A longtime fan of High Times magazine has purchased the stoner bible for $3.5 million, with a pledge to bring back its counterculture ethos — even as marijuana has gone mainstream.

Josh Kesselman, the founder of Raw, a brand of rolling papers, bought the publication for $3.5 million, he announced on Tuesday.

Founded in 1974, High Times was once a home to heavyweight contributors including William S. Burroughs and Charles Bukowski. In its heyday were headlines such as “Best Smuggling Ships,” and its covers in the 1970s were graced by titans of the anti-establishment, including Bob Marley and Andy Warhol.

But a private equity takeover in 2017 seemed to change the tone; one article explained “Popular Ways to Consume Cannabis” and it added gift guides. After the publication’s parent company, the Hightimes Holding Corporation, failed to make loan payments last year, the magazine and its assets were taken over by a lender and put up for sale, and the Septemberissue was its last.

Now, cannabis and its culture are far less subversive than they once were. Marijuana is legal in 24 states and the District of Columbia for recreational use, and in 15 more for medical use as well, according to The National Conference of State Legislatures. Mr. Kesselman wants to reinvent the magazine for modern readers and the world they now occupy.

When Mr. Kesselman first flipped through High Times’s pages in the 1980s, it was like “looking into an open world of possibilities, a world I didn’t even know existed,” he said. “Seeing not just the plants, but the lifestyle, the way that people were actually living an incredibly free life, it really inspired me to be me.”