Reefer Blandness

by Kerry Joyce
illustration by Opie

“Marijuana makes each person God.” So wrote sports reporter, turned anti-war celebrity, turned stock broker, turned road kill, Jerry Rubin, about 25 years ago in a popular, and embarrassing, little book called, Do It, written when marijuana was a cultural accessory for the Rock generation.

It was widely believed back then that marijuana would kick open the doors of perception, a sort of spiritual steroid that could jump-start the divine spark.

By the mid-’70s marijuana had become so pervasive that “Are you cool?” had come to mean “Do you smoke marijuana?” People routinely smoked it walking down Commonwealth Avenue and around Harvard Square. A long hair couldn’t pass through Boston Common without someone asking if they wanted to buy some. You could even ask a complete stranger to get you high in the tip-top bleachers at Fenway Park, and they would generally reply, yes.

There was a fraternal aspect to marijuana smoking. Long hairs picked up other long hairs hitchhiking and got each other stoned. Marijuana became a nationwide institution that for a while helped people transcend the racial and class barriers of the “straight” establishment. But marijuana quickly turned out to be the wrong tool in a great cause.

We laughed up our bongs at the movie Reefer Madness, and louder still with slitted, bloodshot eyes when we were told that marijuana was a gateway drug. “It would lead to harder things,” we were warned.

Well, what did it lead to? By the late ’70s, disco had taken over the air waves, as stoners wretched like drunks at four a.m. over the demise of their cultural predominance. Harvard Square became an outdoor mall, a kind of counterculture theme park, owned and operated by guys with shot glasses in their hands. These days, you’re breaking the law by smoking a cigarette in Harvard Square, never mind a joint.

I could tell you that the people at the Hemp Rally wreaked havoc on the Esplanade. That they politely told the Boston cops, whose union fought drug testing tooth and nail, to take a flying fuck, and vowed to smoke anywhere, anytime. That they’re going to overturn all the stupid laws telling people they can’t get stoned. But you’d know I was lying. That’s not the stoner style. Instead, they want to be congratulated for how peaceful they were. Congratulations.

But go down to City Hall, and get registered to vote and deal with all the bullshit? It’s too much of a hassle. Or contribute to N.O.R.M.L.? Let’s see, where’s my checkbook? Do we have any stamps? Any envelopes? Marijuana does make people more peaceful, if you define peaceful as docile and easily controlled. Sheep are peaceful too.

The words “organization” and “marijuana” don’t even belong in the same sentence, except to say how incompatible they are. Marijuana is the drug of choice primarily for the young, chronically immature.

I guess there were more people at the Hemp Rally than there were at the Red Sox game that day. Attendance was, as usual, directly related to the quality of the musical fare. Letters to Cleo was there. Mass Cann can’t rally 500 people without free entertainment. The speech makers were incoherent from a 100 feet, not that anyone cared. Whoever set up the sound system must have been high.

Watching the political types in their vain attempts to inflame the passions of the stoned masses would have been sadly pathetic, but I was pretty stoned myself, so instead it was just one more thing to giggle about.

Let’s see, where was I? The Rally? Oh yeah, it was a pretty good place to hang out on a kind of warm autumn Saturday. The city hadn’t seen such a concentration of suburban white youth in a public place since the College Republicans were in town. From a sitting position, you could have taken a great ad photo for Klansmen Jeans featuring a cast of thousands. If marijuana is supposed to make people creative, why were we all wearing the same pants? I suppose it’s not Mass Cann’s fault that white kids and black kids don’t listen to the same music. Damn. Did we forget to do minority outreach again?

Medical science has yet to prove whether marijuana turns its smokers into listless wonders, or whether passive people are predisposed to smoking marijuana. Fact is, many of the stigmatized and oppressed have challenged the government with success: Blacks, homosexuals, women, and the handicapped, to name the obvious. The main reason marijuana is still illegal is not because the state is so heavy handed, it’s because marijuana smokers can’t get their shit together.

Millions of people smoke the stuff, yet I never hear about anyone getting rich off it. Even the marijuana sellers I’ve known lacked the where-with-all to keep themselves in a steady stash. Sure alcohol turns you into a bigger jerk, but marijuana turns you into a weak and inefficient one.

A study by NASA observed that stoned spiders give up on spinning a web when only about half finished. Marijuana, it seems, tends to undermine drive, decisiveness, and self-confidence, without which all the creativity in the world isn’t worth a six-pack of Bud Talls. Marijuana makes each person God? If that were the case, God would have rested around the fourth day and left it at that. I know: It would have been one hell of a sky.