NYC24: When people unfamiliar with your magazine ask what you do for a living, what do you tell them?

Steve Hager: I tell them I work for the national voice of the counterculture in America.

NYC24: Do you believe marijuana will be legalized in the United States?

Steve Hager: Yes, someday the drug war will win.But not until most Americans figure out that it's just a propaganda campaign to protect the profits of the legal drugs industries — pharmaceutical companies — while allowing the secret covert operatives to snare huge profits on the black markets. There have to be elements in the government involved in drugs like heroin and cocaine because the profits are so huge that you can destabilize a country with them.

NYC24: How do you balance the production of a legal publication, protected by the first amendment, within an illegal subject?

Steve Hager: Imagine if you asked two blacks in Mississippi in 1964 how it felt to protest racists laws in the state. We're on a mission to save a culture here. Nobody is paranoid or they wouldn't be here.

NYC24: What would you like to say to anti-drug of your magazine?

Steve Hager: If they'd stop running all those commercials on TV about how bad marijuana is, most of the kids wouldn't be attracted to it. Alcohol isn't for kids, yet it is legal. Driving cars isn't for kids, yet adults do it daily. The entire kid issue is an orchestrated misinformation campaign. It's easier for kids to buy marijuana than a six pack because the six pack is sold in a store where they can check IDs. Move cannabis into the stores, and have it sold only to adults and the kid thing becomes a nonissue.

NYC24: Is there any instance in which the government, police or courts have prevented High Times from publication? Have your offices ever been raided? Phone calls recorded?

Steve Hager: Not while I've been here. I'm sure there is routine surveillance of us.

NYC24: Has any subscriber to High Times ever been arrested because of a submission or photograph of them in your magazine?

Steve Hager: No.

NYC24: If a reader submits a photo of him standing next to a marijuana plant, can the police arrest him?

Steve Hager: No, but they can put them under surveillance.

NYC24: Have you ever been arrested for marijuana use?

Steve Hager: No.