STIRRING THE POT

"Wanna go smoke some dope?" she asked. It was 1966, the calm before
the "hippie" storm that soon engulfed Aspen, and although I
vicariously knew about marijuana and various other drugs, I was still
a virgin doper. I had no inclination to start smoking that night,
either, but this good-looking girl, whom I didn't know, had singled
me out of the crowd and I figured I'd be a damned fool if I said no.

At the Red Butte Cemetery we fogged up the inside of my car with some
"blue de hue" and steamed the windows a little bit afterward with
some heavy breathing. It did nothing for me (the joint, I mean), and
I figured "grass" was better left to cows and horses. Afterward, she
left the baggie, still bulging at the seams, in my glove box, and for
whatever reasons, our paths didn't cross again that winter break.

When I got back to college, the apartment was empty, the hour early
and I figured, "What the hell," maybe I should give that dried weed
one more chance. Using newspaper, I rolled a "fatty," about the size
of a good Cuban cigar and began lining my lungs with the power of
hemp. I inhaled one large drag after another, expecting nothing to
happen, and nothing was, when all of a sudden, I entered another
realm. My heart started pounding furiously, my head got fuzzy with
colored noise, my body became weak, and the giggles overtook me.

Going in, it scared me some, but once I adjusted to all the physical
changes, it was what you could call a reasonably good "high." My
roommate and his girlfriend wandered in about the time I changed
realities and immediately noticed something was amiss. "Pothead,"
they teased me, although I was mostly oblivious to their presence.
Fortunately, that sort of thing wasn't my cup of tea, so to speak,
and it was the first and last time I knowingly got ripped from
recreational drugs.

You may think me sacrilegious, but I ended up pitching the rest of
the bag, which was still nearly full. Marijuana possession approached
a hangable offense back in those days, and I didn't trust my college
friends enough to see who might want the remains. Such paranoia was
definitely based in reality and not drug-induced.

By 1970, cannabis had become the "bread and butter" drug of the
counterculture and could be whiffed just about anywhere around town.
Old cowboys felt peculiar rolling Bull Durham cigarettes, wondering
if the penetrating eyes of unshaven, unkempt youngsters, recently
arrived, were seeing something that wasn't there.

Many of those new arrivals, riding a surge of either natural or
otherwise drug-induced euphoria, thought it was time to take over the
local government and posed Hunter Thompson for sheriff, against
incumbent Carroll Whitmire. If you look at documentary film footage
of the contest, it really was a rather innocuous and frivolous
attempt at change, although the participants on both sides took it
very seriously. At center stage, naturally, was the matter of use and
possession of marijuana and to what degree it should be tolerated.

Whitmire won, and with all due respect to his memory, I don't think
he had any more effect on the amount of drug use in Aspen and Pitkin
County than Thompson would have. Such use had become an endemic tidal
wave confined to its own dimensions, and the dire predictions of some
business leaders that "dope" would be the destruction of Aspen may
have been overstated.

Enter medical marijuana, a latecomer to the discussion, and it has,
once again, stimulated the hackles of people on both sides of the
aisle. I've had several propositions to plow up my horse pasture and
cultivate marijuana plants.

We still haven't moved past "hay" and horses and cows, at least not
in my mind, and clearly, that is a phase we have yet to outgrow.