Who's to Say What's Obscene?

by Paul Krassner

  During the campaign, Obama promised that he would end the federal raids on dispensaries, or, as he later worded it for the San Francisco Chronicle, he would curb federal enforcement on state medical marijuana suppliers.

  A few days before Obama selected Joe Biden as his running mate, Tommy Chong, in an interview with the Washington Post, was asked what the average citizen could do to further the cause of decriminalization.

  Chong replied: “Check out the people you’re voting for. For instance, Joseph Biden comes off as a liberal Democrat, but he’s the one who authored the bill that put me in jail. He wrote the law against shipping drug paraphernalia through the mail—which could be anything from a pipe to a clip or cigarette papers.”

  Before becoming vice president, Biden, who coined the term “drug czar,” also sponsored the Rave Act, which targets music events where drug use is supposedly prevalent. As for medical marijuana, he said, “We have not devoted nearly enough science or time to deal with the pain management and chronic pain management that exists. There’s got to be a better answer than marijuana.”

  You mean like prescription drugs, which result in 100,000 deaths a year while marijuana has caused none?

  Anthropologists of the future will surely look back upon these times as incredibly barbaric. Medical marijuana is already legal in thirteen states, yet it’s prohibited—and trumped—by federal law. Shortly after Obama’s inauguration, the DEA raided several medical marijuana dispensaries in and around Los Angeles, but in March 2009, his new U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, announced that the Justice Department now has no plans to prosecute dispensaries in those states where it’s legal.

  States’ rights . . . it’s not just for racists any more.

  BONG HITS 4 JESUS

  The U.S. Supreme Court sucks so badly that it finally turned itself inside out. In 2007, their outrageous 5-to-4 ruling made it acceptable to suspend a high school student for the off-campus act of holding a 14-foot banner reading “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” That harmless bit of incongruity became a federal case ending with a dangerous precedent for suppressing free speech.

  Chief Justice John Roberts agreed with the school principal that “the banner would be interpreted by those viewing it as promoting illegal drug use, and that interpretation is plainly a reasonable one.” What a ton of bullshit. Justices Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy voted with him, but also stated that their decision doesn’t address “political or social issues such as the wisdom of the war on drugs or of legalized marijuana for medical use.” Ironically, this is the same Supreme Court that upheld the illegality of medical marijuana by falsely denying the existence of positive research.

  Studies have concluded that cannabis is effective for relieving muscle spasms and chronic pain in AIDS patients. The miracle weed can both increase hunger in HIV patients and suppress hunger to fight obesity. It can help those with glaucoma, Alzheimer’s, asthma, hepatitis, diabetes, epilepsy, osteoporosis, arthritis, insomnia, sleep apnea, migraine headaches, scoliosis, hypertension, depression, shingles, PMS, menopause, Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis. Cannabinoids can inhibit the proliferation of cancer cell lines, including breast, prostate, colon, pancreatic and brain cancer.

  But cynical critics treat the legalization of medical marijuana as though it was intended to be a gateway leading to legalization of nonmedical marijuana. So this is really about the war on pleasure. I once asked the late Peter McWilliams—a leading activist in the medical marijuana movement who suffered from cancer and AIDS—“Would you agree with Dennis Peron, the co-author of Proposition 215 [California’s medical marijuana referendum], who says—not as a joke—that all use of marijuana is medical?”

  “In the general sense that everything we do for our health—both curative and preventative—is medical, I’d agree,” he replied. “Even a perfectly healthy person who smokes pot once a month purely for its euphoric effects could be said to be doing so to prevent becoming ill, in the sense that people take vitamin C every day to prevent becoming ill, for I believe that euphoria is both healing and health-maintaining. . . .

  “While I was using marijuana to treat my nausea, I can’t tell you how much I missed getting high. Although I’d smoke it several times a day, the average high school student was getting high more times a month than I was. That’s because after the first month, I never got high, and I really enjoy marijuana’s high. Simply put, recreational marijuana you use to get high; medical marijuana you use to get by.”

  The New York Times editorialized, “Although there are other prescriptions that are designed to relieve pain and nausea, and there is concern about the health effects of smoking marijuana, there are some truly ill people who find peace only that way.” But those “other prescriptions” are pushed by the pharmaceutical industry, which spent a record-breaking $155 million to lobby the government from 2005 to mid-2006. In fact, the Partnership For a Drug-Free America was originally founded and funded by the tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceutical companies.

  The priorities are insane. Cigarettes cause 1,200 deaths every day in the United States alone. Nearly 2,000 young people under the age of 18 become smokers every day in America. And yet, although the World Health Organization spent three years working out an agreement with 171 countries to prevent the spread of smoking-related diseases, particularly in the developing world, the United States opposed the treaty, including the minimum age of 18 for sales to minors. Around the globe, tobacco now kills almost five million people a year. Within a generation, WHO predicts, the premature death toll will reach ten million a year.

  Whereas, with marijuana, the worst that can happen is maybe you’ll have a severe case of the munchies and conduct a midnight raid of your refrigerator. In the past forty years, 20 million Americans were arrested for violating anti-marijuana laws, primarily for simple possession. As long as any government can arbitrarily decide which drugs are legal and which are not, anyone behind bars for a drug offense is a political prisoner.

  As for “concern about the health effects of smoking marijuana,” it was reported at the 2005 meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research Society that smoking marijuana—“even heavy long-term use”—does not cause cancer of the lung, upper airways or esophagus. As for recent claims of psychosis, the rate of psychosis has remained unchanged since 1950, while the rate of marijuana use has increased 10,000 percent since then.

  Former drug czar John Walters insists that pot growers are “violent criminal terrorists who wouldn’t hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties.” But syndicated columnist Clarence Page—referring to WAMM, the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana—has written about the DEA raiding “a legitimate health cooperative that was treating more than 200 patients, some of them terminally ill, in Santa Cruz [California]. Snatching medicine out of the hands of seriously ill patients sounds like terrorism to me. In this case it was federally sponsored and taxpayer-financed.”

  WAMM, founded by Valerie and Mike Corral, has been helping people dying of cancer and AIDS for fifteen years. Learning that such patients couldn’t afford the high cost of marijuana, WAMM established a communal garden where medicine is grown for patients who have a doctor’s recommendation; they may take what they need and give what they can, even if that is nothing.

  The late Robert Anton Wilson, a prolific countercultural author, told me, “I never thought I would become another WAMM patient. My post-polio syndrome had been a minor nuisance until then. Suddenly, two years ago, it flared up into blazing pain. My doctor recommended marijuana and named WAMM as the safest and most legal source. By then I think I was on the edge of suicide—the pain had become like a permanent abscessed tooth in the leg. Nobody can or should endure that.”

  After the DEA raided WAMM’s garden and arrested its founders, outraged Santa Cruz city and county officials sponsored WAMM’s medical marijuana give-away on the steps of City Hall and joined WAMM’s lawsuit against the DEA, the U.S. Attorney Gener
al and the Office of National Drug Control Policy. WAMM was considered the most likely organization to ultimately sway the Supreme Court. According to Federal Judge Jeremy Fogel, “WAMM is the gold standard of the medical marijuana movement.”

  Meanwhile, what ever happened to Joseph Frederick? He was the 18-year-old student who, when the Olympic torch passed through Juneau, Alaska in 2002, seized upon the opportunity to hold up that banner, “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” He went on to learn Mandarin and teach English in China. He’s proud that he stood up for his rights, with the aid of the ACLU, but regrets “the bad precedent set” by the Supreme Court ruling. However, his case was settled at the state level in November 2008, winning him $45,000 and forcing the school to hold a forum on free speech.

  If only that banner had read “Bong Hits 4 WAMM,” then, by the Supreme Court’s own language—that their decision did not address “political or social issues such as the wisdom of the war on drugs or of legalized marijuana for medical use”—the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” student would not have been punished. He would’ve been protected by the First Amendment, because blasphemy is protected by the First Amendment. But the prejudiced Supreme Court Justices rationalized that “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” was “promoting illegal drug use,” even though such promotion is also protected by the First Amendment.

  I’ll smoke to that.

  WAS MOSES TRIPPING?

  So now I have a new theological question: What exactly was Moses tripping on while hallucinating that he was parting the Red Sea? After all, Benny Shanon, who teaches cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, theorizes in the journal of philosophy Time and Mind that Moses was simultaneously high on Mount Sinai and high on psychedelics when he heard God delivering the Ten Commandments.

  “The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an altered state of awareness,” he writes. “In advanced forms of ayahuasca inebriation, the seeing of light is accompanied by profound religious and spiritual feelings.”

  Concoctions based on the bark of the acacia tree, which is frequently mentioned in the Bible, contain the same molecules as those found in the vines of the powerful psychotropic plant from which the liquid ayahuasca is prepared. Professor Shanon has himself ingested ayahuasca during a religious ceremony in Brazil’s Amazon forest.

  His article came out of a lecture he gave at a conference organized a few years ago by Chris Bennett, who tells me, “It would be interesting to know if anyone has produced a working ayahuasca-like preparation from the local mid-Easter flora and fauna. As it now stands, the information regarding cannabis, or keneh bosem, which is regarded as the Hebrew word for pot by a growing number of linguists and etymologists, is much more substantial and believable. What is more interesting about Shanon’s theory is that it helps demonstrate the possibility of both shamanism and the use of psychoactive substances in the Bible.”

  However, Daniel Sieradski, who has been researching the subject of Jews and drugs for six years, claims that “while in Israel, Benny Shanon was one of the individuals I met on two separate occasions during the course of my research, and he basically lifted his ‘Moses was high’ theory from me, which I shared with him. Though I’m quite pleased that he’s bringing attention to these ideas, and that he makes them ‘his own’ by adding his own spin to the subject—I can’t deny that Shanon has his own body of work to draw from, nor can I even necessarily fault him if he doesn’t recall our conversation—although it still kind of sucks, missing the boat on publishing the theory before he did. Ah, bitter lemons. Anyway, I believe the Israelites were likely consuming psilocybin.”

  Sieradski proceeds to tell me the story of the manna: “After the Jews left Egypt and were wandering in the desert, they’re starving and complaining and pleading to God for food, and so there’s this miracle of manna, which has traditionally been viewed in mainstream religious discourse as this magical bread that falls out of the sky and it keeps the people fed for the duration of their wandering in the wilderness before entering the Holy Land. What manna seems to be is a hallucinogen.” He speaks of “mass hallucination . . . seeing sounds and hearing colors.” From my own experience, I recall tasting ice cream in my toes while on LSD. In any case, Shanon suggested on Israeli public radio that Moses was also on drugs when he saw the Burning Bush.

  High Times editor Steven Hager says, “I’ve long believed the Burning Bush story was about cannabis, and that is what most Rastafarians believe. When the New Testament was constructed by the Roman Empire, all references to psychedelics and cannabis may have been removed, because those were probably considered secrets for an elite priest class. The only references that survive are from the Old Testament (keneh bosem, burning bush), which was already published and not under their control.”

  Aided by this new perspective, let us step into the time machine and travel to ancient civilizations and witness certain aspects of religion as history instead of a fairy tale.

  Here we see Jesus and his disciples in the midst of an Ecstasy party, embracing each other as they slow-dance to the music of Mistress Magdalene and the Merry Maidens. Oh, look, Judas is French-kissing Jesus.

  Going further back in time, we find Joseph plucking the magic mushrooms out of a pile of his donkey’s manure, and then sharing them with the dove that somehow impregnated his wife, the one and only Virgin Mary.

  Even further back, we come upon Moses, thoroughly stoned on the DMT that he has been snorting as he begins to set the original Ten Commandments in stone:

  “Thou shalt not bogart that joint.”

  “Thou shalt not dose anyone with acid.”

  “Thou shalt not dilute cocaine with baby powder.”

  “Thou shalt not watch TV while using mescaline.”

  “Thou shalt not steal from thy parents’ prescription medicines.”

  Moses stops to check his spelling, then speaks to God: “Some day, oh Lord, these commandments will be posted on every citizen’s door.”

  HOOKAHS ON PARADE

  You might want to read this while listening to “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane: “Tell ’em a hookah-smoking caterpillar has given you the call.” I smoked a hookah for the first time at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Cleveland. I liked it. And passing the many-tentacled water pipe around the dinner table enhanced our sense of community.

  The sweet-flavored combination of apple and peach was tasty, plus I got a pleasant kind of dizziness. This was a legal high, because there was no pot in it. I was smoking a blend of 70 percent fruit, honey, herbs, flowers and molasses and 30 percent tobacco. I’ve never been a cigarette smoker, but Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld—who, as Dr. Hippocrates, wrote a syndicated column for the underground press in the ’60s and who now specializes in the causes and effects of addiction—explains why I got stoned:

  “Continuously and deeply inhaling cooled, flavorful tobacco mixtures will cause the user to experience a very relaxed, elated mood. And if the user is traditionally a nonsmoker, they will experience an even more concentrated feeling of relaxation, because their system is not used to the effects of inhaled smoke. A non–tobacco user will experience an altered mental state.”

  However, the World Health Organization warns that using a hookah to smoke tobacco is “not a safe alternative to cigarette smoking” and that the rising popularity of hookahs is partly due to “unfounded assumptions” of safety and misleading commercial marketing.

  Not to mention the fact that, according to Scott Graber—sales manager of the Austin-based hookah-shisha.com, one of the country’s top retailers of hookah products—“Media exposure to the Middle East is the biggest factor in growth. Servicemen and women returning from Iraq have embraced it. And it is seen as the cool social thing to do among college students.”

  Although cigarette smoking is prohibited in California bars and restaurants, hookah bars are exempt. There’s even a hookah-smoking place in Hollywood where you have to know th
e password to get in. But the question remains, will a control-freak government eventually crack down on hookahs simply because they can be considered drug paraphernalia?

  Since 1990, federal law has made drug-paraphernalia violators subject to RICO—Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization—and money-laundering charges. Jerry Clark and Kathy Fiedler ran a head shop called Daydreams that turned into a nightmare when they were raided by the DEA, U.S. Postal Inspectors, local police and sheriff’s deputies. The RICO Act was used against them, so they faced ten to twelve years behind bars.

  Under federal law, merely manufacturing, distributing or selling nontraditional pipes is enough evidence to be found guilty of paraphernalia offenses. Authorities insist that companies can no longer protect themselves by posting signs or Internet warnings that indicate that their products are intended for tobacco use only.

  So I hereby call to the attention of law enforcement officials an invitation to “Come and have fun at our Hookah Party Fundraiser to support Iraq Veterans Against the War”—obviously a group of Rush Limbaugh’s “phony soldiers”—and to an article in Time magazine which states:

  “At cafes around UCLA and in college towns across the country, students are passing around the hookah, the ancient Middle Eastern water pipe filled with sweetened tobacco. In the past couple of years, the hookah has been resurrected in youth-oriented coffeehouses, restaurants and bars. The Gypsy Cafe serves up as many as 200 hookahs at $10 a pipe. At the Habibi, smokers have rented more than 500 hookahs in a night. Young patrons of the lounges agree that part of the hookah’s charm lies in its illicit associations. ‘It looks illegal,’ says a Gypsy customer, 18, with a grin, sucking on his hookah with the insouciance of the blue caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, ‘but it’s not.’ ”