FLOWER CHILDREN OF ALL AGES STILL BLOSSOM AT OSU'S HEMPFEST

Pro-Marijuana Event Still Smokin' On Its 20th Anniversary

For more than 35 years, David "Shake" Shakin has kept the faith.

While many "flower children" of the 1960s and early 1970s have
dropped out of the peace movement and joined the establishment,
Shakin remains a true believer.

His hair is white, but he still wears a beard. He calls an artists
commune outside Athens, Ga., home. And he supports himself by
traveling the country selling hand-made Indonesian jewelry at music
and community festivals.

Shakin, 55, brought his jewelry business to Hempfest yesterday on the
Ohio State University campus. He was among about 50 vendors that set
up tables and booths at the 20 th annual pro-marijuana event.

When he was a teenage student at Long Island University, Shakin
participated in Vietnam War protests around the country. Those
protests drew hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, he recalled.
Radicals talked of revolution.

Hempfest and other similar gatherings nowadays are mild by
comparison, Shakin said.

"Back then, you had more of an opportunity to do those things," he
said. "Not now. It's more a police state now."

Still, there is an anti-establishment aura at Hempfest, Shakin said.
Incense provided the most pungent scent in the afternoon, but the
aroma would change in the evening, Shakin predicted.

"The air will get sweeter," he said with a mischievous grin.

Other booths provided more evidence that Hempfest was not the kind of
event chambers of commerce feature in their promotional literature.

Booths selling bongs and toke pipes proliferated. Other vendors sold
T-shirts emblazoned with the images of such music icons as Bob Marley
and Tupac Shakur. Signs promoting the legalization of pot were everywhere.

Socialists and the Green and Libertarian parties set up booths early.
Asked why Republicans and Democrats weren't represented in the early
afternoon, Steven Linnabary, treasurer of the Libertarian Party of
Franklin County, said, "They're making money off the war on drugs.
Look at who the jailers, cops and prosecutors are. It's all pure patronage."

In 2004, OSU attempted to ban Hempfest from the campus. But U.S.
District Judge Algenon L. Marbley issued a restraining order
prohibiting the university from canceling the event.

OSU's hierarchy remains unenthusiastic about Hempfest, said Phil
Desenze, a 21-year-old OSU student who served as one of the festival
s co-coordinators.

Because Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, which sponsors Hempfest,
is considered a student organization, the university gives it $2,500
a year, Desenze said. But Ohio State then charges the group $2,800 to
provide security, he said.