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Behind TV's Most Addictive Show: 'High Maintenance'

Creators Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld use pot to tell some of TV's most memorable stories.
Creators Blichfeld (top) and Sinclair are longtime potheads. He boasts of running a marathon "fully blazed."
ben-sinclair-katja-blichfeld

Forty years ago, cannabis culture was Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong smoking dog poop in 1978’s Up in Smoke, or the “tasty waves, cool buds” mentality of Spicoli (Sean Penn), the perpetually baked surfer in 1982’s Fast Times at. Those pothead stereotypes were enormously entertaining and supremely dumb, but times have obviously changed. We now live in a country where marijuana is legal for recreational use in nine states and for medical use in 29, plus D.C., and the idea that just one kind of person smokes pot is absurd. (It always was, like saying everyone who smokes tobacco or drinks liquor shares the same specific stereotypes.) But we are still transitioning between legality and social acceptance, and that is the sweet spot for the TV series .

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