Change ‘attitude problem ’ *
NORML bids for genuine local supporters
Two and a half years ago, when a friend
and I decided to start a UNL chapter of
National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws, we had no idea how many
local activists the issue would attract.
Within a few months, we had more than
200 signed members, with a regular atten
dance of about 30-50 people, and a “core
group” of about 25 people who dutifully
worked and spoke up.
Our immediate goals were to raise money
to support the cause nationally^arfd to dis
seminate information locally tocounter right
ist propaganda — and to some degree our
efforts have been fruitful. We’ve sent more
than $1,500 to national pro-legalization in
terests, informed farmers and other hard-to
reach rural people at last year’s slate fair,
— distributed flyers, sold T-shirts, etc. In a
larger sense, our efforts have gone
unredeemed and, in some cases, have prob
ably been detrimental to our own cause.
I think the pro-legalization movement
has developed an attitude problem. Some of
the people who have joined the group have
been “rebels casting out lines for a cause.”
These people come and go; their super
ficial interests manifest themselves in a simple
unwillingness to work. The other extreme,
equally common, is those people who iden
tify with the issue so closely that it consumes
their lives.
It’s as if the whole world was an arena in
which the great cosmic struggle between the
hempsters and the "Republican fascists” takes
place.
It’s a convenient trap to see things as
black and white, and so our rhetoric be
comes as tired afai reactionary as those
persons we oppose.
The most glaring and self-detrimental
example of this I know of is when Jack
Merer, a noted activist, came to give his talk
last year in Lincoln. As leader of Help
Eliminate Marijuana Prohibition and author
of well-known underground book, “ The
Emperor Wears No Clothes," his presence
attracted many local radicals and other inter
ested persons.
Me also attracted media interest, includ
ing a camera from 10/11 news.
How disheartening it was to hear Merer
employing sexist languagef referring to males
in the audience as ‘men ’ and females as
“girls,” and insulting non-users as “idiots,”
denying, and I quote, “their birthright to
smoke hemp.”
Preaching the hemp gospel as he shook
his copy of “The Emperor” like a Gutenberg,
he reminded one most of a stoned
televangelist.
Yet with all the hoopla andmythomania
fecding rhetoric, the cause is still a vital one.
Perhaps the most effective proponents have
not been radicals at all.
When he publicly announced that mari
juana was less harmful to health than either
tobacco or alcohol, Surgeon General C.
Everett Coop probably convinced more
people than anyone has. And the single best
quote we have on the politics of drug use
comes from Jimmy Carter, who asserted that
“the penalties for the use of a drug should
not be more harmful to the user.than the use
of the drug itself.”
I wou Id take the quote one step further to
argue that a crime without a victim is no
crime at all. __
I have never understood the concept of “a
crime against the state,” for what is “the
state” but the people who populate it?
Anti-marijuana laws are informed by rac
ist preconceptions and imagery from the
mid-1950s, portraying the marijuana user as*
a black, jazz-playing dope fiend or his white
"victim” fit for rape or exploitation.
The classic example of early anti-mari
juana propaganda is the movie “Reefer Mad
ness,” in which innocent whitesuburbanites
smoke grass, go crazy and develop a fantas
tic -conviction in their ability to fly. _ •
While the post-prohibition Anslinger Re
gime is largely responsible for the initial
marginalization of marijuana users, the con
tinued view of hemp as an “evil drug,”
lumped together with more harmful physi
cally addictive drugs such as heroin and
crack, is a function mostly of business inter
ests and ultra-right wing moral entrepre
neurship.
The drug war justifies self-righteous con
servative sentiments that “thou shalt not
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