One Hand Jerking

by Paul Krassner

  Whereas, with marijuana, the worst that can happen is maybe you’ll have a severe case of the munchies and raid somebody’s refrigerator.

  Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman writes, “Americans are fighting tobacco addiction at home while our government is supporting it abroad. In fact, the administration thinks tobacco companies should be allowed to market overseas in ways that are prohibited here—with everything from free samples to sponsorship of youth events. When it comes to tobacco, we are standing outside the world community like a nicotine junkie on a city sidewalk, huffing and puffing away.”

  In October 2003, Health Canada released the results of a study which found that more teenagers smoke pot than cigarettes. Fifty-four percent of 15- to 19-year-olds said they had smoked marijuana more than once. Conversely, cigarette smoking has continued to decline among Canadian youths, with the latest national figures showing that only 22% of teens smoke regularly.

  In December, Associated Press reported that, in the U.S., an annual survey known as Monitoring the Future (funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse), tracked drug use and attitudes among 48,500 students from 392 schools, concluding that marijuana remains by far the most widely used illegal drug. It has been tried at least once by 46% of 12th graders and used by more than a third in the past year.

  John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, stated at a news conference that surveys in 15 cities have found that more teens smoke marijuana than regular cigarettes. However, the drug czar added, “More kids are seeking treatment for marijuana dependency than all other drugs combined.” And in March 2005, Associated Press reported, “Treatment rates for marijuana nearly tripled between 1992 and 2002, the government says, attributing the increase to greater use and potency. ‘This report is a wake-up call for parents that marijuana is not a soft drug,’ said Tom Riley, a spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. ‘It’s a much bigger part of the addiction problem than is generally understood.’”

  Both Walters and Riley neglected to mention how many young “addicts” have sought treatment for marijuana dependency as their only alternative to prison time.

  For those who are truly dedicated tobacco addicts, though, there’s a porn Web site featuring Smokin’ Hot Sluts—“the largest archive of gorgeous girls who love to smoke before, during and after sex.” Internet seekers are invited to “Tell our live babes your deepest, nastiest smoking fantasies, and they’ll fulfill your dreams.”

  But what could such smoking fantasies possibly be? I quote: “Fuck my smoldering hot ass!” “Lesbian smoke orgies!” “Slide your filter tip deep inside me!” And, as if intended specifically for Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, “Inhale and swallow!”

  PREGNANCY AND POT

  Trent Lott, who had to resign as Senate Majority Leader for his racist blooper, was also heavily anti-reproductive rights. Concerning legislation banning abortion, he once vowed on the radio, “I will call it up, we will pass it, and the president willl sign it. I’m making that commitment—you can write it down.” The trickle-down immorality of such a promise has been harassment, fake anthrax mailings, segragationist-modelled blockades, violence, death threats and assassination.

  Recently, Bob Rowell of the South Jersey Clinic Defense Coalition, responded to a fluff piece about the local anti-choice movement, titled “Gentle Persuasion,” in the Courier-Post. In a letter to the editor, he wrote:

  “Many local ‘gentle persuaders’ have made statements that were supportive of the terrorists who bombed clinics and perpetrated fatal sniper attacks against doctors and staffs. The article was as misguided as publishing a feature on the gentle persuaders of al-Queda. In fact, one can easily compare the rhetoric of the 9/11 attackers and groups like Army of God, Missionaries To The Preborn, and Life Dynamics (supporters of anti-choice sniper James Kopp) and see for themselves.”

  Of course, the term pro-choice means exactly what it says. And, just as the Plaster Casters became infamous for immortalizing the erect penises of various rock stars, women who are expecting babies can now immortalize their expanded bellies in all their three-dimensional glory by making plaster belly casts. Proud-Body, a Colorado company, sells a do-it-yourself kit that allows mothers-to-be to create a belly cast in less than an hour.

  But let’s say that, like a friend of mine, you’re a pregnant woman living in Florida and you enjoy smoking marijuana. She wrote:

  “If you test positive at your first visit to a hospital (when all pregnant women are given a blood test), then you must continue to be tested until you’re negative. Furthermore, the hospital is required to test you again at the time of birth, and if it’s positive, the HRS—that’s like Children and Families, the health department—will take your baby and will not give it back until you test negative, and will then continue to give regular tests. This is just one of the state’s stupid laws, passed because of the preponderance of crackheads we have here. For the first five months of my pregnancy, I smoked about half a joint a week, and then I didn’t smoke at all. I tested negative at the time of delivery.”

  On the other hand, if you give birth at home with the aid of a contemporary midwife, it’s quite possible that you will be passed a joint to enhance the experience.

  In Great Britain, even if you’re not pregnant, a motion proposed by female members of Unison—one of England’s largest trade unions—called for the legalization of marijuana because it helps women chill out without gaining weight. The motion included this statement: “Cannabis can be used for women to relax and de-stress without calories, in contrast to alcohol or chocolate.”

  This is not a new idea. One hundred years ago, Morphine Tea Parties were popular with women. The practice originated in Paris, where there were female morphine clubs. A number of ladies would meet around 4 o’clock every afternoon—who knows, maybe even at 4:20—and tea would be served. The servants would be sent out of the room, and the door would be locked.

  Then the guests would bare their arms, and the hostess would produce a small hypodermic syringe. She would administer an injection to each person one by one. Sharing needles was not a problem in those days. And if one injection was not sufficient to satisfy any particular guest, then a second or even a third injection was given.

  Recently, however, the exceedingly proper British Medical Journal weighed in negatively on any such practice: “It is only too true that alcoholism, morphinism, cocainism, and other supposed means of getting beyond a monotonous daily life are becoming increasingly prevalent among women, and it is also only too true that there is no ruin so utter as a woman’s ruin from such causes.

  “Opium as a reliever of pain may still be regarded as ‘the gift of the gods,’ but for those who use it for its mental effect, it is fraught with the utmost danger, none the less because the one motive may merge so easily into the other, and none the less because of the ease with which the subject of a single administration may stumble into an enthralling habit, for the greater the relief from one, the greater is the danger from the other.”

  Meanwhile, the Eugene (Oregon) Register Guard reported that what sounded to angry residents like a war zone around dawn turned out to be, not a terrorist attack, but rather just another example of the inhumane insanity of the drug war. Police served a search warrant for the alleged growing of marijuana. They enlisted an armored personnel carrier and 45 SWAT team officers armed with shotguns and automatic rifles to raid a cluster of houses.

  But, after throwing flash-bang grenades, kicking in doors, and handcuffing four people—including one nude woman and one woman dressed only in underpants and a T-shirt—for hours in a room in one of the houses, police came up completely empty-handed. The invaders also admitted to having placed a black bag over the head of one of the women until she agreed to cooperate with them. Ah, equality for women at last.

  Lucky she wasn’t pregnant.

  BONG WARS: TOMMY CHONG AIN’T THE ONLY ONE

  “The business of Amer
ica is business,” said Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the United States. No wonder it was the front page of the Los Angeles Times Business section that reported the DEA’s recent cluster of raids on head shops and Internet sites selling drug paraphernalia, an industry estimated to be worth $1 billion a year.

  Several weeks earlier, after tougher laws on paraphernalia went into effect, the California Department of Alcoholic Beverages wanted liquor licenses suspended at ten stores accused of selling “rose tubes”—4-inch-long glass tubes with miniature fake roses—to undercover agents who asked for crack pipes.

  Even before then, the war was already escalating, and generating a ripple effect. One student was suspended from high school because he displayed a banner that said “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” although it occurred on a public sidewalk off school property. And a married couple was arrested for contributing to the delinquency of their teenagers because they gave them bongs for Christmas.

  Consider the case of Chris Hill. In order to avoid a potential 20-year sentence on drug paraphernalia charges, he accepted a plea bargain and agreed to serve 14 months in prison. His firm, Chills, a distributor of pipe and tobacco accessories, had been named in Inc magazine as one of the nation’s 500 fastest-growing companies, and prior to his arrest in August 2001, he was chosen as of of America’s top 500 young businessmen by the National Republican Congressional Committee.

  The DEA seized Chills pipes from three Iowa tobacco shops which also sold pro-marijuana posters and books. Agents next went to Florida, raided Hill’s business and home, handcuffing him in front of two infant daughters. His home and all vehicles were confiscated, he was fined $500,000, lost his warehouse building and manufacturing equipment, and faced bankruptcy.

  The prosecuting U.S. Attorney claimed that Hill’s logo—which features a space alien with the words “World Domination”—was evidence of a criminal conspiracy to take over the world. He responded that the prosecutors had been watching too many James Bond movies, adding sarcastically, “Maybe I should get a little white cat and shave my head.”

  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 shop called Daydreams, which turned into a nightmare when they were raided by the DEA, U.S. Postal Inspectors, local cops and sheriff ’s deputies—and the RICO act was used against them, so that they faced 10 to 12 years behind bars.

  Under federal law, merely manufacturing, distributing or selling non-traditional 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 which indicate that their products are intended for tobacco use only.

  And so I hereby call to the attention of law enforcement officials an article in the January 27, 2003 issue of Time magazine, which states: “At cafés 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. . . . [I]n the past couple of years, the hookah has been resurrected in youth-oriented coffehouses, restaurants and bars. . . . The Gypsy Cafe, which has been in business for 15 years, serves up as many as 200 hookahs a night at $10 a pipe. At the Habibi, which opened two years ago . . . 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.’”

  And, just in case you guys at the DEA missed it, a guest on Late Night gave Conan O’Brien a beautiful bong, and he kept it! Hurry, it’s still in his possession. He plans to use it as a glass-eye holder, but that doesn’t matter, you can still bust him.

  The cruel absurdity of anti-paraphernalia laws is underscored by the creative substitutes, such as apples, soda cans, toilet-paper cardboard tubes and aluminum foil, tweezers used as roach clips, and don’t forget those plain old, regular tobacco pipes. Indeed, in Fulton, Kentucky, police investigating a marijuana-smoking complaint, found pot burning on a backyard grill with a large fan on the other side of the house, sucking the smoke through the home, in effect, said the police chief, “turning the house into a large marijuana bong.” Seize it immediately, boys!

  At a press conference announcing the February raids, Attorney General John Ashcroft went out of his way to praise the DEA, which had been criticized earlier this year, in a White House budget office assessment of government performance, as being “unable to demonstrate its progress.” Yes, the business of America is indeed business, and all that those DEA agents ultimately want is simply to keep their jobs.

  THE TRIAL OF IRA EINHORN

  As I write this, the trial of Ira Einhorn for the murder of his girlfriend, Holly Maddux, is scheduled to begin. I have no doubt that he did it, but whatever the verdict, here are several facts, most of which will not be revealed in the courtroom.

  Einhorn claims that the CIA framed him because he knew too much about mind-control technology, top secret weapons and unidentified flying objects. Yet they didn’t assassinate him. Instead, he insists, they bludgeoned her to death, stuffing her body into a padlocked steamer trunk in a locked closet in his apartment.

  Downstairs neighbors complained that “bodily fluids” were seeping down through their ceiling and staining their kitchen wall. Einhorn never investigated the godawful smell in his own apartment during the 18 months before he was apprehended. But why bother? He already knew that the stench was caused by her decomposing remains. One witness heard noisy thumps and a scream around the time Maddux disappeared. Another was asked by Einhorn to help him dump the trunk, explaining that it contained “top secret” documents.

  Einhorn had a reputation for being violent toward women. I was tripping on LSD the day I met him in 1968, and he reeked with vibes of manipulation. Later on, I dated one of his former girlfriends, and she verified for me what an egomaniacal control freak he had been.

  The media reported that he founded Earth Day and was the master of ceremonies at their event in Philadelphia. In reality, his mission there was to seize the microphone and proceed to hog it for half an hour. This so-called hippie guru was really an opportunistic scam artist. He became the New Age advisor to mainstream powermongers, consulting with corporations and politicians alike.

  His $40,000 bail money, which he jumped on the eve of his first pre-trial hearing, was put up and sacrificed by Seagram heiress Barbara Bronfman. She sent him thousands more while he was on the lam, and alerted him when authorities were closing in. She was not charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive. Einhorn claimed that the reason he fled the United States was because he would not have received a fair hearing since he had once organized demonstrations against the Vietnam war.

  When the way was cleared for his extradition from France, he slashed his neck with a dull bread-knife. There were superficial cuts but heavy bleeding. He was in and out of the emergency room, his wound considered not life-threatening. Coincidentally, a psychiatrist on The Sopranos described such an act as a “suicidal gesture as opposed to a suicidal attempt—‘small cutting’ is the clinical term.”

  After Einhorn was back behind bars, the Philadelphia Daily News published an article:

  “Right about now, those prized Jersey beefsteak tomatoes are maturing into plump, succulent fruits ripe for the picking. We recommend you leave them on the vine just a little bit longer . . . when they will be finished growing. And ready for throwing. By then, they should be overripe, thin-skinned, seedy, worm-ravaged, and perhaps even a little smelly, just like some ex-fugitive-murderer we all know: Ira ‘The Blade’ Einhorn. You can still take a shot at a reasonable facsimile of his smug mug laid out on a giant billboard. That’s right, the second annual Ira Einhorn ‘Killer Tomato’ contest is less than two weeks away. . . .

  “Owner of the
homegrown tomato that best exhibits the characteristics of the killer—thin-skinned, ripe-smelling and seedy—wins a trip to Alcatraz. Others presenting tomatoes get a chance to toss their fruit at the billboard.”

  In response to a column in the News, local radio host Bob Rowell wrote:

  “Einhorn got a brief taste of the media limelight during the first Earth Day event, but was anything but a ‘counterculture hero’ or ‘darling of the left.’ Even before the murder, he was widely perceived to be insincere, phony and a con. The column was obviously a cheap shot at a subculture that the writer clearly despises. Einhorn and Manson were two murderers who were never embraced by the counterculture. Actually, they had much more in common with the contras and homicidal elements of some law enforcement entities.”

  Time magazine published a photo of Einhorn with Abbie Hoffman, proclaiming them to be friends. Not true. They met only once, at a 1968 conference of college newspaper editors in Washington. However, Einhorn did cultivate a relationship with Hoffman’s co-founder of the Yippies, Jerry Rubin. Anita Hoffman, the keeper of Abbie’s image, wrote a letter of complaint to Time.

  An episode of South Park included a character that was openly a parody of Einhorn, repeatedly warning that “Republicans are ruining the world,” and using brainwashing techniques to force children into celebrating Earth Day. Later, he chops a young child to pieces. Yes, “the bastard killed Kenny!”

  Among David Letterman’s Top 10 Reasons to Flee was this one: “If your new roommate says, ‘No matter what you hear, don’t open this trunk.’”