introduction smoke:
seventeen writers on going to pot
by jonathan santlofer
P ot. Grass. Hemp. Hash. Herb. Reefer. Ganja. Smoke. Spliff. Weed. Kush. Mary Jane. Cannabis. Tea. Blunt. Dope. Doobie.
Marijuana. The popular drug. The newsworthy drug. The everyman and everywoman drug. Medical marijuana. Recreational pot. A drug for the young, the old, and everyone in between. The drug that doesn’t have you pawning the family silver along with your mother. The mellow—put on a Barry White CD, open a jug of vino, and send out for a dozen Dunkin’ Donuts—drug. The cool drug. The no howling at the moon (well, maybe not) drug.
Whatever you want to call it, marijuana, cannabis, and hemp have been around for a long time. As a food in ancient China, a textile in 4000 BC Turkestan, referred to as “Sacred Grass” in Hindu texts long before Christ. Scythian tribes left cannabis seeds as offerings to the gods. Herodotus wrote on its recreational and ritualistic use. There is evidence that the Romans used it medicinally and the Jewish Talmud touted its euphoric properties. Syrian mystics introduced it to twelfth-century Egypt, and Arabs traded it along the coast of Mozambique. Marco Polo reported on hashish in his thirteenth-century journeys. Angolan slaves planted it between rows of cane on Brazilian plantations, the French and British grew cannabis and hemp in their colonies. George Washington cultivated it at Mount Vernon, and Thomas Jefferson grew it at Monticello. Around 1840 cannabis-based medicines became available in the US—Le Club des Hashischins (the Hashish-Eaters Club) was all the rage in Paris, and Turkish smoking parlors were opening in America. (All according to “A Short History of Cannabis,” by Neil M. Montgomery,Pot Night, Channel 4 Television, March 4, 1995.)
As marijuana’s popularity grew, the British taxed it, Napoleon banned it, Turkey made it illegal, Greece cracked down. In 1930, the US government ceded control of illegal drugs to the Treasury Department and Harry J. Anslinger, a prohibitionist zealot, was named the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a job he managed to hold until 1962. Anslinger waged war against marijuana with a nationwide campaign that linked pot smoking to insanity, and theSan Francisco Examiner ran an editorial in 1923 supporting this belief:
Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters.
Clearly crazier and nastier than the vast majority of pot smokers would ever be, Anslinger went even further with his testimony at a Senate hearing, creating an abhorrent racial bias in regard to the drug:
There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.
Though New York’s mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, commis sioned an in-depth study of the effects of smoking marijuana, which contradicted Anslinger’s claims, it was condemned as unscientific and wholly disregarded by the crusading narcotics bureau chief.
Meanwhile,Reefer Madness, the full-length 1936 black-andwhite propaganda movie, touted the dangers of a “new drug menace which is destroying the youth of America in alarmingly increasing numbers,” that would ultimately cause “emotional disturbances … leading finally to acts of shocking violence … ending often in incurable insanity.” Personally, I found the film’s wild partying, sex, and even murder campy fun despite the pious preaching and bad acting. In the end, you just can’t spell out the dangers of neon with neon and not make your audience want to try it!
The “culture of marijuana” was
