The Stony Awards Are Back: Meet the Class of 2026

This article originally appeared in High Times’ Spring/Summer 2026 print edition. Get yours here.

High Times has always taken cannabis seriously. We just never believed serious had to mean stiff.

From the jump, this magazine understood something that still gets lost in today’s panels, policy debates and profit forecasts: weed matters. But it’s also fun. It’s social. It’s friendship. It’s how people actually live with the plant, not just how it gets regulated, branded or sold.

That spirit is where the Stonys came from.

They were never meant to be “official” in that self-important awards-show way. We’re not rolling out red carpets and hanging the velvet ropes. There are no speeches pretending to be something we’re not.

The Stonys were made for the community and the culture. Those things only grow if people want to be a part of it, and that’s what the Stonys are about. We see you.

Real cannabis culture doesn’t live in boardrooms. It lives in grow rooms, backyards, studios, green rooms and the backseat of a Honda Civic, ripping the fattest jay.

So in that spirit, we’re bringing the Stonys back for a very simple reason. Because they’re fun.

Joy is a foundation of the culture, a cornerstone of why many of us get high. And we think that deserves celebrating.

The Stonys aren’t a trophy case. They’re a shout-out for the moments, people and energy that carried the year. And with that…

Here are the Stonys for 2026.

🏆 THE STONYS 2026

High Times Awards Honoring the People Who Moved Cannabis Forward in 2025

🌿 STONER OF THE YEAR

Wiz Khalifa

Wiz is the living embodiment of cannabis culture. He’s never seen weed as a gimmick, a phase or a rebrand. It’s part of the daily program. The way he shows up in the world hasn’t changed just because the industry got shinier. He’s stayed loud, loyal and unapologetically himself through every era, from the mixtape days to mainstream superstardom. There’s a business too. But it doesn’t feel like a cash grab because it isn’t built on trend-chasing. It’s built on taste, obsession and real smoker standards. The strains, the branding and the whole universe around him all trace back to the same root: Wiz truly, passionately loves this plant.

👫 BEST BUDS AWARD

Snoop Dogg & Martha Stewart

If there’s one duo that proves how far cannabis culture has traveled, it’s Snoop and Martha. Not because Martha is trying to out-smoke anybody. She’s been pretty clear she’s not. The magic is in the contrast. A global weed icon and America’s most famous hostess, genuinely friends, genuinely funny together and totally comfortable letting cannabis sit in the room as a running joke and shared language. Sometimes it’s shared with a wink, sometimes it’s just Snoop being Snoop and Martha being Martha. Either way, this is normalization that didn’t come from a PR campaign. It came from connection, and their chemistry is palpable.

⚡ THE BREAKOUT AWARD

EsDeeKid

Every era gets a new voice that doesn’t ask permission, and EsDeeKid didn’t wait for his turn. He showed up with his own language, his own confidence and a rare ability to not do too much. That restraint is part of the appeal, and in 2025, it mattered. In a scene where everyone is online all the time, EsDee moved with intention. The mystery around who he actually is only adds to it, and moments like the 4 RAWs collab orbiting Timothée Chalamet prove he knows how to hit the culture without chasing it. This award isn’t about polish or public approval. It’s about momentum you can’t fake, and the reminder that cannabis culture still belongs to the young and the bold.

🌍 THE MOVEMENT AWARD

Polita Pepper

Cannabis is multidimensional and lives inside history, politics, culture and power. Polita Pepper has spent years making sure the movement never forgets that. As a social anthropologist (with a PhD!) and co-founder of Cannativa, she brings a rare blend of academic clarity and grassroots credibility to the work, championing feminist, community-centered cannabis across Mexico and Latin America. She’s out here researching traditional production, pushing for policy reform that actually includes people and speaking truth on international stages about gender equity and regulation. Polita doesn’t treat culture like branding. She treats it like a responsibility, and she’s helping shape cannabis spaces with integrity, context and care.

🧠 THE SCIENCE AWARD

CannabiChem (Dr. Riley Kirk)

Cannabis needs fewer myths and better explanations, and Dr. Riley Kirk has become one of the clearest voices doing that work. Through CannabiChem, she brings real science to the culture without talking down to anyone and without draining the fun out of it. In a year where misinformation traveled fast and loud, Riley slowed things down, brought receipts and made the chemistry make sense. That balance is rare, and it’s exactly what this industry needs more of.

🔥 THE RITUAL AWARD

First Smoke of the Day (Cody & Lance)

Before cannabis became an industry, it was a session. Stories, advice, jokes, arguments and hard-earned knowledge passed hand to hand, smoke to smoke. First Smoke of the Day understands that the culture lives right there. They didn’t invent the ritual. They respected it, documented it and kept it public without turning it into a caricature or a content gimmick. That kind of care matters, and it’s exactly how you keep a culture alive.

🌱 THE MASTER GROWER AWARD

Mendo Dope

Anyone can talk “craft.” Mendo Dope proves it. They’ve been holding it down for sun-grown, outdoor cultivation with the kind of consistency you only get from years in the dirt and skin in the game. While the industry chased warehouses and hype, they kept their standards where they belong: under the sun, in the soil, on the hill. This is real grower culture, built on patience, risk and pride, and Mendo Dope wears that legacy like a badge.

🌍 THE GLOBAL CULTIVATION ICON

Jorge Cervantes

There are growers who win awards, and there are growers who teach the world how to grow. Jorge Cervantes is both, and his influence runs deeper than most people realize. His work has crossed borders, generations and every style of cultivation imaginable, and it’s become part of the grower’s backbone. If you’ve ever pulled off a decent run and felt strangely confident doing it, odds are you learned something from Jorge, even if you didn’t know you were learning it. This is legacy-level cultivation, and the culture owes him a salute.

📚 THE TEACHER AWARD

Ed Rosenthal

Ed Rosenthal is High Times history, and not in some sentimental, museum-glass way. In a lived way. In a “people learned to grow because of this man” way. He didn’t just teach cultivation, he taught a generation how to think clearly about the plant, how to respect the work and how to treat knowledge like something you pass along, not something you gatekeep. In a world full of loud opinions and short memories, Ed’s kind of authority still matters because he earned it the only way that counts: decades of showing up, doing the work and telling the truth.

🧬 THE PRESERVATION AWARD

Irrazinig

While most of the market stays obsessed with what’s new, Irrazinig stays loyal to what’s real. Back to origins, back to landraces, back to the genetic source code cannabis came from. This is preservation work with real weight behind it, the kind that keeps lineages intact and the plant connected to its history. These landrace strains are the culture’s origin story, carried forward. Irrazinig gets this at a deep level, and he’s doing the kind of work the entire scene benefits from, whether they realize it or not.

🖤 THE DOPE AWARD

Mary Bailey

The Dope Award isn’t about popularity. It’s about making the kind of impact that changes real outcomes for real people. Mary Bailey earned it through her work with the Last Prisoner Project, fighting for justice, equity and healing after decades of cannabis prohibition. This is about reuniting families torn apart by the failed war on drugs, showing support to those currently incarcerated and never giving up on the fight for true legalization. Mary shows up for the work that matters most, and this award is our way of saying: we see it, we respect it and we’re grateful.

The Stonys are back because cannabis culture is still worth celebrating. Because seriousness without joy dries out fast. And because sometimes the best way to honor a movement is to remember why people fell in love with it in the first place.