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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, November 15, 1367
Skit that came to dinner
You're just sitting down to din-din at your friendly neighborhood living group.
You're hungry enough even to eat what is put before you, and you can see the steam rising off the creamed whatever on the plate of the person next to you.
Your mouth is halfway through a good water, when you suddenly have thrust upon you and your helpless living group a skit or speaker. If it's a skit, the performers nervously giggle their way in front of your living group and begin their performance.
Usually the color, boldness of the effort or visible skin will sustain group interest long enough for the steam to stop rising off the nearby creamed whatever, and glaze over beautifully.
At this same moment, you understand the point of their message, and sincerely appreciate their efforts, and with a much more knowledgeable air are quite ready to assault your creamed whatever.
But no. The skit continues. Or the political speaker, as it were. Or rather, you wish it weren't.
The Politician, stands before you and talks on and on, continually saying that we have
probably heard what he has to say before from other speakers. It occurs to you in passing as you watch a small ice age form on your once steaming dinner that if he knows that we know that we've heard it before, what are we all doing here?
But, alas, he continues. He didn't spend hours in front of the mirror practicing for nothing.
Occasionally, the speaker will become uncomfortable about his particular marathon, but the skit performers, in their enthusiasm, lack such insight.
After all, the show must go on, even if the point of what they had to say made itself clear long ago. That's show biz.
Finally, the skit gives what was supposed to have been their big finish, or the speaker relates what was supposed to have been his last amusing anecdote.
You add your feeble, undernourished assistance to the weak applause, and turn back to your creamed whatever which will grace your desktop for years to come as a paperweight which will commonly be mistaken for vacation souvenir of petrified whatever.
Associate Editorial Editor:
—John Hill
For legal marijuana?
By Will Hardesty
"The Whole Nation is Going to Pot." "Pot is Fun." "Give the Grass a Chance." "Let's Legalize Pot." "Legalize—Now!"
"Cops Bust Grateful Dead." "Marijuana Arrests Up." "Cops Nab 20 Students in Pot Raid." "Viet Troops Smoking Pot."
The button says and the headlines tell the two sides of the story.
The use of "grass" or "pot" or just plain mariquana is definitely on the increase in the U.S. People are asking, "Why not legalize marijuana?"
Newspapers and magazines have chroniced the use of pot among a group sometimes called the "marijuana generation" but most frequently referred to as "hippies."
But there are other people—the "invisible hippies"—who are smoking marijuana also.
Marijuana has also been classified as a mild hallucinogen. This is much closer to the truth. Some users report some hallucinating, but this occurs mainly when the users' eyes were closed. They have reported seeing patterns similar to those anyone may see by closing his eyes tightly. Marijuana may well work on the users' imagination centers, though, because many users report vivid dreaming when they sleep after smoking.
What is marijuana? Currently, it is classed as a narcotic drug. "But scientifically, the evidence fails to support marijuana's classification as a hard drug. Marijuana, most experts agree, does not result in physical addiction. Unlike the heroin user, the pot smoker does not develop a tolerance to marijuana and demand ever-increasing doses for satisfaction."—Newsweek, July 24, 1967.
Power depends on scene
Hip people talk about how a read "pethead" can "turn on" with less marijuana than the novice smoker.
How powerful a drug is marijuana? Like the rest of the hallucinogenic drugs, the scene has a lot to do with the effect. If a person is in a familiar room with bright colors or maybe some lit candles, with music the person likes, with friends, without fears about taking the drug or other things, he will have a much more pleasurable experience than if he is in an opposite situation.
Some "first timers" have been disappointed by their experiences. This can generally be attributed to one of two causes. First, their friends had built up the marijuana experience too much, or second, the person was expecting too much from the drug-marijuana is a mild hallucinogen, not a powerful one like LSD.
The lack of power of the drug also may be the reason "potheads" need less marijuana to "turn on" than novitiates. The "heads" know
what to expect, and to a greater or lesser degree can turn themselves on.
What does the use of marijuana do to the user? Some people argue that using pot leads to use of hard navettes. The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice reported, "There are too many marijuana users who do not graduate to heroin, and too many heroin addicts with no known prior marijuana use, to support such a theory."
Pot and sex
Another old idea about marijuana is its tendency to cause sexual aggressiveness.
"What's the sex life of the user? That's the real question," says Dr. Richard Blum of Stanford's Institute for the Study of Human Problems. Blum also said sexual interest and capacity may often be diminished when on a marijuana high. And it is definitely not classified as an aphrodisiac.
Some people have said marijuana is a stimulant. This appears to be untrue. Smokers a e not so much prone to be active as they are to be passive. Experienced smokers usually sit quietly and "groove" on, for example, a lighted candle or another person. They may listen quietly to music and report "hearing it all over their bodies."
What, then, are the effects of the drug? Newsweek says, "Marijuana typically causes a slight increase of pulse rate and a slight reddening of the membranes around the eyes. Although some users become nauseated, the drug characteristically increases the appetite. Death from the depressant effect of extremely large doses, has been rarely reported; by contrast, cirrhosis of the liver, heart conditions and other disorders brought about by alechelism takes some 20,000 lives in the U.S. every year."
What are the disadvantages of marijuana?
Some people have argued that it produces a meditative mood and makes users philosophical and the nation cannot long survive if everyone is contemplating and not doing.
Marijuana does slow down the reflexes and sensitize the eyes to light, so it is as unsafe to drive while "stoned" as while drunk.
But, primarily, the big disadvantage is this: It is illegal to smoke pot. Under federal law, a first offender can get two to ten years for possession. Some states have more stringent laws. In Ohio, the maximum penalty is 15 years. Kansas laws say not more than seven years for all offenses—both possession and sales.
Legal drawbacks
Throughout the nation, people are advocating either legalization or, at least, a lessening of the penalties for possession and use of pot.
Why, the argument asks, should it be a federal offense to use something which is less harmful than nicotine, caffeine or alcohol?
"I'm Sure It Has A Lot Of Significance, If I Only Knew What"
Paperbacks
BEHIND THE SCREEN: THE HISTORY AND TECHNIQUES OF THE MOTION PICTURE, by Kenneth MacGowan (Delta, $2.95)—A volume that is more techniques than history, though probably the two cannot be separated. MacGowan was a veteran producer and observer of both stage and screen, and some will recall his speaking here years ago. His great theatrical age was the twenties, and he edited a volume in Dell's series on the American drama. Then he went to Hollywood, where he became a producer at 20th Century-Fox, and in the late forties he was named chairman of theater arts at UCLA. This book is a warmly enjoyable wandering through history, episodic and treating history by subject matter—a section on the talkies, a section on censorship, a section on themes, and so on. And like most such books it reveals again how badly we need a tighty organized and yet detailed history of the motion picture.
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THE DOCTORS, by Martin L. Gross (Dell, $125)—One of those big exposes that so delight readers today. It will not make doctors happy, nor was it meant to. Gross has all kinds of accusations to make, mainly centering on his thesis that medical men are little more than witch doctors and that they are ill-trained, affluent, and scarcely dedicated to the Hippocratic cath. If you go for Vance Packard-type books you'll cat this one up.
THE COUNTRY TEAM, by Robin Moore (Crest. 95 cents)—Writing a book about the men of the Green Berets obviously qualifies a fellow to write a blockbuster kind of novel, full of sex and spies and intrigue and terror and violence. That describes "The Country Team." The kind of book you can open almost anywhere for your kicks. So now the novels about Vietnam begin to appear.
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EIGHT SHORT NOVELS, edited by Dean S. Fowler (Premier, 95 cents)—An anthology that includes both the familiar ("Pale Horse, Pale Rider") and the unfamiliar (Edith Wha-ten's "Bunner Sisters"). Some of the others can be found in many places, notably Conrad's "Typhoon" and Melville's "Benito Cereno." Others in the book are Carson McCullers' "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe," D. H. Lawrence's "The Fox," Stephen Crane's "The Monster" and Henry James' "The Pilup."
PEDLOCK AND SONS, by Stephen Longstreet (Dell, 95 cents)—One of those big dynastic novels so popular in America, this one a continuation of the Pedlock story Longstreet started almost 20 years ago. The Pedlocks are a Jewish clan, and the conflict in this one surrounds the decision of a woman to marry a Talmudic scholar much younger than she. Without being a truly good writer, Longstreet, like Herrman Wouk and Leon Uris, does know how to tell a story well, and that's all most readers ask.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY kansan
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Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. Mail subscription rates: so a student $10 a year. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan 66044 students without regard to color, cloed or national origin. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of Kansas or the State Board of Regents.