"What We Want Is Free, Legal, Backyard Marijuana!"

"Generally, the heavy marijuana user's lifestyle, activities and attitudes are unconventional and at variance with those of the larger society . . . based on interrelated familial, social and cultural factors, persons, especially young persons, who may choose to use marijuana can be predicted statistically."

The preceding statement is from the summary of "Marijuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding" written by the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse (NCMDA hereafter) as the first year of the commission ended March 22, 1972, with the release of their recommendations on marijuana.

The fossilized 13-member commission has, after its inception due to law on October 27, 1970, released a report that condemns the users of marijuana as social deviates that need to be discouraged, isolated and harassed to slow, and eventually subside, the growing use and sharing of the sacrament--marijuana.

Since the public birth of our rainbow culture way back in 1967 we have grown from isolated phenomena to a wide spread community of rainbow people planning and building a new society in which we can live and grow as true human beings. This is no longer a rhetorical phrase- it's a statement of fact- that from the west coast to the east coast and right back here to Ann Arbor we have learned that we need to build our own lives and start the institutional pattern that we, as a people, feel will best serve our basic needs and those of our brothers and sisters all across the planet. We see that in order to have the rights and materials that are rightfully ours in the first place that we have to unite to create the programs that will deal with our needs as only we know them. Self determination for our very lives.

We started out "doin' our own things' and thinking that we could do it and be left alone, but we were proven wrong by the city, state and federal governments that sent the police down into our communities to harass us, take our sacraments and lock us up in the penitentiaries and county jails for 10 to 20 to 150 years for following our rights as provided in the US Constitution -- the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They have said to us that we are not white enough to have these privileges and they mean to keep them from us by any means necessary. They have shown us that. They have shown us that we are no longer white, but Rainbow because we have come to realize that white, as a people, is not defined by color, but rather by culture. Honky, Euro-American, neon-TV culture. We dropped out of the hypertensive rat race of schizophrenic America and turned on to the holy smoke and tuned in to the life feeling/culture that has been under constant attack since its beginning. The NCMDA says that our people can be predicted before we develop by checking out who has non-white ideas and life styles yearly in age. That's what they are running in their report. Oh, they don't see the real extent of it, right -- but they do realize that we are a people, and they got to deal with that!

Essentially, what the commission report runs down is that there is nothing wrong with smoking weed! They can't find proof of detrimental effects medically (physically or mentally) and in fact have come to realize, as Michael Aldrich, Ph.D. (on the subject of marijuana) said in his testimony to the commission, 14 June 1971, "As Dr. Seevers (one of the commissioners and Ph.D., M.D. at the U of M) himself has written, in 1950's Defense Department research just released a few weeks ago: 'Preliminary studies suggest that the tetrahydrocannibinols (reefer!!) may have therapeutic value in the treatment of essential hypertension, epilepsy, migraine headache, hyperpyrexia and behavior disorders." (Mike is director of Amorphia, the distributors of Acupulco Gold rolling papers whose profits go to efforts to legalize weed.)

And they reported that marijuana isn't responsible for making people commit crimes such as rape, murder, larceny, etc., nor can smoking reefer be a prerequisite for heroin use when we in fact know that heavy social and psychological depression, frustration, the inability to attain the image of the white T.V. ideal, and the on the spot availability of heroin -- are what cause heroin use and addiction.

So, they ain't got nothing on smoking the benevolent herb -- nothing except the growth of our life culture-- and we are who the recommendations presented by the commission are aimed at.

They say we should be able to smoke dope at home with our brothers and sisters, and even give them a little taste for the road without getting busted, but we shouldn't be allowed to pass the sacrament at our Tribal Stomps or free concerts in the parks on Sunday afternoons, not because we would be attacking anybody or anything by . . . well, just because . . . that's their reasoning. What they say is that if you are going to be smoking joints on the diag then they are going to walk up to you and take away your stash, summon you before the court to pay a fine of $100 and then record any connection whatsoever with the killer weed in separate files for future harassment of the people. And, dig this, with "disorderly conduct associated with public use of or intoxication by marijuana would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to 60 days in jail, a fine of $100 or both." What kind of shit is that? If there isn't anything wrong with smoking at home or even passing your joints to your friends then why will spreading the word about the truth still wind you up in the slam? Those brothers and sisters who righteously sell, grow and just generally get everybody high would still be hunted as evil criminals to be jailed or shot.

See, they aren't afraid of physical harm done by marijuana because there isn't any, they are afraid of the cultural changes that reefer has on the psychocybrenetic society of frozen dinners and control board warfare. That's the difference between private use of the weed and public sharing of the sacrament. Their plan is that hopefully, somehow, by isolating the marijuana smoker, setting us up as social misfits-- when in fact, they are the social misfits-- and keeping the grass confined on the other side of the U.S. borders-they will control and eventually eliminate the righteous cannabis use. The commission is so blind as to ludicrously attempt to snake their way out of the tight political scene they are now in due to Nixon saying that he just isn't going to listen any recommendation they make in favor of legalization on the one hand, while on the other there isn't any reason scientifically not to legalize it. They are caught between fact and fascism.

Marijuana is a political and social phenomena that hasn't been able to be crushed for centuries, and has grown to such proportion that between 20-35 million people in this country have smoked it during complete (?) prohibition! That means that one out of every 10 people you see on the streets pass the smoke while at the same time one half the college population in America are criminals just because they share the sacrament with their brothers and sisters. These are just the people who have been able to get their hands on some reefer or know someone who will take on the risky task of turning someone new on. Back in the 1300's hemp eaters in India were threatened with imprisonment and even with having their teeth actually pulled out for illegally chewing dope and even with this type of prohibition, the practice of chewing increased! Today, they lock people up for 10 years for 2 joints or even 30 years for one joint and more and more people still are smoking more and more everyday! Even this couple with incorrect drug information that has resulted in "81% of the U.S. population thinking it is addictive, 59% think it is very damaging to physical health, 44% think it is more dangerous than heroin." WHAT?!! This is what fraudulent brainwashing by 40 years of falsified information and an interweaving network of counter-espionage on the part of government to rid itself of the ever threatening presence of dope can do to even people who have a higher degree of literacy and use of information than most of the aborigines that have used marijuana for medicinal purposes throughout the centuries.

Since the mid-19th century there has been extensive use of marijuana and hashish n all large centers of population in America. Our Black and Chicano brothers and sisters early in the 1900's were turning on all the time, gettin' high and building their new culture here in a new land. They began developing a whole new music to fit their newly emerging culture- jazz, and as Aldrich said, "Prohibition came about because of the northward mobility of Southern Blacks and jazz musicians- a history of marijuana is a history of jazz- and was a blatant attempt to suppress the flowering of the first truly great Black Culture in America." This came about as a result of the young white high school students hanging out, learning about the Black culture and smoking dope and checking out this weird music that these backyard artists were kicking out. These young white people got turned on and dug it, spreading the happiness to their brothers and sisters on the set- and all the while their parents were freaking out! The Southern states had immense power over these communities that were getting high and learning to be self-determinate and they passed anti-marijuana legislation to halt the use by their sons and daughters. An intensive anti-marijuana & propaganda campaign that created the incorrect associations by the people between marijuana and ghetto crime, insanity and death began. Dope was first introduced as the killer weed that caused people to freak out and run around stabbing little children and raping mothers and destroying the people's property. How ironic, in Vietnam it has turned the American Gl from an implement of this same destruction into brothers that would rather be courtmartialed than kill their Vietnamese comrades.

Strict enforcement of the new law ensued that resulted in little weed to toke, and any attempt by the Black community to get together at tribal stomps and toke downs were viciously attacked by vigilante groups and the people involved were maimed, and most often, hung. It were these actions that paved the way for heroin into the ghetto communities.

These people had just come out of slavery after being kidnapped and brought thousands of miles f rom their homes, families, and they began developing a culture to fit the changes that they had gone through, ya know, when these greed creeps come along and rip it right off them. Can you imagine the emotional impact of that- legally not being a slave but practically have a ball and chain around your necks? These people had nothing in the way of health care or medical aid, their living conditions were horrendous with little clothing, food or shelter. The education in the massa's schools had nothing to do with either their culture, needs as a people, or any of their own history, and when they wouldn't relate to it they were classified as being dull-witted or just plain anthropoidal. The utopian nod of the jones was a most welcome relief to the ghetto and fit right into the white, death cultures scheme- crime, insanity, death. MARIJUANA LEADS TO HEROIN ADDICTION!!! ASSASSIN OF YOUTH!!! This slogan has been pushed and pushed on us, it's very important to understand, that due to this type of continual reinforcement of drug misinformation the credibility of any information that comes from the government has become questionable and any concerning drugs have become blatant lies. They keep running this stuff about how marijuana and heroin are synonymous, and all the while we know reefer ain't bad- so what about the smack & reds & speed & cocaine? Just what are the people supposed to believe? You know what I mean?

These venomous vermin have no interest in seeing that righteous drug information centers are opened, and proper treatment for those with any drug problem is a right, not a possibility. Every time marijuana has appeared on the scene. Smoking dope leads to heroin use only because every time a joint is lit the man be there trying to stick a fix in our arms, trying to choke off our breath all the time saying they don't know what to do about the drug problem and we got to investigate it some more, and shit like that, you know.

There won't be any real solutions to the drug problem until we understand that in order to deal with the plague we got to isolate the carrier of the disease, define how it acts in detriment to the community and then set up the proper institutions to resolve those contradictions.

Decriminalization of marijuana is a ruse that will afford the police the opportunity to continuously harass us, impose petty fines on our people day after day and lock us up for 20, 30, or 60 days at a time. How many times can you afford to pay $100 or spend some time in the slam? Only when we use our energy together to supply ourselves with complete, truthful drug information to force the legalization of marijuana and total decriminalization in use of any drug and begin to demand that the institutions that are supposed to serve our needs become responsible to the community, will there be a sane drug program that follows the ideological principle that is the right of the people- self-determination. "What we want is FREE, LEGAL, BACKYARD MARIJUANA!" (M.R.A.) LET ITGROW!

- John Collins, R.P.P.