After years of legal battles over the proper ownership of Hunter S. Thompson’s (HST) estate, his widow, Anita Thompson announced that she will be making Hunter’s personal strains of cannabis available to the public. Having spent more than ten years in legal limbo between trustees of the Gonzo brand, Anita finally purchased the retreat known as Owl Farm and the rights to Hunter’s likeness with the intention of turning the writer’s former home into a museum and preserving his legacy. Part of that legacy is a history of intense drug use that has made Hunter S. Thompson — or at least the drug-crazed caricature he embodied — a more potent gateway to a culture of blind depravity than marijuana itself could ever be.
“I have found a legal method to extract the DNA from Hunter’s personal marijuana and hashish that I saved for 12-15 years.” Thompson said in an announcement on the Hunter’s official Facebook page, “I am in the process of making the strains available to those who would like to enjoy the authentic Gonzo strains in legal states.”
In the years since HST’s death, on February 20, 2005, his widow has been reluctant to market the Thompson brand in a way that would encourage a focus on his lifestyle rather than his life’s work. But with Colorado’s legalization of recreational marijuana in 2012, local businesses have been seeking to attach the legendary journalist’s name to their products relentlessly.
“Since it became legal I get approached probably once a month by cannabis growers, dispensaries,” Thompson told the Aspen Times “I’ve had probably 10 meetings in the last three years and I always ended up saying ‘No’ because it’s the same story every time: somebody wants to slap Hunter’s name on their strain.”
As a result, Anita has set out to provide a product based on the Doctor’s personal stash, though no details have been given on the particular strains she has preserved.
“If I put Hunter’s name on somebody else’s strain I can never go back and say, ‘No, this is the authentic one,’” she said.
The sales of Thompson-branded dope will go towards funding scholarships established by Anita in Hunter’s name. The money will also go towards preserving Hunter’s legacy and his 42-acre property in Woody Creek, Colorado known as Owl Farm. In the coming years Owl Farm will host writers and artists invited by Anita to stay on the property and develop their craft. Her transformation of the compound was inspired by the nature preserve and museum that was once Earnest Hemingway’s home in Ketchum, Idaho. Anita recently visited the Hemingway home to return a pair of Elk antlers Hunter stole in 1964.
