. .:::::. .::::::::. ...:::::::::.. :::::::::::: ..:::::::::::::::::.. ::::: :::: .::: ::::::: :::. :::::. : :: ::::: :: :::::::. : ::: : :::::::::. ::: :::::::: ::: ::::: ::::: : :::: ::::: oxic :::......:::: hock .:::::::. ::::::::::: ::::::::::: ::::::::: presents Ed Rosenthal Counterculture Hero of the Year 1989 by Bloody Afterbirth Toxic File #61 -from High Times, May 1990, by Jon Gettman- !*@&#^$%#^@&!*@&#^$%#^@&!*@&#^$%#^@&!*@&#^$%#^@&!*@&#^$%#^@&!*@&#^$%#^@&!* Here's some other small things from the same mag... N.O.R.M.L. 2001 "S" Street, NW, Suite 640 Washington, DC 20009 202.483.5500 Membership is 25 bucks, but you can donate 'em money without belonging... They are a good organization and they can use your support. They have rallies and such all over the country, demonstrations, etc... (Picture a cigarette, a beer, and a joint) "Ask your doctor which of these is least harmful to your health. Now ask your Congressman why it's illegal. Nearly 490,000 Americans will die this year from accidents or illnesses related to alcohol or tobacco. But marijuana is no killer. In fact, medical evidence indicated many foods we commonly consume pose a greater danger to human health than marijuana. Stil it remains illegal --- consuming over $5 billion of our tax dollars for law enforcement each year. But if regulated, marijuana sales would generate $10 to $15 billion dollars in annual tax revenue. It Could Be You 400,000 people are arrested each year on marijuana charges - 85% of them for simple possession. If you enjoy occasional recreational use, this fact should trouble you. Because while these laws remain on the books you're in jeopardy. You risk social and financial disaster. In manu states you can still be sent to prison for possessing even a small quantity of pot. Now consider that because of the escalating "War on Drugs," penalties for marijuana possession are being severely increased --- putting you at greater risk than ever before. Send A Buck. Whether you smoke marijuana often, occasionally, or NOT AT ALL, you should be angry about its prohibition. Why not join N.O.R.M.L. - the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws? Membership is only $25.00. If you're skittish about sending us your name, just drop a buck in the mail to. . . . ." "Ever wonder why the two most dangerous drugs in America are legal, while the safest drug remains illegal? The most powerful corporations in the world spend millions of dollars every day to keep cannabis illegal. Why? The petrochemical industry doesn't want legal hemp to compete with synthetic fuel and fiber. The alcohol and tobacco industries don't want legal marijuana to compete with cigarettes and beer. (Tobacco and alcohol account for over 400,000 deaths per year. If you were provided with a non-lethal alternative, which would you choose?) But there's another important reason why corporations fear the cannabis plant. It grows wild in all 50 states and can be cultivated for free by virtually anyone! Once it's legal to grow, cannabis will be far cheaper than alcohol, tobacco, or petrochemicals! So, help legalize cannabis by joining Ed Hassle's Freedom Fighters. For a mere $15 you get an official membership card, a year's subscription to the Freedom Fighter's newsletter, and invitations to pro-pot rallies, HIGH TIMES parties and other special events. Each year, the most decorated member of the Freedom Fighters gets to be a judge at the annual Cannabis Cup Awards in Holland! Join Today!" Check/money order payable to Trans-High Corp. Send to: Ed Hassle's Freedom Fighters 211 East 43rd St. New York, New York 10017 They'll obviously need your name/address...They send the newsletter in a plain unmarked envelope without a return address...and they keep the mailing list confidential... That should do...for now. *!&@^#%$^#&@*!&@^#%$^#&@*!&@^#%$^#&@*!&#@^#%$^#&@*!&@^#%$^#&@*!&@^#%$^#&@*! Ed Rosenthal, at first glance, doesn't look like a hippie, let alone the 1989 HIGH TIMES Counterculture Hero of the Year. He has short hair, for one thing. He's also a successful entrepreneur, self-employed as a writer, publisher, and owner of a mail order business. In addition to his work, he speaks around the country encouraging people to become more involved in local and federal government. Under any other circumstances this would be the description of a successful, small town, main street republican. If it weren't for pot, and the fact that Ed is the most well-known authority on the cultivation of marijuana, it would be easy to confuse Ed with a straight person. He's not, and marijuana's why. If you had walked into a head shop during thr 1970's, in addition to the bongs, pipes, and rolling papers, more often than not, you would have also found books about how to grow marijuana. I know, because I used to manage one of those stores, and I remember that most of the grow books I sold, and most of the grow books sold in the Washington, DC area had Ed Rosenthal's name on them. If you had gone to a NORML conference during the early 1980's, you would have also run into Ed, as a speaker, in a workshop, or, in one of his favorite haunts, "behind the scenes." Meanwhile, his books were still selling, and his readership expanded even more by the way of HIGH TIMES. And then by the late eighties, if you had gone to the Madison Harvest Festival or the Hash Bash in Ann Arbor or a NORML festival at the Washington Monument, once again, you'd find Ed, either rousing the crowd with his own, blunt assessments about our political situation or exhorting them to contribute funds to both the event organizers and NORML to keep our marijuana movement alive. And his books were still selling, and his articles were still being read, and he was still active in NORML on both a national and a local level. Throughout the last 15 years Ed Rosenthal has been an integral part of the marijuana law reform movement, both socially and politcally. The assimilation into our culture of sophisticated means to cultivate marijuana in these United States has permanently guaranteed its presence in our country. Ed's contributions in this area alone are of monumental influence. HIGH TIMES:First of all, Ed, what's your favorite slang term for marijuana? Ed Rosenthal:Pot. HT:When was the first time you smoked pot? ER:In '66 HT: Tell me about it. ER:Actually, I got into it the second time I smoked it. I obtained some and turned on with my roommate. We were both virgins - we had smoked, but we were both really virgins. At that time those books by Carlos Castenada had first come out and they talked about his big smoke and his little smoke and they're being his allies, and immediately when I first got high, I very much felt that marijuana was an ally of mine. HT:When did you first get interested in growing pot? ER:When I was a child I had a great interest in botany, and had taken a number of classes at the New York Botanical Gardens. So it was very natural of me to take an interest in a green plant. HT:What was the state of growing marijuana in the United States during the late '60s? ER:Very few people were growing. It had a very bad reputation, so it sold for much less money than other products. There was very little being grown indoors, and it was been grown under fluorescents. HT:When did you start publishing about the topic of growing marijuana? ER:About 1974. HT:How would you characterize things in the late '70s, compared to the late '80s? ER:It was the golden age of outdoor cultivation. People were growing big plants and were beginning to do breeding. By the early 1980's indoors became the preferred way, and more and more people began growing indoors. HT:Do you have an estimate of the number of readers you have in the US? ER:Milions of readers and over a million books sold. HT:Do you think all those people are actually growers? ER:I think there are something like a million frowers in the country today. That includes everyone, commercial and personal use growers. Figure if there are 35 million smokers who smoke regularly, and one out of thirty three of those people are growing. HT:That's an awful lot of pot. ER:Oh, it's not that everybody's growing successfully, and not everybody is growing a lot. The smallest garden I heard about had a space of about one foot by one foot. HT:What esthetics do you like and look for in pot? ER:Marijuana is a very subtle drug. It can be a blockbuster, but it can also be subtle. I like a variety that brings out the nuances of thought and pleasure, rather than one that is deadening. I think there are some really fine varieties with a senseof humor about them, a wryness, and still allow you to break those synapses... HT:What about tolerances? ER:Somebody wrote that if marijana leads to other drugs it takes a long time. You build up a certain tolerance but it's not as if it loses its effect. I think part of that tolerance is a chemical tolerance, and part of it is your expectations, a familiarity. HT:LEt's talk a little about the Yippies, marijuana, and political action. ER:In 1967 I came back from college to New York and quite by accident I bumped into a demonstration protesting the arrest of Dana Beal and, having nothing to do that evening, I joined the demonstration, and got involved with the New York Provos, and then was in on ethe founding of the Yippies, and stayed with that. The Yippies have an anarchistic streak, they're entreprenuerial, they're not dealing in dogma in the same way the ism-groups do, and they'd like to see major changes in the United States so that it becomes a truly democratic country rather than an imperialistic republic. HT:Tell me a little about your relationship with Reagan Drug Advisor Carleton Turner. ER:After my first big book was published, my co-author Mel Frank and myself sent Carleton a letter and after a little bit of correspondence we were invited down to the University of Mississipi which is where he was doing research. Since then I've kept up my professional relationship with him. Even though we've had many many differences over the years, and can probably say we disagree on almost everything, we have been able to maintain an amiable relationship. I haven't spoken to him since he left the White House. HT:You also had quite a career the last couple of years as an expert witness in marijuana cultivation cases. ER:Yeah. HT:How does the government misstate marijuana cultivation when they bring charges against somebody? ER:Most of the state laws differentiate between cultivation for personal use and cultivation for sale, and most police have never seen a cultivation for personal use garden, because every garden they see is the most professional, the most sophisticated, and the biggest, and so on -- even if it's only a few square feet. HT:They always describe gardens they find in these terms? ER:Yes. They also have the presumption that every female plant is going to yield a pound, and that it is going to be grown to yield a pound, and to grow and survive, and so on. HT:Is this just to have the maximum charges to press or are they genuinely ignorant? ER:I think it is a combination. HT:Does your expertise regarding marijuana come in handy when talking to legislators about marijuana laws? ER:I often wonder about that because I think that of all the people in the United States, I come into the legislature with the most baggage, because to many of the people I'm a personification of evil. HT:Is that because of your activism or because you have helped to spread the word far and wide about growing marijuana? ER:Because of my relationship with HIGH TIMES as well as some of the books I have written. But especially my relationship with HIGH TIMES which, I mean, is the most notorious magazine in the United States. You'd think that a magazine like Soldier Of Fortune, or some of the racist magazines, or some of the magazines with a lot of violence--that should be notorious, but actually the magazine that is most condemned by the establishment is HIGH TIMES. I'm proud to be associated with it. That's on one hand, on the other I think that that has created a lot of baggage for me when I go to the legislature. And that in itself has proven to me that if I can do legislative work, then anybody can because I'm one of the most hated men in the California State legislature. HT:A lot of people think that because they smoke pot they're making themselves vulnerable by going out and lobbying. Do you think that smoking and/or growing pot and political activism are mutually exclusive? ER:No. Because you're concerned about a political issue doesn't necessarily mean you're directly associated with it. There is no reason for a person to say to their congressman "I smoke pot." What is really of concern to legislators is not your personal habits but where you stand on the issues. There is no reason to talk of a person's personal involvement in it. HT:Where do you think movement activity needs to go in the next ten years to make progress? ER:First of all I do think that marijuana is going to be legal and I wouldn't have believed twenty years ago that it wouldn't be legal by now. HT:Do you think it will be legal by the year 2000? ER:Yes, I do, by the outside, by 2004. The way the legalization movement is going now, I do think marijuana is going to be legal soon. HT:What do you think is going right in the movement now? ER:There is an organization out there now that has been able to attract the support of the intellectual community and to penetrate the opinion makers, and that's the Drug Policy Foundation. And what they have done is give an intellectual, as well as a theoretical, base to a lot of the practical things NORML has been saying, as well as what the activists have been saying. For instance, while a lot of politicians can not relate to Madison Harvest Festival organizer and last year's Counterculture Hero of the Year, Ben Masel, they can relate to [Princeton University Professor] Ethan Nadelman or [Drug Policy Foundation President] Arnold Trebach, so that puts the whole issue in a different light. That's one thing. Secondly is that there was a major tactical mistake on the part of the Administration, and that is up until a couple of years ago we only had drug skirmishes, and then the Reagan's adopted the idea of a War on Drugs. The difference between the skirmishes and the War is that skirmishes can go on for generations and generations, but we Americans like our wars short. There haven't been too many long wars in American history. And of course, this is a war that can't be won. HT:Do you think that the Reagans, by calling too much attention and raising the rhetorical pitch, in the end will have provoked a desire to find some resolution to these problems? ER:They definitely will, a year ago Bennett had this perception--he's the commander, he's going to win the war--and now, everybody's looking at the dissarray that his troops are in. They expected Operation Green Merchant to put an end to domestic cultivation. It really backfired on them--they got a lot of bad editorial publicity, and they got a lot of negative response from the community at large. People talk about the numbers of people who feel drugs are a big issue, the number of people who want to kill drug dealers--you hear all these terrible statistics, but these are basically manufactured statistics. HT:Do you think there is a real opportunity for people to make a difference by being more politically active? ER:Oh yes. I think that every letter you write represents a thousand people. I used to criticize NORML for saying 'write a letter,' but I realized how hard it is to get an individual to write a letter, and that's just a starting point. That's why I don't think it's enough. For instance, there are 35 million people who smoke marijuana. If three and a half million people actually lobbied their congresspeople and their legislators, repressive drug laws wouldn't pass. HT:Congress knows, though, that people don't usually write, so that the letters they do receive represent far more people who agree with the letter writer, but didn't get it on paper. ER:Right. And the only reason these laws get passed is because no one stands up on our side and opposes them. When the police get up and say we need more laws, more weapons, more assistance, there is nobody standing up on the other side saying this is crazy, or there hasn't been until recently. HT:Tell me about the California NORML conference you participated in in January. ER:The conference was different. There were about 70 people there, it was a little disorganized. There were no real workshops in the program, but I ran a workshop with Laird Funk [from the Oregon Marijuana Initiative] on media and organizing, and it was really the first workshop at a marijuana conference on how to approach people, how to lobby, how to write letters, and stuff like that. Nobody said that freedom is cheap or is easy or isn't risky and the reality is that anybody can cower in the corner, and it doesn't take a lot of effort to do that, you just, whatever they tell you to do, you just follow their orders. But it does take some self-respect and some confidence in yourself to go out and say this is not going to pass. This isn't going to go down, and to fight for it. And I'll tell you, one person can make a difference. HT:You certainly have. ER:Three years ago, [medical historian and doctor] Tod Mikuriya and I were at a conference where Senator Cranston (D. California) was starting his anti-drug thing. We stopped it when it got to Oakland, California, it didn't go any further. He was trying to get on the bandwagon. HT:What did you do? ER:All it takes is one individual to stop it. He had a metting at which he had the drug pimps all in a row saying we need more money and more help and everything and then he had a short time that was left for public comment. And the public comments weren't exactly what he wanted, like people talking about changing the laws, and jobs, and prioritizing resources and things. He didn't like the way it was going, so he said that "I have a list of seventeen problem areas that other communities have discussed, and I'm going to read them twice. The first time listen to all of them, and the second time we'll take a vote." After he finished the 17, I raised my hand and I said, "Senator, can we add one more," and I said,"Bad drug laws" and then I also said,"We need more jobs" and I started mentioning a few others and the third sentence the whole place was in disruption. THe drug pimps were trying to get out of the room, and Cranston was surrounded by bodyguards. The show was over, there was no vote taken, and he just stopped it right there, that was the end of it. HT:That's a great story. ER:Anybody can do that. They didn't know who I was, I was just another anonymous person there. The most important thing I want to say to readers is this--don't say it was them, you have to take responsibility for change. HT:Thanks, Ed, keep up the good work. Reverse The Greenhouse Effect! LEGALIZE HEMP! * While growing, hemp produces oxygen and removes carbon dioxide (the greenhouse gas) from the atmosphere. * 10,000 acres of hemp will produce as much paper as 40,000 acres of trees! Until 1883, 75%-90% of all the paper in the world was made from hemp. * Methanol and methane fuel, made from cellulose found in hemp, cornstalks, and waste paper, can be produced at 10% of the current cost of oil, coal, and nuclear fuel production. * The glucose produced by manufacturing methane would feed 100 percent of all domestic and farm animals. * The hemp seed (which contains no THC) is a fruit. As a protein source this seed is second only to the soybean. ---Never take a drug you don't really understand. Consider the powerful effects of drugs. Why use your body as a testing ground for substances you may know nothing about? It makes no difference if a drug is legal or illegal, for medicinal use or for recreation - you owe it to yourself to learn everything you can before taking it. The facts could save your life. --- (c)June 1990 Bloody Afterbirth/Toxic Shock