Marijuana--Has 'Pot' Hit KU?
MIDNIGHT RAID—In a scene staged by a Kansan photographer, a midnight caller demonstrates the harvest of a crop of marijuana from a patch one and one-half miles southwest of Lawrence. The photograph was taken last week when leaves of the plant were shriveled and dry—ready for immediate use.
The plants grow to more than 12 feet high. KU students have known of the patch's existence for more than three years, but in that time it apparently has not been investigated by law enforcement authorities.
Editor's Note—The Kansan today presents an in-depth study on the use of marijuana, both nationally and its evident existence at and near KU. Kansan staff member Lee Byrd did the research, writing and photography for this article.
Students across the country are turning on.
"Blowing up" the "joint."
The scene is hash. Or stick, Or grass. Or weed. Reefer, joint, or tea. Pot or marijuana.
It's a thrill, a gas, a soulscarcher, and its at most large universities in the nation, including the University of Kansas.
Where does the party start?
Mostly from Mexico, where it's illegal. Sometimes from kitchen flower pots, where it's risky. And at KU, from Lone Star Lake and other nearby spots where it's illegal, free, and plentiful.
WHO GOES?
The hipster, but the square as well. Pot, unlike hallucenogenics, serves to heighten emotions of the moment. The Bohemian student, sick of his world, finds that marijuana only intensifies his dejection. He'll use the stuff, but only when he's with friends and feels good. Instead of pot, the beatnik will turn to peyote or LSD, drugs which whisk him away from reality.
At most college campuses the majority of users are the straight-thinkers; those in the social action. On the "open" campus—Berkeley, Harvard, Columbia—pot is the alcohol of the new generation.
Much of the material written on campus marijuana attributes its use to the "complexities of university life." Yet, colleges offer a host of outlets, from football games to "woodsies," to erase the pains of exams and the pressures of academia. In a slum, where there aren't pep-rallies or Free Speech Movements, the importance of drugs as a means of excitement is better understood.
THE STUDENT, instead, looks to pot for a number of reasons. At Berkeley it might be used simply because so many of one's friends use it. A male KU student—a good-looking senior who can't be found in any of the "rebel" political groups—says he uses pot as a means of introspection. "Pot has helped me have faith in myself," he explains.
2 Daily Kansan Thursday, November 18. 1965
Another reason—and one particularly significant at KU—is the call of revolt. Two KU students confessed they had repeatedly picked marijuana from a patch that is known to be impotent. "We keep trying anhow," one said.
This futile attempt was described by a graduate student in psychology as another gesture of rebellion against authoritarian social regulations imposed by the University. "I tend to think of the hordes of KU women who leave their closely watched dormitories each Friday afternoon for Lawrence taverns as the same kind of rebellion," he said. "When rules are too strict, students rebell just for the hell of it."
Although it might be close, KU probably is one of the few. Most of the student body possesses the conservative, religious heritage of Kansas. For these students, beer drinking or premarital sex is a symbol of rebellion that smoking pot is to a New Yorker or Chicagoan.
The social posture of not-users at KU is not quite parallel to students at more cosmopolitan universities.
MODERATOR MAGAZINE
claims "there are few large campuses in this country where less than five per cent of the students have had some experience with marijuana."
But this could mean only that pot-smoking is farther below the surface than elsewhere. The KU marijuana user perhaps realizes the social jeopardy of his habits.
THIS PROBLEM was recently apparent at Emporia State Teachers College, where an investigation turned up no evidence of the use of arvifluana, despite widespread rumors that it is on that campus.
ranged for some Yaqui Indians to weave marijuana into sombreros and baskets with harmless vegetable dye. He sells them as party favors.
Compare these results with the University of California, where students are so accustomed to pot consumption (that its a popular source of humor. Vic Keppel, a columnist for the Daily Californian, wrote about several "pushers" on the Berkeley campus;
One student he reported, drives to Mexico where he fills several seuba tanks with live marijuana smoke, then returns and sells them like keens of beer.
A third student quit selling tourist maps which outlined spots on campus where there were marijuana patches, and now intends to open a printing press which he will use to print antimarijuana traces on marijuana paper. "After digesting the medical information, the informed may roll up the last chapter and smoke it," Keppel wrote.
Another imaginative fellow ar-
OBVIOUSLY THE determination of how many students use marijuana is a difficult, if not impossible, task. There have been no extensive studies made, probably due to the professional stigma attached to its mere mention, to the confusion over the laws against it, and to the somewhat natural reluctance of community and university officials to reveal its usage—or to become visibly concerned over the possibility of its usage.
At KU, for example, it has become known throughout the student body that marijuana is available if one cares to pursue it. Most students will say "I heard it grows wild at Lone Star (Lake) and along some nearby roads" even if they don't know the precise location. And it's true that if one cares to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon exploring along those guidelines, it can be found without much effort.
Yet, Lawrence Chief of Police, William A. Troelstrup, says that since he joined the local force a year and a half ago he has known no evidence of marijuana in the Lawrence area. A check with the Douglas County sheriff's office turned up the same reply.
But Deal Six, Douglas County agriculture agent, has other evidence. "A number of years ago I received a request from the federal government to map out the marijuana areas in the county." Six said. "I wrote back and told them that it would be an impossibility. There is just too much of it.
"IT GROWS in nearly every fertile valley and ditch, and along streams and other water masses in the county." Six said.
"Most people thought for years it was wild hemp—many still do." Six continued. "But it's marijuana."
Controlling the stuff would be a "tremendous teask," six said. "We've been fighting bind weed for a long time without much success. I suspect we could improve that record only slightly if we went after marijuana."
Six added, however, that a comprehensive spraying program in the spring might effectively check the weed.
If these patches were to be wiped out the supply of marijuana would probably decrease at KU. The "dedicated" students, however, would not be stopped from using it. In confidential interviews, several expressed an-
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PLANTS AGLOW—The glare of automobile lights upon a patch of marijuana creates a picture as cerie as the sensation evoked by the inhalation of the plant's smoke.