MELLOW FOLKS AT HEMPFEST DON'T SEEM LIKE A THREAT TO THE FIBER OF OUR SOCIETY

"Hey, Jerry Garcia! Bottle of water, $1!"

I looked at the guy shouting it out, and he did look like the reincarnation
of Jerry Garcia. He had the white hair and beard, the potbelly, the
glasses, the tie-dye T-shirt, the peaceful smile. Other people at last
weekend's Hempfest stopped and stared at this mirage from the Grateful Dead.

But he actually was Jack Hanover Miller, 65, and if you've gone to a
baseball game, you've seen him playing his guitar and singing for coins and
bills right by the new Seahawks Stadium. Sometimes he makes $5 a day,
sometimes $60.

I asked Miller if he was a pot smoker, and he said, no, any kind of smoking
was bad for his throat, and if you make your living singing, you gotta keep
the pipes healthy. Miller was there at the entrance to Myrtle Edwards Park,
helping a friend.

There was a steady procession of thousands of people around us. Driving
along the Seattle waterfront this past weekend, you couldn't help noticing
the crowds. The final estimate by the Hempfest 2002 promoters was that
190,000 people showed up over the two days. They jammed the streets and the
sidewalks, and just by their numbers they made a statement about marijuana
these days.

I heard a couple of radio announcers talking about the event, doing that
inane banter they do in between segments, and the banter was something
about hippies. And, yes, you could see plenty of Deadheads at the park. But
not 190,000 of them.

Actually, a good portion of the crowd looked like they could have been at
the Bite of Seattle, just your Wallingford or Ballard or West Seattle
neighbor. They could have been your college-age son and daughter wearing a
$3 plastic marijuana lei, one of the most popular items sold at Hempfest,
which had 300 vendors selling everything from two-foot-long bongs to, of
course, doughnuts.

There were plenty of cops at the festival, although they kept themselves at
the edges and, I guess, enjoyed the warm summer weather.

I tried talking to a couple of them, but they didn't have that much to say.
I wondered what they thought about our marijuana policy as they watched the
crowds.

I mean, here was Scott Weir, 22, who works in Bellingham at a factory that
makes dog and cat beds.

He was obviously in great physical shape; and with his crew cut, you could
have put him in a 1950s teen movie. He graduated from Sedro-Woolley High in
1998, and he remembered the D.A.R.E. lectures. That's when a cop came in
and told about the evils of drugs.

The thing was, pot and cocaine and speed and heroin were all lumped
together in the D.A.R.E. lecture, and the kids didn't buy it. So after the
D.A.R.E. sermon was over, Weir dutifully filled out the exam that was given
out, and, as he explained, "made it look good."

But what he really thought about pot was, "No way are the cops going to
stop us from smoking weed. It's grown just like tobacco, and if tobacco is
legal, why not marijuana?"

While I pondered if it was worth it to make Weir a criminal, I talked to
Aldrick Wilson, 20, of Lynnwood. He graduated from Lake Stevens High School
in 2000 and now works delivering furniture. It turned out that Weir needed
a ride, and Wilson agreed to help out.

Wilson doesn't smoke pot when working but said he'd used it recreationally,
"more as a tribal experience." I asked what a tribal experience was, and
Wilson said it was like a powwow, in which you have an inner search.

Maybe that's similar to the inner search that takes place when a bunch of
people from the office get together for happy hour.

I asked Wilson that of the people he knew, how many smoked pot regularly.
Wilson figured that conservatively it was one out of three.

So here I was talking to guys who work in a factory and deliver furniture,
and I kept thinking that if by bad luck they got busted, would I personally
consider Weir and Wilson a criminal threat to society and want to spend my
taxpayer money prosecuting them?

Personally, I'd rather spend my taxpayer money investigating the guys who
made my 401(k) worthless.

By the way, for you people already typing your e-mails, the answer is: No,
I don't.