High Times sent Ethan Zohn across the country during the World Cup to find where soccer and cannabis collide. Episode one starts in Boston.
The World Cup is on American soil for the first time in a generation, and the country that spent decades calling it soccer is suddenly all in. High Times went looking for the part of that story the broadcast skips. The part where the world’s game meets weed.
That is the whole idea behind Kicking Back, a new eight-episode series hosted by Ethan Zohn. Zohn travels the country during the tournament, city by city, tracking down the people who live where soccer and cannabis overlap. The first episode is out now. It starts where it started for him. Boston.
Zohn is an odd and perfect guide for this. He played pro soccer as an undersized Division III goalkeeper, bouncing from the Cape Cod Crusaders to the Hawaii Tsunami to the Highlanders of Zimbabwe’s top flight. He won Survivor. He survived cancer. He came out the other side a cannabis advocate. In his own narration, “cannabis is moving from the shadows into the light,” and he is the rare person who can say that and mean it several ways at once.
A Boston Homecoming
Lexington is where Zohn grew up and made lifelong friends on the soccer fields. It is also, by his own telling, where he smoked his first joint. And it is where the country got going. The Battle Green, where the American Revolution kicked off 250 years ago, sits a short walk from the Belfry Tower steps where a teenage Zohn first lit up. The 1994 World Cup, played down the road in Foxboro, is the reason he chased the game at all.
From there, the episode runs like a block party with a thesis. Zohn reunites with Kristen and Eric Rogers, the couple behind Levia, the first cannabis seltzer in Massachusetts. “First drink on the East Coast,” Kristen says. He runs a pickup match with PUGG pop-up goals, tries a cannabis-infused hot sauce built by a former Navy submarine chef, and ducks into a dispensary near Fenway before the USA’s opening match.
The Tartan Army Discovers Legal Weed
The sharpest material comes from the visitors. Scotland’s traveling support, the Tartan Army, has taken over Boston for the tournament, and Scotland still bans cannabis at home. So the Scots keep walking into Massachusetts dispensaries and walking back out with legal weed, a little amazed it is allowed at all. Foreign fans buying in a store what they cannot buy back home. That is the show in a single image.
Gino Anderson, president of the American Outlaws supporters group, puts the overlap plainly. “I know people that use it who have like chronic pain just for all sports in general,” he says. “It’s been a huge help.”
The day ends in a packed bar for the United States against Paraguay, drinks dosed with Levia drops, the USA winning, Zohn calling it “almost like homecoming.” New episodes drop across host cities as the tournament rolls on. Next stop, Philadelphia, where the local delicacy is about to get infused.
The world came to America to play. It is leaving with a contact high.
Editor’s note: Kicking Back is a High Times original series. Several brands featured in the episode, including Levia and PUGG, are series partners.
