DO WE NEED ONE MORE DRUG TO SHIELD US FROM REALITY?

I predict that by the end of the year the sale of marijuana will
become so common in L.A. that Mom will be able to say, "Timmy, run
down to Vons and get me a quart of milk, a loaf of sourdough bread, a
pound of tomatoes and two ounces of pot."

Even though an effort is being made to limit the number of places
that sell marijuana, and even barring home delivery, there will be no
way to keep it totally under control.

Any effort to confine its sale to specific venues will be out the
window by the time that old devil weed has made inroads into our
culture. Fake prescriptions will pop up by the thousands and burden
the marijuana stores to the extent that sellers will be expanded to
include pet stores, gas stations, coffee shops and street vendors.

Its sale will satisfy not only its users but those who profit from
it, including growers, sellers and the city. There's nothing like
making money to keep a product in the public eye, or the public bong.

Kids who don't already have the habit will pick it up from their
friends and parents and before you know it every third person in L.A.
will be wearing a dim smile and calling everyone Dude; beggars will
carry signs that say "Will work for Weed."

Marijuana has never been my drug of choice even though the very air
reeked of burning hemp during the 1960s when I was covering the
student uprisings in Berkeley. You could get stoned by just
breathing. I was a martini man then and I'm a martini man now and I
rarely smile, dimly or otherwise, and I call no one Dude.

That is not to say I've never tried the stuff. Since I was writing
about them a lot I decided one evening to eat a sugar cub soaked in
LSD. But instead of rising into psychedelic space or trying to fly
out a window, I remained in my own world, as bland and colorless as
it was. I just sat there drinking beer, of all things, and waiting
for my soul to soar. It never did.

Someone remarked that I was unaffected because I couldn't tell the
difference between fantasy and reality. It reminded me of the famous
boozer/comic W.C. Fields who, when asked if he ever suffered delirium
tremens from overdrinking, replied, "I can't tell where Hollywood
ends and the d.t.'s begin."

Next, on a separate occasion, I tried a pipe loaded with kief, which
is made from the crystals of a cannabis plant. There were maybe four
couples involved, and after a few puffs, everyone fell asleep where
they sat, practically in midconversation. Only my wife Cinelli
declined to smoke the pipe and remembers the evening as very weird,
with everyone slumped in their chairs like oversized rag dolls.

I guess that's the way it was about 2,000 years ago when the ancient
Egyptians were using pot to treat sore eyes. It worked. After a
sufficient number of hits the patients just fell asleep, thus closing
their eyes. In such a state the soreness was gone.

One wonders what inroads the drug sellers will make next. Well, how
about controlled cocaine parties? What you do for those inclined to
sniff things up their noses other than decongestants is to confine
the festivities to closed auditoriums, sell a certain amount of the
drug to each partygoer and let them have the time of their lives
until the coke is gone and they're too stoned to party any longer.

Then when the doors are open and they stumble out onto the streets,
you arrest them for being under the influence of a banned substance,
fine them and release them until the next coke party. There again,
you see, everyone makes money, society gets its pound of flesh and no
one is hurt.

A pamphlet once distributed out of Chicago warned that "friendly
strangers" might try to sneak "marihuana" into your tea pot or your
tobacco in the days when you rolled your own cigarettes, describing
the drug as "a powerful narcotic in which lurks murder! Insanity! Death!" Wow!

I don't believe you necessarily go from one or two hits to becoming a
serial killer. But I do wonder if our culture, already a little
screwy, needs one more drug to shield it from the realities of the
world we should be moving to face head-on before it's too late. To
cure or relieve pain, sure. But where there's money to be made, I
can't help but believe that the whole humanitarian process is going
to be ridden like a drunken horse over the wishes of the people and
we'll all go to hell smiling dimly and calling everyone Dude.