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Toxic Shock 061
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presents
Ed Rosenthal
Counterculture Hero of the Year 1989
by Bloody Afterbirth
Toxic File #61
-from High Times, May 1990, by Jon Gettman-
!*@&#^$%#^@&!*@&#^$%#^@&!*@&#^$%#^@&!*@&#^$%#^@&!*@&#^$%#^@&!*@&#^$%#^@&!*
Here's some other small things from the same mag...
N.O.R.M.L.
2001 "S" Street, NW, Suite 640
Washington, DC 20009
202.483.5500
Membership is 25 bucks, but you can donate 'em money without belonging...
They are a good organization and they can use your support. They have
rallies and such all over the country, demonstrations, etc...
(Picture a cigarette, a beer, and a joint)
"Ask your doctor which of these is least harmful to your health.
Now ask your Congressman why it's illegal.
Nearly 490,000 Americans will die this year from accidents or illnesses
related to alcohol or tobacco. But marijuana is no killer. In fact,
medical evidence indicated many foods we commonly consume pose a greater
danger to human health than marijuana. Stil it remains illegal ---
consuming over $5 billion of our tax dollars for law enforcement each year.
But if regulated, marijuana sales would generate $10 to $15 billion dollars
in annual tax revenue.
It Could Be You
400,000 people are arrested each year on marijuana charges - 85% of them
for simple possession. If you enjoy occasional recreational use, this fact
should trouble you. Because while these laws remain on the books you're in
jeopardy. You risk social and financial disaster. In manu states you can
still be sent to prison for possessing even a small quantity of pot. Now
consider that because of the escalating "War on Drugs," penalties for
marijuana possession are being severely increased --- putting you at greater
risk than ever before.
Send A Buck.
Whether you smoke marijuana often, occasionally, or NOT AT ALL, you
should be angry about its prohibition. Why not join N.O.R.M.L. - the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws? Membership is only
$25.00. If you're skittish about sending us your name, just drop a buck in
the mail to. . . . ."
"Ever wonder why the two most dangerous drugs in America are legal, while
the safest drug remains illegal?
The most powerful corporations in the world spend millions of dollars
every day to keep cannabis illegal. Why? The petrochemical industry
doesn't want legal hemp to compete with synthetic fuel and fiber. The
alcohol and tobacco industries don't want legal marijuana to compete with
cigarettes and beer. (Tobacco and alcohol account for over 400,000 deaths
per year. If you were provided with a non-lethal alternative, which would
you choose?)
But there's another important reason why corporations fear the cannabis
plant. It grows wild in all 50 states and can be cultivated for free by
virtually anyone! Once it's legal to grow, cannabis will be far cheaper
than alcohol, tobacco, or petrochemicals!
So, help legalize cannabis by joining Ed Hassle's Freedom Fighters. For
a mere $15 you get an official membership card, a year's subscription to the
Freedom Fighter's newsletter, and invitations to pro-pot rallies, HIGH TIMES
parties and other special events. Each year, the most decorated member of
the Freedom Fighters gets to be a judge at the annual Cannabis Cup Awards in
Holland! Join Today!"
Check/money order payable to Trans-High Corp.
Send to:
Ed Hassle's Freedom Fighters
211 East 43rd St.
New York, New York 10017
They'll obviously need your name/address...They send the newsletter in a
plain unmarked envelope without a return address...and they keep the mailing
list confidential...
That should do...for now.
*!&@^#%$^#&@*!&@^#%$^#&@*!&@^#%$^#&@*!&#@^#%$^#&@*!&@^#%$^#&@*!&@^#%$^#&@*!
Ed Rosenthal, at first glance, doesn't look like a hippie, let alone the
1989 HIGH TIMES Counterculture Hero of the Year. He has short hair, for one
thing. He's also a successful entrepreneur, self-employed as a writer,
publisher, and owner of a mail order business. In addition to his work, he
speaks around the country encouraging people to become more involved in
local and federal government. Under any other circumstances this would be
the description of a successful, small town, main street republican. If it
weren't for pot, and the fact that Ed is the most well-known authority on
the cultivation of marijuana, it would be easy to confuse Ed with a straight
person. He's not, and marijuana's why.
If you had walked into a head shop during thr 1970's, in addition to the
bongs, pipes, and rolling papers, more often than not, you would have also
found books about how to grow marijuana. I know, because I used to manage
one of those stores, and I remember that most of the grow books I sold, and
most of the grow books sold in the Washington, DC area had Ed Rosenthal's
name on them.
If you had gone to a NORML conference during the early 1980's, you would
have also run into Ed, as a speaker, in a workshop, or, in one of his
favorite haunts, "behind the scenes." Meanwhile, his books were still
selling, and his readership expanded even more by the way of HIGH TIMES.
And then by the late eighties, if you had gone to the Madison Harvest
Festival or the Hash Bash in Ann Arbor or a NORML festival at the Washington
Monument, once again, you'd find Ed, either rousing the crowd with his own,
blunt assessments about our political situation or exhorting them to
contribute funds to both the event organizers and NORML to keep our
marijuana movement alive. And his books were still selling, and his
articles were still being read, and he was still active in NORML on both a
national and a local level.
Throughout the last 15 years Ed Rosenthal has been an integral part of
the marijuana law reform movement, both socially and politcally. The
assimilation into our culture of sophisticated means to cultivate marijuana
in these United States has permanently guaranteed its presence in our
country. Ed's contributions in this area alone are of monumental influence.
HIGH TIMES:First of all, Ed, what's your favorite slang term for marijuana?
Ed Rosenthal:Pot.
HT:When was the first time you smoked pot?
ER:In '66
HT: Tell me about it.
ER:Actually, I got into it the second time I smoked it. I obtained some and
turned on with my roommate. We were both virgins - we had smoked, but we
were both really virgins. At that time those books by Carlos Castenada had
first come out and they talked about his big smoke and his little smoke and
they're being his allies, and immediately when I first got high, I very much
felt that marijuana was an ally of mine.
HT:When did you first get interested in growing pot?
ER:When I was a child I had a great interest in botany, and had taken a
number of classes at the New York Botanical Gardens. So it was very natural
of me to take an interest in a green plant.
HT:What was the state of growing marijuana in the United States during the
late '60s?
ER:Very few people were growing. It had a very bad reputation, so it sold
for much less money than other products. There was very little being grown
indoors, and it was been grown under fluorescents.
HT:When did you start publishing about the topic of growing marijuana?
ER:About 1974.
HT:How would you characterize things in the late '70s, compared to the late
'80s?
ER:It was the golden age of outdoor cultivation. People were growing big
plants and were beginning to do breeding. By the early 1980's indoors
became the preferred way, and more and more people began growing indoors.
HT:Do you have an estimate of the number of readers you have in the US?
ER:Milions of readers and over a million books sold.
HT:Do you think all those people are actually growers?
ER:I think there are something like a million frowers in the country today.
That includes everyone, commercial and personal use growers. Figure if
there are 35 million smokers who smoke regularly, and one out of thirty
three of those people are growing.
HT:That's an awful lot of pot.
ER:Oh, it's not that everybody's growing successfully, and not everybody is
growing a lot. The smallest garden I heard about had a space of about one
foot by one foot.
HT:What esthetics do you like and look for in pot?
ER:Marijuana is a very subtle drug. It can be a blockbuster, but it can
also be subtle. I like a variety that brings out the nuances of thought and
pleasure, rather than one that is deadening. I think there are some really
fine varieties with a senseof humor about them, a wryness, and still allow
you to break those synapses...
HT:What about tolerances?
ER:Somebody wrote that if marijana leads to other drugs it takes a long
time. You build up a certain tolerance but it's not as if it loses its
effect. I think part of that tolerance is a chemical tolerance, and part of
it is your expectations, a familiarity.
HT:LEt's talk a little about the Yippies, marijuana, and political action.
ER:In 1967 I came back from college to New York and quite by accident I
bumped into a demonstration protesting the arrest of Dana Beal and, having
nothing to do that evening, I joined the demonstration, and got involved
with the New York Provos, and then was in on ethe founding of the Yippies,
and stayed with that. The Yippies have an anarchistic streak, they're
entreprenuerial, they're not dealing in dogma in the same way the ism-groups
do, and they'd like to see major changes in the United States so that it
becomes a truly democratic country rather than an imperialistic republic.
HT:Tell me a little about your relationship with Reagan Drug Advisor
Carleton Turner.
ER:After my first big book was published, my co-author Mel Frank and myself
sent Carleton a letter and after a little bit of correspondence we were
invited down to the University of Mississipi which is where he was doing
research. Since then I've kept up my professional relationship with him.
Even though we've had many many differences over the years, and can probably
say we disagree on almost everything, we have been able to maintain an
amiable relationship. I haven't spoken to him since he left the White
House.
HT:You also had quite a career the last couple of years as an expert witness
in marijuana cultivation cases.
ER:Yeah.
HT:How does the government misstate marijuana cultivation when they bring
charges against somebody?
ER:Most of the state laws differentiate between cultivation for personal use
and cultivation for sale, and most police have never seen a cultivation for
personal use garden, because every garden they see is the most professional,
the most sophisticated, and the biggest, and so on -- even if it's only a
few square feet.
HT:They always describe gardens they find in these terms?
ER:Yes. They also have the presumption that every female plant is going to
yield a pound, and that it is going to be grown to yield a pound, and to
grow and survive, and so on.
HT:Is this just to have the maximum charges to press or are they genuinely
ignorant?
ER:I think it is a combination.
HT:Does your expertise regarding marijuana come in handy when talking to
legislators about marijuana laws?
ER:I often wonder about that because I think that of all the people in the
United States, I come into the legislature with the most baggage, because to
many of the people I'm a personification of evil.
HT:Is that because of your activism or because you have helped to spread the
word far and wide about growing marijuana?
ER:Because of my relationship with HIGH TIMES as well as some of the books
I have written. But especially my relationship with HIGH TIMES which, I
mean, is the most notorious magazine in the United States. You'd think
that a magazine like Soldier Of Fortune, or some of the racist magazines, or
some of the magazines with a lot of violence--that should be notorious, but
actually the magazine that is most condemned by the establishment is HIGH
TIMES. I'm proud to be associated with it. That's on one hand, on the
other I think that that has created a lot of baggage for me when I go to the
legislature. And that in itself has proven to me that if I can do
legislative work, then anybody can because I'm one of the most hated men in
the California State legislature.
HT:A lot of people think that because they smoke pot they're making
themselves vulnerable by going out and lobbying. Do you think that smoking
and/or growing pot and political activism are mutually exclusive?
ER:No. Because you're concerned about a political issue doesn't necessarily
mean you're directly associated with it. There is no reason for a person to
say to their congressman "I smoke pot." What is really of concern to
legislators is not your personal habits but where you stand on the issues.
There is no reason to talk of a person's personal involvement in it.
HT:Where do you think movement activity needs to go in the next ten years to
make progress?
ER:First of all I do think that marijuana is going to be legal and I
wouldn't have believed twenty years ago that it wouldn't be legal by now.
HT:Do you think it will be legal by the year 2000?
ER:Yes, I do, by the outside, by 2004. The way the legalization movement is
going now, I do think marijuana is going to be legal soon.
HT:What do you think is going right in the movement now?
ER:There is an organization out there now that has been able to attract the
support of the intellectual community and to penetrate the opinion makers,
and that's the Drug Policy Foundation. And what they have done is give an
intellectual, as well as a theoretical, base to a lot of the practical
things NORML has been saying, as well as what the activists have been
saying. For instance, while a lot of politicians can not relate to Madison
Harvest Festival organizer and last year's Counterculture Hero of the Year,
Ben Masel, they can relate to [Princeton University Professor] Ethan
Nadelman or [Drug Policy Foundation President] Arnold Trebach, so that puts
the whole issue in a different light. That's one thing. Secondly is that
there was a major tactical mistake on the part of the Administration, and
that is up until a couple of years ago we only had drug skirmishes, and then
the Reagan's adopted the idea of a War on Drugs. The difference between the
skirmishes and the War is that skirmishes can go on for generations and
generations, but we Americans like our wars short. There haven't been too
many long wars in American history. And of course, this is a war that can't
be won.
HT:Do you think that the Reagans, by calling too much attention and raising
the rhetorical pitch, in the end will have provoked a desire to find some
resolution to these problems?
ER:They definitely will, a year ago Bennett had this perception--he's the
commander, he's going to win the war--and now, everybody's looking at the
dissarray that his troops are in. They expected Operation Green Merchant to
put an end to domestic cultivation. It really backfired on them--they got a
lot of bad editorial publicity, and they got a lot of negative response from
the community at large. People talk about the numbers of people who feel
drugs are a big issue, the number of people who want to kill drug
dealers--you hear all these terrible statistics, but these are basically
manufactured statistics.
HT:Do you think there is a real opportunity for people to make a difference
by being more politically active?
ER:Oh yes. I think that every letter you write represents a thousand
people. I used to criticize NORML for saying 'write a letter,' but I
realized how hard it is to get an individual to write a letter, and that's
just a starting point. That's why I don't think it's enough. For instance,
there are 35 million people who smoke marijuana. If three and a half
million people actually lobbied their congresspeople and their legislators,
repressive drug laws wouldn't pass.
HT:Congress knows, though, that people don't usually write, so that the
letters they do receive represent far more people who agree with the letter
writer, but didn't get it on paper.
ER:Right. And the only reason these laws get passed is because no one
stands up on our side and opposes them. When the police get up and say we
need more laws, more weapons, more assistance, there is nobody standing up
on the other side saying this is crazy, or there hasn't been until recently.
HT:Tell me about the California NORML conference you participated in in
January.
ER:The conference was different. There were about 70 people there, it was a
little disorganized. There were no real workshops in the program, but I ran
a workshop with Laird Funk [from the Oregon Marijuana Initiative] on media
and organizing, and it was really the first workshop at a marijuana
conference on how to approach people, how to lobby, how to write letters,
and stuff like that.
Nobody said that freedom is cheap or is easy or isn't risky and the
reality is that anybody can cower in the corner, and it doesn't take a lot
of effort to do that, you just, whatever they tell you to do, you just
follow their orders. But it does take some self-respect and some confidence
in yourself to go out and say this is not going to pass. This isn't going
to go down, and to fight for it. And I'll tell you, one person can make a
difference.
HT:You certainly have.
ER:Three years ago, [medical historian and doctor] Tod Mikuriya and I were
at a conference where Senator Cranston (D. California) was starting his
anti-drug thing. We stopped it when it got to Oakland, California, it
didn't go any further. He was trying to get on the bandwagon.
HT:What did you do?
ER:All it takes is one individual to stop it. He had a metting at which he
had the drug pimps all in a row saying we need more money and more help and
everything and then he had a short time that was left for public comment.
And the public comments weren't exactly what he wanted, like people talking
about changing the laws, and jobs, and prioritizing resources and things.
He didn't like the way it was going, so he said that "I have a list of
seventeen problem areas that other communities have discussed, and I'm going
to read them twice. The first time listen to all of them, and the second
time we'll take a vote." After he finished the 17, I raised my hand and I
said, "Senator, can we add one more," and I said,"Bad drug laws" and then I
also said,"We need more jobs" and I started mentioning a few others and the
third sentence the whole place was in disruption. THe drug pimps were
trying to get out of the room, and Cranston was surrounded by bodyguards.
The show was over, there was no vote taken, and he just stopped it right
there, that was the end of it.
HT:That's a great story.
ER:Anybody can do that. They didn't know who I was, I was just another
anonymous person there. The most important thing I want to say to readers
is this--don't say it was them, you have to take responsibility for change.
HT:Thanks, Ed, keep up the good work.
Reverse The Greenhouse Effect!
LEGALIZE HEMP!
* While growing, hemp produces oxygen and removes carbon dioxide (the
greenhouse gas) from the atmosphere.
* 10,000 acres of hemp will produce as much paper as 40,000 acres of
trees! Until 1883, 75%-90% of all the paper in the world was made
from hemp.
* Methanol and methane fuel, made from cellulose found in hemp,
cornstalks, and waste paper, can be produced at 10% of the current
cost of oil, coal, and nuclear fuel production.
* The glucose produced by manufacturing methane would feed 100 percent
of all domestic and farm animals.
* The hemp seed (which contains no THC) is a fruit. As a protein source
this seed is second only to the soybean.
---Never take a drug you don't really understand.
Consider the powerful effects of drugs. Why use your body as
a testing ground for substances you may know nothing about? It
makes no difference if a drug is legal or illegal, for medicinal
use or for recreation - you owe it to yourself to learn everything
you can before taking it. The facts could save your life. ---
(c)June 1990 Bloody Afterbirth/Toxic Shock
