Tom Forçade

Template:Short description Template:Infobox person Thomas King Forçade (born Kenneth Gary Goodson, September 11, 1945 – November 17, 1978) was an American underground journalist and cannabis rights activist in the 1970s.<ref name="gross">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He was the founder of High Times magazine and for many years ran the Underground Press Syndicate (later called the Alternative Press Syndicate)<ref>Bienenstock, David; and editors of High Times magazine (2008). Chapter 1 HIGHstory Template:Webarchive. The Official High Times Pot Smokers Handbook: Featuring 420 Things to do When You're Stoned. Chronicle Books. Template:ISBN. Template:ISBN.</ref>

Forçade published several other publications, such as Stoned, National Weed, Dealer and others, that, veiled as counterculture entertainment magazines, were laced with humor and savvy coverage of politics and popular culture, and served as a forum for some of the industry's best writers and artists.Template:Cn Many of Forçade's publications' writers went on to be published in premiere papers and magazines in North America.Template:Cn

Life and career

Forçade was born as Kenneth Gary Goodson in Phoenix, Arizona on September 11, 1945. He graduated from the University of Utah in 1967 with a degree in business administration. After being quickly discharged from the United States Air Force, Forçade used the skills he learned to traffic drugs across the Mexico–United States border by plane.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Nation2013" /> He used the proceeds to form a hippie commune and underground magazine called Orpheus.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref>

After this, he moved to New York City and officially changed his name to Thomas King Forçade to avoid associating his family name with counterculture and play on the word façade.<ref name=":0" /> There. he first took over management of the Underground Press Syndicate, a network of countercultural newspapers and magazines that he helped found.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Yippie" /> The name was changed to the Alternative Press Syndicate in 1973. Forçade was instrumental in the microfilming of the Underground Newspaper Collection.<ref>Charnigo, Laurie. "Prisoners of Microfilm: Freeing Voices of Dissent in the Underground Newspaper Collection." Progressive Librarian (2012): 41-90.</ref> In 1970, Forçade was the first documented activist to use pieing as a form of protest, hitting Chairman Otto Larsen during the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="nytpie">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In summer 1974, Forçade founded High Times,<ref name="Nation2013">Template:Cite news</ref> and contributed funding to the Yippie newspaper, Yipster Times,<ref name="Yippie">Template:Cite book (Chapter titled "Zeitgeist: The Ballad of Tom Forçade" by Steve Conliff)</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> while also bankrolling the ailing Punk magazine.<ref name="armstrong1981">Armstrong, David (1981). A trumpet to arms: alternative media in America. J.P. Tarcher, Template:ISBN</ref> High Times ran articles calling marijuana a "medical wonder drug" and ridiculing the US Drug Enforcement Administration. It became a huge success, with a circulation of more than 500,000 copies a month and revenues approaching $10 million by 1977, and was embraced by the young adult market as the bible of the alternative life culture. By 1977 High Times was selling as many copies an issue as Rolling Stone and National Lampoon.

According to the 1990 nonfiction book 12 Days on the Road: The Sex Pistols and America, by Noel E. Monk,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Forçade and his film crew followed the Sex Pistols through their chaotic January 1978 concerts of the U.S. South and West, using high-pressure tactics in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade the band's management and record company to let him document the tour.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Death

Forçade committed suicide by gunshot to the head in November 1978 in his Greenwich Village apartment after the death of his best friend, Jack Coombs.<ref name="Torgoff2004">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Forçade had attempted suicide before and bequeathed trusts to benefit High Times and NORML.Template:Cn High Times' former associate publisher, Rick Cusick, claims that, at Forçade's memorial — held on the roof of the World Trade Center — mourners mixed a small amount of ashes from Forcade's cremation into a marijuana cigarette and they smoked it.<ref name=Nation2013 />

External links

• Biography of Forçade from World War 4 Report
• Template:YouTube
• Tom Forçade Interview (published posthumously in HiLife magazine, Sept 1979)
• Yippies vs. Zippies: New Rubin book reveals ’70s counterculture feud (The Villager article by Mary Reinholz, 25 February 2018)
• Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s by Sean Howe (book published August 29, 2023)