Reefer Madness – 1895 to the Present – Chapter 9: 1960-1970 – Crazy Hippies
The 1960s! All the racism, parental hysteria, and ignorance from the previous decades. No hemp. No cannabis medicine bottles. And for the first 4.5 years, no activism (other than the televised words of a poet and the small print run publication of a comedian). But the last half of the ‘60s were filled with pot activists! Suddenly they were everywhere! San Francisco! New York! London! Detroit! Amsterdam! Edmonton! Many were long-haired baby boomers who finally got jobs. Then they bought “lids”! Some even bought “bricks”! They got high and turned into hippies and rebels! They fought back – high on autonomy and dignity! And all the prohibitionists could muster was a pathetic “not enough is known about pot to legalize it yet” in response.
Special thanks to the Cannabis Museum for sponsoring the creation of this series. The introduction to this series (Reefer Madness – 1895 to the Present) can be found here. Chapter 1 can be found here. Chapter 2 can be found here. Chapter 3 can be found here. Chapter 4 can be found here. Chapter 5 can be found here. Chapter 6 can be found here. Chapter 7 can be found here. Chapter 8 can be found here.
“A marvelous project for a sociologist, and one which I am sure will be in preparation before my generation grows old, will be a close examination of the actual history and tactics of the Narcotics Bureau and its former chief Power, Harry J. Anslinger, in planting the seed of the marijuana ‘menace’ in the public mind and carefully nurturing its growth over the last few decades until the unsuspecting public was forced to accept an outright lie.”
– Allen Ginsberg, “First Manifesto to End the Bringdown”, Nov. 13th, 1965 (1)
“The long-haired, mod-costumed youngsters cried, ‘Love, love, love!’, ‘Rolling Stones, Rolling Stones!’ and, ‘Legalize drugs, legalize drugs!’ as they clapped hands and danced about the street. The police, with dogs helping, dispersed the group.”
– ‘Rolling Stones’ Terms Protested, The Amarillo Globe-Times, Amarillo, Texas, June 30th, 1967 (2)
“I certainly will spread it to anybody I know that there’s hope for us and that we’re not a crazy bunch of misunderstood hippies.”
– John Lennon, testifying at the Le Dain commission, Dec. 22nd, 1969 (3)
One thing to remember about the 1960s when it comes to marijuana is that it was perhaps the only era which contained – for one brief moment late in the decade – a time where the voices for realism, reason and reform drowned out the voices for reaction, restriction and repression. Rock began to replace other types of popular music as the primary form of melodic expression in society, and the most critically acclaimed, most popular, most inventive rockers were – from about 1964 onward – smoking lots of pot.
While much of the rock and roll world joined, hinted-at and eventually celebrated the cannabis culture found inside the emerging counter-culture, two men – one beatnik poet who gained national prominence in the late 1950s, and one hippie rock & roller who rocketed rapidly to the pinnacle of global prominence in the mid 1960s – led the way in shaping the look, sound and thoughts of the counter-culture in general, and the fight for pot peace in particular. Those two men were Allen Ginsberg and John Lennon.
Their true public pot protests wouldn’t really even begin for either of them until nearly half-way through the decade. It’s even fair to say that Lennon didn’t even become a “pot-head” until August 1964, when Bob Dylan showed him how. All counter-cultures are based on special knowledge of elements key to human survival and evolution, and those finding themselves in positions to shape new cultures – positions such as poets or musicians or artists of some kind – are often the initial distributors of this special knowledge.
Etymology helps one understand this aspect of the counter-culture. The word “hippie” – used many times during the 1960s to describe the culture the pot user most likely belonged to – had etymological roots in “hipster,” a term used to describe potheads in the 1930s to 1950s “Jazz age,” but is also connected to the modern day hipster – the lovers of eclectic mixes of music and style types that have existed from the 1990s onward. And the words “hippie” and “hipster” both have a link with cannabis and other drugs – in that if you were “hip” it meant you were “aware” (4) – aware of the subculture and its mannerisms, which most certainly meant the use of cannabis as a psychoactive – in much the same way that the word “witch” meant “wise” (5) and the word “gnostic” meant “knowledgeable.” (6) Hippie, witch and gnostic all reference both a subculture and the wisdom or knowledge found within past sub-cultures which includes knowledge of herbal medicine/sacrament use in general and cannabis use in particular. The subculture has been a herbal and/or cannabis culture whenever the main culture has decided to demonize and abandon herbs and/or cannabis.
Ginsberg became headline news in 1957, as his obscenity trial for Howl proceeded. The case was widely publicized – both Time magazine and Life magazine covered it. (7) Ginsberg won his case and became a hero to those who valued the free expression of ideas.
Image #1: Allen Ginsberg. Circa 1961. Photo from: https://yofuiaegb.blogspot.com/
In the book The Letters of Allen Ginsberg, some insight can be found into the sophistication and ground-breaking drug peace visions and drug-war realizations that hit Ginsberg early on, and that the rest of America would hear about soon enough. On February 2nd, 1961, Ginsberg wrote his friend and NY Times reporter Kennett Love about drug prohibition;
“The point is how did this immense mass of misinformation brainwash the whole public on two facts (1) that marijuana is both vicious and habit-forming and 2) that junkies are criminals and not medical cases? Aside from lunatic prudes, the whole smog of misinformation comes directly from the propaganda activities of the federal narco bureau. Well, in the last few years enough people have smoked pot to know the score on that, and the heroin problem has got so bad it’s becoming a J.D. problem and the whole structure begins to collapse and so there’s the beginning of independent activity, the few liberal groups, judges, etc. in NY begin to speak up and now exchange info in NYC and now on a larger national basis. I think there is sufficient info now at hand so that if someone intelligent could investigate and integrate it all and get everyone’s story, it might be possible to blow up the whole federal narco system.” (8)
Ginsberg may have been the first person to go on television and argue for the legalization of marijuana. Just ten days after his February 2nd, letter, he appeared on nation-wide TV to make the case for pot peace;
“February 12, 1961: In the first televised challenge to marijuana prohibition, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg uses an appearance on the John Crosby show to argue for the harmlessness of marijuana. By the end of the program, Crosby and guests author Norman Mailer and anthropologist Ashley Montagu all joined Ginsberg in agreeing the current laws were too extreme.” (9)
The Ginsberg biography I Celebrate Myself by Bill Morgan examines the same event from a different point of view;
“In February he was also invited to appear on the John Crosby television program where he gave what he called an eight-minute ‘lucid advertisement for pot.’ Since it was live, it aired before the FCC had a chance to censor it, and when they saw it they threatened to take legal action against the station.” (10)
Reefer Madness historian Larry Sloman did not fail to realize the significance of this event;
“For the first time the weed had a spokesman for its position, and as the sixties progressed it was a position that would be embraced by a larger and larger segment of the white youth of America.” (11)
This author has only been able to find one photo from this event and has been unable to locate a copy of the video of this television program, and would love to be alerted to the whereabouts of a copy if anyone knows how to find it – it would be illuminating to say the least.
Image #2: Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Ashley Montagu, John Crosby show, New York City, February 12th, 1961. Photo from facebook.com
Image #3: “Crosby Show Open-Mouthed,” The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, February 19th, 1961, p. 43
What might have prompted Ginsberg to contemplate marijuana legalization in February of 1961? Ginsberg was living in New York at the time. The Crosby Show was taped in New York. And the United Nations Conference for the Adoption of a Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs at UN Headquarters was also in New York. The conference, which ran from January 24 to March 25, 1961, would transform global drug policy from regulation-based to repression-based.
Ginsberg became more active in the fight to legalize marijuana in December of 1964, where he attended the first meeting of San Francisco LEMAR (LEgalize MARijuana) – the first organization in the US dedicated to ending cannabis prohibition. Upon returning to New York, Ginsberg organized the first East Coast public protest for pot legalization on December 28th, and founded the first East Coast chapter of LEMAR. Ginsberg’s long-time lover, Peter Orlovsky, would help edit the Marijuana Newsletter, beginning in February of 1965. Ginsberg’s activism and writing would inspire other chapters of LEMAR, including the founding of the Detroit Chapter by fellow poet John Sinclair. (12)
Image #4: “LEMAR press release concerning entrapment effort directed at Allen Ginsberg” 1965. Image from: https://exhibitions.lib.udel.edu/beat-visions-and-the-counterculture/exhibition-item/lemar-press-release-concerning-entrapment-effort-directed-at-allen-ginsberg/
Ginsberg wasn’t just present at one of the first pot-themed and/or youth-oriented gatherings, he attended many of the biggest ones. He began with New York in late ‘64, some of the LSD “Acid Tests” with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters in ’65 and ’66, the Be-In in San Francisco and the Putting Together Of The Heads in London in ‘67, the Chicago DNC protest in 1968, and the Free John Sinclair concert in 1971. Between his writings and his speeches, he was putting his reputation as a defender of free speech to good use.
Image #5: “Can You Pass The Acid Test?” Event poster, Muir Beach, December 11th, 1965. Image from: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/from-the-vault-property-from-the-grateful-dead-and-friends/ken-kesey-and-ram-rod-can-you-pass-the-acid-test
Image #6: Allen Ginsberg, Trips Festival poster, January 22nd, 1966. Image from: https://allenginsberg.org/2024/02/f-f-2-653/trips-festival/
The work that best sums up the power of Ginsberg’s political poetry may very well be his poem “Busted” – written in 1966 but which remained unpublished until High Times magazine put it in their “Greatest Hits” edition in 1994;
“How many people have been busted
How many people, their doors broken down, dragged weeping in their nightgowns to the station
How many boys been slapped around by midnight cops downtown in the colored section
How many musicians pushed out of jobs?
How many students kicked out of school?
How many businessmen hiding paranoic behind their doors afraid of disgrace by narco bulls hiding behind guns and badges with their ignorance and misinformation?
How many cats shaken down beaten up & asked for payoffs by Treasury fuzz?
How many pounds of pot seized & sold on black market by cops?
How many scholars and doctors pressured, warned, blackmailed, prosecuted?
How many newspapers radio stations bombarded with dopefiend T-man propaganda?
What divine congressional investigation will ever undo all these decades of calumny, injustice, brainwash, jail?” (13)
Image #7: Allen Ginsberg, John Sinclair poster in background. Photo of unknown origin.
Perhaps Ginsberg’s most important contribution to cannabis activism is probably his article entitled “The Great Marijuana Hoax – First Manifesto To End The Bringdown” – written on November 13th, 1965, and published twice in 1966 – in the book The Marijuana Papers, edited by David Solomon, and in the November 1966 edition of the Atlantic Monthly magazine. (14)
The article deserves to be quoted in detail. Ginsberg began with drawing attention to – and the naming of – and the demystification of – the performance-enhancing effects of cannabis: “Time slow-down:”
“HOW much there is to be revealed about marijuana in this decade in America for the general public! The actual experience of the smoked herb has been clouded by a fog of dirty language perpetrated by a crowd of fakers who have not had the experience and yet insist on downgrading it. The paradoxical key to this bizarre impasse of awareness is precisely that the marijuana consciousness is one that, ever so gently, shifts the center of attention from habitual shallow, purely verbal guidelines and repetitive secondhand ideological interpretations of experience to more direct, slower, absorbing, occasionally microscopically minute engagement with sensing phenomena.A few people don’t like the experience and report back to the language world that it’s a drag. But the vast majority all over the world who have smoked the several breaths necessary to feel the effect, adjust to the strangely familiar sensation of Time slow-down, and explore this new space thru natural curiosity, report that it’s a useful area of mind-consciousness to be familiar with. Marijuana is a metaphysical herb less habituating than tobacco, whose smoke is no more disruptive than Insight . . .” (15)
Ginsberg’s first point – that the negative propaganda about pot came mainly from those who never smoked it – is worth repeating. This has become more and more obvious since Ginsberg wrote those words, as the percentage of people who have tried cannabis in the Western world has increased dramatically between 1965 and today. Reefer Madness is harder to sell to a population that has witnessed or experienced acute cannabis psychosis, but has never experienced or witnessed chronic cannabis psychosis. So few of us know of any actual examples of people rendered forever insane by pot, in spite of having scores of marijuana-smoking friends and knowing of many weed-puffing celebrities.
Ginsberg’s second point seems to this author to be the golden nugget of insight missing from a majority of descriptions of the effects of cannabis in the 20th century. When “time distortion” is mentioned by the establishment media or by anti-pot academics, it’s as an undesirable side effect. Ginsberg pointed out that “time-slow” is a very desirable effect to those who seek to focus on a particular thought, feeling, sensation, activity or stimulus. For many cannabis users, it’s not a scary side effect of getting high, it’s the reason to get high. But it’s difficult to get people to understand how time slow is advantageous unless they experience it firsthand – and experience it repeatedly. Its utility only becomes apparent after the user has adjusted to the sensation and then applied it to a favourite activity. Unless you’re used to the sensation (and also familiar with the activity involved during the high) it can sometimes be disorienting at first.
In the 1800s, the effect of time-slow was mentioned in works such as Theophile Gautier’s 1846 short story; “The Hashishins’ Club,” or Charles Baudelaire’s “Poeme du Hachich,” or Fitz Hugh Ludlow’s The Hasheesh Eater, or Dr. Charles Richet’s article “Poisons of the Intelligence: Hasheesh.” In the early 20th century, time-slow was mentioned by Victor Robinson in “Experiments with Hashish,” by Mezz Mezzrow in Really The Blues and in the LaGuardia, Wootton, Shaffer and LeDain Commissions. 21st century researchers and pot activists would do well to reinvestigate this area of cannabis medicine, not only to inform the general public about the performance-enhancing and inspirational effects of pot, but also gain a deeper understanding of our concept of time itself. The time-slow effect is one of the most exciting and over-looked areas of cannabis research. (16)
Image #8: Allen Ginsberg, smoking a joint with a pal. Photo from: https://hashmuseum.com/en/cannabis-knowledge/cultural-cannabis/
Ginsberg goes on to quote a November 9th, 1963 article in the Lancet – among the world’s oldest and most prestigious medical journals;
“. . . At most of the recent references the question was raised whether the marijuana problem might be abolished by removing the substance from the list of dangerous drugs, where it was placed in 1951, and giving it the same social status as alcohol by legalizing its import and consumption. This suggestion is worth considering. Besides the undoubted attraction of reducing, for once, the number of crimes that a member of our society can commit, and of allowing the wider spread of something that can give pleasure, a greater revenue would certainly come to the State from taxation than from fines. Additional gains might be the reduction of interracial tension, as well as that between generations; for ‘pot’ spread from South America to Britain via the United States and the West Indies. Here it has been taken up by the younger members of a society in which alcohol is the inheritance of the more elderly.” (17)
This quote also appeared in an advertisement calling for the legalization of marijuana, appearing in part in the British daily newspaper The Times, on July 24th, 1967, along with many other quotes from leading health authorities, in a full-page advertisement paid for by the Beatles. (18)
Image #9: Sunday Times ad, July 24th, 1967. Some say Paul McCartney paid for the ad, while others say all four Beatles contributed to the cost. Image from: https://beatlesbible.com/wp/media/times-marijuana-advertisement-670724.jpeg
Cannabis smoking was introduced (or re-introduced) to the Beatles by Bob Dylan on August 28th, 1964. The event went nothing like the anti-pot propaganda suggested it would. Nobody was aggressive, or disoriented or negative in any way. The two effects that were most memorable to all involved were 1) euphoria/humor, and 2) insight. This is typical of most people’s first cannabis experience. Beatles insider Peter Brown captured the moment for history;
“Dylan lit the joint, gave them instructions on how to smoke it, and passed it on to John. John took it from him but was too scared to try it himself and passed it on to Ringo, whom he called ‘my royal taster.’ Ringo held onto the joint and finished it himself while Dylan and Aronowitz rolled half a dozen others. Ringo started laughing first and set the others off. Like many novice pot smokers they found many trivial things funny. Dylan watched for several hours as the Beatles broke each other up, sometimes with something authentically funny, often at nothing more than a look or a word or a pause in the conversation. For a while they all laughed at Brian, who kept saying, ‘I’m so high I’m on the ceiling. I’m up on the ceiling . . .’ After the smoke had cleared out they allowed a room-service waiter to come in to clear the dining room and found everything he did reason to convulse them with laughter. Months later ‘Let’s have a laugh’ became the code for ‘Let’s go get stoned.’ Paul was overwhelmed with the momentousness of the occasion. ‘I’m thinking for the first time,’ he said, ‘really thinking.’” (19)
Image #10: Bob Dylan and John Lennon. Famous composite photo. Image from: https://matruecannabis.medium.com/the-beatles-get-back-to-cannabis-d55a5897210e
Image #11: Sources of the composite photo. Image from: https://ca.pinterest.com/
Image #12: An original card stock poster that was used to promote The Beatles performances that took place at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, Forest Hills, New York, on the 28th and 29th August 1964. The Beatles would get smoked up by Bob Dylan the night of the 28th. Image from: https://www.barbra-archives.info/forest-hills-music-festival-1964
Image #13: A funny animated cartoon about Bob Dylan smoking up the Beatles. Image from: Bob Meets The Beatles – The Meth Minute 39 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybI34Z_ZHbo
It’s as if, when the joint was passed from Dylan to the Beatles, Dylan received the power of the electric guitar (which he began performing with within one year), while the Beatles took all of Dylan’s political edginess and sophisticated writing style (Rubber Soul began to be recorded less than 14 months later). To honour this momentous occasion, “let’s have a laugh” was brought back to mean “let’s go get stoned” in the 21st century by some of the Vancouver potheads amongst this author’s peers.
At least one historian has argued that the Beatles derived their name (in part) from the Beat Generation. (20) By 1964, the Beatles were ready to take the pothead torch from the beats, take a hit and pass it on to all the hippies. Compelling evidence has been submitted that the Beatles smoked some sub-par pot in Germany in 1962, (21) but apparently the session with Dylan was the first time they smoked good pot. McCartney’s observation that it was the first time he was really thinking may have been more than just his imagination over-estimating the effects. From this point on – late 1964 – the Beatles smoked pot while composing some of the most loved music of all time. Their pre-pot albums were popular, but the only albums to achieve “diamond” status (over 10 million records sold) were albums they wrote while high. Beatles historians have taken note of this fact;
“Indeed, the period of the Beatles’ heaviest drug use coincided with the three albums that may well be their finest: Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt Pepper.” (22)
Image #14: “John appears to be passing a joint in this photo” – circa 1965-1966. Photo from: https://www.reddit.com/r/beatles/comments/8br2ai/john_appears_to_be_passing_a_joint_in_this_photo/
After Dylan turned the Beatles into pot smokers, the Fab Four went on to pioneer key works in the origins of “folk rock,” “electronic,” “art rock,” “psychedelic rock” and “heavy metal” music. (23)
Image #15: Life Magazine, Asia Edition, July 24, 1967. Same date as the Sunday Times advertisement. Notice the cover advertises the article “MARIJUANA’S TURNED ON MILLIONS.” Image from: https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/1287252463/the-beatles-life-magazine-1967-poster
Lennon himself would ascribe some of his musical innovations to cannabis. In 1980, he commented on his inspiration for the backward sound effects in the song “Rain:”
“That one was the gift of God – of Jah, actually, the god of marijuana. Jah gave me that one. The first backwards tape on my record anywhere. Before Hendrix, before The Who, before any fucker.” (24)
Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Lester Grinspoon related a meeting with Lennon where Lennon would confirm to him the cannabis-insight connection;
“A year later, I related this story to John Lennon and Yoko Ono, with whom I was having dinner. (I was to appear the next day as an expert witness at the Immigration and Naturalization Service hearings that Attorney General John Mitchell had engineered as a way of getting them out of the country on marijuana charges after they became involved in anti-Vietnam War activities.) I told John of this experience and how cannabis appeared to make it possible for me to ‘hear’ his music for the first time in much the same way that Allen Ginsberg reported that he had ‘seen’ Cézanne for the first time when he purposely smoked cannabis before setting out for the Museum of Modern Art. John was quick to reply that I had experienced only one facet of what marijuana could do for music, that he thought it could be very helpful for composing and making music as well as listening to it.” (25)
Image #16: Paul McCartney in the foreground, and what appears to be a joint being passed in the background. Circa May-October 1968. Image from: The Beatles – The White Album Sessions. At 2:13 of the video. https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rfdf0q7Drus?feature=oembed
But the Beatles weren’t just potheads, they were pot advocates. The Lennon-McCartney songwriting duo would make a series of references to pot – some veiled, some not – in their songs. “She’s A Woman,” “Got To Get You Into My Life,” “With A Little Help From My Friends” and “A Day In The Life” have all been found to have passages which refer to cannabis according to multiple Beatles historians. (26)
Lennon also participated in many instances of anti-pot-prohibitionist activism, from a) the full page ad in the Times in 1967 mentioned above, (27) to b) singing background vocals with Paul McCartney in the Rolling Stones tune “We Love You” – a song written to protest the Stones’ recent drug bust – to c) composing “Come Together” for drugpeace activist Tim Leary’s 1968 presidential election campaign, to d) composing “10 for 2,” a song to benefit John Sinclair, a pot activist with LEMAR who was given ten years in jail for “trafficking” two joints. Allen Ginsberg, by the way, inspired Sinclair to start a chapter of LEMAR in Detroit, and was present at the recording of “We Love You” (28) as well as the John Sinclair benefit concert on December 10th 1971 and Lennon’s 31st birthday party October 9th 1972. Lennon and Ginsberg put the “hoots” in “cahoots.” (29)
Image #17: John Lennon “having a laugh” (detail), July 28th, 1968 – taken from A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE BEATLES, Don McCullin, Jonathan Cape/Random House, London, 2010, p. 106
But that wasn’t all. Lennon even e) testified at Canada’s Le Dain Commission in 1969! Fortunately, his testimony was preserved by historians and can be found online. These passages seem especially important in light of recent events involving semi or partial legalization today;
“The first thing we have got to do is to break through the media and get them to talk sense, and the only way they’ll do that is if they are directed because they are directed on everything else, and they must be directed on what is happening because that’s establishing a fear in the adult world that this generation is going to kill them or frighten them or, you know, go insane . . .”
“The money made out of the country — the country that legalizes pot — we had an answer to Britain’s problem, ha ha. It was to legalize pot and let homosexuals marry and Britain would be the richest nation on earth. It’s as simple as that. Why not? What the hell are we pretending about?”
“You’d just have to be as strong as they are and show — make them prove they are experts, and don’t let it lie once the thing’s out. Get on and push and push on every T.V., radio, everything you’ve got and keep the questions going. Don’t let it hang in a Report and leave it. Pretend the Report never happened, and just make them prove, you know. Surely we can — we are — we can — if they hike the public with that, where are we at if we can’t hike the public with the truth?” (30)
Image #18: “Drugs: John pledges help,” The Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa, Ontario, December 24th, 1969, p. 3
Lennon’s activism came with a heavy price. On October 18th, 1968, John and Yoko were busted for possession of an ounce and a half of marijuana, in what appears to be a set-up by the police;
“‘The thing was a set-up,’ Lennon later declared. He had been warned two weeks before by a friendly journalist that the police were out to get him because he was a ‘loudmouth’: ‘So believe me,’ he said, ‘I’d cleaned the house out.’ The same ‘head-hunting cop’. Detective-Sergeant Norman Pilcher, later gaoled for two years for planting evidence in other cases, ‘went around and busted Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Wiener quotes Lennon as saying: ‘Some of the pop stars had dope in their houses, and some didn’t. It didn’t matter to him. He planted it. That’s what he did to me. He said, ‘If you cop a plea, I won’t get you for obstruction, and I’ll let your missus go.’” (31)
Image #19: “Beatle John Lennon, right, and companion Yoko Ono are arrested for possession of marijuana after their flat was raided in London, England, on Oct. 18, 1968. (AP Photo/Boyton)” Image from: https://flashbak.com/busted-famous-people-arrested-for-smoking-marijuana-1949-1980-25188/
The officer who “found” Lennon’s cannabis – Detective Sergeant Pilcher – and who was accused of planting it on him – was later found guilty of planting cannabis on others and conspiracy ‘to pervert the course of justice.” (32) But there wasn’t just evidence of foul play in Lennon’s pot bust, there was also evidence of foul play in Lennon’s murder – as well as the murders of fellow pot activists/musicians Bob Marley and Peter Tosh – but these are a separate story in themselves, has been covered briefly in Vansterdam Comix (33) by myself and artist Bob High, and will be explored more closely in a future work.
Image #20: Image from a series of home movies involving John Lennon. In the above image, John is celebrating his 32nd birthday on October 9th, 1972. Ginsberg is sitting next to him. Image from: https://www.ubu.com/film/mekas_lennon.html
Image #21: In the next scene, a pile of roaches. Image from: https://www.ubu.com/film/mekas_lennon.html
Image #22: Further along in the video, John is caught smoking a joint at a party held on June 12th, 1971. Image from: https://www.ubu.com/film/mekas_lennon.html
If the second half of the 1960s was dominated by the voices of poets and musicians, expressing their true selves as they became adults and gained power and influence, the first half was dominated by the forces of the rich and powerful – the forces of euphoriphobia and persecution. How the western world was, in the space of a few years transformed – for a little while, at least – from a mainly cannabiphobic culture to a cannabiphillic culture is one of the most interesting stories in the history of Reefer Madness. It was as if the work done by the musicians and scientists, comedians and poets, historians and storytellers in the previous decades manifested an age of protest, and for one brief shining moment, the tide had turned.
The beginning of the 1960s resembled the conservative, right-wing, ignorant 1950s in every way but two. 1) There was a young, fresh-looking, fresh-sounding President in the White House by November 9th, 1960, who spoke of “new frontiers” of all types, urging America and the rest of the world to improve the lives of all people. 2) There were some progressive students at the University of California, Berkeley, who were already involved in community-improvement activities by the Friday the 13th of May 1960 – when they organized a protest against the “witch hunters” of the House Subcommittee on UnAmerican Activities. Students from Berkeley would be responsible for later protests involving civil rights, freedom of speech and anti-war activities, but the San Francisco pot protest – the first public US pro pot protest ever – would be organized from out of the Haight-Ashbury part of town (about ten miles west of Berkeley) where the poets and the pot-heads lived, and it wouldn’t be organized until August of 1964.
In 1960, the latest soft-cover version of Marijuana Girl had been published, with even more scandalous cleavage than the 1951 cover. (34)
Image #23: Marijuana Girl, N. R. DeMexico, A Beacon Book, Universal Publishing and Distributing Corporation, Canada, 1960 edition.
The newspapers were filled with photos of the latest raids on pot farms and pot gardens across the country. Marijuana would be called a “narcotic” in many of these stories, reestablishing the mythology in the public mind that pot use led to heroin use – or at any rate it was nearly as bad, as it was in the same regulatory category of drug – “Schedule 1”. For example, the Herald-Press of Saint Joseph, Michigan reported on January 4th, 1960 that;
“Michigan State Police rackets squad investigators swooped down on a marijuana processing plant in Benton Harbor Saturday night and confiscated an estimated $10,000 worth of the narcotics.” (35)
Of course cannabis is now no longer considered to be a “narcotic,” as the withdrawal symptoms from the use of actual narcotics are much more severe than the nearly non-existent cannabis withdrawal symptoms. But the stepping stone myth was the primary myth of the prohibitionists of the early 1960s.
The cops would constantly inflate the worth of whatever they seized to make their jobs sound more important.
Image #24: “ENOUGH FOR OVER 10,000 ‘REEFERS’,”The News-Palladium, Benton Harbour, Michigan, January 4th, 1960, p. 1
Also, in spite of the Civil Rights Movement having been around since at least 1954, newspapers were still bringing up the race of non whites (and ignoring the.race of whites) to stigmatize non-whites and make them seem more criminal, from the beginning of the 1960s right through to the end.
Image #25: “A MARIJUANA ARREST.” The Kansas City Times, Kansas City, Missouri, February 16th, 1960. p. 2
Image #26: “MARIJUANA TRIALS BRING STIFF TERMS,” Hickory Daily Record, Hickory, North Carolina, March 26th, 1960, p. 6
Image #27: “Police Arrest ‘Weed’ Seller,” The Shreveport Journal, Shreveport, Louisiana, July 1st, 1960, p. 3
Image #28: “Negro Is Arrested,” The Palm Beach Post, West Palm Beach, Florida, July 8th, 1960, p. 28
In another story from 1960, an unfortunate man named Henry Moraga was found to be in possession of a bunch of plants that didn’t really look like pot plants from the photo, and which he said “had nice yellow flowers” which “bloomed just like sunflowers” which he claimed he didn’t know were pot plants, but the plants were tested which “proved the plants were marijuana,” which was presumably enough for the average reader to feel there was no injustice occurring. (36)
Image #29: “Yard Yields Big Harvest Of Marijuana,” Arizona Republic, Phoenix, Arizona, August 14th, 1960, p. 1
In a newspaper story from 1961, the title announces that “Marijuana Has Been Used Ever Since Ancient Times.” But instead of a positive story about the therapeutic potential of cannabis arising from a close examination of its historical uses, the author limited themselves to sharing a few different names for pot from various countries, and then went about describing all the possible negative effects and ignoring all the possible positive effects;
“When a person takes marijuana it can produce all kinds of strange results. A person may feel thirsty, hungry, and crave sweet foods. It may make him nauseous, dizzy, or sleepy. It may make him very irritable, give him delusions of grandeur, or feel that he is being persecuted. Sometimes it makes people very talkative and unable to control their laughter, or it may cause fear, depression, mental confusion and even delirium. Some people who have smoked just one marijuana cigarette have suffered very disagreeable effects a short time after. Young people who make the mistake of wanting to ‘try it’ are often led into the terrible practice of using heroin or morphine afterwards and become addicts. Marijuana itself is a complex kind of drug and much study remains to be done by science about it. But there is no question that it should be avoided by everyone who wants to lead a healthy, normal life.” (37)
Arguably, these negative effects can all be accounted for from either excessive dosing or else a direct result of prohibition itself – especially with respect to the association with fear, depression, or feelings of persecution. A person might have very good reason to feel afraid, depressed or persecuted if their rulers are hunting them down like witches for their intelligent preference for a non-toxic, not-physically addicting herbal relaxant and euphoric. Being exposed to black market heroin is, of course, another consequence of the black market itself, and not a result of the effects of cannabis.
Image #30: “Marijuana Sale Charged,” The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tennessee, December 13th, 1960, p. 25
In June of 1961, a rooftop pot garden was busted in Marin County, California (just on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco). A hotbed of pot-related activity, Marin County would later become home of The Grateful Dead (the house band of the LSD-promoting Merry Pranksters), and later still become the birthplace of the term “420” as it relates to pot. As with most newspaper stories about cannabis arrests, the harmfulness of cannabis was not even a matter of debate – it was assumed to be so. (38)
Image #31: “Marijuana Plants Found Growing On Marin Roof,” Daily Independent Journal, San Rafael, California, June 27th, 1961, p. 1
In 1961, the film Fiend of Dope Island was released. Filmed in 1959, it told the lurid story of an asocial marijuana grower, exporter and gun runner named Charlie Davis who ruled his Caribbean fiefdom with a whip and a surly attitude. He kept scantily clad dancing girls around for his entertainment. (39) One of many examples of using sex to sell a false narrative about the cannabis community, this type of exploitation film was invented in the 1930s, and (unfortunately for the pot community) would continue to fill movie theatres for years to come.
Image #32: Fiend Of Dope Island (Whiplash), Lobby Card, Essanay Films, 1961. Image from: https://www.csfd.cz/film/306108-the-fiend-of-dope-island/galerie/fotosky/
Image #33: “$1,000 Fine Given,” The Palm Beach Post, West Palm Beach, Florida, July 21st, 1961, p. 10
Image #34: “Marijuana Cache Nabbed In Raid,” Fort Lauderdale News, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, September 16th, 1961, p. 13
Image #35: “Marijuana Cache Nabbed In Raid,” Fort Lauderdale News, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, September 16th, 1961, p. 13
Also in 1961 was another Dell Reefer Madness pulp fiction novel entitled Epitaph For A Dead Beat. The title is a play on the words “Dead” and “Beat,” according to book reviewers;
“…the space between Dead and Beat in the title is intentional, since most of the victims were beatniks, not deadbeats.” (40)
The subtitle states that “She was out of kicks at a Greenwich Village tea party – so was her killer.” The author gives a nod to beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, whose last names are passwords into the aforementioned tea party. (41)
Image #36: Epitaph For A Dead Beat, Dell, 1961. Image from: https://flashbak.com/eighteen-brilliant-pulp-novel-cover-illustrations-by-robert-mcginnis-22204/
Greenwich Village – a small hip neighbourhood of New York – was, of course, as much a part of the counter-culture as the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco, and had been so for a long time, being the home of such historical gathering spots as the first racially integrated nightclub: Café Society, and the famous birthplace of the gay rights movement, the Stonewall Inn. Greenwich Village, known to locals as simply “the Village,” has been home to such counter-culture notables as Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Anaïs Nin, Salvador Dali, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, William Faulkner, John Reed, Robert Crumb, Diego Rivera, and the great beat writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, among many others. (42)
By the time 1962 rolled around, Harry J. Anslinger was facing mandatory retirement. Just to keep society on the right track, he co-authored one more anti-pot tract at the beginning of that year. Entitled “Marijuana: Ticket To Violence” (or “Reefers: A Fast Road Downhill” in some papers), it echoed the Reefer Madness of the 1930s. The marijuana “mobsters” were targeting “America’s fresh, post-depression teenagers” with cannabis-related psychosis;
“The drug produces first an exaltation with a feeling of well being, a happy, jovial mood, usually: an increased feeling of physical strength and power. Those who are accustomed to habitual use of the drug are said eventually to develop a delirious rage after its administration during which they are temporarily, at least, irresponsible and prone to commit violent crimes. The prolonged use of narcotics is said to produce mental deterioration.” (43)
Image #37: “Marijuana: Ticket To Violence,” Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburg, Florida, January 17th, 1962, p. 3
Image #38: “Reefers: A Fast Road Downhill,” Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, January 17th, 1962, p. 5
Of course, everything Anslinger claimed were effects of cannabis after the first sentence has since been proven not to be true. Many prohibitionists have given up trying to associate cannabis with “rage” (an effect more associated with alcohol) or “violent crimes” these days, and while there is still some pathetic attempts to associate cannabis with “mental deterioration,” the same cannot be said of actual narcotics such as opium, morphine and heroin. Opiates don’t result in mental deterioration. In fact, the science suggests the opposite may be true:
“In general, research reflects minimal to no significant impairments in cognitive functioning. If impairment does occur, it is most often associated with parenteral opioids administered to opioid-naive individuals. Some evidence suggests that opioids may actually enhance cognitive function and decrease delirium in some patient populations.” (44)
Anslinger would spend much of the rest of the article explaining how the “negroes and Puerto Ricans” were more vulnerable to the pot mobsters than white people, and how the La Guardia report was so much “medical mumbo jumbo.” Less than six months after this article was written, Anslinger would retire as head of the FBN.
Some police officers were so eager to get on the pot-denouncement band-wagon they would be interviewed in the press about not being able to find any marijuana in their area, but cautioned the public to stay well away should any happen to appear;
“The chief pointed out that periodic reports of sales to high school students, at local bars and other places have been received and carefully checked. But none of the ‘weed’ has ever been turned up. State narcotics agents have been called in as undercover men and likewise found nothing. These agents, with beatnik-type and otherwise accoutered as addicts, had access to the most likely sales spots without being identified. But they found nothing.” (45)
Image #39: “Marijuana ‘Weed’ in Winter Haven? – Vigilant Police Say No-” The Tampa Tribune, Tampa, Florida, January 27th, 1962, p. 7
Image #40: “Marijuana ‘Weed’ in Winter Haven? – Vigilant Police Say No-” The Tampa Tribune, Tampa, Florida, January 27th, 1962, p. 7
Image #41: “Negro Arrested For Marijuana,” Fort Lauderdale News, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, June 17th, 1962, p. 16
In spite of there never being any mention anywhere ever of a “Caucasian narcotics ring” and the term “white narcotics ring” was only used once (on August 16th, 1955, in the same story told by a bunch of Southern newspapers), there have been multiple mentions of a “negro narcotics ring” over the last several decades, using the classic scapegoating technique of inferring that race had something to do with the misdeed – unless, of course, the race was white:
“Shreveport police early yesterday morning smashed a Negro narcotics ring that had been operating in the Bottoms area for the past 10 months with the arrest of four men, seizure of three automobiles and a quantity of marijuana. Public Safety Commissioner J. Earl Downs said that the arrest of the four Negroes include the ring leaders of the organization. He said that other arrests probably will follow. . . . The narcotics ring was the first broken up by police here in the past four years. In 1958 city police smashed another Negro narcotics ring with the arrest of several Negros.” (46)
The image that accompanied the story was of four white police officers. The implied message was that the law enforcers are generally white, and the law breakers are generally non-white. It would be more accurate to say that the law enforcers were (and still are) generally white, and their preferred targets of investigation were (and still are) generally non-white.
Image #42: “Police Smash Narcotics Ring Here With Arrest of Four Men – QUANTITY OF MARIJUANA SEIZED,” The Times, Shreveport, Louisiana, March 29th, 1962, p. 3
Image #43: “Man Is Held In Narcotics Investigation,” The Times, Shreveport, Louisiana, May 12th, 1962, p. 10
It was at this time in history that the dreaded LSD made its appearance in the newspapers. Having been experimented with for a decade or so, the drug was beginning to be used by non-professionals for individual experimentation. Because medical autonomy was being demonized and stigmatized generally, this non-institutional use began to be demonized and stigmatized. In a small news story on page 19 of the local Murfreesboro, Tennessee paper entitled “New Killer Drug Joins Black Market”, the following was written;
“A powerful and dangerous ‘suicide’ drug has joined the black market ranks of marijuana, heroin, and peyote, according to an article in the current issue of the journal of the American Medical Association. Improper administration of the hallucination – producing drug, LSD-25, can result in suicide or prolonged psychotic reactions, the article said. Two Los Angeles physicians, Dr. Sidney Cohen and Dr. Keith S. Ditman, reported in the journal that there is illicit trade in LSD tablets and ampules, and in sugar cubes saturated with the drug. Some persons who take marijuana also take LSD and hold ‘LSD parties’, the physicians said.” (47)
The same story was reprinted in November in a small-town Indiana newspaper.
Image #44: “New Killer Drug Joins Black Market,” The Daily News-Journal, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, July 15th, 1962, p. 19
The same type of accusations made against teen cannabis use today – that pot “triggers” psychotic episodes in those predisposed to psychosis genetically – is also levelled at LSD. The medical establishment has made this seem like a bad thing instead of an opportunity to use cannabis as tool for diagnosis – there is evidence to suggest that early intervention in schizophrenia is a good thing. Early diagnosis with cannabis or LSD experimentation (under controlled conditions) may very well lead to early interventions and better outcomes, rather than not being able to pick the time and place where you learn if you’re genetically predisposed to psychosis or not. (48)
Image #45: “HEMP HARVESTED,” The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, August 16th, 1962, p. 1
1962 wasn’t all anti-pot propaganda. A rather positive and truth-based article appeared in August in Playboy magazine. Written by Dan Wakefield, “The Prodigal Powers of Pot” title refers to the bountiful powers of cannabis – for many types of illness reduction, preventive medicine and performance enhancement. The article also mentioned the LaGuardia’s findings, that pot “was not a cause of insanity or violence,” and that “a number of medical, psychiatric and sociological findings have since been published that reinforce and support the conclusions of The LaGuardia Report.” (49)
Image #46: Playboy magazine, August 1962
Image #47: Playboy magazine, August 1962
The same month, a racist roundup of mostly non-white perpetrators by a team of all-white police was announced on the front page of the Louisville, Kentucky newspaper, the Courier-Journal. The insanity myth wasn’t being believed by the public, so the reporters went with the steppingstone myth instead;
“The drug is not addictive, (Federal Narcotics Agent Al) Cook said, but it is classified as dangerous and is considered the steppingstone to such drugs as heroin and cocaine. ‘I feel sure,’ Cook added, ‘that if these peddlers were allowed to continue there would soon be a demand for stronger drugs.’” (50)
Image #48: “15 Are Accused In Dope Probe – Roundup Raids,” The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, August 16, 1962, pp. 1, 18
Later the same month, Spokane, Washington police resisted charging a farmer who was mailed pot seeds from “relatives in Germany,” claiming he was just using them to produce birdseed. It was supposed to “make birds sing like crazy” – in other words, tweeter madness. One has to wonder if the police would be so lenient if the seeds had been mailed from “relatives in Egypt” instead. (51)
Birds were also blamed for the feral hemp growing in Rochester, New York in the next day’s newspaper;
“They say a woman used to raise canaries in that area in the 1890s or early 1900s. The birds were fed hemp seeds which germinate marijuana plants. Some of the seed got scattered about and plants resulted. Then they continued to spread over the years.” (52)
The police destroyed the patches with a chemical “weed killer solution.” The irony of using a carcinogenic substance to kill a tumor-shrinking herbal medicine is not lost on this author, but continues to be lost on all those who still use Roundup to kill dandelions. Two weeks later authorities burned a patch of marijuana in Pennsylvania. The reporter ended the story with a Reefer Madness spin;
“Authorities say that use of the so-called ‘loco-weed’ could lead easily to further drug addiction.” (53)
Image #49: “Marijuana Seized,” Spokane Chronicle, Spokane, Washington, August 29th, 1962, p. 4
Image #50: “LOSING GROUND,” Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, August 30th, 1962, p. 8
Image #51: “NEW EAGLE POLICE CHIEF PETER DRAGONE …” The Daily Republican, Monongahela, Pennsylvania, September 12th, 1962, p. 1
1962 was also the year the famous rebel comedian Lenny Bruce released his spoof on the emerging pot culture: STAMP HELP OUT! – And other short stories: THE POT SMOKERS. In this small-print-run home-made magazine, Bruce provided many photo gags of him standing next to obviously-not pot plants with captions claiming the opposite, and written gags such as this one;
“Whiney Punter voice: ‘I don’t know what the hell it is, Bill, I’ve been smoking this pot all day and I still can’t get high on it.’ Authorative Expert voice: ‘What kind are you smoking?’ WP: ‘Well, all marijuana’s the same, isn’t it?’ AE: ‘That’s the mistake a lot of people make!’” (54)
Image #52: Stamp Help Out! Lenny Bruce, 1962. Image from: https://pleasuresofpasttimes.com/popt-shop/lenny-bruce-stamp-help-out-and-other-short-stories/?attribute_condition=EX
Image #53: Stamp Help Out! Lenny Bruce, 1962.
Image #54: Stamp Help Out! Lenny Bruce, 1962.
Image #55: Stamp Help Out! Lenny Bruce, 1962.
Apparently, the magazine became a very rare item after the pressure from Bruce’s “methadone, speed and needles” arrests and obscenity arrests (55) scared him into self-censorship;
“He also gave copies to poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti to sell at his City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, but by January 1963, Bruce was so embroiled in narcotics busts and obscenity trials that he sent Ferlinghetti a telegram ordering the destruction of all the remaining copies!” (56)
Image #56: “LENNY BRUCE,” The Memphis Press-Scimitar, Memphis, Tennessee, October 10th, 1961, p. 15
1963 provided a couple of new sensationalist sex-and-drugs exploitation novels. The Drifter by Dell Holland, and Beach Binge by Dean McCoy. Both novels had a scantily-clad buxom blonde and promises of marijuana/pot and liquor/booze-soaked stories inside. In this passage, the drifter has just drifted into Greenwich Village, New York – Beat city central. The location was the only realistic thing about the book – the writer seemed challenged both ethically and mentally – Holland was unable to write believable dialogues, internal monologues or helpful, understandable or accurate descriptions of the cannabis high;
“He did as he was directed, though, being in no mood to start another argument. Pot was illegal, he knew, but then he suspected that there might be laws against what he wanted to do to Sandra, too. He’d been so fouled up, he didn’t have anything to lose so he gulped down a mouthful of the tea-smelling smoke. Nothing happened. They passed the joint back and forth for several more drags. It hit him then. It felt as if a sack of feathers had exploded someplace in his head. ‘You’re with it now, Square George, aren’t you?’ ‘Like, wow!’” (57)
Image #57: THE DRIFTER, Dell Holland, Playtime Books/NEVA PAPERBACKS, April 1963.
While The Drifter treated cannabis as an aphrodisiac, Beach Binge treated it like a violence-inducer. According to one online synopsis of the book;
“Gardner has spent all week trying to ‘apologize’ to Patricia for ‘collecting her pelt’ and wants her to believe that he really does have feelings for her. To help those feelings become mutual, he ducks out of the party for a few minutes to buy two dozen reefer cigarettes, which upon his return quickly make the rounds among the high-school kids. Against all scientific probability, the sudden influx of THC into the proceedings makes the boys rowdy and violent, and soon they’re refilling empty beer cans with water so they can chuck them into the drywall. ‘Let’s trash this place!’ . . . Keeping Angela in his grip, the cop knocks on the door. When Pat answers, the officers rush into the living room. Bert Leach is passed out on the floor. The cops grab Gardner as he and his marijuana cigarettes attempt to escape through the bathroom window. Everyone’s going to jail.” (58)
Image #58: BEACH BINGE, Dean McCoy, Beacon Books, 1963.
Neither book really reflected reality – they were just using sex, drugs and violence for the sake of sensationalism. The stigmatization of cannabis wasn’t the purpose of the work, rather, it was a path to greater book sales. The re-release of the 1956 autobiographical book Viper under a new (more stigmatized) title: Hooked, also occurred this year.
Image #59: HOOKED! Raymond Thorp, Paperback Library, 1963. Image from: https://www.amazon.com/-/zh_TW/Raymond-Thorp/dp/B0007FWJ8O
Magazine articles of 1963 were possibly the worst they have ever been – or ever will be – when it comes to pot stigmatization. The pinnacle of Reefer Madness for all time must have been the March, 1963 edition of The American Legion Magazine. This old-soldier digest dusted off the “hashish eater = assassin” story (the actual context of which was explained fully back in Chapter 2), getting a contemporary artist to do a very realistic image of a pot-crazed fanatic choking someone to death. Titled “VICE, CRIME and MARIJUANA,” the text under the violent image read;
“The assassins would drug themselves with marijuana before committing crimes.” (59)
Of course, the true story was that they were drugged at the recruitment phase, but you can’t scare people with stories of cannabis if you inform them of its historical use as a relatively safe knock-out drug that allows one to fully enjoy sensual gardens of paradise immediately upon waking up, with zero hangover. The article was filled with multiple horrific murders resulting from using cannabis (complete with multiple illustrations), as well as a summarized list of the effects with three categories;
“1. It kills inhibitions.
2. It produces hallucinations and illusions.
3. It destroys judgment of time and distance.
By inhibitions I mean those restraints which good upbringing, moral instruction in school, religious instructions, and community traditions put upon a man or woman’s conduct.” (60)
Image #60: “VICE, CRIME and MARIJUANA,” The American Legion Magazine, Volume 74, No. 3, March 1963, p. 12, Image from: https://archive.legion.org/handle/20.500.12203/4068
Image #61: “VICE, CRIME and MARIJUANA,” The American Legion Magazine, Volume 74, No. 3, March 1963, p. 12, Image from: https://archive.legion.org/handle/20.500.12203/4068
Image #62: “VICE, CRIME and MARIJUANA,” The American Legion Magazine, Volume 74, No. 3, March 1963, p. 12, Image from: https://archive.legion.org/handle/20.500.12203/4068
The comic books of 1963 were just as sensationalist when it came to stories about pot. In the 11th issue of Daring Adventures, a star-spangled hero called “Yankee Boy” took on a scythe-wielding villain named “The Reefer King” who is, according to the narrator;
“… a sinister salesman of cigarettes that shrivel the smokers’ souls! How could Yankee Boy – alone and unaided – dethrone the devil behind this crooked commerce?” (61)
In another panel, a young man responds to the effects of the reefer;
“With a few more puffs, the poisonous smoke pours madness into Mickey’s muddled mind!”
“This four-bit cap pistol looks like a real gun in the dark. I’M GETTIN’ IDEAS!” (62)
Image #63: Daring Adventures #11, I. W. Publishing, 1963, “Sorry–No Cigarettes Today” (6 pages) featuring Yankee Boy, pp. 21-27 Image from: https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=24046
Image #64: Daring Adventures #11, I. W. Publishing, 1963, “Sorry–No Cigarettes Today” (6 pages) featuring Yankee Boy, pp. 21-27 Image from: https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=27869
Image #65: Daring Adventures #11, I. W. Publishing, 1963, “Sorry–No Cigarettes Today” (6 pages) featuring Yankee Boy, pp. 21-27 Image from: https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=27869
Image #66: Daring Adventures #11, I. W. Publishing, 1963, “Sorry–No Cigarettes Today” (6 pages) featuring Yankee Boy, pp. 21-27 Image from: https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=24046
The same comic strip was originally published in Dynamic Comics back in 1945. I used the earlier comic for my images because the colours were brighter, but this just proves that the messages about “reefer” had stayed the same over the decades.
Image #67: “Negro Held in Marijuana Case,” Enterprise-Journal, McComb, Mississippi, July 22nd, 1963, p. 1
Image #68: “Negro Officer Is Jailed After Marijuana Found,” The Tulsa Tribune, Tulsa, Oklahoma, October 14th, 1963, p. 19
Image #69: “‘REEFERS PEACEFUL’,” The Vancouver Sun, Vancouver, British Columbia, November 7th, 1963, p. 39
Image #70: “Legal Reefer Is Suggested,” Omaha World-Herald, Omaha, Nebraska, November 8th, 1963, p. 55
Image #71: “Huge Marijuana Crop Is Seized On Georgia Farm,” The Progress-Index, Petersburg, Virginia, November 22nd, 1963, p. 8
In spite of this onslaught of stigma, 1963 was also a year for marshalling the forces of facts and reason. In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, a review of the Lancet’s November 9th defence of legalization got the attention of a syndicated columnist, John Crosby, who wrote a similarly well-crafted argument, including mention of the LaGuardia Report and of Allen Ginsberg’s appearance on his TV program back in February of 1961. Titled “British Medical Journal Says Marijuana Should Be Legalized,” it was published a day after the assassination, and struck at the heart of Reefer Madness;
“A week or so ago, the Lancet, Britain’s leading medical publication, suggested mildly that marijuana – or pot or tea or reefers as it is variously called – might be taken off the list of dangerous drugs and given the same status as alcohol. This proposal caused no uproar here at all. . . . By legalizing marijuana, the Lancet pointed out, the number of crimes man commits might be reduced by one. ‘It seems difficult to kill oneself with canninbinol (sp): reported deaths are surprisingly few. Its effect is almost certainly not addictive. The drug has been reported to lead to psychosis in habitual users, but others deny this.’” (63)
Image #72: “British Medical Journal Says Marijuana Should Be Legalized,” The Tampa Tribune, Tampa, Florida, November 25th, 1963, p. 12
In the unspoken rules of “balanced reporting” on the subject (that is only required of pro-pot op-ed articles but never anti-pot articles) the opposing view was also given. Immediately following the John Crosby article was another article entitled “Drug Expert Says It Shouldn’t Be,” with the usual reefer madness bunk science. However, with so many people now trying cannabis and not experiencing withdrawal, the “addiction” argument had to be dropped:
“Let there be no mistake about marijuana . . . it is not powerfully addicting, but as it can be so easily produced, and as it can be quite pleasant to use, the danger of it becoming a habit worse than tobacco smoking would be highly probable if its use were legalized. Unlike tobacco, marijuana has a much greater effect on the nervous system and can give rise to maniacal excitement or coma. In smaller amounts or in those less susceptible to it, marijuana may impair judgment and critical faculties, release inhibitions and undermine self-control, leading either to irresponsible and aggressive conduct or render them liable to yield to temptations which would otherwise be resisted.” (64)
Image #73: “Drug Expert Says It Shouldn’t Be,” The Tampa Tribune, November 25th, 1963, p. 12.
Image #74: “HEMP PLANT,” The Ithaca Journal, Ithaca, New York, December 5th, 1963, p. 2
Image #75: “Negro Airmen Face Marijuana Charges,” The Huntsville Times, Huntsville, Alabama, December 17th, 1963, p. 3
And then the year 1964 happened. 1964 was when both the free speech movement and the pot legalization movement were born. 1964 was the year the beats would pass the torch to the hippies, and Dylan would pass the joint to Ringo. 1964 was the year the public protests began – first in San Francisco, then in New York City. Nothing would ever be the same again.
This is particularly fascinating, because scapegoats don’t always fight back – for just two examples, both witches and Jews have suffered poor outcomes from the “wait and see what happens next” strategy. When scapegoats do fight back, they don’t always win. When scapegoats do fight back and win – and do so non-violently – one must marvel at the bravery of the initial few who faced an unknown fate to resist such a powerful example of state oppression.
1964 was also the year of the novel Beatnik Wanton. Written under the pen name “Don Elliott,” it was written by award-winning Science Fiction (and soft porn fiction) writer Robert Silverberg. The front cover promised that “SHE LUSTED IN SIN ORGIES AND REEFER BRAWLS” – again suggesting that cannabis has a link to violence – a link which is much, much more firmly established with alcohol. Coincidentally, Silverberg once owned a mansion previously owned by Mayor LaGuardia. (65)
Image #76: Beatnik Wanton, Don Elliott (Robert Silverberg), Greenleaf Classics, 1964
In 1964, the majority of the media saw cannabis users as pond-scum. Every cop and politician and judge would do their best to shame pot growers, dealers and users regularly in the press, and it was a rare editorial that didn’t echo these sentiments with an always sanctimonious, almost bloodthirsty level of enthusiasm. For example, in the January 18th edition of the Windsor, Ontario newspaper the Windsor Star, under the title “Marijuana . . . A Shadowy Human Peril,” Magistrate Fred K. Jasperson was quoted at length on his views of marijuana;
“‘While the physical and mental consequences of using marijuana are not as disastrous as heroin, they are considerable. . . . Generally, they are persons of weak character who seek it for an ‘escape’ from ordinary stresses of life; persons who also have a propensity to crime.’ Magistrate Jasperson also noted that the association of a user are ‘generally weak and unstable characters, some of whom can be described by the modern colloquialism of beatnik, to whom the path to the use of the narcotic is made easy. Nor can it be overlooked that the buyers and users of marijuana keep in existence the illicit traffickers. . . . But the wide public circulation of views of which we have recent example, that marijuana is not necessarily a habit-forming narcotic, that it is akin to liquor, could very well lead persons, particularly those of early years and a bit adventuresome, to try it. . . . The publication of these views does seem to be a bit irresponsible and in bad taste and could very well break down the inhibitions against the use of this narcotic. After all, the Narcotic Drug Control Act states what the offences are. That act is the law of the land. Parliament, after due consideration, has made it the law of the land.’ . . . The size of the amount indicated Kane and Beretti were at least psychologically dependent on marijuana, if they were not physically dependent on it the way heroin users are, the magistrate added.” (66)
In other words, “Pot is harmful. People use pot to relax. Breaking laws is always wrong. Potheads – mostly dirty beatniks – are too weak to obey their rulers. Potheads – not law makers – are responsible for creating the black market. Journalists should stop printing facts about pot because it encourages young people to try it. Politicians really thought this through before they wrote the laws so the laws should no longer be questioned. If you use a lot of pot, you’re dependent on it, which is inherently abusive under all circumstances.” Unfortunately, these leaps of logic continue to exist in courtrooms to this day, with a few brand-new “only millionaires can grow pot properly” arguments thrown in for good measure.
When the perpetrators were white, they were usually dismissed as “beatniks” – in other words, dirty non-conformists who didn’t go along with the rat race like everyone was supposed to. But suspects were usually Hispanic or black, and then they just had their faces and/or names in the paper and the editors left the readers to draw their own racist conclusions – conclusions which were usually the product of centuries of racist mythology.
I’m sure there are still people believe it’s just a coincidence that most of the arrested were non-whites and ethnic types, or lower-class folk, and it was just another coincidence that the cops doing the arresting and posing with their captured contraband were nearly always white. Those being arrested, however, had a unique perspective on the inner-workings of “subtle white-supremacy:” it was designed to give the appearance of impartiality but at the same time ensure non-whites were to be blamed for nearly everything and defended by practically nobody.
For example, Detectives Donald Bunce, Elwood Smith and supervisor Lucien DiGiovenni posed with their tiny pot plant haul on page 10 of the July 2nd, 1964 Rochester, New York newspaper, the Democrat and Chronicle – tiny pot plants recently taken from a man named Angelo G. Santiago. Unfortunately, the paper, for whatever reason, did not publish a photo of the accused, but nearly every example of an “Angelo Santiago” in a modern-day Google image search provides a photo of a non-white person. The message the white cop, non-white perp dynamic sends is that non-whites are born criminals – or born “more criminal” than whites. (67)
Or the white Texas Sheriffs – Sheriff F. B. Byrne and Chief Deputy L. W. Donaho – who posed with their captured bulk marijuana and joints they obtained from “two negros” – unnamed. (68)
While the names and faces of law enforcement sound pretty white, most of the names of the perpetrators sound pretty “ethnic” – for example the following 16 names of suspects in an L.A. “narcotics raid”, mostly for marijuana: “Elias R. Hernandez . . . Justine M. Olea, Marvin Cohen . . . Pete Hernandez . . . Leonard T. Provencio . . . Robert Dennis Bedinger . . . Guadalupe R. Hernandez . . . Mary Motter . . . Michael T. Rodriguez . . . Pedro L. Garabito . . . Jose Lugo . . . Norman Motter . . . Frank Ramirez . . . Arthur Williams . . . Joe F. Vasquez . . . Julio H. Melendez . . . Frank Marquez.” Not to worry, folks. “Sgt. Don Chaney” and “Detective Lt. James Sands” had the situation well in hand. (69)
Same deal with swarthy marijuana suspect “Tony Valenzuela” and the very white cops Sgt. Vern Wingfield and detectives Dennis Dierking, Dick Sierra and Bill Stull, who caught him with heroin and “enough seed to plant a 10-acre marijuana patch”. (70)
Can the pot war still be called white supremacy if it has the thin veneer of built-in plausible denial? It was a time – only 19 years after the end of WW2 – when every politician took pains to differentiate themselves from the Nazis, so white supremacy hid within police profiling and discriminatory sentencing (71) while the civil rights movement concentrated on removing the more obvious Jim Crow discrimination laws such as separate schools and separate water fountains. One Canadian “addiction expert” – Gene Elmore of the “Narcotic Addiction Foundation of B.C.” – opined that;
“Enforcement agencies list numerous cases where brutal crimes have been committed by people ‘high’ on marijuana. This often occurs among rebellious, adolescent groups, both white and Negro, in the lower social strats.” (72)
See – the drug war isn’t overtly racist (in Canada) – it’s just overtly classist and ageist! Humans were being divided and conquered in the usual ways – scapegoaters were attacking the usual targets.
Image #77: “WOODCHOPPER’S BALL,” The Santa Fe New Mexican, Santa Fe, New Mexico, February 2nd, 1964, p. 3
Image #78: “READS WARRANT CHARGING HE POSSESSED MARIJUANA,” The Santa Fe New Mexican, Santa Fe, New Mexico, February 2nd, 1964, p. 3
Image #79: “CONFRONTED WITH EVIDENCE,” The Santa Fe New Mexican, Santa Fe, New Mexico, February 2nd, 1964, p. 3
Image #80: “Evidence,” The Santa Fe New Mexican, Santa Fe, New Mexico, February 2nd, 1964, p. 3
Image #81: “BOOKED FIRST,” The Santa Fe New Mexican, Santa Fe, New Mexico, February 2nd, 1964, p. 3
Image #82: “HARVEST TIME,” The Wichita Eagle, Wichita, Kansas, June 2nd, 1964, p. 16
Image #83: “HARVEST,” Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, July 2nd, 1964, p. 10
Image #84: “NEGRO MAN ARRESTED – Marijuana Found Growing In Lynchburg City Limits,” Daily Advance, Lynchburg, Virginia, July 18th, 1964, p. 2
Image #85: “GARDEN OF MARIJUANA,” Daily Advance, Lynchburg, Virginia, July 18th, 1964, p. 2
In the various arrest reports during the 1960s, the harmfulness of cannabis was hardly ever elaborated upon – it was a given. Most often, when a reason was provided for the harsh punishments the steppingstone theory was floated, but no reports were cited and no evidence was provided. It was just a narrative that everyone bought into.
Well … almost everyone.
On August 16th, 1964, in San Francisco’s Hall of Justice, the protests began. It was Lowell “Freddie” Eggemeier, sparking up a protest joint, demanding to be arrested. (73)
Weekly protests in San Francisco’s Union Square soon followed – and the media began reporting on it. The August 31st, 1964 San Francisco Examiner told the story this way;
“Marijuana, some 250 devotees declared in downtown Union Square yesterday, is a wholesome, non-habit forming ingredient constitutionally guaranteed to all Americans interested in the pursuit of happiness. And with this declaration – spelled out on banners – the group presented the first item in a program designed to be played out eventually before the United States Supreme Court. The item in this case was a few laps around the monument to Admiral Dewey while spectators, sunning themselves on one of the balmiest days of the summer, made disparaging remarks. Then the group, sandals flapping, marched down Powell Street on to Market Street before going off in two directions – one group to the Hall of Justice and the other to City Hall. Leading the crusaders was North Beach hero, Lowell ‘Freddie’ Eggemeier. Eggemeier rose from the ranks Aug. 16 when he went to the Hall of Justice and asked to be arrested. His request was granted when he lit a marijuana cigaret and shared the smoke by blowing it on inspectors in the room. On hand yesterday to explain the group’s purpose was James R. White III. ‘We plan to have 1,000 persons committing a felony at once.’ He said. ‘They’ll all light up together.’ The police would be notified before, so they could share the national ‘first.’ Lt. Norbert Currie, head of the San Francisco police department’s narcotics detail, disagreed with the marchers on all counts. Far from being wholesome, he said, marijuana is ‘an evil’ which often leads users to such ‘heavy’ narcotics as heroin. Curry said there is some disagreement about whether marijuana is addictive, but ‘there is no medical proof it is not harmful.’ And it quite definitely is illegal. ‘It is a felony to use it.’ said Currie. If there was a ‘puff in.’ he said, ‘We would have no alternative but to arrest them.’” (74)
Notice how the burden of proof is put on the scapegoat to prove that they are “not harmful,” rather than a standard requirement upon the state to prove the group or activity or characteristic in question is inherently harmful. “Innocent before proven guilty” is a right never afforded the scapegoat.
Image #86: “Marijuana Smoker ‘Puffs-In’ – – – Jailed,” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, August 17th, 1964, p. 1
Image #87: “LOWELL EGGEMEIER AT HALL OF JUSTICE,” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, August 17th, 1964, p. 4
Image #88: “’Puff-In’ Arrested As Expected,” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, August 17th, 1964, p. 4
Image #89: “Evangelist vs. S. F. Pickets – A March for Marijuana,” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, August 24th, 1964, p. 7
Image #90: August 30th, 1964 protest in Union Square for the legalization of marijuana. Image from https://myfilmfriend.com/en/movies/grass
Image #91: “MARIJUANA DEVOTEES PARADE,” Oroville Mercury Register, Oroville, California, August 31st, 1964, p. 1
Image #92: “S. F. Dope Parade – THE FAR-OUT PROTEST – Growing Like a Weed,” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, August 31st, 1964, p. 1
Image #93: “Sunday Marching Society,” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, August 31st, 1964, p. 22
Image #94: “Naomi Annette lecturing Chet Helms at Union Square marijuana rally, September 6, 1964. Helms was a pot dealer and friend (and eventual manager) for Janis Joplin. (photograph by Fran Ortiz, courtesy of a private collector.)” Image from: “Marijuana in the City: A Closer Look” https://www.opensfhistory.org/osfhcrucible/2018/06/
Image #95: “A Union Square Lecture,” San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, California, September 7th, 1964, p. 3
Image #96: “GOLIAD MARIJUANA,” Victoria Advocate, Victoria, Texas, September 18th, 1964, p. 1
Image #97: “Pair’s Arrest Ends Marijuana Harvest,” Victoria Advocate, Victoria, Texas, September 18th, 1964, p. 1
Image #98: “Sentence Given on Dope Charge,” The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, Louisiana, September 19th, 1964, p. 21
Image #99: “RAID SUSPECT,” The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, California, October 8th, 1964, p. 117
On November 18th, 1964, Eggemeier and White petitioned the Supreme Court of California for a “Writ of Habeas Corpus” – a test of the lawfulness of the anti-pot laws. Wikipedia explains;
“Habeas corpus . . . Medieval Latin meaning ‘[we, a Court, command] that you have the body [of the detainee brought before us]’) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, to bring the prisoner to court, to determine whether the detention is lawful.” (75)
White published his petition under the name MARIJUANA PUFF IN – hard copies still exist and can be purchased on the internet today. Within its pages are a summary of various reports on marijuana and hashish including the conclusions of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission;
- There is no evidence of any weight regarding mental and moral injuries from the moderate use of these drugs.
- Large numbers of practitioners of long experience have seen no evidence of any connection between the moderate use of hemp drugs and disease.
- Moderation does not lead to excess in hemp any more than it does in alcohol. Regular moderate use of ganja or bhang produces the same effects as moderate and regular doses of whiskey. Excess is confined to the idle and dissipated. (76)
Being a pioneer is never easy. The protesters themselves were protested by “church workers” in subsequent protests, (77) and Eggermeier lost his case, ending up spending nearly a year in jail. (78)
Image #100: “MARIJUANA PUFF IN,” IN THE SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA, In re LOWELL F. EGGEMEIER, Petitioner, For a Writ of Habeas Corpus after denial of an Application for Writ by District Court of Appeal, without opinion filed. James R. White III, 19 Boardman Place, San Francisco, California, Underhill 3-2375, Counsel for Petitioner. Dated: November 18th, 1964
Image #101: “MARIJUANA PUFF IN,” IN THE SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA, In re LOWELL F. EGGEMEIER, Petitioner, For a Writ of Habeas Corpus after denial of an Application for Writ by District Court of Appeal, without opinion filed. James R. White III, 19 Boardman Place, San Francisco, California, Underhill 3-2375, Counsel for Petitioner. Dated: November 18th, 1964
Image #102: “A clump of ‘weed’,” The Peninsula Times Tribune, Palo Alto, California, December 17th, 1964, p. 25
Image #103: “Police Seize Heroin, Find Marijuana Seed,” Arizona Republic, Phoenix, Arizona, December 17th, 1964, p. 17
Image #104: “Police Seize Heroin, Find Marijuana Seed,” Arizona Republic, Phoenix, Arizona, December 17th, 1964, p. 17
Nevertheless, a seed was planted in the minds of the counterculture, and that seed would bare fruit down the road. Not necessarily with the North American courts, who have been reluctant to even apply facts or reason to the questions of medical autonomy or harm reduction (unless, occasionally, in Canada, when the case also involved medical necessity), but rather with the power of civil disobedience and public protest and citizen’s initiatives to force facts that involve the actual effects of marijuana (and the effects of marijuana policy) in front of the public and the law makers.
The most immediate effect of the Eggermeier protest was that San Francisco became ground zero for cannabis protests – beginning in August of 1964. As well, New York potheads were inspired to protest in December of that year. In the December 29th 1964 edition of the Paterson, New Jersey paper The News, the headline read “‘Beat’ Chief Ginsberg Leads Village Picketing to Legalize ‘Pot’.” The reporter made it all about Ginsberg, but did pass on a few choice sound-bites;
“Paterson’s Allen Ginsberg wants ‘pot’ and he picketed for it Sunday – in broad daylight in front of city cops – in Greenwich Village, New York. Ginsberg is that author-adventurer-philosopher and spiritual leader of the ‘beat generation’ who grabs more headline space than any other poet in the country. His father is Louis Ginsberg, a retired English teacher at Central High School, and an acclaimed poet in his own right. And ‘pot,’ the reason for today’s new headline, is simply another word for marijuana. Ginsberg says ‘pot’ is healthful and mustn’t be banned in this country. Marching in front of the Department of Welfare building at E. 9th Street and Avenue C in New York. Ginsberg and 18 other men and women including poet Peter Orlovsky, carried signs reading ‘Smoke Pot, It’s Cheaper and Healthier Than Liquor’, and ‘Pot Is a Reality Kick.’ The demonstration took place near Tompkins Square, sometimes described as the center of the city’s New Bohemia. Demonstrators said they were members of a group called ‘Lemar.’ (Legalize Marijuana) One marcher distributed excerpts from a book by Dr. Robert S. de Ropp, a well-known biochemist who favors legalizing marijuana, which claimed marijuana is ‘a very innocuous drug, non-poisonous drug, non-addicting and does not produce a hangover . . .’ Ginsberg predicted that ‘pot’ will be legalized in this country within five years, calling the drug ‘a benevolent, natural and not addictive drug.’ Only a handful of spectators turned out for the demonstration.” (79)
Image #105: Image from: “The Legendary Ed Sanders: A Head of his Time,” Martin A. Lee, O’Shaughnessy’s • Winter/Spring 2013, p. 63 https://beyondthc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2013-Sanders-63.pdf
Image #106: Image from: “ALLEN GINSBERG AT MARIJUANA RALLIES, MID-60s.” https://aphelis.net/ginsberg-marijuana-rally/
Image #107: Image from: “Dangerous minds: the writers hounded by the FBI. From James Baldwin to Susan Sontag: the American authors labelled enemies of the state.” Douglas Kennedy, January 9th, 2019 https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2019/01/dangerous-minds-writers-hounded-fbi
Image #108: Image from: “A Founder Looks at 50: The ‘Free John Sinclair’ Rally; Public Protests Sometimes Matter,” KEITH STROUP, NORML LEGAL COUNSEL, JULY 24, 2020. https://norml.org/blog/2020/07/24/a-founder-looks-at-50-the-free-john-sinclair-rally-public-protests-sometimes-matter/
Image #109: “They’d Legalize Marijuana – Demonstration Goes To Pot,” The Journal Herald, Dayton, Ohio, December 28th, 1964, p. 1
Image #110: “‘Beat’ Chief Ginsberg Leads Village Picketing to Legalize ‘Pot’,” The News, Paterson, New Jersey, December 29th, 1964, p. 32
Image #111: “TAKING POT LUCK.” Newsday (Suffolk Edition), Melville, New York, January 11th, 1965, p. 4
By January 30th, 1965, LEMAR had published its first issue of “The MARIJUANA NEWSLETTER!” On the front cover, the organization explained its position in greater detail:
“New York City Lemar is a voluntary association formed to educate the public concerning Marijuana & the urgent need to legalize it. Like liquor prohibition, pot prohibition violates personal liberty, promotes racketeering, & invites mass evasion of the law. But, while alcohol is demonstrably productive of hangover, cirrhosis of the liver, violence and Dylan Thomas scenes, Marijuana on the other hand is in ALL respects gentle, benevolent, & absolutely NON-addictive. We defy anyone to produce one shred of evidence that Marijuana is in any way addictive! Or that it produces at any time any adverse, depressive or other toxic effects.” (80)
Image #112: The MARIJUANA NEWSLETTER! Issue #1. New York, January 30th, 1965. Image from: https://www.biblio.com/details.php?dcx=1691911790&aid=vialibri&utm_source=vialibri&utm_medium=archive&utm_campaign=vialibri
Image #113: An attempted hit piece on Malcolm X, published one day after his assassination. “Malcolm X Peddled Marijuana as Youth,” Shamokin News-Dispatch, Shamokin, Pennsylvania, February 22nd, 1965, p. 12
Image #114: The Marijuana Newsletter, Issue #2, New York, March 15th, 1965
With the emergence of this new, never-before seen “cannabis culture” – one based in personal experience and serious investigation such as the Indian Hemp report, the LaGuardia report and the Lancet article – we then began to hear a different narrative out of the mass media. The establishment cranked out stories that not only exaggerated the effects of cannabis to fit their “it’s inherently problematic” narrative, but also attacked the integrity of anyone who dared question this narrative. The perfect example of this was an opinion editorial pretending to be a news article that ran in April of 1965 of the Vancouver Sun – just a few months after the appearance of the first pro-legalization protests, totally in reaction to them:
“Beware! Don’t let the pot-smoking so-called intellectual set agitating for legalized marijuana lull you into a state of indifference. The lobbyists make loud claims that the narcotic is a harmless ticket into Dreamland, non-habit forming, even beneficial. Hogwash. In truth, keeping company with the Green Goddess is the first step on a short ladder to self destruction. Cannabis sativa is an illegal drug. It must remain illegal. Narcotic effects are good or bad. The effects of marijuana, however, run in only one direction: bad. Those who minimize the dangers of using marijuana overlook the evidence of exhaustive studies by police, social workers and the medical profession. . . . The effect isn’t always peaceful euphoria. One of the worst reactions of this drug is that, during the periods of temporary insanity which frequently follow its use, the addict can easily become obsessed with a murderous frenzy and will attempt to kill anyone his fancy so directs. In addition, the drug is inclined to promote unnatural and exaggerated sexual tendencies in its users. These effects have been blamed for many brutal murders and sex crimes in Mexico and those parts of the United States where the use of marijuana is prevalent. . . . The end result finds the user suffering permanent mental dullness or even insanity. He must then be confined in a mental institution for his own safety as well as that of others.” (81)
Interestingly, the article also revealed how fast pot activism was spreading around the world, and into other countries;
“Those agitating for legalized marijuana have become bolder. In February, police here seized pamphlets urging social acceptance of the narcotic that were being distributed by a beatnik-type couple – both in their teens – in the West End. Recently, in the U.S., a newsletter was published by a group called Lemar – the abbreviated term for legalized marijuana.” (82)
It appeared as though the establishment were losing the shame game, and had to put aside the “stepping stone” argument as their go-to and instead bring back the “temporary insanity/murderous frenzy” argument – double down on it – and hope people would just take them for their word about the “exhaustive studies” that were often mentioned but never named.
A similar article was published in August in the form of an interview with Henry L. Giordano, Anslinger’s replacement as Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Responding to the existence of Lemar, the new FBN head came out with the same old “cannabis turns people into homicidal maniacs AND heroin junkies” BS;
“Some become violent and inflict damage on themselves and others. Some are unable to gauge space and distance and are a hazard on the highway. Our files are replete with cases of degradation and violence caused by marijuana, and the worst danger of all lies ahead for the person who continues to smoke marijuana, for he will almost surely turn eventually to stronger drugs – cocaine and heroin – for bigger thrills.” (83)
And speaking of thrill seekers . . . enter the Merry Pranksters. Ken Kesey was already an acclaimed writer of a counter-culture classic, the 1962 novel One Flew Over The Cookoo’s Nest, who had then taken the wealth generated from his book and invested it in LSD infused parties and road trips – some of the most epic road trips and parties in American History. The Bus that Kesey custom designed and psychedelically decorated for cross-country travel was driven by none-other than Neil Cassidy – the man who had his life used as the model for one of the two main protagonists in Kerouac’s On The Road. This 1964 California-to-New York adventure eventually became the subject of the 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Trip and the 2011 documentary Magic Trip. The most famous road beatnik chauffeured-in the next subculture – literally. (84)
Image #115: Tripping (1999 Ken Kesey/Merry Pranksters documentary). Image from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh2kK5IfS-8
Image #116: Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place (2011) Documentary. Image from: https://flixtor.to/
Image #117: Stark Naked and Neil Cassady walk beside Further, the magic bus. Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place (2011) Documentary. Image from: https://flixtor.to/
Image #118: “Neal Cassady was a major figure in the Beat Generation and the psychedelic movement of the 1960s. He was immortalized in Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road as the character Dean Moriarty, and also features in two Grateful Dead songs as well as Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Cassady was a member of Ken Kesey’s ‘Merry Pranksters,’ and the main driver of the bus Furthur on the first half of its psychedelic-fueled journey from San Francisco to New York.” Image from: Incredibly Trippy Portraits of Famous Psychonauts, Nicolás Rosenfeld, Psychedelic Frontier, July 2014. https://psychedelicfrontier.com/trippy-portraits-psychonauts-nicolas-rosenfeld/
Kesey’s parties – “Acid Tests” (a play on the term “acid test,” which originally was a way miners tested to see if their gold was genuine, but had come to mean “any definitive test for some attribute, e.g. of a person’s character” (85) and the word “acid” in the middle of LSD: LySergic acid Diethylamide) – were transformative tests of character through LSD, music and trippy visuals. The first of these Acid Tests took place on December 4th, 1965 and the last on Oct. 2, 1966. Also involved were the Grateful Dead, and occasionally Allen Ginsberg. These tests eventually morphed into the “Dead Tour” – a travelling Temporary Autonomous Zone that accompanied the Grateful Dead like a hippie circus.
Image #119: “The 1960s LSD movement was captured by Lawrence Schiller in all its psychedelic forms — from student bedsits at the University of Berkeley to Acid Tests run by the Merry Pranksters. A loose group devoted to the exploration of LSD, the Pranksters, led by author Ken Kesey, were the subject of Tom Wolfe’s trailblazing ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.'” Image from: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/electric-kool-aid-acid-test-revisited-lawrence-schiller-tom-wolfe-taschen
Image #120: “The height of Kesey’s efforts was the Acid Test Graduation, which took place on October 31, 1966. Kesey (center, shirtless) was entangled with legal proceedings against him for marijuana possession and faked suicide, and wanted to go out in a moment in triumph. The test was ostensibly to “go beyond acid,” to reach its heightened state sober. In reality everyone took acid with television cameras rolling — Kesey’s last prank with the Pranksters. Image from: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/electric-kool-aid-acid-test-revisited-lawrence-schiller-tom-wolfe-taschen
A series of arrests – the first on April 23rd, 1965 after a raid on Kesey’s rural home, and another on January 19th, 1966 (with “Mountain Girl” – Grateful Dead lead singer Jerry Garcia’s future wife, but then 19-year-old Carolyn M. Adams) for cannabis and other trumped-up charges backfired on the police. (86) It was a different era than the year before . . . the hippies had now been born from the beatniks. Instead of the arrests scaring people away from him, Kesey’s notoriety grew, and he became a folk hero to an entire generation of young and the young at heart. And the type of LSD/travel/music/dance based-culture Kesey helped give birth to would live on for many years after his 2001 death. In fact, the remaining band members of the Grateful Dead continued to tour and provide the proper setting for an “acid test” until the year 2023. (87)
Image #121: La Honda Arrest of Ken Kesey and 13 of his friends, April 24rd, 1965 Photo from: https://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2017/04/ken-kesey-wisdom.html See also: https://www.sfchronicle.com/thetake/article/Ken-Kesey-vs-the-cops-Looking-back-at-6700243.php
Image #122: “Nab Novelist In Narcotics Raid,” Akron Beacon Journal, Akron, Ohio, April 25th, 1965, p. 8
Image #123: “In time, the deadly hemp drug makes them wildly insane,” “Ask Andy – True Hemp Provides Tough Fibre and Dangerous Drug,” Evening World-Herald, Omaha, Nebraska, May 21st, 1965, p. 29
Image #124: Ken Kesey’s 1965 mug shot, June 1st, 1965, San Mateo county jail in Redwood City, California. Photo from Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe, 1968, Kindle Edition, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. https://twitter.com/HeadsNews/status/602568367623557120
Image #125: “Marijuana Sends Negro To Jail,” The Dothan Eagle, Dothan, Alabama, June 20th, 1965, p. 28
Image #126: “DR. TIMOTHY LEARY,” Poughkeepsie Journal, Poughkeepsie, New York, December 24th, 1965, p. 1
Image #127: “Hallucinatory Research – Professor And Family Held On Dope Charge,” The Journal Herald, Dayton, Ohio, December 24th, 1965, p. 2
Image #128: Kesey’s 1966 mug shot. January 17th, 1966. San Mateo county jail in Redwood City, California. Image from: https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/oct/06/fbi-ken-kesey/
Image #129: “Drug Charge Jails Novelist,” The Tampa Tribune, Tampa, Florida, January 18th, 1966, p. 23
Image #130: Ken Kesey and Mountain Girl arrested, January 19th, 1966. Image from: “4/20 Photos: The history of marijuana in the Bay Area,” April 20th, 2021. https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2021/visuals/archives-420-day-marijuana/
Image #131: “Held On New Narcotics Charge,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, Cincinnati, Ohio, January 20th, 1966, p. 2
Image #132: “Kesey Friend’s ‘Pot’ Trial,” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, February 26, 1966, p. 3
Image #133: Carolyn Adams, AKA “Mountain Girl,” walking past Kesey’s magic bus, circa 1966. Image from: https://cdn1.dangerousminds.net/uploads/7/2015/02/Mountain_Girl.jpg See also: https://dangerousminds.net/comments/mountain_girls_acid_test_diploma/
Image #134: Light Up, Jon Parker, an Original Wee Hours Book, Buffalo, New York, 1966
Image #135: “KEN KESEY,” Lincoln Journal Star, Lincoln, Nebraska, March 13th, 1966
Time life books did a series on “The Drug Takers” – the ad for the “special report” which appeared in newspapers told you all you needed to know about their views on cannabis in October of 1965;
“Although many of its users believe marijuana to be harmless, it is often a way station to heroin addiction and occasionally produces homicidal violence in its users.” (88)
What was happening at the same time as this bogus information was being published was that pot was getting popular amongst young people, and old people were demanding information about it from ignorant journalists and academics. From 1965 on, many stories on pot started off as reporting on the newly-minted pot activists and/or the newly-minted members of the cannabis community, which were often the sons and daughters of the ruling class.
An example of this was a report by the normally-progressive Jack Anderson in the Santa Rosa, California paper, The Press Democrat. Entitled “Collegians Going to Pot”, it was basically a warning to all parents to make sure the “lavish allowance” they sent to their kids for food and textbooks wasn’t being spent on beatnik equipment and/or cannabis instead;
“The use of marijuana on college campuses has been causing concern in the Narcotics Bureau. The findings show that in more than 50 collages and universities drug addiction has been increasing, especially among beatniks, misfits and exhibitionist students. They are in a minority, but the fad is growing. . . . Over in a corner, a pair of bongo drums throbbed and sobbed. In the center of the dimly lit room, hazy with smoke, two couples danced as if in a daze. Other boys and girls in beatnik barb, eyes glazed, sprawled on the floor, some in close embrace. One girl stood on her head, unkempt hair screening her face, slim legs braced against the wall. Nobody seemed to think her behavior the least unusual.” (89)
The “scene” didn’t take place “in some beatnik joint in New York or San Francisco, but in a coed’s room at the University of Wisconsin”! The beatnik poets were taking over the world with their poetry and bongos and pot! Soon YOUR child will be standing on THEIR heads!
In Egypt, 1966 saw “new, heavier penalties ranging up to death” to deal with all the hashish smuggling that was going on then. (90)
Image #136: “POP STAR DONOVAN IN COURT ON A DRUG CHARGE,” Daily Mirror, London, England, June 11th, 1966, p. 5
Image #137: “Marijuana wrongly classified,” The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Ontario, June 15th, 1966, p. 31
Image #138: “‘The Wild Angels’ was the first film to associate Peter Fonda with Harley-Davidson motorcycles, three years ahead of ‘Easy Rider’, in fact, ‘The Wild Angels’ marked the beginning of the outlaw biker movies.” Image from: https://journal.riserapp.com/100-motorcycle-movies-episode-2-wild-angels-on-two-wheels/
Image #139: “DONOVAN FINED £250 ON DRUG CHARGE – Cannabis found in cigarettes,” Evening Sentinel, Stoke-on-Trent, England, July 28th, 1966, p. 4
Image #140: “I’VE LEARNED MY LESSON,” Daily Mirror, London, England, July 29th, 1966, p. 5
Image #141: “Accused of Smuggling $306,000 Worth of Weed – Trio Faces Marijuana Charge,” The Monitor, McAllen, Texas, September 22nd, 1966, p. 1
Also in 1966, laws prohibiting LSD began to appear – first in California and Nevada, then by 1968 across the entire USA. Many of the scare stories that led to the creation of laws prohibiting LSD followed the same pattern of the cannabis scare-stories of the 1920s and 1930s: young people and students were trying it, predictable effects of excessive dosing was confused with typical effects of proper dosing, harms were either invented or exaggerated, and benefits were minimized or ignored. Sometimes pot was also mentioned in the same story – those who saw LSD and pot as tools rather than vices were usually condemned and dismissed;
“And much of the propaganda, some of it highly favorable, is being circulated on the Arizona State University campus. An article in the left-leaning Los Angeles Free Press recently quoted a doctor as saying: ‘For me, drugs have been a tool with which I have been able to build a richer and more awake life . . .’ The article continued: The psychic energizers, the hypnotics, the tranquilizers, to say nothing of benign marijuana and soul-shaking LSD, are all part of a palette of mood-changers a lot of people I know have come to value.’ And Moderator, a national student magazine, justified the use of marijuana in its article ‘The Question of Pot’.” (91)
The above quote from May 8th, 1966 was found under the heading “Propaganda Circulates Favoring Use” – when information from a legalization advocate was mentioned, it was dismissed as “propaganda” – anti-pot information was treated as gospel.
The governors of Nevada and California both signed bills into law on May 30, 1966, to control LSD, making them the first two states to outlaw the manufacture, sale, and possession of the drug. The law went into effect immediately in Nevada, and on October 6, 1966, in California. (92) Newspapers reported on the event;
“California and Nevada Monday became the first states in the nation to outlaw the promiscuous use of the dream drug LSD. Nevada Gov. Grant Sawyer and California Gov. Edmund G. Brown signed similar LSD control bills into law. The statutes were generally the same. Each outlaws the manufacture, sale and possession of the drug but permits its use in supervised research projects. The California statute makes possession or knowing use of hallucination- causing drug a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum fine of $l,OOO or a year in jail. It makes manufacture, possession for the purpose of sale, or sale of the drug a felony punishable by one to five years in prison for the first offense and two to 10 years for each subsequent offense. The Nevada law restricts the possession of LSD to licensed manufacturers, pharmacists, doctors and psychologists. The drug may be used in research at state universities ‘to investigate the safety and effectiveness of such drugs.’ However the person to whom the drug is administered must be under the personal supervision of a physician until the effects wear off. Unlawful possession or use of the drug is a gross misdemeanor which has a maximum penalty of one year in the county jail and a $1,000 fine. The second offense is a felony with a one-to-10-year prison sentence. Backers of both bills claimed the illicit use of LSD and similar drugs was reaching epidemic proportions on college campuses. In Millbrook. N.Y., Dr. Timothy Leary, a controversial supporter of LSD, said control laws were ‘hysterical’ and ‘unrealistic.’ He suggested that Brown (and presumably Sawyer) should take the drug and ‘discover first hand why the young people of his state are willing to risk prison to expand their consciousness.’ Despite a controversy over who signed first—Brown or Sawyer —the Nevada statute was first to go into effect. It became law with Sawyer’s signature. (93)
Image #142: “Happiness Is LSD?” The Berkeley Gazette, Berkeley, California, October 7th, 1966, p. 1
Image #143: “‘Freak Outs’ Assemble in S.F. Park; Protest in Behalf of LSD,” The Berkeley Gazette, Berkeley, California, October 7th, 1966, p. 1
Image #144: “‘FURTHER’ ARRIVES,” Berkeley DAILY GAZETTE, Berkeley, California, October 7th, 1966, p. 4
Image #145: Berkeley DAILY GAZETTE, Berkeley, California, October 7th, 1966, p. 4
Image #146: “KESEY WATCHES HIMSELF ON TV BEFORE ARREST,” The Times, San Mateo, California, October 21st, 1966, p. 29
Image #147: “He Said It – ‘Cuckoo’,” The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon, October 21st, 1966, p. 1
Image #148: “OUR PHOTOG WENT FAR OUT TO MAKE THIS PICTURE,” The San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, California, October 28th, 1966, p. 4
Image #149: “Kesey Takes Press on A Trip With No Treat,” The San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, California, October 28th, 1966, p. 4
Image #150: “On Halloween 1966, the Grateful Dead, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters ‘graduated’ from LSD,” Oct. 05, 2022 Image from: https://sfstandard.com/2022/10/05/on-halloween-1966-the-grateful-dead-ken-kesey-and-his-merry-pranksters-graduated-from-lsd/
Image #151: “MEMPHIS: Marijuana crackdown set,” Kingsport News, Kingsport, Tennessee, November 15th, 1966, p. 10
Image #152: “Author’s Marijuana Trial Ends In Deadlock,” The Modesto Bee, Modesto, California, December 2nd, 1966, p. 2
Image #153: “Triumph Of Research – Princeton Chemist Unlocks Marijuana Mysteries,” The Times, Trenton, New Jersey, December 5th, 1966, p. 17
Image #154: “Colorful art postcard titled ‘GOD Grows His Own’ by famed artist Mari Tepper. Dates to the famed ‘Summer of Love’ in Haight Ashbury neighbourhood of San Francisco. … Publisher name ‘AMERICAN NEWSREPEAT COMPANY, 27 CASTLE ST. SAN FRANCISCO’.” https://chadbourneantique.com/products/1967-mari-tepper-san-francisco-postcard-god-grows-his-own Image from: https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/poster-by-mari-tepper-god-grows-his-own-206-c-3694cc4a58
The response to the banning of LSD that took effect October 6th, 1966 in California was a massive “Human Be In” demonstration in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, on January 14th, 1967. Reporting on “beatniks” had ended. Reporting on “hippies” had begun. Wikipedia summed it up nicely;
“It was a prelude to San Francisco’s Summer of Love, which made the Haight-Ashbury district a symbol of American counterculture and introduced the word ‘psychedelic’ to suburbia. . . . The Human Be-In focused the key ideas of the 1960s counterculture: personal empowerment, cultural and political decentralization, communal living, ecological awareness, higher consciousness (with the aid of psychedelic drugs), acceptance of illicit psychedelics use, and radical liberalpolitical consciousness. The hippie movement developed out of disaffected student communities around San Francisco State University, City College and Berkeley and in San Francisco’s beat generation poets and jazz hipsters, who also combined a search for intuitive spontaneity with a rejection of ‘middle-classmorality’. Allen Ginsberg personified the transition between the beat and hippie generations. . . . The Human Be-In was announced on the cover of the fifth issue of the San Francisco Oracle as ‘A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In’. The occasion was a new California law banning the use of the psychedelic drug LSD that had come into effect on October 6, 1966.” (94)
Multiple posters were created for the event, which was quite well-attended – some estimates as high as 30,000 – when compared with the 250 protesters in San Francisco’s first pro pot legalization protest just three years prior. There was no mention of marijuana on the posters advertising the event, but it was implied, due to the psychedelic style of the posters, and the speakers mentioned on the poster, most of whom had a pro-drug reputation.
Image #155: Poster advertising the Human Be In event, January 14th, 1967, in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California. Image from: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/5o36rn/poster_for_the_human_bein_at_san_franciscos/
The speakers list included Allen Ginsberg, Laurence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure and Lenore Kandel – all beat writers and poets, and Tim Leary, Richard Alpert – both professors that had been kicked out of Harvard for experimenting with LSD and other drugs. Also on the poster was Dick Gregory – a stand-up comedian famous for supporting civil rights activism but who also branched out into other issues including drug peace.
Also, there were subtle references to cannabis in the flags that could be seen at the event on or near the stage. Multiple flags – a red one, a green one, and a multi-colored one – were adorned with cannabis leaves in a tree-of-life circle form in the center. These pot leaves in a circle were probably used throughout history as a subtle reference to cannabis where more obvious references weren’t tolerated.
Image #156: Image from: “GRATEFUL DEAD 1/14/1967 ~ Human Be-In” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqxlO4IMxos
Image #157: Image from: “GRATEFUL DEAD 1/14/1967 ~ Human Be-In” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqxlO4IMxos
The Be-In would inspire many other “Be-Ins” and “happenings” – some more overtly pro-cannabis than others. One advertisement that appeared as a full-page ad on the back cover of the youth newspaper The Georgia Straight for a Be-In in Vancouver in 1969 had an image of a young child smoking a joint, with the words “EASTER CANNABIS FESTIVAL” in large font up top and the words “BRING YOUR OWN” written below. (95)
Image #158: Georgia Straight, Vancouver, B.C., Volume 3 #31, March 28th to April 3rd, 1969 – back cover.
Paul McCartney gave an interview to a BBC television program called So Far Out It’s Straight Down – filmed just four days after the big Be-In on January 18th 1967, and telecast on March 7th – to attempt to explain the youth culture to the rest of the world. Accompanied by footage of young people carrying protest signs such as “LEGALISE POT” and “POT IS FUN” in downtown London, McCartney provided a defense of John Stuart Mill’s Harm Principle (the harmless should not be harmed) and applied it to cannabis and LSD, but in Paul’s own inimitable way;
“I really wish the people that look sort of in anger at the ‘weirdos,’ at the happenings, at the psychedelic freak-out, would instead of just looking with anger– just look with nothing; with no feeling; be unbiased about it. Because they really don’t realize that what these people are talking about is something that they really want themselves. It’s something that everyone wants. . . . I remember that that was exactly what I wanted then – what I want now – which is just to be able to move freely, and do what you want to do, as long as you don’t interfere with other people. If you interfere, OK, well you’ve got to have rules against you – ‘cause you could just go around doin’ anything, which might be a bit of a drag for some people. First of all, then, we can have rules against that but at least you must be able to do what you want to do, without interference. ‘Cause you know nobody’s got any right to tell you not to. ‘Cause they’re only the same as you. It needs everyone in the world to realize that inside them is the same thing that’s inside everyone. And that’s all there is to it. And then nobody better than anyone else. . . . Even though everyone is sort of getting on very well in this society we’ve got, it’s a bit too controlled, you know. Because you suddenly, you want to go and do something and somebody says: ‘Oh, no!! Subsection B, Clause A!! You can’t do that, you know!!’ And you say, ‘Well, why not? I’m a human being and that, and haven’t I got my rights?’ They say, ‘Well yes. But you’re not allowed to do THAT!’ You say, ‘Well if it doesn’t interfere with anyone it must be okay.’ ‘Sorry! Still isn’t!’ you know. . . . And so, all-in-all, what this gang of people from the ‘International Times,’ ‘Indica,’ and the whole scene is trying to do is try to see where we are now and see what we’ve got around us; see any mistakes we’ve made and straighten ’em out. . . . They’re talking about things that are a bit new you know. And they’re talking about things which people don’t really know too much about yet. So they tend to get, you know– people tend to put them down a bit and say, well you know– ‘weirdo,’ ‘psychedelic,’ and things. But it’s really just what’s going on around, and they’re just trying to look into it a bit.” (96)
Image #159: The International Times, No. 6, January 16th to 19th, 1967, London, England “International Times: highlights from the early years,” July 17th, 2009. Image from: https://www.theguardian.com/media/gallery/2009/jul/15/international-times-magazine
Image #160: “Scene Special – It’s So Far Out, It’s Straight Down (Interview With Paul McCartney) – 7 March 1967.” Images from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJEr70of1pU (since taken down).
An overall positive article was published in February of 1967 in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette regarding the dangers of cannabis use being over-blown. With the very provocative title: “Dangers of Marijuana Use Confusing to Authorities,” it jumped right into the debate, and was disappointing: no possible benefits of proper cannabis use and no medical autonomy. But it was far more even-handed than the usual anti-pot propaganda in weighing the risks, especially when it came to the “stepping stone” theory and the supposed criminogenic nature of marijuana:
“Does marijuana really cause violent crime, as its opponents say? Is it physically harmful to the users? Many medical and social scientists say it is not. All authorities, including police, agree on one point: you don’t get addicted to marijuana the way you do to heroin. You may develop a strong liking for it, and it may become a habit – but you can quit any time without the severe pains, nausea and craving of withdrawal. On many other points, though, there is wide disagreement. Many medical and social scientists do not think it causes crimes. Nor do they think it leads to heroin or other ‘hard’ narcotics. The more closely marijuana is studied, it seems, the more trouble scientists have in pinning down its dangers. Dr. Emil Trellis, a Pittsburg psychiatrist widely experienced with marijuana and narcotics users, has this to say: ‘Many – perhaps most – people can smoke marijuana without harm. But there’s a small number of people for whom it is probably dangerous. One girl made a suicide attempt after she had been smoking it. Some people hallucinate – they see and hear things that aren’t there.’ You have no way of knowing whether you’re one of the few who can’t smoke it without danger, says Dr. Trellis. He continues: ‘The point is, no one HAS to take marijuana. A college kid can perfectly well go through college without it. So why take it?’” (97)
This question deserves an answer. The answer has three parts: 1) Necessity is relative. The Koji Indians of the Andes don’t HAVE to take coca leaf to deal with the altitude sickness, fatigue and hunger that comes with living and working high up in the mountains – it just makes life easier. Cannabis users don’t all live high up in the mountains, but the stress, depression, fatigue, loss of appetite, lack of sleep/motivation/focus experienced by almost everybody who isn’t a member of the upper classes (and who do not purposefully keep themselves ignorant of the problems of the world) is justification for the use of cannabis as a preventive medicine. Poverty and other typical situations of today’s world are stressful and depressing situations. These conditions don’t even include the many, many uses of cannabis for illness and disease – cannabis is both medicine for the sick and the healthy. 2) As well as a preventive medicine, it’s also a performance enhancer. It makes a minute feel like an hour. It gives a person familiar with the dose and the activity a faster reaction time. Humans are guaranteed liberty and the right to pursue happiness – not just for survival but also for enjoying one’s self. Limiting one’s rights to what one needs and not also include what one wants is a very sort of empty and disappointing life. 3) We have the right to have a good job in the agriculture and retail sectors – a job with no boss. We have the right to pursuits that give us our share of the riches of the earth. Cannabis is our co-evolutionary plant partner, and to continue to survive, evolve and thrive we need to guarantee every human full access to it, and not have it prohibited or monopolized by our “betters.” Everyone – including the young – have the right not only to use cannabis, but to grow it and/or sell it, too. That’s how many college kids paid their way through school under cannabis prohibition – that option should remain open under legalization.
The author continued with an array of opinions gathered from local academics, who were unusually candid;
“Marijuana is not a step toward heroin, according to Dr. Trelllis. ‘Many people smoke marijuana and never smoke heroin,’ he declares. This is especially true, he says, among college and high school students – heroin, he says, has not become fashionable in student circles, and he doesn’t think it ever will. Dr. Douglass S. Thompson, director of the student health service at the University of Pittsburgh, says he has not seen any student patients with symptoms attributed to marijuana. Comments Dr. Thompson: ‘All the studies I am aware of indicate that marijuana is not addicting, and I know of no step-wise correlation from it to other drugs or agents that are addicting. I would look on it (marijuana use) as a symptom – an inappropriate response to life situations. But as symptom of some magnitude, nevertheless. . . . As for the possible dangers of marijuana, Freeman says: ‘My own feelings are mixed. On the one hand, we hear reports that it produces dangerous reactions. But I wonder how much of this is due to marijuana. I wonder whether many of the crimes that have been blamed on marijuana wouldn’t have been committed anyway, without it.’ . . . Dr. Joseph P. Buckley, professor of pharmacology at the University of Pittsburgh, says he believes the worst thing about marijuana is its bad reputation. ‘By itself it’s not too bad,’ he says. He adds: ‘Marijuana may have medical uses that science has not discovered. Researchers have been afraid to use it experimentally because of the stigma associated with it.’ The federal National Institute of Mental Health has expressed interest in seeing marijuana’s active ingredients isolated, Dr. Buckley says. . . . A Pittsburgh attorney who has made an extensive study of marijuana contends that it is harmless. The Attorney, who declined to be identified, is one of a growing number of persons who believe ‘pot’ should be legalized. Marijuana proponents have banded together and called themselves LEMAR (LEgalize MARijuana). They contend that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco.” (98)
Image #161: “Charged,” The Des Moines Register, Des Moines, Iowa, February 15th, 1967, p. 2
Image #162: “Raid on home of a Stone,” Sunday Mirror, London, England, February 19th, 1967, p. 7
Image #163: Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler posed for this mug shot in March 1967 after Yonkers, New York cops busted him, then 18, for pot possession. Image from: https://classicrockstarsbirthdays.over-blog.com/2014/03/happy-birthday-steven-tyler.html
One of the many “drugs on campus” scare stories that appeared during this time found its way into the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in May of 1967. Titled “Going After Drugs on the Campus,” it mentioned that;
“If the user is unstable to start with, even a small amount of the drug can produce mental derangement, and the psychosis can last weeks or even months. Law enforcement agents are taught that a marijuana smoker can be even more dangerous than a heroin addict. The craving for heroin usually leads to commission of crimes aimed at getting money to buy the narcotic; marijuana, with the false courage it can impart, the hallucinations it induces and its general unpredictable effects, can trigger irrational acts. . . . Some people, including a number of physicians and psychologists, argue that marijuana should be legalized, contending that its hazards have been exaggerated and the drug presents a minor problem compared to abusive use of alcohol. But federal authorities and many other scientists vigorously oppose the suggestion. ‘Surely society has a right, indeed an obligation, to limit distribution of potentially dangerous and medically useless drugs,’ says Dr. Louria. “We must not overreact to use of marijuana, but we cannot afford to legalize it.’” (99)
On May 10th, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones had his house raided. The police found a “planted vial of ‘pathetic grass’” in the house. (100)
Image #164: “Girls scream at accused pop star,” Southern Daily Echo, Southhampton, England, May 11th, 1967, p. 1
Just three months earlier, on February 11th, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were caught in a drug raid in Keith’s “posh country home” – Redlands – in what appears to be another set-up. The subsequent trials, convictions and over-turned convictions filled the newspapers for months with scandalous tales of the hedonistic rock and roll lifestyle (they got high regularly!) and the somewhat salacious detail of a 20-year-old woman named Marianne Faithfull – a blonde bombshell singer and actor – arrested wearing just a rug and a smile.
Image #165: “Mick Jagger hears story of drugs,” STONES’ PARTY RAID: ‘HEMP, HEROIN FOUND’,” Evening Standard, May 10th, 1967, p. 1
Image #166: “In 1967, the Rolling Stones singer was imprisoned for 3 months for possession of amphetamine. This is how he was transported to prison.” Image from: https://hir.ma/18-2/dobbenetes-kepek-a-tortenelembol/203493
Image #167: “The Rolling Stones & The Redlands Drug Bust: 53 years ago today, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards became the first pop stars to get caught with narcotics and sent to prison.” AARON CHAN 2/12/20 Image from: https://www.smackmedia.ca/deep-cuts/the-rolling-stones-the-redlands-drug-bust
The raids had the opposite of the intended effect. The Rolling Stones were now seen as both rebellious and unfairly persecuted. A now-famous editorial in the London Times written by none other than the editor, conservative politician and one-day member of the House of Lords, William Rees-Mogg was published. It was titled “Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?” and basically put forth the notion that jail for possessing drugs was over-kill. He wrote an indictment of the heavy-handedness of the sentences – Jagger was sentenced to three months in jail for possession of four pep pills legally bought in Italy and recommended – but not prescribed – by his doctor, and Keith Richards was sentenced to a year in jail for allowing hashish to be smoked in his house;
“The normal penalty is probation, and the purpose of probation is to encourage the offender to develop his career and to avoid the drug risks in the future. It is surprising therefore that Judge Block should have decided to sentence Mr. Jagger to imprisonment and particularly surprising as Mr. Jagger’s is about as mild a drug case as can ever have been brought before the Courts. It would be wrong to speculate on the judge’s reasons which we do not know. It is however, possible to consider the public reaction. There are many people who take a primitive view of the matter, what one might call a pre-legal view of the matter. They consider that Mr. Jagger has ‘got what was coming to him.’ They resent the anarchic quality of the Rolling Stones’ performances, dislike their songs, dislike their influence on teenagers and broadly suspect them of decadence, a word used by Miss Monica Furlong in the Daily Mail. As a sociological concern this may be reasonable enough, and at an emotional level it is very understandable, but it has nothing at all to do with the case. One has to ask a different question: has Mr. Jagger received the same treatment as he would have received if he had not been a famous figure, with all the criticism and resentment his celebrity has aroused?” (101)
Image #168: “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel? William Rees‑Mogg’s original leader in full” July 1st, 1967 Image from: https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/europe-travel/italy/who-breaks-a-butterfly-on-a-wheel-williamreesmoggs-original-leader-in-full-l5zhdcm7g
This op-ed would be followed by the full-page ad paid for by the Beatles that appeared in the London Times on the 24th of the same month. That full page ad would itself be cited in at the beginning of the Wootton Report as the reason for the creation of the report, just one year later. Clearly, the lesson for every pot activist was that being attacked by the police sometimes provided opportunities to change the dialogue and dispel lies – especially if the targets of the attack were high-profile.
LIFE magazine would do a story on marijuana on July 7th. Titled “Marijuana: Millions of Turned-on Users,” (102) LIFE borrowed a term from Tim Leary’s now-famous “tune in, turn on, drop out” LSD advice that he gave at the Human Be-In 7 months earlier. The Life reporter tells the public just how far the debate has shifted in the last few years;
“Some authorities estimate as many as 10 million Americans have tried marijuana at least once, and the number of users is increasing rapidly. … One reason for the explosion is that old fears concerning marijuana have proved to be exaggerated. Pot is not physically addicting, nor need it lead to crime, immorality or stronger drugs. Other dangers, of course, remain: a driver who is high on pot is as lethal as a drunk, and the laws governing anyone caught possessing or peddling marijuana are extremely severe, often with mandatory jail sentences.” (103)
Image #169: “Marijuana: Millions of Turned-on Users,” Life magazine, July 7th, 1967, pp. 20, 21
The rest of the article was filled with mentioning the many vague dangers of smoking marijuana to the young – who didn’t know any better:
“It acts on the nervous system as part relaxant, part stimulant, and the psychic effects may vary from sleepy contentment to wide-awake euphoria. It distorts perceptions and the sense of time and space, though not to the extreme degree LSD does. In unstable individuals marijuana has on rare occasions been known to cause anxiety and panic, and even to precipitate psychotic incidents. . . . The kids who are so sure they can handle it do not understand the nature of what they are dealing with, nor its effects on their attitudes and outlook.” (104)
One might argue – after being exposed to more accurate information – that it was both cannabis and cannabis prohibition which had been misunderstood by most adults for decades, would continue to be misunderstood by many adults to this day, and it was the pot laws in particular which would have negative effects on their attitudes and outlook.
On July 11th, just 10 days after the July 1st “Butterfly” op-ed in the London Times, the Sydney Morning Herald published a similar article, painting the drug war as an inter-generational war that the young were winning and the old should consider surrendering. See if you can detect a pro-legalization spin hidden in the last four sentences;
“‘Drug-taking,’ wrote Dr. West, ‘readily arouses public concern owing to the popular idea that it leads inevitably to moral degradation and hopeless addiction. Actually, the majority of students and others who try out ‘reefers’ or ‘pep’ pills suffer no obvious harm. No one feels pleased at the spectacle of teenagers emerging from notorious cafes glazed-eyed and ‘high,’ but is it any sadder than the sight of older age groups rolling home drunk when the bars close? The public has a curious double standard in regard to alcohol compared with other intoxicants.’” (105)
On July 16th, 1967, “The Putting Together Of The Heads” legalize pot rally occurred in Hyde Park, London, England. Allen Ginsberg spoke. Video footage of the event that survives on the internet depict people carrying signs that said “CHANGE THE DRUG LAWS” and “LEGALISE POT.” (106) That same evening, Lennon and McCartney sang background vocals on the Rolling Stones anti-pot-war song “We Love You,” with Ginsberg present. (107) It was decided at the rally to put the full-page ad in the London Times.
Image #170: “LEGALISE POT RALLY, 1967, ‘Legalise Pot Rally, Speakers Corner, Hyde Park, Sunday July 16, 2pm’, designed by Mike McInnerney, 105 in Osiris series, printed by TRS for Osiris (Visions) Ltd.” Image from: https://www.sworder.co.uk/auction/lot/297-legalise-pot-rally/?lot=422632&sd=1
Image #171: Poster by Martin Sharp advertising the LEGALISE CANNABIS: THE PUTTING TOGETHER OF THE HEADS event, July 16th, Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, London. Image from:
https://www.rockpaperfilm.com/posters/martin-sharp-legalise-cannabis-rally-hyde-park-bo1-1967/
Image #172: Photo from the July 16th, 1967 event in Hyde Park, London. Photo from HIPPIES – HYPOCRISY and “HAPPINESS,” Ambassador College Press, Pasadena, California, 1968, p. 23
Image #173: “The Press Made Fun Of Dope Dope Smoking Hyde Park Hippies. 1960s Entertainment News” Image from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4WYf1IllEw
Image #174: “Legalize Pot Rally, Hyde Park, London, England, 1967” Image from: https://beatles-chronology.ru/1967/07/16/den-otdykha-145/ “July 16, 1967 – Allen Ginsberg at a marijuana legalization event in Hyde Park wearing a shirt given to him the day before by Paul McCartney, photo by Robert Whitaker.” https://www.the-paulmccartney-project.com/1967/07/paul-mccartney-meets-with-allen-ginsberg/
Image #175: “The Press Made Fun Of Dope Dope Smoking Hyde Park Hippies. 1960s Entertainment News” Image from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4WYf1IllEw
News of the London rally even made US papers the next month;
“Although only a small minority of flower children smoke marijuana, they are united behind the campaign to make it legal. The campaign kicked off with a demonstration in Hyde Park recently during which 5,000 hippies milled around under the benevolent eye of the cops, who warmed them not to trample the tulip beds. As to the next step towards making pot respectable, the campaigners forked out $5,000 for a full-page advertisement in the London Times proclaiming that ‘the law against marijuana is immoral in principal and unworkable in practice’.” (108)
The July 24th, 1967 cover of Newsweek depicts a man’s hand holding a joint, passing it to the hand of a woman. The number one hit for that week in the American Billboard charts was the Doors song “Light My Fire,” arguably a song about a man offering to share a joint with a woman, and the romantic consequences of that act. One could speculate that the popularity of the song played some role in the editorial decision to go with a cannabis cover story during that particular time period. So arguably, it wasn’t coincidence that a “light my fire” themed cover story was visible while the same theme played on the radio.
Image #176: Newsweek magazine, July 24, 1967, featuring “MARIJUANA: The Pot Problem.”
And it also wasn’t really a coincidence that this author’s particular issue of Newsweek was cover-dated for the exact same day the full-page ad in the London Times appeared – July 24th, 1967. Again, the agitators for drug peace had set into motion both the ad in the times AND the zeitgeist spreading throughout youth culture, with the puff-in, then the protest, then the Be-In (a smoke-in and mass LSD festival disguised as a “happening”). Youth culture began to flex its muscles globally. The Summer of Love had its theme song and its aphrodisiac.
If the US birthrate hit a peak in 1948, then that peak turned 19 in 1967. The baby boomers now had jobs and were flexing their economic and cultural might. They didn’t want to hear Lawrence Welk. They wanted to hear the Beatles and the Doors and the Stones and Pink Floyd and anything else that sounded cool when time was slowed down. These types of “same day” events were likely to happen sooner or later, given the effects that the new global youth culture was having on global pop culture.
The real coincidence (at least from my own personal perspective) concerns who a particular Newsweek magazine – the copy obtained by this author – belonged to. If you look closely at the address on the label, it says “R Krieger, 216 Third Ave, Venice, Ca.” This is undoubtedly the name and address of Robbie Krieger, guitarist of the Doors and the very person who wrote the song “Light My Fire.” This very issue of Newsweek took note of and aided in the transformation of American culture from pot-fearing to pot-curious to herbally-hip, and it was in the mailbox of one of the main transformers at the moment his contribution to the transformation became the anthem of that transformation.
Not everyone believed that “Light My Fire” was about lighting a joint, but when the Doors played the Ed Sullivan Show on US cable TV, Sullivan’s people thought “Light My Fire” was about drugs, and insisted that Jim change the song’s lyrics from “Girl we couldn’t get much higher” to “Girl we couldn’t get much better” – an attempt at censoring the Doors that was met with a legendary failure:
“The band agreed to do so, and did a rehearsal using the amended lyrics, ‘girl, we couldn’t get much better’; however, during the live performance, the band’s lead singer Jim Morrison sang the original, unaltered lyrics.Ed Sullivan did not shake Jim Morrison’s hand as he left the stage. The band had been negotiating a multi-episode deal with the producers; however, after violating the agreement not to perform the offending line, they were informed they would never do the Sullivan show again. Morrison’s response was ‘Hey man. We just did the Sullivan show.’”(109)
Image #177: “When The Doors Defied Ed Sullivan” Image from: https://bestclassicbands.com/doors-ed-sullivan-9-15-17/
The contents of the Newsweek article – “The Marijuana Problem” – could be summed up this way: “Not enough is known about its effects on the brain, so you better avoid doing it.” There was a slight debunking of the reefer madness propaganda of the last few decades, but then the “we don’t know enough” argument appeared;
“Most researchers have found little reason to blame marijuana for crimes or violent behavior. Many reports linking criminal acts to marijuana come from the defendants themselves and, therefore, may only be pretexts. . . . No one has yet found just where pot acts in the brain and what it does to nerve cells. One reason so little research has been done, of course, is the legal red tape involved in obtaining pot for laboratory use. … ‘Advocates of legalized pot,’ says NIMH director Stanley Yolles, ‘are going a little too fast without any real fundamental information about the pharmacological effects.’” (110)
Image #178: “MARIJUANA: The Pot Problem,” Newsweek, July 24, 1967, p. 50
So too, one might argue, did the advocates of criminalizing pot – before it was criminalized – and now that it had been criminalized for decades, the evidence of the harms of pot laws were clear, while the evidence of the harms of pot were vague. One doctor did manage to get a profound truth into the discussion;
“‘If marijuana were not called terrible by society’ says Fort, ‘everyone would find it a mild drug that has little effect except to stimulate the appetite, slow down the time sense and create a mild euphoria, and that would be that. Then we could go on to the bigger problems of facing life as it is.’” (111)
The article also mentioned two rock and roll songs – The Beatles “A Day In The Life” (released on Sgt. Pepper in May of 1967) and the Rolling Stones “Something Happened To Me Yesterday” (released on Between The Buttons in January of 1967 – that were about “psychedelic messages.” (112)
Students of Beatles history know now that the “went up stairs and had a smoke, somebody spoke and I went into a dream” lyrics in “A Day In The Life” was about pot, of course, but the “I want to turn you on” part was an LSD reference. (113) Students of Stones history would argue that “Something Happened To Me Yesterday” was just about LSD. (114)
Image #179: Image from: https://www.liveinternet.ru/users/5347628/post328166275
Image #180: “A rug on the nude is not a nude on hemp,” The Kokomo Morning Times, Kokomo, Indiana, August 1st, 1967, p. 3
Pot began to be referenced in jazz songs in the 1920s, and made it into many jazz songs in the 30s. In 1953 comedian/pianist Tom Lehrer recorded “Be Prepared,” a song about the Boy Scouts, with the following lyrics:
“Keep those reefers hidden where you’re sure that they will not be found, and be careful not to smoke them when the scoutmaster’s around, for he only will insist that they be shared – be prepared!” (115)
In 1957, the musical West Side Story – with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim – began its run on Broadway, and was made into a major motion picture in 1961. In the song “Gee, Officer Krupke,” members of the Jets gang sing their sob story, with one of them playing the local beat cop Krupke, whom the rest sing to:
“Dear kindly Judge, your Honor, my parents treat me rough. With all their marijuana, they won’t give me a puff.” (116)
In 1966, three songs came out that were probably about pot but which all contained some built-in plausible deniability. Bob Dylan released “Rainy Day Woman” which, apparently, is a beatnik term for “joint,” and contained the line “Everybody must get stoned!” Dylan insisted the word “stoned” referred to being killed by people throwing stones;
“‘It doesn’t surprise me thatsome people would see it that way,’ he told Rolling Stone in 2012. ‘But these are people that aren’t familiar with the Book of Acts.’” (117)
Ray Charles selected a song with similar plausible deniability to cover for his 1966 number 1 hit: “Let’s Go Get Stoned,” which could arguably be about cannabis or about alcohol or about heroin, given both the original meaning of the term “stoned,” (118) and the various drugs Charles used to get stoned. (119)
The Beatles 1966 song “Got To Get You Into My Life” was Paul McCartney’s “ode to pot” (120) – as he found he needed “another kind of mind” that he wanted to experience “every single day of my life.” The Beatles would put out at least three more drug songs in 1967: the previously-mentioned “A Day In The Life,” the supposedly-not-about-LSD-but-come-on-really “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” and the pretty obvious “With A Little Help From My Friends,” which contained the lyric “I get high with a little help from my friends,” which Nixon’s VP Spiro Agnew quoted in 1970 in an attempt to get the song banned from the radio. (121) The Beatles claimed at the time they meant “spiritually high.” (122)
The most up-front, undeniable reference to cannabis in pop music in 1967 came from folk singer and human rights activist Phil Ochs, who wrote the protest song “Outside of a Small Circle of Friends,” which contained the lyric;
“Smoking marihuana is more fun than drinking beer,But a friend of ours was captured and they gave him thirty yearsMaybe we should raise our voices, ask somebody whyBut demonstrations are a drag, besides we’re much too highAnd I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybodyOutside of a small circle of friends” (123)
The airways were filled with pot references in a way that dominated the collective mind, similar to the way jazz and its many pot-references dominated the minds of the public in the 1930s. The newspapers were still full of semi-scare stories about pot, but you could imagine frustration from the pot prohibitionists that their message wasn’t believed by modern music lovers anymore. Admittedly, the anti-pot crowd could enjoy obscure songs such as the 1951 song “Marijuana – The Devil’s Flower” by Mr. Sunshine and his Guitar Pickers, or the 1968 fiasco titled “The Pot Smoker’s Song” by Neil Diamond, or the 1971 song “Marijuana, the Devil Flower” by Johnny Price, or the 1971 homage to the stepping-stone theory “A Box Of Grass” by Buck Jones, but that crowd would have to wait until 1969 for the anti-pot/anti-hippie anthem “Okie from Muskogee” by Merle Haggard {who by 2003 had changed his mind about pot (124)} or 1970 for the arguably anti-pot song “One Toke Over The Line” by Brewer & Shipley before anti-pot sensibilities made it into popular music.
Image #181: “Young man, you’ve got nothing there but weeds!” The Columbian, Vancouver, Washington, August 9th, 1967, p. 12
Image #182: Robert Plant, one year before he joined Led Zeppelin, standing amongst supporters. The sign behind him says “Robert Plant must go free.” “The ‘flower children – POP SINGER WEARS GREEN ‘ORIENTAL CLOTHES’ IN COURT,” Birmingham Evening Mail and Despatch, Birmingham, England, August 11th, 1967, p. 2
Image #183: “If a picture paints a thousand words, then the photograph of Robert Plant, shot in the West Midlands town of Wednesbury on August 10, 1967, tells quite a story. In the photo, the future Led Zeppelin frontman can be seen surrounded by young people dressed in regulation Summer Of Love attire. They’re holding placards.” Image from: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/true-story-robert-plant-fake-085929969.html
In 1967, you could occasionally hear the voice of sympathetic reporters trying to jam as much reality into their report while feeling pressure from above to toe the line. One or both of those things may have been going on in the following article – “Marijuana Users Face Severe Punishment”- which appeared in the Democrat and Chronicle in August of 1967;
“But among American young people today marijuana is something new – the subject of much talk and increasing experimentation, a symbol of defiance and independence. In spite of almost daily warning on the dangers of the drug, the word has got around that marijuana is the mildest and safest of the so-called ‘mind-expanding’ drugs. The user will not become physically addicted, as does the heroin user or the alcoholic and he will not run the risk of ‘going out of his mind’ in the bizarre and dangerous fashion of the LSD user. Psychotic reactions are not unknown among marijuana users, but they seem to occur among those who are already disoriented and not in the case of reasonably normal persons.” (125)
Then, after explaining all the horrible punishments in great detail, the reporter goes on to say;
“Yet the prevailing laws are based on the position long held by the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics that marijuana can be a stepping stone to drug addiction. A growing number of authorities advocate reduction of legal penalties against marijuana use. Some groups even urge the legalization of the drug. One student recently told a newspaper reporter: ‘You know, some day there could be a reefer hour instead of a cocktail hour.’ That day certainly has not arrived. But it does appear that sympathy is being won for a reevaluation of the effects of current marijuana laws on today’s new generation of pot smokers.” (126)
Image #184: “Marijuana Produced Artificially,” The Mercury, Pottstown, Pennsylvania, August 17th, 1967, p. 9
Image #185: “Are ‘Hippies’ Right About Smoking ‘Pot’,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August 19th, 1967, p. 19
In the Philadelphia Inquirer’s full-page article entitled “Marijuana – ‘Intoxicant in an Already Overburdened Society’,” the health-effects section was limited to a booklet with a not-very-critical summary of those effects by the relatively progressive National Education Association – a teacher’s union and the largest union in the United States. Their booklet states;
“. . . to date, available information indicates that marijuana has few detrimental side effects on any individual’s personal health. In contrast, the use of tobacco and alcohol can contribute to hearth, circulatory and respiratory illnesses. ‘If I had to choose between alcohol and pot,’ said Dr. David H. Powelson, chief of the psychiatric services at the University of California, Berkeley, ‘I’d choose pot.’” (127)
Image #186: “A Walk on the East Side . . .” Daily News, New York, New York, August 22nd, 1967, p. 690
Image #187: “The ‘Love Generation’ Protests,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, Cincinnati, Ohio, September 16th, 1967, p. 6
Image #188: “Hippies Protest, Beg Up Bail,” New York Post, New York, New York, August 23rd, 1967
Image #189: “‘Hippie Hero Dana Beal, 21, is carried on the shoulders of friends after he was released on $3,000 bail on charges of selling LSD, his arrest touched off an all night vigil by some 25 hippie friends outside the Federal courthouse.’ Lower Manhattan, New York August 23, 1967” Image from: www.thecannachronicles.com/hippie-hero-1967/
Image #190: “Hippie Folk Hero Released On Bond,” The REGISTER, Santa Ana, California, August 24th, 1967, p. A8
Another challenge to the pot laws came in September of 1967, in Boston, an academic enclave. It was the court case of two young men who had their shipment of five pounds of pot intercepted by narcotics agents. The debate in court focused on the issue of “psychotic breakdowns.” On the witness stand was Dr. Joel Fort, founder and director of the Center for Special Problems in San Francisco – a cutting-edge addiction treatment center – and the most progressive voice in the July 24th Newsweek cover story;
“In his arguments, St. Clair fought for retention of the state and Federal statutes which he said protects against the widespread use of marijuana, an agent that can lead to more serious drug use and psychotic breakdowns to those predisposed. Ford testified that such breakdowns would require an inordinate amount of the type of marijuana used in this country. He classified that likelihood of such a breakdown as almost negligible.” (128)
Image #191: “New, Potent Marijuana Is Reported,” St. Petersburg Times (Tampa Bay Times), St. Petersburg, Florida, September 22nd, 1967, p. 6
Just to remind everyone what a terrible scourge hashish was, an article entitled “Egyptian Dope Trade Booms Despite Death Penalty” was published in a Hackensack, New Jersey paper, outlining the severe punishments that were increasingly extreme – with little effect on use rates:
“‘The severe penalty inflicted upon traffickers (recently put up to capital punishment though no cases have yet been executed), and the penalty on users (up to several years imprisonment) make it risky to depend solely on official statistics of convicted cases,’ he reports in the United Nations Bulletin on Narcotics.” (129)
In a column by Robert Reinhold of the New York Times and syndicated in other newspapers entitled “Marijuana – medically safe or not?” the theme of “we don’t know enough” was the dominant spin;
“There is no direct evidence that marijuana causes any long-range personality changes. However, because marijuana is forbidden and its use is generally covert, such changes are difficult to identify. Nor has marijuana been shown conclusively to cause lasting mental disturbances. But there have been reports of temporary psychotic reactions, acute panic reactions and delusions with very large doses. . . . Most pharmacologists and psychiatrists are taking a wait-and-see attitude. They say, in effect, that it is impossible, on the basis of current evidence, to pronounce marijuana medically safe or dangerous.” (130)
Image #192: “JAILED,” The Daily Home News, New Brunswick, New Jersey, October 19th, 1967, p. 36
Image #193: “Girls weep as Rolling Stone Jones is gaoled,” The Guardian Journal, October 31st, 1967, p. 3
Image #194: “SIDEWALK STAND,” Newsday (Suffolk Edition), Melville, New York, November 15th, 1967, p. 3
In another story about the influx of cannabis on campus, the faculty at Yale had given up attempting to stigmatize cannabis at all, focusing their attention instead on the value of obedience (or perhaps discretion);
“Yale deans generally limit themselves to warning pot-smoking students about the dangers of arrest.” (131)
The “we don’t know enough about marijuana to say what it’s harms really are” theme continued with an article in a December 3rd, 1967 Binghamton, New York newspaper expose on pot and LSD: “A Trip for Truth About Mind Benders.” The hubris – even in admitting one’s ignorance – was stunning;
“But no definitive scientific answer has been possible for the most part about marijuana – a plant – because until recently there was no unequivocally known potency. One cigaret could be far different from another because of soil, weather and harvesting. This tended to make experts skeptical of claims that a single cigaret could produce any given effect. More so, very little scientific research was conducted because of a dominant law enforcement attitude, shared by portions of the medical profession, that there was no medical use for the drug. Now there is a synthetic, THC, which scientists feel will allow them to conduct valid research as to what it does and why it is used. This research is now going on in 19 projects. There also is prospect that the American Medical Association’s council on drugs will conduct a scientific study.” (132)
Translation: “We know nothing of self-titration or the typical potency of hashish imports or the entourage effect of the various cannabinoids and terpenes, so instead of studying actual cannabis used by people as intelligently as possible in their natural surroundings we’re instead going to conduct animal studies with pure THC for the next 60 years, carefully avoiding learning anything from history or herbalism and whole-plant medicine, refusing to incorporate any proper use rituals created by the subculture, with a process designed by researchers biased against non-proprietary medicine and funded by an entire industry made mostly of cannabis medicine substitutes, with enormous pressure on researchers to find an inherently harmful characteristic of cannabis while avoiding researching benefits altogether.”
The same sentiment was echoed in a two-page L.A. Times feature story the very next day. The take-away sentiment at the end stated;
“It seems safe to conjecture that all this harmful-vs.-harmless debate, with its endless ramifications, will continue until research scientists produce the definitive answer. For the present, says Dr. David Lewis of Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital: ‘The truth is really in the area of the unknown.’ Meanwhile, law enforcement must cope. Chief Reddin says he’s perfectly willing to ‘let the scientists and lawmakers take over, and when they find the total answer, we will do as they say.’ Until then, he said, policemen must enforce the law as it’s written now. And he added: ‘Based on the findings of men I’ve spent most of my adult career working with, men who have worked with the marijuana problem, I have to conclude the drug should be outlawed. In the absence of scientific proof otherwise, I couldn’t change my mind.’” (133)
The “enough missing data to admit ignorance but not enough missing data to admit error” theme continued right up until the end of the year, with full page articles such as “GOING TO POT” in the New York Daily News. FDA Commissioner James L. Goddard was pictured with a tobacco pipe in his mouth, and quoted as saying;
“We don’t know what [marijuana’s] long term effects are. For example, we don’t know whether or not it may alter the chromosomes, as LSD may do. I wouldn’t want young women who haven’t been married and had children to be affected. . . . We need more research on chronic use and I think this research will start now.” (134)
And just to balance all the positive and neutral press, the reporter got a quote from one of the remaining doctors who was still spouting the reefer madness narrative;
“Dr. Donald B. Louria, chairman of the New York State Council on Drug Addiction, says further that ‘marijuana in virtually any dose can cause deterioration and have a deleterious effect on the personality.’” (135)
Image #195: “John Steinbeck’s Son Cleared,” The Kansas City Times, Kansas City, Missouri, December 21st, 1967, p. 2
Image #196: “Pentagon Denies Claim That Many GIs Puff Pot,” Dayton Daily News, Dayton, Ohio, December 28th, 1967, p. 15
The 1968 film Maryjane, starring teenage heartthrob Fabien, attempted to show the divide between the older generation and the younger. Fabien played a progressive, younger-than-the-rest-of-the-faculty football coach who challenged the Gestapo tactics of his fellow teachers when it came to dealing with the problem of marijuana in their high school. At 27:39 of the film, Fabien shared his point of view in his big speech;
“I’ve read about marijuana. It does less damage than cigarettes or alcohol. The worst thing I know about it – that it’s illegal . . . I don’t condemn it and I don’t condone it. I don’t know that much about it.” (136)
The film, however, stigmatized cannabis use, indicating it led to impaired driving and bad life choices. Both versions of the movie poster promise to deliver “the shocking FACTS behind the marijuana controversy!” but aside from the “less damage than” the two most damaging drugs in the world, it was pretty short on facts, and full of hype.
Image #197: Growing Marijuana, L.M. Provancha, Langdon Enterprises, 1968. Image from: https://overgrow.com/t/let-s-see-those-old-grow-guides-and-collectibles/81870/61
Image #198: “BIG HAUL OF MARIJUANA – Mexican Police Make Seizure in Tijuana,” The Kansas City Times, Kansas City, Missouri, February 20th, 1968, p. 7
Image #199: “BIG MARIJUANA SEIZURE MADE,” The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, Louisiana, February 27th, 1968, p. 8
Image #200: “BIG MARIJUANA SEIZURE MADE,” The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, Louisiana, February 27th, 1968, p. 8
Image #201: “MARIJUANA FOUND – Negro Advisor To Coop Charged,” The Dothan Eagle, Dothan, Alabama, March 24th, 1968, p. 1
The Musical Hair had an off-Broadway debut the year before and debuted on Broadway in April of 1968. “Hashish” – a list of popular recreational drugs put to music – was the third song of the show, with hashish topping the list. With all the anti-war messaging, nudity and flag desecration depicted in the play, hardly any notice was made of the pro-drug sentiments. (137)
One film with zero cannabis-related stigma was the 1968 grindhouse artsy soft-porn flick Smoke And Flesh, which basically depicted people sharing a joint and then living their best lives. Pot wasn’t depicted as problematic, just a sensuality enhancer. The dialogue wasn’t that memorable, but the movie – apart from showing a more realistic depiction of cannabis use – contained an early depiction of interracial sexuality. It was released on August 23rd, 1968, (138) about three months before the famous interracial kiss between Captain Kirk and Lt. Uhura on Star Trek (139) – the first interracial kiss ever broadcast on TV.
Image #202: Movie ad for “SMOKE AND FLESH,” Vancouver Sun, Vancouver, British Columbia, October 18th, 1968, p. 32
Image #203: “Turk, a ‘cool swinger’, throws and wild sex and drugs party, but has trouble when three hoodlum friends of his crash the party and Turk resorts to drastic measures to remove them from the festivities.” SMOKE AND FLESH movie poster. Image from: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063616/?ref_=mv_desc
A similar 1968 documentary/exploitation soft porn film Like It Is had even more boobies and more pot. (140) The 1968 documentary Revolution had lots of interviews with real hippies – pot and nudity seemed to be its focus as well. (141)
One of the movie posters for Revolution pointed to Haight-Ashbury as the epicenter of the scene, explaining “The sex is free. The pot is cheap. Everyone can afford the acid.”
The number of “drugsploitation” films, especially when including ones about LSD, enjoyed an exponential increase in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with most of them either neutral or foisting maximum stigma.
And then there existed movies that were both terrible in their attempt to demonize cannabis users, and terrible in the execution of the craft of film making. The 1968 documentary Marijuana, narrated by a seemingly heavily-sedated Sonny Bono of Sonny and Cher fame, was painful to watch in both of those respects. A pitiful attempt at an unbiased look at the issue of the effects of cannabis, a reviewer summed up the format:
“. . . arguments for and against its use are presented and the accumulation of arguments against is allowed to speak for itself”. (142)
Image #204: “PHYSICAL DANGERS: A depressant which hampers mental judgement. EMOTIONAL (DRUG) DEPENDENCY: Marijuana could lead to hard drugs causing a breakdown in moral judgement, and social attitudes.” Promotional material for the film “MARIJUANA” with Sonny Bono. 1968
Image #205: “Seventh Grade Ses Marijuana Film,” The Standard-Star, New Rochelle, New York, December 6th, 1968, p. 29
Image #206: Screenshot from the film Marijuana, Max Miller, 1968. Image from: https://archive.org/details/Marijuana_1968
Image #2207: Screenshot from the film Marijuana, Max Miller, 1968. Image from: https://archive.org/details/Marijuana_1968
Image #208: Screenshot from the film Marijuana, Max Miller, 1968. Image from: https://archive.org/details/Marijuana_1968
The myths of inherent impairment, amotivational syndrome, the stepping stone theory, criminogenic side effects and a pathological mental dependence were trotted out and assumed to be true, with zero evidence presented. The “herbal medicine = synthetic medicine” argument was also made, and is worth a closer examination, because it can be found so often in the 21st century;
“From Aspirin to the latest vaccine – manufacture and control of all drugs is government supervised. Would you really want it any other way – like without government supervision? As a drug, marijuana comes under the supervision of the federal and state governments. It is the assigned work of the police to enforce the law. It is not something they dreamed up by their own. From the Ten Commandments to the Constitution, man has made laws to protect him from hurting himself, in the common interest of the group called society. Doctors, psychiatrists, social scientists, chemists, biochemists, basically people who are not primarily concerned with the ethics or morality of the use of marijuana have provided their expert knowledge to our legislators, which in turn has caused them to pass laws to make marijuana illegal – not as a matter of morality, but as a matter of health – mental health- period.” (143)
Notice how that’s the exact opposite of how the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was drafted? US government officials ignored the advice of the AMA’s Dr. Woodward (see Chapter 6). Any systematic attempt at evaluating any possible inherent harms of cannabis (Indian Hemp Commission, the LaGuardia committee) have been ignored, and – up until this point – the evidence that proves inherent harmfulness was never cited – just assumed.
On January 29th, 1968, the Canadian rock band Steppenwolf released their self-titled album with the song “The Pusher” on it. “The Pusher” attempted to delineate the difference between soft drugs like cannabis with harder substances;
“You know the dealer, the dealer is a manwith a lot of grass in his handAh but the pusher is a monstergood god he’s not a natural manThe dealer, for a nickel lordhe’ll sell you lots of sweet dreamsAh but the pusher’ll ruin your bodylord he’ll leave . . . he’ll leave your mind to screamgod damn ahh the pusher.god damn, god damn the pusher.I said god damn god, god damn the pusherman” (144)
Speaking of the pusher, the pharmaceutical industry representative – the person least likely to evaluate herbal medicine without a prejudice against it – Dr. Thomas L. Perry, a professor of pharmacology at the University of British Columbia, Canada, argued in May of 1968 that “Laws covering the hallucinatory drug LSD and marijuana are illogical and grossly unfair” – not because using these drugs was an intelligent choice, but rather that;
“We should strongly penalize the importers and sellers of these drugs who make money out of it, but not the user who needs the best medical care he can get.” (145)
Thus we have a false dichotomy: a choice between being treated like a criminal, or like an addict who needs medical attention. Being left alone to make one’s own medical choices – medical autonomy – or choosing to have a medical and/or economic relationship with herbal medicines – herbal autonomy – are never considered viable options by those with roles in the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmacologist thus speaks in ways that would limit herbal autonomy while at the same time seems like a progressive voice by advocating some form of “treatment” for one’s intelligent preference instead of punishment.
Dr. Perry’s stigma was threefold. First, he implied cannabis smokers were hurting themselves and needed medical intervention. Second, he suggested cannabis users were a menace on the road;
“He also said many marijuana users are wrong in thinking that the drug is not harmful at all. Use of it could lead to serious traffic accidents because of misjudged speed and distance, he said.” (146)
He’s wrong, of course. This will be addressed in a later chapter, but potheads are safe drivers – much safer than those “under the limit” who have been drinking alcohol. Thirdly, he stated that;
“. . . the real problem with marijuana is that it takes away young people from the really challenging problems in society.” (147)
Arguably, the ones who have been “taken away” from “the real challenging problems” have been the millions of people who got thrown into cages for following their intuition rather than edicts from the state – for exercising their right to medical or vocational autonomy. Many thousands more have devoted their lives to changing this horrible social policy of drug prohibition and have been distracted away from other important work. It’s the cannabis prohibition – not the use of cannabis – that wastes time and wastes lives. Cannabis (the plant) being blamed for what cannabis prohibition (the policy) results in is a common theme of the history of marijuana.
Rather than simply being an intelligent choice of stimulant/relaxant/euphoric/inspirer/focuser – the safest, cheapest and most effective one of those things on planet earth – the professor of Pharmacology instead suggests that cannabis use is a form of rebellion;
“But there is a good reason why they are doing it. They are essentially rejecting the stupidity, double standards and amorality in our society.” (148)
Granted, many cannabis users claim to be doing that too, but the little “stink it to the man” element of cannabis use – offending, shocking and dismaying one’s rulers with one’s autonomy – is merely a bonus element on top of the desirable physical effects, not the goal. This author smoked to get high – disobedience was just icing on that cake.
Image #209: John Sinclair, Ann Arbor, 1968. Image from: https://www.lostinsounddetroit.com/en-ca/products/john-sinclair-hash-bash-2018-limited-edition-photo
In what may be the first ever photograph of a person smoking cannabis in public as a form of protest, on April 14th at the San Francisco Hall of Justice, police Sgt. Richard Burgess (wearing his uniform) lit up a joint in protest of the pot laws, and was quickly arrested and stripped of his police badge and uniform. The newspapers across the country carried photos of Sgt. Burgess puffing proud in the newspapers the next day and in the subsequent days. The quotes given by this police officer of 13 years were astounding for their insightfulness and bravery;
“A veteran policeman found he was a civilian today after leading 150 hippies in a Marijuana ‘puff-in’ on the steps of the Hall of Justice on a sunny Easter afternoon. Police Sgt. Richard R. Bergess, 36, a boyish-looking father of two, was arrested and booked on charges of possession of marijuana after he accepted a light and took a few puffs from a dark-brown cigarette. . . . ‘I want the right to take a different kind of Holy Communion and I don’t want to be sneaky about it,’ said Bergess. ‘I am trying to prove I have the right to do what I want with my own body. I feel the present laws against marijuana and LSD have reached the same absurdity as those against alcohol during prohibition.’ Hippies clapped and cheered. They strewed flowers in his path. They called Bergess ‘sergeant Sunshine’ and carried ‘love’ placards. . . . While a patrolman in the hippie district, he interviewed several of the flower children. ‘I found out I was on the wrong side,’ he said. “I wanted to know what the enemy was. I found out I was the enemy.” (149)
Image #210: “Policeman Fights ‘Pot’ Law,” The Evening Tribune, Cocoa, Florida, April 15th, 1968, p. 3
Image #211: “Law Takes a Potshot At ‘Sgt. Sunshine’,” Dayton Daily News, Dayton, Ohio, April 15th, 1968, p. 1
Image #212: “. . . in 1968, San Francisco police Sgt. Richard Burgess – known as ‘Officer Sunshine’ – lit up a joint on the steps of the Hall of Justice and was promptly dismissed from the force.” Photo from: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2021/visuals/archives-420-day-marijuana/
The nudie magazine Peek-A-Boo in their Spring 1968 issue published a rather even-handed evaluation of the marijuana science up until that point, with the following quote from a Dr. Klob, “America’s leading authority on drug addiction”;
“I have never seen anyone who has been mentally or physically harmed by the use of it.” (150)
In May of 1968 the magazine Popular Science did an investigation of the latest scientific facts on the subject of the effects of cannabis. (151) After pointing out that “no long-term studies have been conducted. Few short-term ones have, either,” FDA Chief Dr. James L. Goddard was quoted;
“For the user of marijuana, the threat is of the unknown effects which science must yet determine.” (152)
The report evaluated various claims of the prohibitionists with various levels of accuracy, and then stated plainly;
“It is also said that marijuana can act as a trigger, bringing on psychosis. And here detractors are on safer ground. One man, in fact, flipped out right under the eyes of researchers at the Federal Addiction Research Center in Lexington, Ky. The program’s aim was to catalogue brain-wave changes in people smoking marijuana. The volunteer had electrodes attached to his scalp, and was told to leisurely puff a cigarette that had been injected with THC. Dr. Harris Isbell, director of the center, says ‘The man was being given a brain-wave test when very suddenly and without warning he reached up, ripped the wires off his head, grabbed a pair of scissors and made threatening motions with them.” (153)
Pure THC – sold as a pharmaceutical drug under various names – has different effects than whole-plant cannabis medicine, as the various cannabinoids and terpenes work as an “entourage.” For example, CBD has anti-psychotic and anti-THC-overdose effects, all of which is then missing from the “cigarette injected with THC.” The advantage with using pure THC is that dosing can be standardized, assisting those conducting the study with their measurements. The disadvantage is that it tells us little about what the effects of smoked whole-plant cannabis are.
Pathological animal experiments and asinine pure-isolate experiments are just two of many examples of the bunk science that results from researcher bias – field studies seem to hold the most value, as they take into account the wisdom of the subject as well as the effects of the actual substance in question, but accurate results are not the desired results of a medical establishment that sees herbal autonomy and medical autonomy as threats to their exclusivity and their captive market.
But then, to his credit, the reporter pointed out the following fact;
“In fact, according to the American Medical Association, there is no evidence that marijuana causes ‘lasting physical and mental changes’ except some constipation, diarrhea, and bronchitis among chronic users.” (154)
This author hasn’t seen any evidence of constipation and diarrhea from cannabis use, or any evidence of bronchitis from those who take small puffs off joints or use multi-chambered room temperature water-filtration devices.
Image #213: “Allen Leaves School, Faces Marijuana Rap,” The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon, May 25th, 1968, p. 29
Image #214: “Judge Says Negro In Marijuana Case Must Stand Trial,” The Dothan Eagle, Dothan, Alabama, July 10th, 1968, p. 16
Image #215: “U.S. Court Sentences 2 Mexicans – Marijuana Offenders Get 5-Year Terms,” Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, Arizona, August 13th, 1968, p. 7
In the fall of 1968, the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs published their “current marijuana issues” edition, published by the Haight-Ashbury Medical Clinic. In an article entitled “A WORLD VIEW OF MARIJUANA” by Dr. Joel Fort, a concise summary of the facts surrounding pot and psychosis could be found;
“In regard to psychosis or mental illness from pot, in the United States, mental hospital records do not show people admitted as the sole result of marijuana usage, and the scattered reports from abroad lack psychiatric examinations of the alleged cannabis psychotics or even elementary use of statistics and scientific method. There have been occasional panic reactions or acute psychotic reactions occurring spontaneously and in one experiment with some twenty heroin addicts, all cleared up within hours. These reactions emphasize the importance of personality or character structure in any mild-altering drug reaction, and indicates, of course, that no potent mind-altering drug is either totally harmless, or always harmful. Probably some reports incorrectly lump together perceptual changes, illusions, hallucinations and ‘psychosis’. Essentially then there is no problem of mental illness directly caused by marijuana use, but if there were it would be pale by comparison with that brought about by abuses of amphetamines, LSD, and most of all, alcohol.” (155)
A different researcher, Roger Smith M.S., pointed out that the AMA was ignored in the drafting of the Marijuana Tax Act;
“The last remaining witness, Dr. William C. Woodward, the legislative council for the American Medical Association, and himself an attorney, opposed the bill on a number of counts. He felt that the state legislation was sufficient to meet the problem, and that previous testimony was based primarily on hearsay evidence. The passage of this act, he added prophetically, would inhibit future research into its pharmacology and would rule out further investigation into the medical possibilities of this drug. He cited its use in medicine as a sedative and muscle relaxant.” (156)
Smith also noted the excuse for prohibition shifted over time from one pretext to the next, without any science ever backing up any of them;
“What we have seen then, in less than thirty years from the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act, is a dramatic transformation in the qualities of a drug, from a substance which produces moral degeneration, and is the cause of crimes of violence, to a drug which has only a tenuous causal relationship to crimes of violence, but is directly responsible for progression to harder narcotics. This transformation took place without benefit of even minimal research into the actual properties of the drug which was severely restricted because of the limitations imposed upon legitimate researchers.” (157)
Image #216: JOURNAL OF PSYCHEDELIC DRUGS, Volume II – Issue 1, Editor David E. Smith, The Haight-Ashbury Medical Clinic, San Francisco, California, (Fall) 1968
Image #217: The Marijuana Review, Vol. 1, #1., October 1968. Image from: “THE MARIJUANA REVIEW: VOL. 1, NO. 1 THRU VOL. 1, NO. 9; A COMPLETE RUN OF THIS INFLUENTIAL PERIODICAL” https://www.abebooks.it/riviste-giornali/MARIJUANA-REVIEW-VOL-VOL-COMPLETE-RUN/31364019227/bd
Image #218: The Marijuana Review, Vol. 1, #1, October 1968, p. 16. Image from: “THE MARIJUANA REVIEW: VOL. 1, NO. 1 THRU VOL. 1, NO. 9; A COMPLETE RUN OF THIS INFLUENTIAL PERIODICAL” https://www.abebooks.it/riviste-giornali/MARIJUANA-REVIEW-VOL-VOL-COMPLETE-RUN/31364019227/bd
Image #219: “IT WAS FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY–OCTOBER 18, 1968- JOHN AND YOKO ARRESTED FOR POSSESSION OF CANNABIS,” Thursday, 18 October 2018. Image from: https://slicethelife.com/2018/10/18/it-was-fifty-years-ago-today-october-18-1968-john-and-yoko-arrested-for-possession-of-cannabis/
Image #220: “Beatle Fans Mob Lennon In Court,” The Evening Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, October 19th, 1968, p. 3
Having little new scary data to share, many newspapers reporting on cannabis crop seizures or intercepted hashish shipments during this period focused on the economics of the industry and didn’t mention negative side effects. (158)
Stigma was left to the experts. Famous advice columnist Ann Landers was asked about pot at least twice in 1968 – and both times she came back with misinformation. In an article entitled “Experts Say No On ‘Pot’,” Landers responds to a reader’s questions about cannabis with quotes from “three of the country’s most distinguished psychiatrists”;
“Dr. Edward M. Litin, Head of Psychiatry at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn., says: ‘I am dead set against marijuana because it produces confusion, hallucinations and impulsive behavior. While some marijuana users have no inclinations to try anything stronger, many do graduate from pot to more powerful drugs and of course this can lead to serious trouble.’ Dr. Zigmond M. Lebensohn, Chief of Psychiatry at Sibley Memorial Hospital, Washington D.C., says: ‘I consider marijuana a serious problem for our ‘alienated youth.’ It is not harmless, as some users insist, and I am sorry the notion that it is non-addictive has gained such wide acceptance. Although people who use marijuana do not experience withdrawal symptoms when it is removed, they are tremendously drawn to it and many users go back to marijuana after they have left the hospital because they want to recapture the pleasurable feeling. This dependency is just as serious as physical addiction. In my professional experience I have seen a number of young people experience psychotic episodes precipitated by marijuana. Intense emotional experiences were sufficient to tip the balance in the direction of acute psychotic disorganization. This sometimes lasts for weeks and even months. In certain instances, the effects continue indefinitely and cause complete disruption of a life plan, tremendous expense to the smoker and his family and the end is often a totally unproductive human being. Some individuals have been able to use marijuana and get away with it, but these individuals have stable nervous systems. Most young people who smoke marijuana do not have stable central nervous systems and for this reason it is particularly dangerous for them.’ Dr. Philip Soloman, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard, says: ‘Some people have smoked marijuana for years and have experienced no damage whatever. For others it has proved disastrous. Marijuana is not harmless. It may not be addictive but it is habit-forming. In unstable personalities marijuana can be the trigger that precipitates psychosis. Marijuana is the coward’s approach to dealing with life’s problems. Escaping does not produce a solution. It merely distorts the judgment and delays acting on a solution. Prolonged and continued escape can and will create serious incapacitation and move a person farther and farther from reality.” (159)
Again in November of the same year, Ann Landers was asked about the statement made by Dr. Nicholas Malleson, head of London University’s Student Health Center, who questioned the official narrative. Ann Landers responded with other experts who said the opposite;
“. . . he would prefer that his teenage son smoke marijuana rather than overindulge in alcohol or ride a motorcycle without a crash helmet. Dr. Malleson added, ‘In my view marijuana is not a harmful drug.’ . . . His views were instantly challenged by Dr. Elizabeth Tylden, consultant psychiatrist at Bromley hospital (England), Dr. Donald Louria, associate professor of medicine, Cornell University Medical College, and Commissioner Arthur J. Rogers, New York State Narcotics Addiction Control Commission. Dr. Tylden said young adults who suffer from marijuana psychosis behave like schizophrenics. Dr. Louria pointed out that studies showed up to five percent of the persons who had used marijuana more than five times became pot-heads with bouts of black depression and loss of goals. Arthur Rogers stated that 95 percent of all known heroin users started with marijuana. The psychiatric authorities with whom I consult report that marijuana produces confusion, hallucinations, disorientation and impulse behavior. They insist that continued use of this drug can cause acute psychotic disorganization and a complete disruption of a life plan. They say, too, a marijuana user, behind the wheel of a car, is as dangerous as a drunken driver.” (160)
Apparently, 31 years later – in 1999 – Landers had a change of heart and began feeling compassion for the victims of cannabis laws, deciding now to focus on the actual results of the law rather than the debatable effects of the drug:
“I have long believed that the laws regarding marijuana are too harsh. Those who keep pot for their own personal use should not be treated as criminals. Thirty years in prison makes no sense whatsoever. I’m with you.” (161)
In December of 1968, Science magazine published an article titled “Clinical and Psychological Effects of Marihuana in Man” – what was called “the most carefully controlled such project in the scanty history of marijuana research” by the newspapers at the time. (162) The researchers – Andrew Weil, Norman Zinberg and Judith Nelsen – concluded that the drug is a “relatively mild intoxicant.” (163) Arguably he most valuable take-away from the study was that;
“Regular users of marijuana do get high after smoking marijuana in a neutral setting but do not show the same degree of impairment of performance on the tests as do naive subjects. In some cases, their performance even appears to improve slightly after smoking marijuana.” (164)
There it was. Pot was a performance enhancer. There was now a scientific reason for people to use it. People weren’t just having fun … they were living their best life.
Image #221: SCIENCE, 13 December 1968, Vol. 162, No. 3859. Image from: https://www.science.org/toc/science/162/3859
Image #222: “Clinical and Psychological Effects of Marihuana in Man,” Andrew Weil, Norman Zinberg, Judith Nelsen, SCIENCE, 13 December 1968, Vol. 162, No. 3859. Image from: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.162.3859.1234
Image #223: “Marijuana Effects Mild, Harmless, Report Says,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, Missouri, December 14th, 1968, p. 7
Image #224: “A Theory Refuted – Experimenter’s Report On Pot And Addiction,” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, December 19th, 1968, p. 6
On the same date of the publication of that issue of Science, Dr. S. E. Jenson, director of the Vancouver Island mental health centre, was quoted in the papers saying the use of marijuana and LSD had become “an epidemic” among teens and required “mass arrests” and recommended expulsion from school and a mandatory “psychiatric assessment” if any teen were caught with drugs. (165)
This language was echoed in the religious pamphlet of an evangelical Christian group: “HIPPIES – HYPOCRISY and ‘HAPPINESS’” was published by the Ambassador College Press in Pasadena, California, also in 1968. In it were some nice pictures of various pot protests and Be-Ins in England and the US, along with many extremist pronouncements such as the following;
“‘The problem is staggering. It is tremendous. We must take the sophistication out of marijuana use.’ he added. Another official called marijuana a ‘PLAGUE-LIKE DISEASE, slowly but surely strangling our young people.’ . . . Make no mistake! The problem of DRUG ABUSE is reaching EPIDEMIC PROPORTIONS . . . Yes, your child could become a hippie – a washout, a dropout from society!” (166)
Image #225: Groucho Marx (lifelong pothead) playing a character called “God” and finally taking a hit on screen. “Then, in calm waters, a small sailboat, with sails decorated in large psychedelic designs of the words ‘LOVE’ and ‘PEACE’, holds two occupants – Fred the Professor and God, both dressed in transcendental meditation / Hare Krishna garb. As Nilsson’s voice is heard singing ‘I Will Take You There’, they smile beatifically while sharing a lit joint and, after taking a puff, God murmurs, ‘…mmm, pumpkin’.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skidoo_(film) Image from https://flixtor.to/home
Printed in late 1968 and made available to the public in January 1969, “Cannabis – Report by the Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence” was also known as the “Wootton Report” due to it being chaired by Baroness Wootton of Arbinger. (167) The report begins by noting the effect the full-page ad in the Times had on their decision to issue it;
“Our first enquiries were proceeding — without publicity — into the pharmacological and medical aspects, when other developments gave our study new and increased significance. An advertisement in The Times on 24th July, 1967 represented that the long-asserted dangers of cannabis were exaggerated and that the related law was socially damaging, if not unworkable. This was followed by a wave of debate about these issues in Parliament, the Press and elsewhere, and reports of enquiries, e.g. by the National Council for Civil Liberties. This publicity made more explicit the nature of some current ‘protest’ about official policy on drugs; defined more clearly some of the main issues in our study; and led us to give greater attention to the legal aspects of the problem. Government spokesmen made it clear that any future development of policy on cannabis would have to take account of the Advisory Committee’s Report. Accordingly, we decided to give first priority to presenting our views on cannabis.” (168)
The report pointed out that the evidence for “reefer madness” did not exist;
“An increasing number of people, mainly young, in all classes of society are experimenting with this drug, and substantial numbers use it regularly for social pleasure. There is no evidence that this activity is causing violent crime, or is producing in otherwise normal people conditions of dependence or psychosis requiring medical treatment.” (169)
The report fell short of recommending legalization, but did seem to come down squarely in favour of reduced penalties – in particular the following two of the committee’s 12 recommendations;
“(6) Possession of a small amount of cannabis should not normally be regarded as a serious crime to be punished by imprisonment (paragraphs 87 and 90).
(7) The offence of unlawful possession, sale or supply of cannabis should be punishable on summary conviction with a fine not exceeding £100, or imprisonment for a term not exceeding four months, or both such fine and imprisonment. On conviction on indictment the penalty should be an unlimited fine, or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or both such fine and imprisonment (paragraphs 86, 88 and 89).” (170)
Image #226: Cannabis – Report by the Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence (Wootton Report), HER MAJESTY’S STATIONERY OFFICE, LONDON, 1968
Image #227: “David Bowie and John Hutchinson David Bowie and Feathers at Trident Studios, London, Britain – 1969” Photo from: https://flashbak.com/david-bowie-the-beckenham-years-in-photos-51142/
Image #228: “Go EASY ON ‘POT’ SMOKERS, REPORT URGES,” The Guardian Journal, London, England, January 8th, 1969, p. 1
One of the committee members – Michael Schofield – wrote an in-depth analysis of the report’s findings, which was published as the book The Strange Case Of Pot in 1971. (171) The Home Secretary – James Callaghan – lamented the influence of “that notorious advertisement” but implemented many of Wootton’s proposals. (172)
The film More, which saw its debut in August of 1969, was a drama/romance film about drug exploration and free love – and which used actual marijuana, LSD and heroin in the scenes involving those drugs. The soundtrack was by Pink Floyd. (173)
The protagonists discuss the differences between cannabis and heroin in one scene;
“You must admit . . . this is better than that junk of yours, hun?”
“It’s very different.”
“What’s the difference?”
“This makes everything beautiful. And alive. Horse just makes you feel very comfortable.”
“Ah ha! That’s what horse is.”
“Yeah. People who take horse want to escape from life. People who smoke this or take acid want to intensify their lives. Hippies put horse down. And junkies put down the little fools that think they’ve discovered the world. Hardly anybody mixes the two.” (174)
Image #229: Poster for the film more, 1969. Image from: https://www.formidablemag.com/more-1969/
Image #230: Image from the film more, 1969. Image from: https://latjc.wordpress.com/2015/05/01/more-de-barbet-schroeder-4/
Another revolutionary, ground-breaking film that used real pot in the pot scene was Easy Rider. (175) Released on July 14th, 1969, it also dealt with sex and drugs and had an amazing psychedelic rock & roll soundtrack. In one scene, the younger generation (Wyatt, played by Peter Fonda) introduces the older generation (George Hanson, played by Jack Nicholson) to pot;
“Do this instead.”
“No, thanks. l got some store-bought here of my own.”
“No, man. This is grass.”
“You mean, marijuana? Lord have mercy! ls that what that is? Let me see that.”
“Go ahead. Light it up.”
“Oh, no, no, no … l couldn’t do that. l’ve got enough problems with the booze and all. l can’t afford to get hooked.”
“You won’t get hooked.”
“Well, l know. But it leads to harder stuff. You say it’s all right? Well, all right then. How do l do it?
“Here.”
“That’s got a real nice taste to it.” (176)
Image #231: Jack Nicholson takes a hit off a joint in the 1969 film Easy Rider. Image from https://flixtor.to/home
The Yippies – or the Youth International Party members – formed their organization on New Years Eve 1967. It was a combination of hippie culture with political theatre and injustice resistance. In 1968 they turned up to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and attempted to promote peace even though people like Bobby Kenney were getting shot for advocating it. Sometime in late 1969 or early 1970, they wrote a manifesto and published it in a poster with their symbol – a green pot leaf on top of a red star over a black background. The Yippie Manifesto began this way;
“WE ARE A PEOPLEWe are a new nation.We believe in life.And we want to live now.We want to be alive 24 hours a day.Nine-to-five Amerika doesn’t even live on weekends.Amerika is a death machine. It is runon and for money whose powerdetermines a society based on war,racism, sexism, and the destructionof the planet. Our life-energy is thegreatest threat to the machine.So they’re out to stop us.They have to make us like them.They cut our hair, ban our musicfestivals, put cops and narcs in theschools, put 200,000 of us in jailfor smoking flowers, induct us,housewive us, Easy-Rider murder us.Amerika has declared war on our New Nation!
. . . We will continue to seize control of our minds and our bodies. . . . We will begin to take control of drug manufacture and distribution, and stop the flow of bad shit.” (177)
Image #232: “YOUTH INTERNATIONAL PARTY MANIFESTO! Circa 1968.” Image from: https://www.biblio.com/book/youth-international-party-manifesto-drugs-counterculture/d/1673290953
The Yippies would be responsible for creating and organizing smoke-ins, beginning with the one in Washington, D.C., on July 4th 1970. The one in Vancouver, BC, Canada on August 7th, 1971, would go down in history as the beginning of the legalization movement in Canada. These smoke-ins will be discussed in greater detail in the following chapters.
Image #233: “Old Freak Street, Kathmandu Durbar Square, Nepal. 1969” Image from: http://www.thecannachronicles.com/hashish-mariwana-1969/
In January of 1969, 17 simultaneous drug raids in Pennsylvania resulted in 29 young people charged, 16 with “sale of narcotics and dangerous drugs” (hashish), and 13 for simple possession. In order to justify the raids, some scare tactics were utilized;
“‘. . . according to a study conducted by the federal government of over 2,000 addicts, more than 80 per cent got their start on marijuana.’ The drug is apparently not addictive. But it is habitative, Newcomer said. Moreover, the initial reaction to a dose of marijuana varies from person to person. Case histories have been written about the violent reactions and deeds carried out while people are under the influence of marijuana.” (178)
In another speculative article that appeared in February of 1969 from an Ohio newspaper about how little was known about cannabis’s harms (not to mention its benefits, which nobody was bothering to look into), a reporter summed it up this way;
“- The long-term physiological and psychological effects of smoking marijuana are not yet known. Scientists are just beginning to study such possible effects as genetic damage, permanent personality alteration and the correlation between marijuana smoke – like cigarette smoke – and cancer.
– There is some evidence that marijuana smoking reduces motivation in youngsters, causing them to lose interest in schoolwork and to grow more passive and less ambitious.
– Otherwise, there is virtually no scientific evidence that the mildly potent marijuana normally available in the United States is physically harmful when smoked occasionally and over a short period of time. Many scientists contend that, based on the short-term evidence, marijuana is probably less damaging that two other widely used drugs: Alcohol and nicotine in cigarettes. Some stronger forms of marijuana that grow in India, North Africa and the Middle East are believed to enter this country only in small amounts.
– Thus far there is little evidence to support the popular myths often fostered by law enforcement agencies that marijuana, which appears capable of causing a psychological dependence but not a physical one, leads to a craving for such addicting drugs as heroin, or that marijuana stirs criminal tendencies in its users.” (179)
Image #234: “New Spring Courses?” The Morning Call, Allentown, Pennsylvania, March 8th, 1969, p. 6
Image #235: Georgia Straight, Vancouver, B.C., Volume 3 #31, March 28th to April 3rd, 1969, quoting from paragraph 90, p. 29 of the Wootton Report.
In early April of 1969, this author’s home town of Edmonton, Alberta, suddenly became a hot spot of pot activism. A group called the “Committee of Concerned Adults Protesting Unjust Marijuana Laws” held a 2 hour march, ending with a demonstration of about 75 people (including academics and professionals) outside the Federal building. The main organizer, a high school teacher named G. L. Brown, who had a son awaiting trial for possession, made “a thorough study of it, including the reading of the LaGuardia report” and had this to say:
“We feel the time has come to take a stand. We are concerned that hundreds of youngsters, with no previous record, have either been convicted or are awaiting trial on unfair marijuana laws. Marijuana is not medically classified as a narcotic and nothing should be forbidden under severe penalty – as marijuana is – unless it has been shown to be a menace to society. … The drug was put on the narcotics’ schedule many years ago when it was virtually unknown, without research and without debate. It is now making criminals out of hundreds and hundreds of young people for no good reason, and we are losing these people’s valuable skills. … Many people are making wild statements about it without taking the slightest bit of trouble to find out anything.” (180)
Image #236: “75 state opposition to marijuana laws during two-hour city march Saturday,” Edmonton Journal, Edmonton, Alberta, April 7th, 1969, p. 21
Image #237: Photo of the 1969 Edmonton pot protest from a 1979 Edmonton pot zine. Image from: Prairie Weed, Vol. 2, No. 3, July 16, 1979. https://issuu.com/dragonflyarchive/docs/praireweedvol2no3july161979m.compre
In late April of 1969, the infamous Karl E. Meyer (infamous for making sure the world knew nothing about the US-backed massacres in East Timor in the 1970s while serving as “senior writer on foreign affairs” (181) for the New York Times, as proven in the 1992 documentary “Manufacturing Consent”) (182) was writing for the Washington Post, and – true to form – decided to write a hit piece about the pot scene in Amsterdam. In an article titled “Amsterdam Hashish Club Just Big Bore,” Meyer (about 32 years old at the time) downplayed the significance of the emergence of Dutch tolerance for cannabis – a tolerance which would one day be replicated in many places throughout the world during his lifetime. Meyer wrote;
“There are only two clubs in the West where hashish may be smoked with police consent and the benevolent subsidy of the local government. Both are in Amsterdam. Here is an uncensored report on a wanton Saturday night in the most uninhibited of the two, Fantasio Youth Club: First you push open a door in an otherwise nondescript house facing the docks, and you join the queue for becoming a member of Fantasio (price 84 cents). An incoming tide of youngsters presses you up the stairs to a spacious loft, described outside as the ‘Porno Room.’ By 10 p.m. the room is pullulating with scruffy patrons, many of them looking like the case of the New York musical ‘hair’. . . . During the evening, by rough estimate, about a third of the 300 or 400 youngsters were smoking hashish, and were lost in their private nebulae. Another third were drinking Dutch beer and moving restlessly from room to room of the club, presumably looking for something to happen somewhere. . . . Fantasio and its sister club, Paradiso, were opened last April in a conscious effort to try a new approach to the problem of cannabis – the approach of total permissiveness . . . Both clubs have the same fundamental rule. Hashish is permitted but the hard stuff is out. Fantasio, unlike the adult-controlled Paradiso, is run completely by the youngsters themselves.” (183)
Meyer would rise in the ranks of journalism by anticipating and articulating what powerful people wanted to hear – as do all members of the establishment. When covering the story of one of the first pot cafés in Western society, he should have realized that only boring people get bored, and that he failed as a journalist and as a participant to initiate interesting activity – or even get high and report on the effects and the experience. Meyer did not subscribe to the school of participatory journalism eventually known as “Gonzo” – invented by Hunter S. Thompson in 1967.
Image #238: Patrons of the Fantasio. Image from: https://hashmuseum.com/en/amsterdam/7-fantasio/
Image #239: “Today’s Amsterdam had its formative years in the late 1960s. Liberal dutch attitudes to recreational drugs and sexual promiscuity were first nurtured in this building on Prins Hendrik Kade.” Art by Dutch artist Jan Rothuizen. Image from: https://janrothuizen.nl/en/drawing/youth-centre-fantasio-68/
Image #240: By Jan Rothuizen. Image from: https://janrothuizen.nl/en/drawing/youth-centre-fantasio-68/
Image #241: “Pink Floyd at Fantasio Club Paradiso (Holland, Amsterdam, May 31th 1968)” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mluOJbAbkk&t=6s
Image #242 “Early poster from the Paradiso archives” Image from: https://www.dutchnews.nl/2017/08/amsterdams-paradiso-from-flower-power-to-punk-and-beyond/
Image #243: “POT PARADISE,” The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, Australia, February 8th, 1969, p. 22
Image #244: “POT PARADISE,” The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, Australia, February 8th, 1969, p. 22
Image #245: “POT PARADISE,” The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, Australia, February 8th, 1969, p. 22
Image #246: “A VISIT TO THE POT PALACES OF AMSTERDAM,” The Vancouver Sun, Vancouver, British Columbia, October 11th, 1969, p. 96
Image #247: “A VISIT TO THE POT PALACES OF AMSTERDAM,” The Vancouver Sun, Vancouver, British Columbia, October 11th, 1969, p. 97
According to legend, there was a weed club that opened even earlier than the Amsterdam clubs Fantasio and Paradiso (which opened on March 29th and March 30th of 1968, respectively). (184) Some Dutch pot historians give that honour to the Cotton Club – a 1950s jazz club. (185)
Image #248: “The Cotton Club in 1961.” Image from: https://collectie.nederlandsfotomuseum.nl/collectie/detail/dcddfd12-d530-8fad-9004-90005219ff93
But some consider the Sarasani club in Utrecht to have technically qualified as the very first weed club of the modern era. The Sarasani seems to be the earliest club to both a) sell cannabis (in “early 1968” according to most sources) and then b) transition to a “cafe” model in 1974 when their liquor license was revoked. (186)
Image #249: “View of the lower part of the facades of the buildings at Oudegracht 323-329 in Utrecht, with the wharf cellars. In the middle of the wharf cellars is the entrance to the Sarasani coffee shop.” Image from: https://hetutrechtsarchief.nl/beeldmateriaal/detail/b97d98de-36c7-5150-8c69-0c486aed9f3e/media/3f39f7b8-f00c-c903-056b-a4aa75bf43a8
Image #250: “On November 15, 1969, Armand sold Koffiekelder Sarasani on an installment plan to the then 22-year-old Leo Hasenbos, whom I will call Holly Hasenbos from here on. Holly started selling hash and weed and turned Koffiekelder Sarasani into the very first coffeeshop in the Netherlands, and therefore the world.” Image from: https://bertvanzantwijk.com/2022/03/18/sarasani/
Image #251: “Coffeeshop Sarasani frozen in time It has been already 4 years ago since the oldest Coffeshop of Holland closed his doors. Luckily I had a chance to take some pictures. Except from the smell that has left the cellar nothing much has changed in the last 4 years.” Circa 2011. Image from: https://flickr.com/photos/ghandhihi/6014658096/in/photolist-5HQh-3KaVX-25X9xR-37QEwg-knJ6X-6TaUJi-6kxsJ-aauGiE-2vnmoo-DH7Sg/
In 1969, the Lowlands Weed Company in Amsterdam – run from a boat – opened. It was the first venue to publicly advertise the sale of cannabis cuttings. (187)
Image #252: “Dutch pot pioneers: Kees Hoekert and Provo Jasper Grootveld of the Lowland Weed Company selling Cannabis plants on their houseboat The White Raven.” COURTESY COR JARING. Photo from: https://issuu.com/nwleaf/docs/alaskaleaf_june2021/s/12382964
Image #253: “Kees Hoekert in the 1970s. Source: Hollandse Hoogte / C. Barton van Flymen” Photo from: https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/kees-hoekert-1929-2017-grootvader-van-de-nederwiet~bd09822b/
Image #254: “Grootveld, known as Robbie to his friends, made a splash as an anti-smoking magician, raft builder, and the center of events on the Spui.” Photo ANP/Cor Out Photo from: https://www.parool.nl/nieuws/antirookmagier-robert-jasper-grootveld-overleden~ba2755fc/
Image #255: “Rare original 1970’s Lowlands Weed Co. poster from Amsterdam Holland. Lowlands was the very first to distribute Marijuana seeds globally.” Image from: https://www.instagram.com/p/DJIZq_ryana/?img_index=1
Most histories of the Dutch pot café scene begin with the Coffeeshop Mellow Yellow, which opened in 1972 or 1973. (188) Regardless of where the story of the sale of pot in Holland begins, the famous Dutch tolerance for cannabis can be traced to mid-1960s police abuses of the young and a desire to make amends afterwards – similar, in some ways, to the Vancouver Police Department’s reaction to their 1971 Grasstown Riot abuses;
“The excessive use of force by Amsterdam police in response to student riots in 1966 made law enforcement highly sensitive to public opinion and led to more relaxed attitudes towards social issues such as the peace movement and drug use. Policies de-emphasizing marijuana possession arrests resulted.” (189)
Image #256: “Negro Facing Possession of Marijuana Rap,” Daily World, Opelousas, Louisiana, May 1st, 1969, p. 2
On May 19th, 1969, in the pot trial of Dr. Tim Leary, the Marijuana Tax Act was struck down as unconstitutional, violating the Fifth Amendment’s right of avoiding self-incrimination. The decision stated;
“Compliance with the transfer tax provisions would have required petitioner unmistakably to identify himself as a member of [a] . . . ‘selective’ and ‘suspect’ group, we can only decide that when read according to their terms these provisions created a ‘real and appreciable’ hazard of incrimination.” (190)
Image #257: “Marijuana Appeal Cites Religious Use,” Atlantic City Press, Atlantic City, New Jersey, May 23rd, 1967, p. 3
Image #258: “Leary’s Marijuana Conviction Upheld by Appeals Court,” The Buffalo News, Buffalo, New York, September 30th, 1967, p. 9
Image #259: “30-Year Sentence, $30,000 Fine Upheld For Drug Cult Leader,” The Anderson Herald, Anderson, Indiana, October 1st, 1967, p. 8
Image #260: “HAPPY,” The Minneapolis Star, Minneapolis, Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 20th, 1969, p. 7
Image #261: “Supreme Court Voids Dr. Leary’s Marijuana Conviction,” Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, May 20th, 1969, p. 9
It was a small victory. It (sort of) helped Leary avoid jail but didn’t do anyone else any good, as the Marijuana Tax Act was replaced on Oct. 27th, 1970, with the Controlled Substances Act. (191)
There was no big celebration, as while the Federal anti-pot law was deemed unconstitutional and void, State laws against marijuana remained. Leary never had time to celebrate his victory, either, as was explained in the cannabis history book Smoke Signals;
“It proved to be a Pyrrhic victory. Before the smoke cleared, the feds filed new charges against Leary and retried him on a technicality. The High Priest, who freely admitted to using marijuana, was convicted and sentenced to a decade in prison. Another pot bust – Orange County cops had found two roaches in Leary’s car in December 1968 – resulted in another ten-year sentence to run consecutively with the first.” (192)
Leary’s victory was heralded by LEMAR as an opportunity to lobby for better pot laws, and put Leary on the cover of their June/August issue of Marijuana Review. Leary would eventually escape from the California Men’s Colony prison on September 12th, 1970, in part using skills he learned as a psychologist to put him in a minimum security situation – conducting one of the most daring escapes from prison by a literary figure since Casanova’s daring 1756 escape from Piombi prison in Venice, Italy. (193)
Image #262: Marijuana Review, Vol. 1, #3, June 1969.
When a report on a drug raid from the ever-central-to-the-pot-community city of San Rafael, California, boasted it was “probably the biggest haul of hashish ever made in the United States,” (194) no mention was made of the harmful effects of cannabis. The stigmatization necessary for scapegoating to continue had been done – the residual stigma was enough to hold it in place – even if the current articulation of that stigma was now mostly limited to “we’re unsure of the effects.”
That was basically the take-away message from the Newspaper Florida Today and their evaluation of the medical hazards of cannabis in an article entitled “The Mystery of Marijuana,” which included quotes from Dr. Sidney Cohen, director of the Division of Narcotic Addiction at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md. In the article, Dr. Cohen stated;
“We don’t know the long term effects of the chronic use on an individual’s personality, or the impact of marijuana and hashish on the growing brain.” (195)
This “impact on the growing brain” spin will manifest into the number one stigma on cannabis by the early 21st century. Elsewhere in the article, the reporter opined;
“. . . researchers, while softening their claims, say it may be years and generations before actual harm or harmlessness of the drug is proved.” (196)
It’s alarming that every expert interviewed during this “we don’t understand marijuana” era – without exception – refuses to state the obvious: in lieu of evidence of inherent harmfulness, these mythology-based laws should be rescinded, because unlike the very contentious harms of cannabis, the harm from cannabis prohibition (raids, seizures, incarcerations etc.) is undeniable and never even debated.
Even in Canada, a “huge hashish haul” in Montreal in July of 1969 was mentioned in front-page headlines but no further stigma against hashish was thought necessary in the body of the text. (197) In yet another effort to drive home the point that cannabis was too under-researched to be considered safe to use but researched enough to continue to maintain a prohibition upon, an article entitled “Marihuana Is Here and Available to Those With Contacts!” was published by a newspaper in Pennsylvania in July of 1969. It stated;
“Medical science does not yet know enough about the effects of marihuana use because its active ingredient – tetrahydro-cannabinol – was not available in pure form until recently.” (198)
This, of course, reveals the trouble with most cannabis research (even today): cannabis has more than one active ingredient – it has hundreds. For the same reason you can’t properly evaluate the effect of an Italian-food diet by injecting huge amounts of cheese into the stomachs of mice, you can’t isolate one element of cannabis medicine and pretend that standardization reveals more than researcher-bias can hide.
Image #263: “Myths, Half-Truths Envelop Marijuana, Says Harvard Expert,” Boston Evening Globe, Boston, Massachusetts, July 17th, 1969, p. 18
Image #264: “Myths, Half-Truths Envelop Marijuana, Says Harvard Expert,” Boston Evening Globe, Boston, Massachusetts, July 17th, 1969, p. 18
Image #265: “Sinclair Convicted In Pot Case,” Detroit Free Press, Detroit, Michigan, July 26th, 1969, p. 3
Image #266: “Sinclair Given Sentence Of 9 1/2-10 Years for Pot,” Detroit Free Press, Detroit, Michigan, July 29th, 1969, p. 3
Image #267: “Negro Man Charged In Marijuana Sale,” The Shreveport Journal, Shreveport, Louisiana, August 11th, 1969, p. 4
Image #268: “’Humboldt Co. Growers Co-op Annual Convention’ Poster – Master of ceremonies Tim Leary. Humboldt Grange Hall – Sept 19, 1969.” Image from: https://www.worldofcannabis.museum/collection
Image #269: “MEXICAN MARIJUANA,” The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio, September 25th, 1969, p. 4
There was no mention of the effects of cannabis in a front-page New Jersey newspaper story about an intercepted shipment of hash in August of 1969 (199) just a smug mention of how the area was “turned off” temporarily because of the arrests, as if to say, the advice “turn on, tune in and drop out” provided by Dr. Tim Leary will become harder and harder to follow if the police manage to destroy medical autonomy by making enough drug seizures.
On September 25th, 1969, the headline “Marijuana Called Safe” was found on top of an article in the Meriden, Connecticut newspaper The Journal. In the article, it was argued that marijuana was not a harmful drug, nor a “hard drug” – it was softer than aspirin. Making this argument was a Reverend from New Haven. (200)
One day later, Time magazine did a cover story on “Drugs and the Young” (201) which spent much of the column space on cannabis. In it, it was written;
“Most researchers now classify the dangers of marijuana as on a par with those of alcohol. However, so far there is no scientific evidence on whether long-term use can produce effects comparable to alcohol’s cirrhosis or tobacco’s cancer and emphysema. Marijuana’s active ingredients – chemicals known as tetrahydrocannabinols (THC) – can cause LSD-type psychotic hallucinations when administered in pure form. . . . Would the ideal solution be to legalize pot? No, say most authorities. Long-term use of marijuana may hold yet unknown health hazards, and might conceivably induce in America the passive, fatalistic outlook common in many Asian and Middle Eastern nations, where marijuana-like preparations are traditional and ubiquitous.” (202)
No evidence linking cannabis to a “fatalistic outlook” was provided. Repeated invasions and the use of sabotage, torture, and chemical and biological weapons on multiple Asian countries by the US military was not considered a contributor to an Asian “fatalistic outlook.” To their credit, the reporter did manage to capture the “catch-22” of cannabis research articulated by more than one researcher;
“Researchers Norman Zinberg and Andrew Weil, who last year did the first truly scientific study of marijuana’s effects on the human organism, maintain: ‘Administrators of scientific and government institutions feel marijuana is dangerous. Because it is dangerous, they are reluctant to allow work to be done on it. Because no work is done, people think of it as dangerous. . . . Social Psychologist Joel Hochman of the U.C.L.A. Neuropsychiatric Institute goes so far as to charge that ‘the Government is giving legitimate researchers such a hassle because they are afraid our work will show no serious side effects, and if there are no serious side effects then there is no rationale for keeping the use of marijuana illegal.” (203)
Image #270: TIME magazine, CANADA edition, cover story: “Drugs and the Young,” September 26th, 1969
Image #271: TIME magazine, CANADA edition, cover story: “Drugs and the Young,” September 26th, 1969, p. 62
Image #272: TIME magazine, CANADA edition, cover story: “Drugs and the Young,” September 26th, 1969, p. 64
Image #273: TIME magazine, CANADA edition, cover story: “Drugs and the Young,” September 26th, 1969, p. 67
Image #274: TIME magazine, CANADA edition, cover story: “Drugs and the Young,” September 26th, 1969, p. 68
Image #275: TIME magazine, CANADA edition, cover story: “Drugs and the Young,” September 26th, 1969, 72
Image #276: Newsday (Suffolk Edition) Melville, New York, October 15th, 1969, p. 10
Image #277: “DESERT DOOR,” Newsday (Suffolk Edition) Melville, New York, October 15th, 1969, p. 11
Image #278: “‘Quality Mexican Marijuana’ Scarce in U.S., Report Says,” The Miami Herald, Miami, Florida, October 24th, 1969, p. 131
Dr. Margaret Mead, perhaps the most famous of all anthropologists, testified on October 27th, 1969 to the Senate’s “Select Committee On Small Business.” After Mead mentioned how marijuana was unjustly linked to hard drugs, a Senator decided to focus his question on marihuana. Her answer was revealing and insightful;
Senator JAVITS: “Just one question on marihuana because it happens to intrude in another committee of which I am the ranking minority member. You speak as if the scientific basis for discounting marihuana, according to what the kids say, as being nothing worse than alcohol or tobacco.”
Dr. MEAD: “Not nearly as bad.”
Senator JAVITS: “Perhaps even better. However, many people still leave it up in the air. It is not scientifically proved that maybe it is a threshold drug to addiction, et cetera. Would you care to substantiate your statement, which, if you stand by it, is very important, on that subject. Would you say there is not adequate scientific proof to dismiss marihuana as a threshold, addictive of similar drug comparable to hashish, heroin, and so on?”
Dr. MEAD: “Senator, I would separate hashish and heroin very sharply. On the question of the use of cannabis in various forms we have cross-cultural evidence, we have cultures that have used it for a very long time. There is some evidence that if people use it to excess for 20 years, which mean that they spend their time smoking instead of doing anything else, they showed some mental deterioration. You can find that with people who do nothing but eat for 20 years let alone people who only use alcohol; that is the excessive use of any piece of chemical intake, even bread and milk is not particularly good for you. We know that cannabis has been used for a very long period; we have accounts of the way in which it is used to energize during work and to relax after work. It is my considered opinion at present, and this is not proved because we haven’t had instances of where we could follow children whose known situation was, well, authenticated into adult life, life where we could control all the other aspects of their lives so as to discuss this. But it is my considered opinion that at present that marihuana is not harmful unless it is taken in enormous and excessive amounts. I believe that we are damaging this country, damaging our law, our whole law enforcement situation, damaging the trust between the older people and younger people by its prohibition, and this is far more serious than any damage that might be done to a few overusers, because you can get damage from any kind of overuse. . . . Today by an accident of history we have a break and the drugs that the young people want to use, the stimulants, the energizers, the pacifiers or whatever you wish to call them, are ones that the adults don’t want to use so there is now what appears to be a new form of tyranny by the adults over the young, and you have the adult standing with a cocktail in one hand and a cigarette in another saying ‘I would beat the —- out of any child of mine who ever smoked pot.’ Now, this position is untenable, and it is leading to a degree of distrust, a breakdown of law and order, that, beside which the prohibition conditions of the 1920’s in which I grew up pale completely because we now have this vicious relationship between marihuana and hard drugs, which we invented, and which wasn’t necessary at all.” (204)
After her testimony, reporters asked her about a minimum age at which people should be allowed to buy cannabis. She responded:
“. . . she told newsmen afterward that the minimum age should be ‘probably 16.’ She said marijuana ‘doesn’t have the toxic effects that cigarets have’ and is milder than liquor. Therefore, she said, it should be permitted at a younger age than tobacco and alcohol.” (205)
Image #279: “Margaret Mead Urges Pot at 16, Vote at 18,” The Boston Globe, Boston, Massachusetts, October 28th, 1969, pp. 1, 12
It is fortunate for all of us that there was at least one academic with such impeccable reputation and stature, who stood up to the powerful in the name of reason and against an ocean of parental hysteria surrounding cannabis. This author would like to add that – ideally – cannabis should be no more regulated than organic, fair-trade coffee beans, because if you limit cannabis to those sixteen and older, you run the risk of subjecting teens younger than sixteen to black market harms that are completely unnecessary. If society is unable to permit that much autonomy, the least it can do is allow those fifteen and under to use under doctor supervision, so as to protect them from the real black-market harms that actually do exist and can be demonstrated to be inherently harmful. An age limit below tobacco and alcohol would allow for a more inclusive economy and the removal of red tape around industrial hemp, as monopoly and over-regulation of medicinal and industrial cannabis – the denial of access to our co-evolutionary plant partner – is one of the greatest harms to humanity ever devised by our rulers.
The establishment couldn’t give Dr. Mead the last word. On October 31st, 1969, LIFE magazine published their “big blue joint” close-up cover story: “MARIJUANA: At least 12 million Americans have now tried it. Are penalties two severe? Should it be legalized?” (206) The questions suggested some attempt at impartiality. Limiting the answer to one from the ex-head of the FDA and the CDC – Dr. James L. Goddard – quickly removed that illusion;
“The principle danger is that one may become psychologically dependent on marijuana and, instead of coping with the everyday problems, withdraw through frequent use of the drug. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to this danger because of their limited experience and less well-developed habits of living.” (207)
Image #280: LIFE magazine, October 31st, 1969
This “a-motivational” syndrome” mythology would get much more attention in the following years. The other myth – the “we don’t know enough about it to legalize it but we know enough about it to keep it illegal,” was promoted as well;
“Some of the questions we must answer are;
- Does long-term usage of marijuana have harmful effects?
- Does it affect the reproductive process?
- What type of treatment will be most effective in rehabilitating chronic marijuana users?
- What conditions favor continuation of marijuana use as opposed to moving to hard drugs?
- What kinds of educational approaches are most effective in reducing misuse?
- Does marijuana affect human chromosomes?
Steps are being taken to obtain answers to these and other questions.” (208)
The list revealed all types of assumptions, not least of which was the notion that “chronic marijuana users” are in need of “rehabilitation” and “treatment.” We don’t consider the chronic users of coffee beans in need of treatment – why should we treat the users of cannabis any differently?
The Doctor continued with the “not enough evidence to legalize” myth;
“I do not believe that marijuana should now be legalized, and the steps which I have suggested will not satisfy those who seek to legalize it. . . . I believe if alcohol and tobacco were not already legal, we might very well decide not to legalize them – knowing what we now know. In the case of marijuana, we will know in a very few years how harmful it is or not. If it turns out to be relatively harmless, we will be embarrassed by harsh laws that made innocent people suffer. If it turns out to be quite harmful – a distinct possibility – we will have introduced yet another public health hazard that for social and economic reasons might become impossible to dislodge.” (209)
What actually happened was that evidence of cannabis being relatively harmless was ignored by most of the major media, and academics came up with more clever and more sophisticated ways to stigmatize pot instead.
The late 1960s ended with a claim of ignorance about the harms of cannabis, and the position of “precautionary continued prohibition” was adopted instead of “precautionary legalization.” The “criminalize first – ask questions later” approach guarantees that scapegoating will never be eradicated from human society, because it allows massive numbers of people to be criminalized without any evidence whatsoever that they are a group of people that are inherently harmful to others. Scapegoating – as history has proven time and time again – does more damage than any vice.
It’s worthwhile to note that “psychosis” or other terms for mental illness were not mentioned in the LIFE magazine hit piece. Nor were they mentioned in the Canadian Government’s Department of Health and Welfare pamphlet entitled “FACTS ABOUT CANNABIS” that was published November of 1969. (210) Tellingly, no new evidence had come out regarding cannabis causing psychosis – or reducing psychosis – between the early 1960s, where it was sometimes the major spin of a story, and the last half of the 1960s, where it was barely mentioned if at all. What had changed was that the scapegoats were no longer quiet – and the arguments they were making didn’t sound crazy at all. Science didn’t determine what pot prohibitionists were willing to say in public – the protests of the scapegoated population did.
Image #281: The Georgia Straight, Vancouver, B.C., November 26th to December 3rd, 1969. Image from: https://www.straight.com/news/800651/9-things-you-didnt-know-about-tommy-chong-told-tommy-chong#
Image #282: Marihuana, Lester Grinspoon, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, December 1969, p. 17
Image #283: Marihuana use improves the performance of chronic users! This is the major takeaway from the Weil study in his 1968 Science article, which Grinspoon then drew attention to in his Scientific American article, and then was reprinted in a Scientific American blog from April 20th, 2016. Image from: https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/sa-visual/dude-how-did-scientific-american-end-up-in-this-jerry-garcia-howard-wales-album-art/
Image #284: “$64,00 Bond Set In Mexican Marijuana Case,” Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, Arizona, December 4th, 1969, p. 37
Image #285: “1969 – John Lennon and Yoko Ono meet with the Honourable John Munro, Minister of Health and Welfare Canada” Image from: http://beatles.ncf.ca/munro.html
The last bit of evidence in our analysis of the 1960s was a very instructive example from a Hawaiian newspaper dated December 14th, 1969. In it, the author attempted to blame the infamous My Lai massacre on cannabis use. It is reprinted here in full;
“Whether or not the My Lai massacre in Vietnam actually took place, the mere suspicion that it did has been enough to settle a pall of shame on Americans everywhere. American GI’s have been universally known for their compassion and kindness, for caring for orphans and sharing their rations with homeless children in many countries. Many are asking how these young Americans could suddenly go against all their upbringing and training and resort to mass murder of civilians – a total and incomprehensible aberration from their normal conduct. There is a growing belief on Capital Hill that the soldiers involve were, in the incident did occur, under the influence of drugs. Whether this is true, will, no doubt, come out in later investigations. ‘There is reason to believe that this new image of the GI as stormtrooper could well be the direct result of the toxic effects of certain drugs which are abundant in Vietnam.’ said Sen. Thomas Dodd. The senator is chariman of the Senate Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee which, incidentally, was holding hearings on the use of marijuana by Americans in Vietnam – just 10 days before the massacre was alleged to have happened. Here is some of the testimony that came out of those hearings:
- Marijuana was found on the bodies of four out of five GI’s who died in that country, including officers.
- The son of author John Steinbeck testified that during his time in Vietnam as a reporter he determined that as high as 75 per cent of the U.S. troops used marijuana.
- Doctors who had been in Vietnam were impressed by the frequency and severity of adverse reaction to smoking Vietnamese marijuana – reported by the Army chemical Laboratory in Japan to be twice as potent as that found in the United States.
- Medical men told the subcommittee that marijuana, combined with environmental stress, has caused a condition known as ‘marijuana toxic psychosis.’
Sen. Dodd said the difference between domestic marijuana and Vietnamese marijuana was ‘the difference between a glass of beer and a half-pint of whisky.’ As recent as last Nov. 4, a subcommittee investigator took a deposition from a New York psychiatrist who has treated Vietnam veterans for this condition. In his statement, he discussed the potential for the blind violence he said could result from marijuana psychosis. One incident related that a 19-year-old GI on guard duty smoked marijuana, and began to taut some nearby Vietnamese children, firing his rifle near them. Another said that a young GI saw the words ‘Ho Chi Min’ written on a comrade’s T-shirt and ‘killed him with his rifle’ while under the drug influence. White there was no completely reliable testimony as to the exact extent of marijuana use by Americans in Vietnam, Dodd said subcommittee interviews with returning veterans placed the figure at ‘as many as 60 per cent’ who smoked weed when going out on dangerous missions ‘to dissolve the fear and anxiety related to combat.’ The facts surrounding My Lai will undoubtedly come out in the coming investigations and court martials, and likely will be given full news coverage. This is, of course, as it should be. It would not be too surprising to find that the potent Vietnamese weed did play a part in the reported incidents – just as the less potent drug has reportedly been a factor in some of the violence at home.” (211)
The My Lai massacre was one of the most well-publicized – but certainly not the biggest or the worst – of the war crimes committed in Vietnam. And the reason it happened was not due to marijuana. The reasons it happened was because a) it was the policy of the American military to tell soldiers to kill everything that moved in certain “free fire zones,” (212) and b) the Phoenix Program – a CIA-led counter-insurgency operation – targeted civilians who might be somehow useful to the enemy. (213)
Blaming cannabis use for what the US ordered their soldiers to do in Vietnam really exposes how cannabis prohibition served (and continues to serve) as both a distraction from – and a scapegoat for – government crimes. The myth of cannabis psychosis serves multiple purposes: It can justify the prohibition or over-regulation and cartelization of the industrial hemp economy, it can rationalize a massive increase in the prison population, it can reinforce racist notions of non-white races and their vices, it can allow pharmaceutical corporations to eliminate natural options and create artificial dependency for synthetic medicine, it can justify different types of exclusivity of the cannabis medicine market itself, it can even explain away war crimes as pot psychosis instead of what they really were and continue to be: policy.
Separating humans from their co-evolutionary plant partner is a type of population control that divides itself into so many sub-rackets and scams – involves such conflict of interest and momentum – that it will take a massive awakening – with many thousands of participants – to escape from it. That awakening began, slowly, tentatively and in the meekest of ways, in the 1960s. It would continue to evolve – and even win some small victories at the ballot box – in the 1970s. And while these victories were tiny in comparison to the changes that are necessary for full symbiosis between human beings and planet earth – the changes that are necessary for continued human evolution – within them contained the seeds of awareness necessary for such things to occur.
Citations:
1)Allen Ginsberg, “First Manifesto to End the Bringdown”, Nov. 13th 1965 published in The Marijuana Papers, 1966, edited by David Solomon, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., p. 187
See also: Atlantic Monthly magazine, November 1966
2) “‘Rolling Stones’ Terms Protested,” The Amarillo Globe-Times, Amarillo, Texas, June 30th, 1967, p. 17
3) John Lennon, testifying at the Le Dain commission, Dec. 22nd, 1969 http://beatles.ncf.ca/ocrledain.html
4) “According to lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower, the terms hipster and hippie derive from the word hip and the synonym hep, whose origins are unknown. The words hip and hep first surfaced in slang around the beginning of the 20th century and spread quickly, making their first appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1904. At the time, the words were used to mean ‘aware’ and ‘in the know.’ . . . In a June 11, 1963 syndicated column by Dorothy Killgallen, she wrote ‘New York hippies have a new kick – baking marijuana in cookies.’”
5) “The ‘benefit’ of an etymological derivation directly from an Indo-Germanic precursor concept having to do with knowing and/or seeing (e.g., wissen, weise [German], weten [Dutch], videre [Latin], wise, wit [English], wiedzieć, widzieć [Polish] etc.) are: (i) that it works for both ‘witch’ and ‘wizard’, both of each would mean ‘the knower or the seer’ and (ii) that there is no need to attempt to derive the ‘s/t’ sound from the ‘g/k’ sound in ‘wicca’ and its precursors.”
6) “Gnostic (n.) 1580s, ‘believer in a mystical religious doctrine of spiritual knowledge,’ from Late Latin Gnosticus ‘a Gnostic,’ from Late Greek Gnōstikos, noun use of adjective gnōstikos ‘knowing, able to discern, good at knowing,’ from gnōstos ‘known, to be known,’ from gignōskein ‘to learn, to come to know,’ from PIE root *gno- ‘to know.’ Applied to various early Christian sects that claimed direct personal knowledge beyond the Gospel or the Church hierarchy; they appeared in the first century A.D., flourished in the second, and were stamped out by the 6th. gnostic (adj.) ‘relating to knowledge,’ especially mystical or esoteric knowledge of spiritual things, 1650s, from Greek gnōstikos ‘knowing, good at knowing, able to discern,’ from gnōstos ‘known, perceived, understood,’ earlier gnōtos, from gignōskein ‘learn to know, come to know, perceive; discern, distinguish; observe, form a judgment,’ from PIE *gi-gno-sko-, reduplicated and suffixed form of root *gno- ‘to know.’” https://www.etymonline.com/word/gnostic
7) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howl#1957_obscenity_trial
8) The Letters of Allen Ginsberg, Bill Morgan, editor, Da Capo Press, Philadelphia, P.A., 2008, p. 240
9) Drug War Chronicle » Issue #720, This Week in History, February 08, 2012 https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2012/feb/08/week_history
10) Allen Ginsberg, I Celebrate Myself, Viking, New York, 2006, p. 325
11) Larry Sloman, Reefer Madness, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1979/1998, P. 219
13) Allen Ginsberg, “Busted”, 1966, High Times, no. 225, May, 1994, p. 36
See also: Wait Till I’m Dead: Uncollected Poems, Allen Ginsberg, Grove Press, 2016 https://archive.org/stream/WaitTillImDeadTheUncollectedPoemsByAllenGinsberg/Wait+Till+I%27m+Dead+-+The+Uncollected+Poems+by+Allen+Ginsberg_djvu.txt
14) Allen Ginsberg, “First Manifesto to End the Bringdown”, Nov. 13th, 1965 published in The Marijuana Papers, 1966, edited by David Solomon, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., pp. 183-200
See also: Atlantic Monthly magazine, November 1966
15) Ibid, pp. 184-185
16) “High Society – Time Slow [1of3],” April 17 2003 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5Npmj3PTZg
“High Society – Time Slow [3of3],” April 17th, 2003 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwH7QtNLlrY
David Malmo-Levine, “Time slowdown,” 2003, Cannabis Culture #45
17) “First Manifesto to End the Bringdown,” pp. 185-186
See also: “Pop ‘pot’,” The Lancet, Volume 282, Issue 7315, 9 November 1963, Pages 989-990
18) McCartney convinced the rest of Beatles to cover the cost of the ad: “The Beatles signed and paid for the advertisement . . . “ Barry Miles, Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1997, pp. 390, 395
See also: “The Beatles call for the legalisation of marijuana,” Monday 24 July 1967
19) Peter Brown & Steven Gaines, The Love You Make – An Insider’s Story of The Beatles, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1983, p. 157
20) “. . . the name Beatles comes from ‘Beat’ . . .” Regina Weinreich, “Books: The Birth of the Beat Generation,” The Sunday New York Times Book Review, January 11, 1996; a review of Steven Watson’s THE BIRTH OF THE BEAT GENERATION: Visionaries, Rebels, and Hipsters 1944–1960. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/11/style/IHT-books-the-birth-of-the-beat-generation.html
21) “The Beatles and drugs,” Published: 7 April 2008 | Last updated: 15 July 2022 https://www.beatlesbible.com/features/drugs/2/
22) “We All Want to Change the World: Drugs, Politics, and Spirituality;” From A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles by Mark Hertsgaard. Chapter 16 from Mark Hertsgaard’s A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles; “We All Want to Change the World: Drugs, Politics, and Spirituality.” http://marijuana-uses.com/we-all-want-to-change-the-world-drugs-politics-and-spirituality-by-mark-hertsgaard/
See also: “‘When [Martin] was doing his TV programme on Pepper’, McCartney recalled later, ‘he asked me, ‘Do you know what caused Pepper?’ I said, ‘In one word, George, drugs. Pot.’ And George said, ‘No, no. But you weren’t on it all the time.’ ‘Yes, we were.’ Sgt. Pepper was a drug album.’” “100 greatest Beatle songs: #1 – A Day In The Life” Rolling Stone, April 8th, 2012 https://web.archive.org/web/20120408140520/http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-greatest-beatles-songs-20110919/a-day-in-the-life-19691231
Paul McCartney appears to be smoking a joint at 1:05 of the video for “A Day In The Life” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usNsCeOV4GM
24) The Beatles, The Beatles Anthology, San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000, p. 212
25) “A Cannabis Odyssey: To Smoke or Not To Smoke,” Lester Grinspoon
http://marijuana-uses.com/to-smoke-or-not-to-smoke-a-cannabis-odyssey/
26) “The Beatles and drugs,” Published: 7 April 2008 | Last updated: 15 July 2022 https://www.beatlesbible.com/features/drugs/2/
27) Barry Miles, Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1997, p. 390
See also: “The Beatles call for the legalisation of marijuana,” Monday 24 July 1967
28) “Ten For Two – The John Sinclair Benefit – Part 1” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYzYGDk2lIA&t=2699s
“Ten For Two – The John Sinclair Benefit – Part 2” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxj0-Y9dYj0
29) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sinclair_Freedom_Rally
“October 9, 1972 an exhibition of John Lennon/Yoko Ono’s art, designed by the Father of Fluxus movement, George Maciunas, opened at the Syracuse Museum of Art (curated by David Ross, presently director of the Whitney Museum). Same day an unusual group of John’s and Yoko’s friends, including Ringo, Allen Ginsberg and many others gathered to celebrate John’s birthday. This film is a visual and audio record of that event.”
Marijuana is sometimes referred to as “hoots.” “Having a hoot” can also mean “having a puff” of marijuana.
30) “Le Dain Commission of Inquiry into the ‘The Private Testimony of John Lennon,’ Dec. 22nd, 1969, Copyright, Health Canada, 1969, 2003, Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, 2003, Researched by John Whelan, Chief Researcher for the Ottawa Beatles Site” http://beatles.ncf.ca/ocrledain.html http://beatles.ncf.ca/lennon_inquiry.html
31) Fenton Bresler, Who Killed John Lennon, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1989, p. 64
32) Phil Strongman & Alan Parker, John Lennon and the FBI Files, Sanctuary Publishing, London, 2003, p. 109
33) David Malmo-Levine & Bob High, Vansterdam Comix, Weeds, Vancouver, 2018, pp. 351-359, 388
34) N. R. DeMexico, Marijuana Girl, Beacon Book, Canada, Universal Publishing and Distributing Corporation, 1960
35) “Police Raiders Find B. H. Marijuana Mill,” Herald-Press, January 4th, 1960, p. 1
36) “Yard Yields Big Harvest Of Marijuana,” Arizona Republic, Phoenix, Arizona, August 14th, 1960, p. 1
37) “Marijuana Has Been Used Ever Since Ancient Times,” Intelligencer Journal, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, April 13th, 1961, p. 10
38) “Marijuana Plants Found Growing On Marin Roof,” Daily Independent Journal, San Rafael, California, June 27th 1961, p. 1
39) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiend_of_Dope_Island
Fiend of Dope Island, 1961, trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wVqWp5OgDY
40) “Epitaph For A Dead Beat,” Book review by Russell Atkinson, Jul 07, 2017
41) “EPITAPH FOR A TRAMP AND EPITAPH FOR A DEAD BEAT,” DAVID MARKSON,12 February 2007 https://www.popmatters.com/epitaph-for-a-tramp-and-epitaph-for-a-dead-beat-by-david-markson-2495807563.html
42) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Village#Reputation_as_urban_bohemia
43) “Marijuana: Ticket To Violence,” Harry Anslinger and Will Oursler, Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburg, Florida, January 17th, 1962, p. 3; “Reefers: A Fast Road Downhill,” Harry Anslinger and Will Oursler, Chicago Tribune, January 17th, 1962, p. 5
44) “The cognitive effects of opioids,” Ersek M, Cherrier MM, Overman SS, Irving GA., Pain Manag Nurs., 2004 Jun;5(2):75-93. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15297954
45) “Marijuana ‘Weed’ in Winter Haven? Vigilant Police Say No,” The Tampa Tribune, January 27th, 1962, p. 7
46) “Police Smash Narcotics Ring Here with Arrest of Four Men – Quantity of Marijuana Seized,” The Times, Shreveport, Louisiana, March 29th, 1962, p. 3
47) “New Killer Drug Joins Black Market,” The Daily News-Journal, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, July 15th, 1962, p. 19, “LSD Drug May Result In Suicide,” The South Bend Tribune,South Bend, Indiana, November 7th, 1962, p. 51
48) “Mental illness best detected early in schools, doctors say – Teachers need to understand mental health to guide kids to treatment,” CBC News, Oct 07, 2014 https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/mental-illness-best-detected-early-in-schools-doctors-say-1.2791671
49) Dan Wakefield, “The Prodigal Powers of Pot,” Playboy, Vol. 9, No. 8, August 1962, pp. 51-52, 58, 103-105
50) “Roundup Raids – 15 Are Accused In Dope Probe,” The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, August 16th, 1962, pp. 1, 18
51) “Officers Probe Marijuana Find,” Spokane Chronicle, August 29th, 1962, p. 4
52) “Marijuana Patch Dwindling,” Democrat and Chronicle, August 30th, 1962, p. 8
53) “Authorities Burn Patches Of Marijuana,” The Daily Republican, Monongahela, Pennsylvania, September 12th, 1962, p. 1
54) “Lenny Bruce Is Not Afraid” https://www.ukcia.org/potculture/61/lenny.html
55) “How Comedy Legend Lenny Bruce Met A Tragic End,” ELENA NICOLAOU DECEMBER 4, 2018 https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/12/218560/who-lenny-bruce-death-drug-overdose-marvelous-mrs-maisel
56) “Lenny Bruce Is Not Afraid” https://www.ukcia.org/potculture/61/lenny.html A couple months later, Bruce’s home was raided when he wasn’t present, and the people he sub-let the upstairs to were busted for marijuana possession: “Sheriff’s detectives failed to nab comedian Lenny Bruce early today, but took into custody on narcotics charges two of his shapely tenants and their two men friends. Booked on suspicion of possession of marijuana were blonde Diane Lee Skelton, 20, and brunette Beverly Jean Brown, 20, both of West Hollywood; Larry Loyd James, 23, and Bruce N. Thomas, 22, both of North Hollywood. Deputies said they found marijuana debris in two sandwich bags discarded in a wastebasket and a marijuana cigarette in a bedroom ashtray.” “COMIC MISSING – Four Jailed In Raid on Bruce Home,” Oakland Tribune, Oakland, California, March 26th, 1963, p. 30
57) Dell Holland, The Drifter, Playtime, Las Vegas, Nevada, April 1963, p. 120
58) Dean McCoy, BEACH BINGE, (1963), Beacon-Signal http://ludicdespair.blogspot.com/2011/08/beach-binge-1963.html
59) “VICE, CRIME and MARIJUANA,” The American Legion Magazine, Volume 74, No. 3, March 1963, pp. 12-13, 35-38, archive.legion.org
60) Ibid.
61) “Yankee Boy,” Daring Adventures #11, I.W. Publishing/Super Comics, 1963, pp. 21-26 https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=27869 This comic first appeared in Dynamic Comics #16, Flying Cadet Publishing, New York, New York, October 1945 https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=24046
62) Ibid.
63) “British Medical Journal Says Marijuana Should Be Legalized,” The Tampa Tribune, November 25th, 1963, p. 12.
See also: “On Going To Pot,” Chillicothe Gazette, Chillicothe, Ohio, November 23rd, 1963, p. 6
64) “Drug Expert Says It Shouldn’t Be,” The Tampa Tribune, November 25th, 1963, p. 12.
65) Don Elliott (Robert Silverberg), Beatnik Wanton, Evening Reader, ER 717, 1964 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Silverberg
66) “Marijuana … A Shadowy Human Peril,” The Windsor Star, Windsor, Ontario, January 18th, 1964, pp. 5, 8
67) “Marijuana Flourishes In Heart of City; Cops Raid with Hoe,” Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, July 2nd, 1964, p. 10
68) “Pair’s Arrest Ends Marijuana Harvest,” Victoria Advocate, Victoria, Texas, September 18th, 1964, p. 1
69) “16 Arrested in Pre-Dawn, 2-County Narcotics Raid,” Los Angeles Times, October 8th, 1964, p. 117
70) “Police Seize Heroin, Find Marijuana Seed,” Arizona Republic, Phoenix, Arizona, December 17th, 1964, p. 17
71) “Race and Prisons,” Page last updated: Dec. 15, 2021 by Doug McVay, Editor. https://www.drugwarfacts.org/chapter/race_prison
72) “Marijuana: Let’s Keep It Illegal – You Can’t Justify Its Use,” The Vancouver Sun, April 4th, 1964, p. 6
73) “Marijuana Smoker ‘Puffs-In’ – – – Jailed,” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, August 17th, 1964, pp. 1, 4
74) “A Marijuana March – 250 in Union Square,” The San Francisco Examiner, August 31st, 1964, page 1, 12
75) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus
76) “MARIJUANA PUFF IN: IN THE SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA,” In re LOWELL F. EGGEMEIER, Petitioner, For a Writ of Habeas Corpus after denial of an Application for Writ by District Court of Appeals, without opinion filed, James R. White III, 19 Boardman Place, San Francisco, California, Underhill 3-2375, Counsel for Petitioner, p. 6
77) “A Union Square Lecture,” The San Francisco Examiner, September 7th, 1964, p. 3; “Pro-Marijuana Pickets Picketed,” Lansing State Journal, Lansing, Michigan, September 14th, 1964, p. 1
78) “50th Anniversary of First Pot Protest – August 16, 2014” https://www.canorml.org/history/50th-anniversary-of-first-pot-protest-august-16-2014/
79) “‘Beat’ Chief Ginsberg Leads Village Picketing to Legalize ‘Pot’,” The News, Paterson, New Jersey, December 29th, 1964, p. 32
80) “The MARIJUANA NEWSLETTER!” #1, January 30th, 1965, NYC, p. 1
81) “MARIJUANA BEAST CALLED POT – Don’t Flirt With the Green Goddess,” The Vancouver Sun, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, April 9th, 1965, p. 15
82) Ibid.
83) “The Thrill Seekers,” Star Tribune, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 22nd August, 1965, p. 179
84) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Electric_Kool-Aid_Acid_Test
85) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_test_(gold)
86) “Kesey was arrested in La Honda, California, for possession of marijuana in 1965. In an attempt to mislead police, he faked suicide by having friends leave his truck on a cliffside road near Eureka, along with an elaborate suicide note, written by the Pranksters. Kesey fled to Mexico in the back of a friend’s car. He returned to the United States eight months later. On January 17, 1966, Kesey was sentenced to six months to be served at the San Mateo County jail in Redwood City, California. Two nights later, he was arrested again, this time with Carolyn Adams, while smoking marijuana on the rooftop of Stewart Brand‘s Telegraph Hill home in San Francisco.”
“Kesey got busted for pot in April of 1965, but instead of lying low he and the Pranksters staged a series of public psychedelic initiations up and down the West Coast.”
Martin Lee, Smoke Signals, Scribner, New York, 2012, p. 89
“The publicity couldn’t have been better, at least in terms of the hip-intellectual circles where the Pranksters might hope to have some immediate influence. Accusing somebody of possession of marijuana was like saying ‘I saw him take a drink.’ Kesey was referred to as a kind of ‘hipster Christ,’ ‘a modern mystic,’ after the model of Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. As all could plainly read in the press, Kesey had gone even further. . . . If the purpose of the raid was to stamp out dopeniks, the cop game couldn’t have backfired more completely.”
Tom Wolfe, Electric Koolaid Acid Test, Bantam, New York, 1968, p. 136
87) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_%26_Company#2023
88) “THE DRUG TAKERS,” Cincinnati Enquirer, October 20th, 1965, p. 23
89) “Collegians Going to Pot,” The Press Democrat, Santa Rosa, California, November 21st, 1965, p. 4
90) “Cairo Cracks Down in Drive on Deadly Traffic in Narcotics,” Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, November 24th, 1966, p. 241
91) “LSD: A Dangerous New Campus Fad,” The Arizona Republic, Phoenix, Arizona, May 8th, 1966, p. 19
92) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_lysergic_acid_diethylamide#Resistance_and_prohibition
93) “Control Law Set On LSD,” Desert Sun, Vol. 39, Number 256, 31 May 1966, p. 1
94) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Be-In
95) Georgia Straight, Vol. 3, No. 51, Mar. 28 – Apr. 3, 1969
96) “Beatles Interviews Database: Paul McCartney Interview: 1/18/1967” http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1967.0118.beatles.html
“Scene Special – It`s So Far Out, It`s Straight Down (Interview With Paul McCartney) – 7 March 1967”
Incomplete but higher-quality image: “Faul McCartney First Interview 1967”
Another version: “Paul McCartney 1967 BBC Interview” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q87_QjYqbMY
97) “Dangers of Marijuana Use Confusing to Authorities,” Pittsburg Post-Gazette, February 3rd, 1967, p. 19
98) Ibid.
99) “Going After Drugs on the Campus,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 7th, 1967, p. 142
100) Alex Constantine, The Covert War Against Rock, 2000, Feral House, Venice, California, pp. 42-52
101) “Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?” William Rees-Mogg, The London Times, July 1st, 1967
http://www.nickelinthemachine.com/tag/drugs/page/4/
http://invanddis.proboards.com/thread/6773/redlands-bust?page=1
http://ethanrussell.com/americanstory/?p=4016
http://beaconfilms2011.blogspot.com/2012/02/who-breaks-butterfly-upon-wheel.html
102) “Marijuana: Millions of Turned-on Users,” Life, July 7th, 1967, pp. 16-23
103) Ibid, p. 17
104) Ibid, pp. 20, 22
105) “The antagonists: Oldies versus the teenagers,” Sydney Morning Herald, July 11th, 1967, p. 2
106) “Allen Ginsberg and Steve Abrams at Legalise Pot Rally 1967” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxOfFJfiMng
“Legalize Marijuana Rally in Hype Park Archival Newsreel” www.PublicDomainFootage.com
“London Hippies Take Over Hyde Park For Peace 1967”
“Summer of Love – Allen Ginsberg Hippies hold rally in Hyde Park. Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg playing squeezebox and chanting mantra ‘Hari Om Namah Shivaya. Interview with man and women about being hippies and smoking marijuana. Summer of Love – Allen Ginsberg on July 16, 1967 in London (Footage by Getty Images)” https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/video/hippies-hold-rally-in-hyde-park-beat-poet-allen-ginsberg-news-footage/98074849
107) “Allen Ginsberg . . . Allen Ginsberg was in London for a pro-marijuana rally in Hyde Park. He met Jagger at McCartney’s house, and Jagger invited the Beat poet to that night’s session with Paul and John to record uncredited backing vocals for ‘We Love You’. Ginsberg, waving his Shiva beads and a Tibetan oracle ring, conducted the singers from the other side of the studio glass to the tempo of the stuttering Mellotron track. ‘They looked like little angels,’ he wrote later of the Stones and the Beatles, ‘like Botticelli Graces singing together for the first time.’” https://www.robertwhitakerphotography.com/robert-whitaker-biography/allen-ginsberg/
108) “England Is Hippie Heaven,” The Times-News, Hendersonville, North Carolina, September 14th, 1967, p. 14
109) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_My_Fire
110) “The Marijuana Problem,” Newsweek, July 24th, 1967, p. 47
111) Ibid, p. 50
112) Ibid, p. 46
113) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Day_in_the_Life#Drug_culture
114) “At the time of the song’s release, Jagger said: ‘I leave it to the individual imagination as to what happened.’ Matthew Greenwald calls it ‘one [of] the most accurate songs about LSD’.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Happened_to_Me_Yesterday
115) “Tom Lehrer: Be Prepared (studio solo) (1953)” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkrheaWuShU
116) “West Side Story – Gee Officer Krupke! (1961) HD” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7TT4jnnWys
117) “Pot Sounds: The 20 Greatest Songs About Weed,” April 19, 2020 https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/pot-sounds-the-20-greatest-weed-themed-songs-of-all-time-627951/the-beatles-got-to-get-you-into-my-life-1966-2-628022/
118) “Origin of the expression ‘Get stoned’” https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/57256/origin-of-the-expression-get-stoned
119) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Charles#Substance_abuse_and_legal_problems
120) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Got_to_Get_You_into_My_Life
121) Nicholas Schaffner, The Beatles Forever, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1977, p. 77
122) Peter Brown & Steven Gaines, The Love You Make – An Insider’s Story of The Beatles, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1983, p. 224
123) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outside_of_a_Small_Circle_of_Friends
124) By 2003 Haggard had changed his mind about cannabis: “My views on marijuana have totally changed. I think we were brainwashed and I think anybody that doesn’t know that needs to get up and read and look around, get their own information. It’s a cooperative government project to make us think marijuana should be outlawed.” McLenan, Andy (October 31, 2003). “Merle Haggard – Branded man”. nodepression.com. Retrieved April 6, 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merle_Haggard#cite_note-54
125) “Marijuana Users Face Severe Punishment,” Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, August 14th, 1967, p. 10
126) Ibid.
127) “Marijuana – ‘Intoxicant in an Already Overburdened Society’,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 20th, 1967, p. 109
128) “Fight to Legalize Marijuana Opens,” The Boston Globe, September 18th, 1967, pp. 1, 16
129) “Egyptian Dope Trade Booms Despite Death Penalty,” The Record, September 28th, 1967, p. 61
130) “Marijuana – medically safe or not?” Southern Illinoisan, Carbondale, Illinois, October 12th, 1967, p. 4
131) “Thousands In College Turn On With Marihuana,” The Evening Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, November 21st, 1967, p. 19
132) “A Trip for Truth About Mind Benders,” Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, New York, December 3rd, 1967, p. 6
133) “Marijuana: Views Collide,” Los Angeles Times, December 4th, 1967, pp. 37, 42
134) “GOING TO POT,” New York Daily News, December 17th, 1967, p. 97
135) Ibid.
136) Maryjane, 1968 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063281/?ref_=ttls_li_tt
Maryjane, 1968, Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpKIQZ5UlDo
Part 1: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5l0465
Part 2: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5l0414
137) “Hashish,” Hair, 1968 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N3KKFyFOcQ
138) Smoke and Flesh, 1968 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063616/
139) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirk_and_Uhura%27s_kiss
140) Like It Is, 1968 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTe6-1wP_FM
141) REVOLUTION, 1968 https://www.thevideobeat.com/beatnik-hippie-drug-movies/revolution-1968.html
142) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_(film)
143) Marijuana, Educational Film with Sonny Bono, beginning at 18:32 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfZqDRul3nw
144) “The Pusher,” 1968 https://genius.com/Steppenwolf-the-pusher-lyrics
145) “Drug Laws Punish ‘Wrong People’,” The Vancouver Sun, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, May 10th, 1968, p. 15
146) Ibid.
147) Ibid.
148) Ibid.
149) “SF Policeman Joins Hippies In Marijuana Demonstration,” The Californian, Salinas, California, April 15th, 1968, p. 24 According to the Yippies, the first smoke-in ever took place the previous year: “It was at a Grateful Dead concert at the bandshell in the park in the Summer of 1967 that the first ‘Smoke-In’ can be said to have taken place. According to the tale, Provo Dana Beal took a bunch of weed and rolled up a bunch of joints and passed them around at the concert. Some say he got the crowd going when he threw joints in the air from the stage, a tried-and-true tactic.” “History A Brief History of the NYC Cannabis Parade” https://web.archive.org/web/20171010005429/https://cannabisparade.org/history/
150) “MARIJUANA – ON THE WAY IN?” Peek-A-Boo, Spring 1968, New York, NY, p. 53
151) “THE TRUTH ABOUT POT,” Popular Science Monthly, May 1968, 76-79, 211-213
152) Ibid, p. 77
153) Ibid, pp. 79, 211
154) Ibid, p. 212
155) “A WORLD VIEW OF MARIJUANA,” Dr. Joel Fort, Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, Volume II – Issue I, Edited by David E. Smith, M.D., M.S., Haight-Ashbury Medical Clinic, San Francisco, California, fall 1968, p. 7
156) “U.S. MARIJUANA LEGISLATION AND THE CREATION OF A SOCIAL PROBLEM”, Roger Smith M.S., Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, Volume II – Issue I, Edited by David E. Smith, M.D., M.S., Haight-Ashbury Medical Clinic, San Francisco, California, fall 1968, p. 97
157) Ibid, p. 99
158) “A million dollar field of marijuana located east of Martinsville off Rt. 57 was seized Thursday by federal, state, county and Martinsville law enforcement officials.”
“$1 Million Marijuana Field Seized East Of Martinsville,” The Danville Register, Danville, Virginia, September 20th, 1968, p. 13
“More than $100,000 in hashish wedged behind religious pictures mailed from the Holy Land was seized Wednesday morning by Detroit postal service inspectors and local narcotics agents.”
“Art Shipment Yields Dope; Student Held,” Detroit Free Press, October 24th, 1968, p. 3
159) “Experts Say No On ‘Pot’,” Madera Tribune, Madera, California, February 26th, 1968, p. 6
160) “Ann Landers answers your problems,” Redlands Daily Facts, Redlands, California, November 14th, 1968, p. 5
161) https://www.civilized.life/articles/ann-landers-marijuana-laws/
“Harsh Penalty For Pot,” Ann Landers, Jan. 4, 1999 https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1999-01-05-9901040182-story.html
162) “A Theory Refuted – Experimenter’s Report On Pot and Addiction,” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, December 19th, 1968, p. 6
163) Ibid.
164) Clinical and Psychological Effects of Marijuana In Man, Andrew Weil, Norman Zinberg, Judith Nelsen, Science, December 13th, 1968, reprinted in MARIJUANA: MEDICAL PAPERS, edited by Tod Mikuriya, MEDI-COMP PRESS, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA, 1973, p. 277
165) “Teen-Agers’ Use of Drugs ‘An Epidemic’ – School Crackdown Urged By Island Psychiatrist,” The Vancouver Sun, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, December 13th, 1968, p. 27
166) “HIPPIES – HYPOCRISY and ‘HAPPINESS’,” Ambassador College Press, Pasadena, California, 1968, p. 29
167) Cannabis – Report by the Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence, 1968, HER MAJESTY’S STATIONERY OFFICE, LONDON
168) Ibid, p. 1
169) Ibid, p. 16
170) Ibid, p. 33
171) “The Wootton Report Extract from The Strange Case of Pot by Michael Schofield (Penguin, 1971).” https://druglibrary.net/schaffer/Library/studies/wootton/strange.htm
172) “The Home Secretary at the time, James Callaghan, suggested he would reject the report. He told Parliament that on his reading, the committee had been ‘over-influenced’ by the ‘lobby’ for ‘legalisation’ responsible for ‘that notorious advertisement’, adding, ‘it was wrong for the committee to report on one drug in isolation in the way that it did’. However, a year later he introduced comprehensive new consolidating legislation that had the effect of implementing Wootton’s proposal.”
173) “Real drugs were used in scenes showing the use of marijuana, heroin, and LSD.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_(1969_film)
174) More, 1969, at 1:10:13 https://themovies.to/movies/more-1969/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIZ_ijxhsdU
175) “Peter Fonda Admits He Smoked Real Pot in ‘Easy Rider’,” October 30, 2009 https://extratv.com/2009/10/30/peter-fonda-admits-he-smoked-real-pot-in-easy-rider/
176) “Easy Rider – Is that marijuana?” https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4zr901
177) “Youth International Party manifesto! poster work on paper c. 1968” http://collections.museumca.org/?q=collection-item/2010541073
178) “29 Young People Arrested Here In Widespread Narcotics Raids,” Sunday News, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, January 19th, 1969, pp. 1, 35
179) “Marijuana: A Tree Grows Into a Society Thorn,” Dayton Daily News, Dayton, Oho, February 10th, 1969, p. 20
180) “75 state opposition to marijuana laws during two-hour city march Saturday,” Edmonton Journal, Edmonton, Alberta, April 7th, 1969, p. 21
181) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_E._Meyer
182) The evidence of the NYT massacre-cover-up begins at 1:07:12 – one can hear Meyer’s weak response to the charges at 1:24:02 and again at 1:27:20
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media | Feature Film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuwmWnphqII&t=8896s
183) “Amsterdam Hashish Club Just Big Bore,” San Antonio Express, April 29th, 1969, p. 25, see also “The limits of permissiveness,” The Boston Globe, October 12th, 1969, p. 247-316
184) https://hashmuseum.com/en/amsterdam/7-fantasio/
185) The Grand History of Cannabis, Stefan van Swieten, Marimba Publishers, Velsen-Noord, Netherlands, 2024, pp. 14-15
186) https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarasani
187) https://hashmuseum.com/en/amsterdam/lowlands-weed-company/
188) The Dutch Cannabis Connections, Wernard Bruning, April, 2004
The History of the First Ever Coffeeshop – The Legend of Sarasani and Holly Hasenbos, shite guides, 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zmm6jI3eZU&t=73s
189) NATIONAL DRUG POLICY: THE NETHERLANDS Prepared For The Senate Special Committee On Illegal Drugs Benjamin Dolin Law and Government Division 15 August 2001 LIBRARY OF PARLIAMENT https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/committee/371/ille/library/dolin1-e#A.%20%20Historica
190) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leary_v._United_States
191) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act
192) Martin Lee, Smoke Signals, Scribner, New York, 2012, p. 118
193) Timothy Leary, Confessions of a hope fiend, 1973, Bantam Books, New York, pp. 31-119 https://archive.org/details/confessionsofhop00learrich/page/n9/mode/2up
“On January 21, 1970, Leary received a ten-year sentence for his 1968 offense, with a further ten added later while in custody for a prior arrest in 1965, for a total of 20 years to be served consecutively. On his arrival in prison, he was given psychological tests used to assign inmates to appropriate work details. Having designed some of these tests himself (including the ‘Leary Interpersonal Behavior Inventory’), Leary answered them in such a way that he seemed to be a very conforming, conventional person with a great interest in forestry and gardening. As a result, he was assigned to work as a gardener in a lower-security prison from which he escaped in September 1970, saying that his nonviolent escape was a humorous prank and leaving a challenging note for the authorities to find after he was gone.”
194) “Inverness Hashish Raiders Arrest 10,” Daily Independent Journal, May 28th, 1969, pp. 1, 4
195) “The Mystery of Marijuana,” Florida Today, Cocoa, Florida, June 22nd, 1969, pp. 1E, 5E
196) Ibid.
197) “Dorval customs men get huge hashish haul,” The Gazette, Montreal, Canada, July 7th, 1969, p. 1
198) “Marihuana Is Here and Available to Those With Contacts!” The Scrantonian, July 13th, 1969, p. 42
199) “Hashish cache uncovered,” The Daily Record, Long Branch, New Jersey, August 2nd, 1969, p. 1
200) “Marijuana Called Safe,” The Journal, Meriden, Connecticut, September 25th, 1969, p. 21
201) “Pop Drugs: The High as a Way of Life,” TIME, September 26th, 1969, pp. 62-72
202) Ibid, pp. 68, 72
203) Ibid, p. 72
204) “COMPETITIVE PROBLEMS IN THE DRUG INDUSTRY: HEARINGS BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON MONOPOLY OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS, UNITED STATES SENATE, NINETY-FIRST CONGRESS, FIRST SESSION ON PRESENT STATUS OF COMPETITION IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY, MONDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1969, UNITED STATES SENATE, Washington, D.C. U.S. Congress, Senate Committee Hearings, Senate Library Volume 2028, 1969 [Dr. Margaret Mead] [p. 5459]” http://www.veryimportantpotheads.com/site/meadtestimony.htm
205) “Margaret Mead’s for Legal Pot,” UPI, Washington, October 27th, 1969, see also: “Marijuana Should Be Legal, Margaret Mead Tells Senate,” Chicago Tribune, October 28th, 1969, p. 20
206) “Marijuana: the law vs. 12 million people,” LIFE, Vol. 67, No. 18, October 31st, 1969, pp. 26-35
207) Ibid, p. 34. Dr. Goddard’s article was condensed and reprinted in the January, 1970 edition of Reader’s Digest, p. 70
208) Ibid.
209) Ibid.
210) Facts About Cannabis, Revised November, 1969, Drug Abuse Education Unit, Food & Drug Directorate, Department of National Health and Welfare, Ottawa, Ont.
211) “Testimony Given on MJ Use By GIs,” Bill Kennedy, Hawaii Tribune-Herald, Hilo, Hawaii, December 14th, 1969, p. 4
212) “Returning veterans, affected civilians and others have said that U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), based on the assumption that all friendly forces had been cleared from the area, established a policy designating ‘free-fire zones’ as areas in which:
- Anyone unidentified is considered an enemy combatant
- Soldiers were to shoot anyone moving around after curfew without first making sure that they were hostile.
Around 220,000 civilians killed by US/GVN forces were counted as ‘enemy KIA’ in battlefield operations reports during battles against VC/NVA, according to Guenter Lewy due to the use of free-fire zones. There are no distinctions between enemy KIA and civilian KIA inadvertently killed in the crossfire or through deployment of heavy artillery, aerial bombardment and so-on. Part of this stemmed from the doctrine requirements of producing ‘enemy body count’ during the Vietnam War, which saw violations and statistical manipulations due to ongoing pressures from MACV on units.”
See also:
“These types of incidents, in which My Lai massacre was a perfect example, occurred frequently in most areas throughout South Vietnam. Obviously, the loss of lives among non-combatants was enormous. According to a U.S. Senate estimate, civilian casualties from such actions were 100,000 in 1965 and 300,000 by 19685.” https://thevietnamwar.info/free-fire-zone/2/?vietnam-war-facts=free-fire-zone
“The commission sought to give the impression that Directive 525-3 had forbidden indiscriminate airstrikes and artillery attacks on populated areas in what were called ‘specified strike zones’—also known within the US military as ‘free-fire zones.’ It said one of the ‘significant points’ in the directive was that such zones ‘should be configured to exclude populated areas.’ But what Directive 525-3, which this writer obtained from Army historical archives, actually said was, ‘Specified strike zones should be configured to exclude populated areas except those in accepted VC bases.’ [Emphasis added.] The Peers Commission thus exonerated Westmoreland by suppressing the crucial part of the sentence that showed exactly the opposite of what it was asserting. The directive actually allowed the creation of free-fire zones in hamlets and villages under long-term Viet Cong control such as My Lai, in which the civilian population would have no protection whatsoever. Although the official MACV directive did not explicitly state that civilians living in “specified strike zones” were not to be given any protection, it clearly implied that this was indeed the policy.”
213) The best book that proves that murdering civilians was a result of official US policy, and not a result of cannabis use, was a 2017 book entitled The CIA As Organize Crime by Douglas Valentine. One of the chapters in this book was about the “Phoenix Program” – the CIA’s coordinated effort to assassinate the Viet Cong, which critics like Valentine argue convincingly that was mainly a coordinated effort to assassinate and intimidate and extort civilians, most of which had nothing to do with the Viet Cong.
Valentine writes;
“The program existed in relative secrecy until June 1969, when numerous South Vietnamese legislators complained in open session about being extorted, jailed and killed, but the complicit American press corps never reported it. And in the absence of any objection by the American public, the CIA had no reason to relent. It was not until late 1970, when a handful of anti-war Phoenix veterans exposed the program’s many abuses, that Congress finally launched an investigation. But even then, thanks to skillfully dissembling on the part of William Colby, the erstwhile Deputy for Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development in charge of Phoenix, the CIA was able to shirk any responsibility.”
The CIA As Organized Crime, Douglas Valentine, Clarity Press, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia, 2017, p. 59
Valentine provides the context that leads one to suspect that My Lai wasn’t just a result of the “free fire zone” policy, but that it was a CIA “selected assassination of civilians in the Phoenix Program” policy as well;
“Before the (Phoenix Program) operation, Provincial Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) teams, advised by US Marines detached to the CIA, were sent to locate and surveil targeted Communist cadres, known as members of the Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI). Escape routes were studied for ambush sites and local US Army and Marine units were conscripted to act as a ‘blocking force’ to seal off the village, just as happened at My Lai on 16 March, 1968. At dawn on the day of the Phoenix operation in Thuong Xa, US military aircraft dropped thousands of psywar leaflets on the village urging the targeted VCI to surrender, and offering rewards to defectors and informers. All that happened at My Lai too.”
Ibid, p. 321
