Thirty-three years ago this Thursday, Aug. 15, the Woodstock Music and Art Festival began on Max Yasgur's Farm in Sullivan County, New York, and forever changed popular American culture. It was the first time that hippies' acid- and folk-rock was fully recognized as important, politically potent music. It was the first time the counter-culture showed it might actually be large enough to stop a war. And it was the first time that tens of thousands of people smoked marijuana openly and, by implication, became activists in the fight for its decriminalization. [continues 1008 words]
I'm writing about your thoughtful editorial: "TEACHING THE WRONG LESSONS" (8-1-02). You were right on the money when your said: "Like liquor during prohibition, anyone who wants pot can get it, and lots of people do." The problem is that when pot is sold only on the black market, the sellers of pot often also sell other much more dangerous and addictive drugs like heroin, cocaine and meth. Thus, the "gateway effect" is caused by the policy of marijuana prohibition. Not the marijuana. As to what would be the lesson if we re-legalized recreational drugs: it's not the proper role of a free country's government to dictate what adult citizens may or may not put into their own bodies. Kirk Muse Mesa, AZ [end]
When I was about five or six and living with my parents in the Berkeley hills, I wandered over to a neighbor's yard one day, as I often did, and began rough-housing with some pups her dog had given birth to a half year earlier. As young dogs do with each other, the pups liked to wrestle with me and would give me playful bites that never broke the skin. I would shake them loose, and they would rush back for another bite. [continues 907 words]
As The World Wobbles Coastal Gardener columnist Russell Ridge of Inverness Ridge (no relation, as he likes to say) and I are having a minor dispute about the Swedish study of elk saliva. The study found that branches bitten off by elk grow 110 percent faster than normal. Ridge is correct that researcher Margaret Bergman (from the Department of Animal Ecology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) conducted her study with deer that look more like moose than tule elk. In fact, an English-language translation of her obtuse paper about saliva uses the word "moose," not "elk." My vintage Encyclopedia Americana, on the other hand, says there are no moose of the American variety in Europe. [continues 789 words]
Comic Paul Rodriguez once observed, "Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography." Indeed, how many of us would know where East Timor is had not Indonesian militias attempted to crush that country's independence movement? How many of us could locate Burundi and Rwanda on the map (they're west of Kenya and Tanzania) were it not for their civil wars? Or Sierra Leone (just north of Liberia on Africa's west coast)? Or Kosovo? Unfortunately, these days we're also learning more than we want to know about Colombia, which stretches from Panama in Central America to the Amazon Jungle, from Venezuela on the Caribbean to the Andean nations of Peru and Ecuador on the Pacific. [continues 585 words]
Mendocino County voters this month sent local law enforcement a message to continue its low-key approach toward pot growers, which ironically is the approach Marin County used throughout most of the 1970s. From 1974 until 1980, no one was prosecuted in this county for growing marijuana, no matter how big his patch was. But in 1978, Jerry Herman was elected district attorney, and in 1980 he pressured the Board of Supervisors into a 4-1 vote to resurrect a county narcotics squad. Supervisor Gary Giacomini cast the dissenting vote. [continues 798 words]
Is anyone else surprised that Republican Tom Campbell of San Jose, US Senator Dianne Feinstein's opponent, is the only candidate for national office we hear making much noise about the US being drawn into Colombia's 36-year civil war? Congress has authorized President Clinton's and drug czar Barry McCaffrey's spending $1.3 billion to purportedly revive Colombia's flagging war against cocaine production. However, this explanation is not only dishonest, it will probably lead to our going to war. And if that happens, our strongest allies will probably be the biggest cocaine producers in the world. [continues 696 words]
On Monday I received a press release from the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which reported that "a female correctional peace officer was raped and beaten by an inmate Saturday at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi [Kern County]." Apparently the beating, which bloodied the guard's face, and the rape itself occurred in a staff bathroom. The correctional officers association added that the rapist was still in the bathroom with the woman when another guard found them. This press release from the prison guards' union also reported that "on average, nine officers a day are assaulted in California prisons." I assume most of the other assaults are not sexual. In fact, last week's column noted that "gassing," throwing feces in a guard's face, is a "prevalent" form of assault in prisons these days. [continues 603 words]
For high school graduates with no special talents - except a propensity for not taking guff from nuts and troublemakers - there are few jobs that pay as well as being a prison guard for the California Department of Corrections. The state provides the necessary training and then puts you on the payroll at $31,200 per year, which climbs steadily to $42,400 - unless, of course, you get a promotion. Nor is that the full amount of compensation since it doesn't include such benefits as health insurance. [continues 1155 words]
America's "war on drugs" that began under the Nixon Administration has now become a fight against hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug sellers - and a handful of violent ones too. Worse yet, the anti-drug war is corrupting officials from Marin County to South America. For the past several weeks I have been complaining about US plans for a major military commitment to Colombia. The Clinton Administration's plan is to provide that country with more than $500 million worth of aircraft supposedly to be used to fight cocaine traffickers. [continues 874 words]
Is anybody else noticing, but here in an election year - buried among the lesser news of larger publications - the careful reader can find a worrisome development: the United States is going to war in Columbia. Of course, it's not being sold that way. The Clinton Administration would have us believe this is yet another skirmish in the War on Drugs. "Columbia is a drug disaster," proclaims General Barry McCaffrey, the US drug tzar, as Congress debates whether to supply the Columbian military with an amazing array of weaponry. [continues 633 words]
