ARGUMENTS
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want the freedom to do research, to ask questions and to find answers.
What, for example, does pot do to the mind or body-in contrast, say,
to alcohol and tobacco? Is marihuana the drug addict's first love, to
be
inevitably or commonly followed by a marriage to heroin? Who uses
pot or acid anyway-mad, immoral and "deviant" students on the way
to oblivion, or Negroes, or delinquents and criminals, or ineffective
political radicals? Ought those who take drugs like marihuana and LSD
be considered primarily medical and psychiatric "problems," or social
outcasts or-as they now are-lawbreakers pure and simple? Is there, for
that matter, any reason why pot should be outlawed, why you and I
should be denied rightful access to the experiences and sensations hemp
and its derivatives have offered millions of people for centuries? Why
do even psychiatrists (in America, that is) find supplies of LSD almost
impossible to obtain, at least legally?
These are the questions we all have, and no amount of rhetoric from
self-righteous politicians, ministers, college deans or doctors ought to
make them illegitimate or "evil" questions---that deserve in alarmed
reply a smoke screen of pieties. In these two books at least the tone is
one of rational curiosity. No doubt many of the authors favor the use
of both drugs---as aids in psychotherapy or for the personal use of any
citizen-but at least they marshal evidence for their cause rather than
proclaim it as part of some unarguable morality.
It
is a relief to find an
uncommon viewpoint stated honestly, quietly and seriously.
What is there to say, after going through these 1,100 pages---not to
mention the articles and editorials that appear with rising frequency in
the medical and psychiatric journals? Perhaps the most important con–
clusion is the one that is least medical: pot and acid challenge our
culture. They are social drugs. They influence our values and attitudes.
Consequently, what they do to our "nerves" or our moods cannot be
described in a purely psychological or psychiatric way. They are not like
sedatives or tranquilizers, including alcohol-let alone the thousands of
other drugs that pharmacists dispense-because they arouse, rather
than dampen or ignore, the mind's consciousness, the mind's awareness
of itself, its host the body and its surroundings, that is, the neighbors, the
ministers, the police, the mayor and everyone else who has a say in what
is "right" or "wrong." Minds so aroused may not storm barricades but
walk away from them with pointed indifference or scorn-and perhaps
it is more galling to be snubbed than fought.
Consequently it has to be admitted that the least thoughtful and
most outraged critics are right when they refuse to lump pot with alco–
hol, or the side effects of LSD with the by-products of racism, poverty,
