The War on Drugs

Weed smokers today should appreciate how good they have it compared to smokers in the 1970′s, 80′s, and 90′ s. Starting actually with President Johnson in the 1960′s, the so called war on drugs made the life of a stoner miserable at some times. During this time, there were periods – lasting months – where it was next to impossible to get some decent weed. The pot you could get was also expensive in addition to being low quality.

During the late 1970′s and early 1980′s, the U.S. government began spraying marijuana fields in Mexico with the herbicide paraquat. Although studies had shown that smoking paraquat sprayed pot had little or no health consequences, the government ran a disinformation program claiming that smoking the tainted pot would cause health problems. While paraquat exposure has been linked to Parkinson’s disease, this has only happened with people who regularly worked with the herbicide such as farmers. The small amount of paraquat that was ingested from smoking weed wasn’t enough to cause any significant health problems.

In the end, all the war on drugs accomplished was to imprison people for wanting to use a substance that has never been proven to be addictive or harmful in the way that heroin, cocaine, and alcohol are. You don’t see stories in the news about people high on marijuana causing traffic fatalities in the thousands every year like alcohol does.

Luckily for me, I was busted with about a quarter pound of pot (a felony) before the war on drugs was underway. The charge was eventually reduced to possession of less than 30 grams (a misdemeanor) and I consider myself fortunate today to have beaten the war on drugs implementation. Had I been busted a few years later, I almost certainly would have received jail time because if you were caught with over an ounce in those days it was implied that your intent was to distribute. People who were caught selling drugs back then almost always received jail time.

The War on Drugs