 Hash Bash on the University of Michigan Diag, the annual protest held every April since 1972 after John Sinclair's marijuana conviction was overturned.
- - Cannabis Cup 1995 with Jack Herer, Ben Dronkers and Soma. Archival Cannabis Cup footage featuring Jack Herer, author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes, and Sensi Seeds founder Ben Dronkers.
- - The 8th High Times Cannabis Cup, Amsterdam 1995. Feature-length footage of the 1995 Cannabis Cup, the annual Amsterdam competition and festival founded by High Times in 1988.
- - The ninth annual High Times Cannabis Cup, 1996. A period documentary of the 1996 Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, recording the judging, the seed companies and the coffeeshop scene of the era.
- - Hash Bash 2007 with David Arquette. Footage from the 36th annual Hash Bash on the University of Michigan Diag, 7 April 2007.
- - Bhang shop, Jaisalmer. A bhang shop in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, selling cannabis preparations.
- - How the High Times Cannabis Cup began. Steven Hager recounts founding the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam in 1988 and how the harvest festival became the industry's best-known competition.
- - Bhang seller, Varanasi. A bhang vendor in Varanasi, where the cannabis drink is sold openly and consumed at festivals.
- - NORML at forty: in the beginning. NORML's own retrospective on its 1970 founding by Keith Stroup and its first decade lobbying for decriminalisation.
- - NORML at 40 - advocates and the Shafer Commission. NORML's own retrospective on the 1972 Shafer Commission, which recommended decriminalisation and was rejected by President Nixon.
- - A NORML Life - documentary trailer. Trailer for the documentary on American marijuana law reform and the patients and activists behind it.
- - Channel 4 News: Amsterdam coffeeshops may close to tourists. Reporting on the Dutch wietpas proposal that would have restricted coffeeshop sales to residents, a turning point in the country's tolerance policy.
- - Ganja smoking at Gangasagar Fair. Ganja being smoked at the Gangasagar Fair transit camp in Kolkata.
- - Selling cannabis and bhang, Assam. A woman selling cannabis and bhang at a market in Guwahati, Assam.
- - Kings of Cannabis. VICE follows breeder Arjan Roskam sourcing landrace genetics in Africa and beyond, a portrait of the modern seed-breeding trade.
- - High Times Cannabis Cup Amsterdam 2013, day three. Official High Times footage from one of the last Amsterdam editions of the Cup before Dutch enforcement pushed it out of the city.
- - Ten thousand expected at the Cape Town cannabis march. News24 reports on the South African leg of the Global Marijuana March, the annual worldwide demonstration held since 1999.
- - NORML founder Keith Stroup on the movement's evolution. Stroup recalls starting NORML in 1970 on five thousand dollars of seed money from the Playboy Foundation and its growth into the main American reform lobby.
- - Stoned Kids - Weediquette, full episode. VICE TV's documentary on families treating children's cancers with cannabis oil, a formative story in the American medical-cannabis debate.
- - The best joint rollers in the world, at the Cannabis Cup. High Times' own coverage of competitive joint rolling, a craft discipline within Cannabis Cup culture.
- - Smoking sadhu, Pashupatinath. A sadhu smoking cannabis at the Shivaratri festival at Pashupatinath, Nepal, where ritual use is tolerated.
- - The Bulldog, Amsterdam. The Bulldog, which opened in 1975 and is the oldest coffeeshop in Amsterdam.
- - Steven Hager on the real story of 420. The former High Times editor who popularised the term explains how the Waldos coined 420 in 1971 and how the magazine turned it into an international ritual.
- - CNBC: Amsterdam's coffeeshops and the American industry. CNBC reports on the regulatory contradictions of the Dutch model, where selling cannabis is tolerated but supplying the shops remains illegal.
- - Emily Dufton on Grass Roots, the history of marijuana in America. An American Historical Association talk by the historian whose book traces the American legalisation movement from the 1960s onward.
- - Adventures in cannabis hemp: the Dutch coffeeshop experience. A feature-length tour of the coffeeshop scene in Amsterdam and Haarlem, documenting how the Dutch tolerance model works in practice.
- - A conversation with Keith Stroup, part one. A long interview with NORML's founder covering the organisation's origins, the 1970s decriminalisation wave and the decades of setback that followed.
- - The first coffeeshop - Sarasani and the birth of the Dutch system. The story of Sarasani and the earliest Amsterdam coffeeshops, and how Dutch tolerance policy took shape around them from the 1970s.
- - Detroit television covers the Hash Bash crowds. WXYZ Detroit reports from Ann Arbor as crowds gather for Hash Bash under pandemic-era public health concerns.
- - The Waldos, who invented 420. Forbes meets the San Rafael High School friends who coined '420' as a meeting time in 1971; the phrase spread through Grateful Dead circles into global use.
- - Rastafari scholar Jahlani Niaah on sacramental ganja. Rastafari scholar Jahlani Niaah discusses the movement's history and the religious framing of ganja use, in conversation with the Chacruna Institute.
- - 1967: the counterculture year that changed the world. A documentary on the Summer of Love and the music, fashion and drug culture that defined 1967.
- - The Cannabis Question - NOVA full documentary. PBS NOVA's 2021 feature on the science, medicine and policy history of cannabis in the United States.
- - The 50th Ann Arbor Hash Bash. MLive's footage of the 50th Hash Bash, the annual April rally on the University of Michigan Diag held since 1972 after John Sinclair's release.
- - Jamaica - reggae, religion and ganja. A feature documentary on the intertwining of Rastafari faith, reggae music and ganja in Jamaican life.
- - The Waldo 420 tapes, part one. Steven Hager's recorded conversations with the Waldos documenting the origin of the 420 code and its passage into cannabis culture.
- - Amsterdam bans outdoor smoking in the red light district. France 24 reports on the May 2023 street-smoking ban introduced by Amsterdam's mayor as part of a push against nuisance tourism.
- - Rastafari win sacramental rights to ganja. Associated Press report on Rastafari communities securing legal recognition of cannabis as a religious sacrament.
- - The Congolese communities living off cannabis. VICE reports from the Democratic Republic of Congo on cannabis growing as a survival economy.
- - Inside the Amsterdam coffeeshop supply problem. VICE's Weediquette on the Dutch 'back door' paradox: coffeeshops may sell cannabis but cannot legally be supplied with it.
- - Ann Arbor Hash Bash 2025 with Adam Brook. Archive footage of the 2025 Hash Bash presented by longtime organiser Adam Brook.
- - Psychedelic posters: a dealers' symposium talk. Ted Bahr of the Bahr Gallery lectures on psychedelic poster art at the International Vintage Poster Dealers Association symposium in New York, December 2025.
- - The history of Amsterdam coffeeshops, part one. Traces the emergence of Amsterdam coffeeshop culture from Mellow Yellow onwards and the Dutch gedoogbeleid tolerance policy that permitted it.
