The late writer's widow told the Aspen Times last week of her plan to cultivate and sell the author's strains of cannabis. Thompson said she was working with a marijuana company to grow and distribute six kinds of marijuana that she saved, which were once smoked by her husband.

"Since it became legal I get approached probably once a month by cannabis growers, dispensaries," Thompson reportedly said. "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… 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 joked that she was "looking forward to being a drug lord," but put those plans on hold for so long on purpose.

"For 10 years, we were always careful to steer the conversation back to Hunter's work," she said. "Because it was never guaranteed that Hunter's work would be appreciated into this generation."