The next time you open a magazine you could find an ad for cannabis filling the pages. Media focusing on cannabis is on the rise as the spread of legalization has created a demand for cannabis industry news.
Last month, for example, a local San Francisco magazine premiered filled with stories about pot-friendly politicians and even included a comic book strip starring a joint smoking dinosaur named Budzilla. The free publication, the SF Evergreen, is a bet by the company that owns The San Francisco Examiner that people will want to hear the latest news and stories related to marijuana.
"We think it's well past time for an industry of this size to have media dedicated to it," said Chris Roberts, SF Evergreen's editor.
The SF Evergreen is just one of the latest in a recent boom in marijuana related media that has emerged from the black market as the use of plant gains more legitimacy.
The Marijuana Business Daily, Cannabis Now, Culture Magazine and Marijuana Venture have all recently opened for business and have begun covering stories about pot culture, the political landscape and even the financial side of this new blooming industry.
This recent expansion of pot culture and media covering it comes as more and more opinion polls are released that show that a majority of Americans now support the legalization of the drug.
Medical marijuana is already allowed in 23 states and is legal for recreational use in four states plus Washington, D.C. Several more states could legalize the drug in the 2016 elections. While this legalization is coming at the state level, the drug still remains illegal at the federal level both medically and recreationally.
Because of this acceptance, sales of legal marijuana are on fire. Last year, that market grew 74% to $2.7 billion, and with it a rise in the media covering everything marijuana has found a niche of its own.
Of course, writing about marijuana isn't something new. High Times magazine has been covering the marijuana counterculture for over 40 years since its founding and is still going strong. High Times made its own headlines last year when it disclosed plans to create a $100 million fund to invest in the cannabis industry.
"There's nobody in the industry that the people at the magazine here don't know, because they've grown up over the last forty years with them," Ivan Wolff, the High Times Growth Fund partner, says.
SF Evergreen, for its part, has an editorial staff of about a half-dozen writers and design staff, most of which pull double duty contributing to both the Evergreen and the Examiner. For its 32-page first issue, it printed 85,000 copies and plans future issues that could contain as many as 40 pages.
Evergreen publisher Ari Spanier said, "We're not designing this just for pot-smokers. The same people that are patients and recreational users also buy products."
