Jocelyn Elders Co-Authors Oped Slamming AMA's Position on Marijuana

Elders depicted at the 2016 Oakland Museum "Altered State" exhibit

Former US Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders has co-authored an oped on CNN.com  blasting the AMA's policy on marijuana as racist and out of step with the times. It states:

The AMA actively supports cannabis prohibition, a cornerstone of the drug war, even as it hypocritically condemns systemic racism for creating inequity and limiting access to health care among communities of color. The organization fails to appreciate or chooses to ignore the fact that the uneven application of laws on cannabis prohibition contributes to poverty, which is one of the largest obstacles to health care access in communities of color. 

Cannabis is demonstrably safer for the vast majority of adults than alcohol, but the AMA doesn't call for a return to alcohol prohibition. Cannabis is far less harmful to adults than tobacco, but the AMA advocates tighter regulation rather than the prohibition of tobacco products. While the medical community offers an evidence-based, nuanced assessment of the health effects of cannabis, the AMA hyperbolically asserts that "without question, the public health risks (of legalization) are immense." 

Cannabis use is not the "immense" public health threat that the AMA claims, but its prohibition is a powerful weapon of racially biased policing. In 2019, US law enforcement made over 500,000 arrests for simple cannabis possession alone. An American Civil Liberties Union report from 2018 found that Black people in America are nearly four times more likely than Whites to be arrested for cannabis possession, despite similar usage rates between the two groups.

RIP Ramsey Clark, Mary Jeanne Kreek and Jean Langenheim

Recently portrayed as the man of uncommon integrity he was by Michael Keaton in the Aaron Sorkin/Netflix movie "The Trial of the Chicago 7,” former US Attorney General and government official Ramsey Clark has died. 

Clark supervised the drafting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968, and as AG opposed the death penalty and enforced antitrust laws. He "tussled with J. Edgar Hoover, settled land claims with Native American groups and accompanied Martin Luther King Jr. on his march to Selma."  He also helped start NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws). 

Keith Stroup, who was a young lawyer when he started NORML, recalled in a New York Magazine article that he'd read Clark's book Crime in America. "I was amazed because here was this former Attorney General arguing that marijuana should be legalized. I’d never heard that from such a prominent public figure before," Stroup said. He met with Clark who reaffirmed his mission and helped make it happen, serving on the advisory board for NORML.

"It was terribly sad to learn of Ramsey Clark’s death," Stroup wrote to me in an email. "He was a friend and a personal political hero of mine, and someone who helped me get NORML off the ground in the early 1970’s. When I was uncertain, he reassured me that it was the right thing to do and he introduced me to Hugh Hefner and the Playboy Foundation, that largely funded NORML for our first decade. He was a brilliant man who fought every day for the common man. Ramsey Clark for my generation was the icon that we looked to to tell us how to move forward. He helped us end the Viet Nam War and to seek racial justice." 

Two prominent women scientists and unsung heroines have also recently passed and been added to Tokin' Woman's yearly In Memoriam post: Mary Jeanne Kreek and Jean Langenheim.

Women to Celebrate this International Women's Day

More celebrated in other countries than in the US due to its socialist roots, International Women's Day is inspired by the 1909 ladies garment workers' strike and held on March 8 – the date of the 1917 Russian women's "Bread and Peace" strike. It is is now officially "a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women." 

Some women's achievements to celebrate this year are: 

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms removed drug-testing requirements for city employees, citing equity concerns. 

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer granted clemency to four longtime marijuana prisoners. 

Kansas Governor Laura Kelly announced "we will combine common sense medical marijuana policy to pay for Medicaid expansion."

Our Tokin' Woman of the Year for 2019, Jane Fonda, won the Cecil B. DeMille award at the Golden Globes, and gave a great speech about inclusion. 

Andra Day picked up a Globe for her portrayal of drug war victim Billie Holiday, and Catherine O'Hara (pictured) won one for her role on "Schitt's Creek" wherein she tokes, and ruminates on taking ayahuasca with Al & Tipper. 

Dolly Parton, who had an "old fashioned ladies pot party" with Fonda in 9-5, donated $1 million to help pay for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and re-wrote her hit song "Jolene" to encourage people to get vaccinated. 

Beyoncé gave a $10K grant to a black-owned cannabis company.  

Michelle Alexander's seminal book "The New Jim Crow" made a list of Top 10 greatest works of journalism in the last 10 Years.

Miley Cyrus and Joan Jett, both pot lovers, crushed it at the TicToc Superbowl party for first responders. 

Lady Gaga lifted us up with her rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at the inauguration and Chelsea Handler launched a an Inauguration Day-themed cannabis kit titled “America is Back” to benefit the nonprofit Cage-Free Repair. 

Oh yeah, and our Tokin' Woman of 2020 Kamala Devi Harris was sworn in a Vice President. (Devi is another name for the Goddess Parvati, one of the International Tokin' Women presented here.)

The United States vs. Billie Holiday: How The Drug War Can Silence Political Speech

The United States vs. Billie Holiday, now showing on Hulu, depicts how Holiday was targeted by the US government for her drug use due to her politics, in particular because of her refusal to stop performing her song "Strange Fruit" about lynching.

Starring Andra Day in a powerhouse, Golden Globe–winning performance, the film has the questionable casting of the handsome Garrett Hedlund (who played Dean Moriarity / Neal Cassidy) as the hideous (inside and out) Harry Anslinger, the careerist anti-drug zealot and longtime head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics who took down Holiday over her heroin use.  Very Important Pothead Louis Armstrong makes an appearance or two in the movie, and Tokin Woman Tallulah Bankhead is also depicted, as being questioned by Anslinger about her relationship with Holiday.

Just after Holiday is shown singing Bessie Smith's song "Give me a Pigfoot/Reefer" we see Very Important Pothead Lester Young, her saxophonist, rolling and smoking a joint. But despite the fact that at the time, "Billie Holiday's name had become a kind of password among marijuana smokers," she is only shown buying and using heroin, after which a flashback scene reveals she was pressured into prostitution as a young girl by her mother. Reason enough for anyone to do heroin. 

New Film Explores Canada's 1970s Experiment with Women and Weed

"The Marijuana Conspiracy" cast 

Coming to the US on 4/20 is a Canadian film titled "The Marijuana Conspiracy" about a bizarre experiment that happened in 1972 in which 20 women were confined in a Toronto hospital for 98 days while they were supplied with increasingly potent marijuana to smoke. 

Then-Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's government was reportedly considering legalizing pot, and the experiment sought to discover whether smoking it would make workers unproductive. The women were paid to weave belts or assemble stools with sea grass seats, as a measure of their motivation. According to an article in The Toronto Star, when their wage increase from $2 per stool to $2.75, the women's output increased. “Evidence shows that the inability or unwillingness to earn following high cannabis consumption can be overcome by an economic incentive,” researcher C.G. Miles wrote. 

Women from Canada's 1972 pot experiment

Filmmaker Craig Pryce interviewed several of the women who took part in the experiment for the film. Expecting a sort of fun "hippie camp" where they were paid to smoke marijuana, the subjects' isolation and the effects of too-potent weed they were required to smoke (or else not be paid at the end of the experiment) reportedly had a detrimental effect on some of the women.  Many were disturbed by the fact that the results of the experiment were buried, apparently due to political reasons. 

 

Hemp Wins the Superbowl

An Inside Edition story reveals that 43-year-old quarterback Tom Brady's health regimen includes a daily blueberry breakfast shake with two key ingredients: hemp milk and hemp seeds. Hemp seeds (and the milk from which they're made) are complete proteins, containing all the essential amino acids with the perfect proportion of omega-3 and omega-6 oils, plus hard-to-find ones too.  

Brady and his wife Giselle speak about their commitment to regenerative agriculture in the the documentary "Kiss the Ground," narrated by pot-lover Woody Harrelson. 

Unstoppable receiver Rob Gronkowski, who followed Brady from the Patriots to Tampa Bay and scored the first two touchdowns in Sunday's game, announced in 2019 he was investing in a CBD company. Gronk said at the time, “I am here today to appeal to the sports governing bodies of the world to update their positions on CBD.” 

Nabataean Incense and the Goddess Al-Uzza

Watching the series Sacred Sites of the World, I learned of the city of Petra in modern-day Jordan with its Nabataean Temple of the Winged Lions where the goddess Al-Uzza and the Egyptian goddess Isis were likely worshipped. This would make it yet another ancient site where incense was burned ceremonially to the goddess.  

The Nabateans (300 BCE to 106 CE) were Arabian nomads from the Negev Desert who "amassed their wealth first as traders on the Incense Routes which wound from Qataban (modern-day Yemen) through neighboring Saba (a powerful trade hub) and on toward Gaza on the Mediterranean Sea." 

Some archaeologists think the Queen of Sheba was a Sabaean.  I was informed by a DJ in Jamaica that the Rastas sing about the Queen of Sheba bringing ganja to King Solomon. 

Women of New Administration To Lead on Marijuana Reform?

Tokin' Women Lady Gaga and Kamala Harris greet each other at the inauguration.

As Kamala Devi Harris,  our reigning Tokin' Woman of the Year, was sworn in as our first female Vice President, it was a banner week for progressive females. 

Pennsylvania's top health official Dr. Rachel Levine was announced as the Biden/Harris administration's pick for assistant secretary of health. Levine, a pediatrician, would become the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Levine has earned praise for her handling of the COVID crisis, and for managing the roll out of legal medical marijuana in Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh NORML director Patrick Nightingale commented, "Dr. Levine has worked hard to implement and steward Pennsylvania's highly regulated medical cannabis program. She readily accepted the recommendations of the Advisory Board, adding flower and multiple qualifying conditions resulting in greater product choices for patients and expanding PA's patient population. Dr. Levine made sure that Pennsylvania adapted to the challenges posed by the pandemic by expanding the monthly purchase amount allowed under PA law, allowing telemed for new patients and recertifications, authorizing curbside delivery for dispensaries and eliminating the five-patient limit for caregivers."

Levine has also been open to the notion, supported by science, that cannabis could play a role in alleviating the opioid epidemic. This is in sharp contrast to former Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use Elinore McCance-Katz, who resigned her post on January 7. In 2018, McCance-Katz called research showing medical marijuana states have fewer opioid overdoses "flawed." Instead, she touted her agency’s success in promoting MAT (medically assisted treatment, meaning methadone, naltrexone, or buprenorphine) for opioid abuse, something also advanced by our new Acting Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), Regina LaBelle. (No word on LaBelle's opinion of marijuana. NORML lobbied for the Biden/Harris administration to eliminate the ONDCP.)

Fran Lebowitz: "No Light Happiness for Me"

Voted her class's Top Wit in 9th grade (the last year she graduated school), Fran Lebowitz was afraid to take the award home because her mother had told her, "Don't be funny around boys. They don't like it." The Martin Scorsese-directed Netflix documentary series "Pretend It's a City" captures Lebowitz's caustic brilliance and is a welcome antidote to last week's sad shenanigans from another New Yorker of a stinkier stripe.

Lebowitz's 1978 book Metropolitan Life was a collection of hilarious essays with titles like, "Success Without College" and "A Few Words on A Few Words." She worked as a cab driver, a housecleaner, and a street vendor, but refused to waitress, saying those jobs went to women who were required to sleep with their boss. Shifting to writing for Andy Warhol's "Interview" magazine and other outlets, she appeared as a judge on the TV series "Law & Order" and in Scorsese's film The Wolf of Wall Street.

"Pretend It's a City" features interviews with Lebowitz by Scorsese, Alec Baldwin, and Spike Lee, all of whom she cracks up (I guess boys do like her humor). She is also interviewed by actress Olivia Wilde, who in 2015 spoke to People magazine about "that unfortunate semester in high school when I simultaneously discovered Krispy Kreme and pot."

A longtime, devoted cigarette smoker, Lebowitz once told David Letterman, "I have two main activities in life: smoking and plotting revenge." She rants in "Pretend It's a City" about the "wellness" craze and parents who won't allow their kids to have sugar. 

"We now live in an era where cigarettes are horrible for you," Lebowitz observes in Episode 5 of the series. "Now, marijuana's good for you. Marijuana used to be a horrible thing that would lead to a life of desperate degradation. Now it's a wonderful thing! It's curative. It's...they put it in jelly beans! Or a gummy bear, or whatever you call it. Now of course they won't let children have real lollypops but the mother has a lollypop with marijuana." 

"I smoked marijuana when I was young," she continues. "I didn't particularly like it. I didn't like the smell of it. Of course now, people don't smoke it as much. I mean they smoke it but they also take these other things, these candies or whatever. I never really....that's not the feeling I was ever seeking, was that feeling of kind of light happiness, okay? That's not for me. No light happiness for me." 

"Party Girl" Turns 25

Posey puffs and gets inspired at the library in "Party Girl" 

The recent 25th anniversary of the 1995 Indie film "Party Girl" earned a write-up in Vogue magazine for its influence on fashion. Parker Posey stars in the titular role, wearing a funky mix of designer duds and thrift-store trash, and enjoying marijuana. 

The opening scene has Posey as her character Mary smoking a joint and collecting entry fees to an illegal rave she's throwing, leading to her arrest. When her librarian godmother Judy (Sasha von Scherler) bails her out, Mary goes to work at the library to pay back her debt, but without much interest in learning about being a librarian. 

That is, until she smokes pot at the library one night and is inspired to learn the Dewey Decimal System, which she soon uses to organize her DJ roommate's records. Meanwhile, she romances falafel cart owner Mustafa, who shows up at the library for help with getting a teaching certificate, leading to a sexual encounter that costs Mary her job. It becomes apparent that Judy is envious of Mary's lifestyle, partying with friends and finding love. 

Tokin' Women and Other Luminaries We Lost in 2020

Dawn Wells (12/30)

Wells, the perky and petite brunette who played Mary Ann on TV's Gilligan's Island, was caught with a stash box and several half-smoked doobies in her car in 2007. Wells claimed the pot was not hers, but she was rumored to be the person who mailed a package of pot to Bob Denver (Gilligan) at his West Virginia home. Wells died at age 82 due to complications of COVID. 

Patricia Ann Steward (12/30)

Known as "The Duchess of Hemp," Steward was an activist, entrepreneur, and compatriot of Jack Herer (The Emperor Wears No Clothes: Hemp and the Marijuana Conspiracy). We corresponded after John Prine died this year, with her reminiscing about smoking pot with Prine at the club she owned in Arizona.

 

K.T. Oslin (12/21)

Oslin made music history by becoming the first middle-aged woman to rise to stardom in Nashville. She was 45 years old when she scored a hit with “80’s Ladies” in 1987. The song made her the first female songwriter in history to win the CMA’s Song of the Year prize, and she was the CMA Female Vocalist of the Year in 1988. (Source.)

We were the girls of the 50's.
Stoned rock and rollers in the 60's.
Hunny, more than our names got changed
As the 70's slipped on by.

Now we're 80's ladies.
There ain't been much these ladies ain't tried.

 

 

David Lander (12/4)

Lander, who made us laugh as Squiggy on "Laverne and Shirley," was an MS sufferer and advocate for medical marijuana. Lander said he and his partner Michael McKean (Lenny) created their characters for the show while high.

Tokey Awards 2020

Tokin' Woman of the Year: Kamala Harris

“I’m America’s cool aunt. A fun aunt. I call that a funt. The kind of funt that will give you weed but then arrest you for having weed," said Maya Rudolph in her Emmy-winning portrayal of Kamala Harris on Saturday Night Live. 

 

Although VP-elect Harris's record and rhetoric on marijuana wasn't good while she was a prosecutor, she has championed reform in the Senate, where she sponsored the MORE Act (Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement Act).  Harris, like others, has figured out that the drug war is steeped in racism, and so it's a human rights issue for all. And she knows that it's now cool to say you smoked it. 

During her Presidential campaign, Harris said on a radio talk show she was “absolutely in favor of legalizing marijuana,” harkening to her half-Jamaican heritage and citing the mass incarceration resulting from cannabis prohibition, particularly of young black men. And she admitted she smoked weed when she was in college. When asked if she might start smoking again, she replied, “I think it gives a lot of people joy, and we need more joy in the world.”

 

Harris has managed to straddle her tough-prosecutor past with her "funt" persona. She's advocated for arresting the police who shot and killed Breonna Taylor in a botched drug raid, and noted at a Judiciary Committee hearing on Prison Safety and the Coronavirus that 70% of those in US prisons are black and brown people, and while Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen qualified for home detention due to COVID concerns, 62-year-old Fidel Torres died of COVID-19 in a federal prison while serving the final two years of his 20-year sentence for a marijuana offense. She has also been a strong advocate for voting rights, so important in this year's election, and beyond. 

 

The first woman, the first black, and the first person of Asian descent to be elected Vice President, Harris is sure to make herstory. She's reiterated the Biden/Harris pledge to decriminalize marijuana since the election, and in the recent BET documentary "Smoke." Biden is a longtime drug warrior who will have to be pushed beyond his treatment-instead position. We hope the Californian Harris will help give him a nudge into the present day, where a supermajority of Americans favor cannabis legalization.  

RIP: Literary Lioness Diane di Prima

Di Prima reads from her first book,
"This Kind of Bird Flies Backwards" in 1959

The prolific Beat poet and teacher Diane di Prima was the mother 

of five children and became a Lioness of Letters at a time when poets mostly belonged to boys' clubs. She died on October 25 at the age
of 86.

In an often-repeated anecdote from her 2001 memoir Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years, Di Prima recalls being at a "boozy, marijuana-filled party one night in New York" with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and when she announced she needed to leave at 11:30 p.m. to relieve her babysitter, Kerouac shouted, “DI PRIMA, UNLESS YOU FORGET ABOUT YOUR BABYSITTER, YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO BE A WRITER." 

She wrote of her decision to pursue a career in poetry, "The things I now leave behind... leaving the quiet unquestioned living and dying, the simple one-love-and-marriage, children, material pleasures, easy securities. I am leaving the houses I will never own. Dishwashers. Carpets. Dull respect of dull neighbors. None of this matters really. I have already seen it all for the prison it is."

The actress who played Don Draper's Greenwich Village girlfriend in TV's "Mad Men" read Di Prima's Memoirs of a Beatnik (1969) in preparation for the role. As quoted in Sisters of the Extreme, Di Prima wrote in Memoirs: "As far as we knew, there was only a small handful of us—perhaps forty or fifty in the City (NY)—who knew what we knew; who raced about in Levis and work shirts, smoked dope, dug the new jazz, and spoke a bastardization of the Black argot.....Our chief concern was to keep our integrity...and to keep our cool."

In her epic poem Loba she wrote, seemingly to the goddess Parvati: 

They call me drunkard, though I drink no liquor

I drink her nectar only; my mind reels

I sit day and night at the feet of Shiva's consort
High, not dulled with the wines of earth.  

The cosmic egg floats on the elixir of her Joy.

She delivers the low-born, I shall not leave her side. 

Virtue, ignorance, action, wisdom—these drugs delude

But when you drink Her wine, you are out of tune

And the Divine Bard loves you: she takes you on her lap.

 

and

 

Why do I regret

hours in pastel gardens where scented drugs

might have sharpened our senses?

Raiders Sign Player Who Quit over NFL's Marijuana Policy

The Las Vegas Raiders have signed former Dallas Cowboy David Irving, 27, who announced he was quitting the NFL last year in opposition to the league's drug policy, "particularly in regard to marijuana," reported ESPN. 

Irving was suspended indefinitely for violating NFL's substance abuse policy in 2019, and now is back under "provisional" reinstatement, while he is being tested for COVID.  In March, the NFL's level of THC triggering a positive test was increased fourfold from 35 to 150 ng/ml, among other policy reforms negotiated by the NFL Players Association. 

On Instagram, where he announced his resignation from football, Irving calls himself an "NFL Player turned Cannabis Activist." He told Sports Illustrated in February, "I've been smoking since I was in middle school. Always had a 3.0 GPA. Never had any trouble with the law."  He added that cannabis could help the NFL with its CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) problem. 

"I know the perception people have of me is that I'm some sort of gangsta, homeless pothead," Irving told SI. "But I gave up football for a bigger cause. I want to change the bias toward marijuana. I want to educate America that it's not a drug, it's medicine."

Abbie Hoffman: Steal This Urine Test

There's a great scene in the new Aaron Sorkin / Netflix movie "The Trial of the Chicago 7" where Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) of Students for a Democratic Society says to Yippie! Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen), "My problem is that for the next 50 years, when people think of progressive politics, they’re going to think of you and your idiot followers, passing out daisies to soldiers or trying to levitate the Pentagon. So they’re not gonna think of equality or justice; they’re not gonna think of education or poverty or progress. They’re gonna think of a bunch of stoned, lost, disrespectful, foul-mouthed, lawless losers. And so we’ll lose elections." 

I know this to be true because I campaigned for Hayden when he ran for Governor of California in 1994. I would talk to young people, saying, "You know Tom Hayden, the Chicago 7?" Only when I said, "with Abbie Hoffman" did the bells of recognition ring. (Hayden lost that election, and Abbie remains enduringly popular.) 

The credits of the movie mention Hoffman's bestseller "Steal This Book" but not its 1987 sequel, "Steal This Urine Test" in which he blows the lid off the bogus urine testing industry that discriminates against marijuana smokers by detecting inactive metabolites that can stay in the body for weeks after use. 

Hoffman wrote of NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse) chief Dr. Robert DuPont's evolution from a somewhat liberal scientist to a zealot-like proponent of urine testing:  

Why Red Ribbon Week is a Fraud

Students with photos of Kiki Camarena. 

This October 23-31, schoolkids across the US will participate in "Red Ribbon Week," an anti-drug education campaign that pressures students to sign an anti-drug pledge. The event began in honor of DEA agent Kiki Camarena, who was kidnapped, brutally tortured, and murdered in Mexico by drug cartel operatives in 1985, at the height of former first lady Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" to drugs campaign. 

However since Camarena's death, more and more allegations have surfaced connecting the CIA and the DEA to his murder. Former cartel employees told USA Today that a DEA official and CIA operative participated in meetings with the cartel where Camarena's abduction was discussed. 

The must-see new Amazon documentary series "The Last Narc" interviews Camarena's widow, former DEA agent Hector Barilles who was assigned to investigate Camarena's murder, the US prosecutor of his killers, and two Mexican policemen who were assigned to protect drug lords involved in the crime, revealing the layers of corruption involved.

Kendall Jenner Would Like To Buy the World a Toke

Jenner in the green Calvin Klein gown
she wore to the 2015 Met Gala.

Kendall Jenner, who got flack for her appearance in a 2017 ad wherein she offers a policeman a Pepsi at a mock Black Lives Matter protest, was outed as a cannabis consumer on the podcast "Sibling Revelry" with Kate Hudson and her brother Oliver.

Asked towards the end of the show by Oliver, "If there was a stoner [in your family] who would it be?" Jenner's sister Kourtney Kardashian was quick with her reply: "Kendall."

"I am a stoner," the 24-year-old model and businesswoman agreed. "No one knows that, so that’s the first time I’ve ever really said anything out there." A horsewoman, Kendall also said she "would love to be the second Olympian Jenner" as a Grand Prix hunter/jumper.  She also spoke about her struggles with anxiety and panic attacks (which cannabis probably helps her with). In May, she posted a sweet tweet checking in about people's mental health during COVID.

A 2014 "Keeping up with the Kardashians" episode shows mama Kris and her mother M.J. munching medicinal gummy bears and giggling. In 2015, Kourtney's husband Scott Disick entered a facility in Costa Rica that uses the psychedelic plant Iboga in its treatment for drug and alcohol addiction. Kim Kardashian, who reportedly got married and made a sex tape on Ecstasy, advocated for the release of nonviolent drug offender Alice Johnson (winning her a 2018 Tokey Award; her CBD-themed baby shower earned her a 2019 Tokey).

Republicans Slam Democrats' Support For (or Prosecutions For) Marijuana

Cissie Graham Lynch speaking at the RNC. 

The Republicans have put forth two women in the first two nights of its convention to lambaste Democrats over their marijuana policies. 

Last night, cancer survivor Natalie Harper praised the administration's FDA "Right to Try" reform act, affording incurably ill patients access to developmental drugs, then went onto claim that Democrats' healthcare plan is "a right to marijuana, opioids and the right to die with dignity."

Tonight, Cissie Graham Lynch, Billy Graham’s granddaughter, included among her indictments of the Democrats the banning of church services due to COVID, while declaring marijuana shops essential during the pandemic. “Even during the pandemic, we saw how quickly life can change," she said, "Some Democrat leaders tried to ban church services while marijuana shops and abortion clinics were declared essential."

A few speakers later, anti-abortion advocate Abby Johnson stated that, "Margaret Sanger was a racist who believed in eugenics," adding that Planned Parenthood clinics where "infant corpses are pieced back together” are predominately in minority communities.

Ironically, Republicans have been attacking former California AG Kamala Harris over her past record of marijuana convictions ever since her Vice Presidential nomination. Former New York Mayor and Trump acolyte/attorney Rudy Guiliani tweeted about it, which was especially ironic since under Guiliani's reign in NYC, the number of marijuana arrests soared, a result of his "stop and frisk" policies that largely rounded up people of color. 

I finally succeeded in getting the number of words in my convention speech below the number of small time Marijuana smokers Comrade Kamala put in prison.

— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) August 23, 2020

Tokin' Woman Kamala Harris Gets VP Nod

Harris talking pot on "The Breakfast Club"

Presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden has named California Senator Kamala Harris as his Vice Presidential pick. 

During her Presidential campaign, Harris said on a radio talk show she was “absolutely in favor of legalizing marijuana,” harkening to her half-Jamaican heritage and citing the mass incarceration resulting from cannabis prohibition, particularly of young black men. Harris admitted she smoked weed when she was in college, and when asked if she might start smoking again, said, “I think it gives a lot of people joy, and we need more joy in the world.”

California  NORML notes, "As San Francisco’s District Attorney and California’s Attorney General, Harris upheld California’s medical marijuana law. Since being elected to the Senate, she has come on strong for federal marijuana law reform as the Senate sponsor of the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement (MORE) Act to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act, enabling states to set their own marijuana policies and reinvesting funds in communities of color that have been impacted by laws against marijuana." 

Hillary Clinton Tweets that Maureen Dowd May Have Had "Too Much Pot Brownie"

In response to New York Times columnist Maureen Down claiming there hadn't been a male/female major Presidential ticket in 36 years, Hillary Clinton tweeted:

Either @TimKaine and I had a very vivid shared hallucination four years ago or Maureen had too much pot brownie before writing her column again. https://t.co/J3SSwtkg7x

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 8, 2020

The Times has corrected Dowd's column, and their tweet, to reflect that no male presidential candidate had selected a woman VP candidate since Walter Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.

Clinton's tweet refers to the column written by Dowd in 2014 after she overdosed on a pot brownie she bought at a Colorado marijuana store (without reading its warning label). "Sitting in my hotel room in Denver, I nibbled off the end and then, when nothing happened, nibbled some more," she wrote. "What could go wrong with a bite or two?"

NORML's director Erik Alteri took umbrage at Clinton's tweet, and I understand his frustration with lame "stupid stoner" jokes. But note that the tweet actually warns about taking "too much" pot brownie, a message of moderation in keeping with NORML's "low and slow" advice on edibles. 

Ina Coolbrith: A Bittersweet Life

Ina Coolbrith at age 30

Though she consorted with fellow writer Mark Twain, and was an influence on Jack London—both of whom tried hashish—it's doubtful Ina Coolbrith ever got the chance. Her duties to her family and others scarcely allowed her time to pursue her literary career, much less indulge in exotic pleasures.

Born into a Mormon family that was exiled and traveled by wagon train to California, her biography Ina Coolbrith: The Bittersweet Song of California's First Poet Laureate by Aleta George details the hardship she and many women of the time endured.

Fleeing an early abusive marriage in Los Angeles, Coolbrith and her family moved to San Francisco in 1862. When she wasn't busy taking care of her mother and siblings and their household, she was supporting them by working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week at the Oakland Free Library, where she was librarian. Her hours were so long that she usually stayed on a cot in the basement, eventually moving to Oakland.  

The hardest part of her arduous life was not finding the time to write, and watching her compatriots like Twain and Joaquin Miller (whom she named) have successful writing careers. She even cared for Miller's daughter while he went off and laid a wreath of California laurel she had made at Lord Byron's grave, something she longed to do. Miller read aloud Ina's poem to Byron as he placed her wreath: 

O winds, that ripple the long grass!
O winds, that kiss the jeweled sea!
Grow still and lingering as you pass
About this laurel tree.

Kerry Washington & Girlfriends Light Little Fires Everywhere

Kerry Washington plays an artist who finds inspiration in weed in Little Fire Everywhere 

I hadn't realized it, but I spent National Girlfriend Day yesterday binge watching Hulu's Little Fires Everywhere, the female-produced adaptation of the acclaimed Celeste Ng novel about race, class, motherhood and more. 

Set in the "planned community" of Shaker Heights, Ohio where Wu lived growing up, the series was co-produced by her and by series stars Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon, among others, including Lynn Shelton, the beloved actress/writer/director/producer who died unexpectedly in May at the age of 54 from acute myeloid leukemia.

Unlike the book, the series shows Washington's character Mia, an artist and single mother, smoking a marijuana pipe in her studio, and in her car before starting one of her menial jobs. Washington tweeted in answer to the question, "What was the most fun thing to bring to life on screen?" like this: 

As a producer, the most fun thing was the HOMECOMING and maybe the FIRE! As an actor... smoking weed 😂 and making artwork!!! #FireQuestions https://t.co/q49PQSCMLe

— kerry washington (@kerrywashington) March 26, 2020

Marijuana-Smoking Musicians Alanis Morissette and Liz Phair Go Inward

Singer-songwriters Alanis Morissette and Liz Phair were set to tour together this summer; instead a dual interview with them was published today in the LA Times. 

The two breakthrough artists made headlines and trended on Twitter by opening up about being female in a male-dominated rock world back in the day. They also talked about how songwriting helped them navigate life, and not feel "insane."

"Not many people can sit with themselves and go inward and investigate," Phair observed. "A lot of people avoid it. But the pandemic has certainly forced people to do that."

"But for introverts and empaths, the internal world is heaven. It’s rich," Morissette replied.

Phair puffs on The Joe Rogan Experience

Phair has spoken out in favor of marijuana legalization since 1993, and smoked pot with Joe Rogan on his podcast in 2018.
"I was never much into alcohol. I prefer marijuana," she said. "Marijuana is like shining a flashlight onto your unconscious." Morissette told High Times magazine in 2009, "As an artist, there's a sweet jump-starting quality to [marijuana] for me...So if ever I need some clarity... it's a quick way for me to get to it."

George Lopez to Willie Nelson: Can Someone Be Too High?

George Lopez interviews Willie Nelson on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

It was "Lopez Tonight" all over again as George Lopez, who got lots of stars like Cameron Diaz to "out" their marijuana use as the first Mexican-American talk show host, guest hosted on Jimmy Kimmel's show tonight and interviewed Very Important Pothead Willie Nelson.

"Cannabis is so widely accepted now—marijuana—is it shocking to you, how well it's being received?" Lopez asked. "No, I always knew that people would realize its benefits, and I think now that it's legal medicinally in 30 states and a lot of states recreationally, it's on the way, and I think it's a good thing," was the response.

Beecham House and Bhang

NOTE: I tried not to include "spoilers" but you might want to watch the series before reading too much of this!

The Empress  (Tisca Chopra) and her hookah in Beecham House.

Beecham House, the current PBS Masterpiece* series from female director/producer and force of nature Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham, etc.) presents an Indian, and a female, point of view of the British occupation of India. The sets and costumes are spectacular, and the acting is top notch. And yes, there are drugs.

Set on the cusp of the 19th century in Delhi just before the British ruled in that region, we're first introduced to hookah smoking by Daniel Beecham, the bad brother of the British protagonist, who is enjoying himself in a brothel, exhaling smoke like a devil while ominous music plays at the end of Episode 1.

It was likely hemp in the hookah. The extensive Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report, completed in 1894 by the British,was over 3,000 pages long, and detailed the many traditional religious practices of India regarding cannabis, concluding that the use of hemp was common among Indian people and that, at least in moderate doses, it had little or no detrimental physical or moral effects on them or their society.

Women Increasingly Find Marijuana Smoking "Morally Acceptable"

Women aren't buying into the propaganda anymore.

UPDATE 11/20: The newest Gallup poll has 69% of men and 66% of women supporting legalization, only a three-point difference. 

According to the latest Gallup poll, 70% of Americans say that it is morally acceptable for adults to smoke marijuana, an increase of five percentage points since Gallup last posed the question in 2019.

The jump is attributable to a change in women's perception. In 2019, 62% of women said they thought smoking marijuana was acceptable, compared to 69% of men. This year, 70% of women and said they approve, an increase of 8%, while the same 69% of men were in approval.

By contrast, drinking alcohol is now OK with 88% of men and 84% of women. On other issues, 90% of the public think birth control is morally acceptable, with 93% of women approving, compared to 86% of men; 47% of women and 42% of men approve of abortion; and 71% of women and 61% of men say having a baby outside of marriage is OK. On the death penalty, 62% of men currently approve and only 47% of women do.

Trump Clemency Grantee Alice Marie Johnson Responds to Stone Commutation

Longtime, tremendously hard-working prisoner advocate Amy Povah of the Cando Clemency Foundation clued me into this story on her Facebook page. Please support her and other groups working for prison reform.

Roger can get Stoned with his Richard Nixon bong while
thousands of nonviolent drug offenders wait for clemency. 

The vile Roger Stone* is getting a pass for perjury and other crimes, in part because he could be at risk for COVID-19 if he goes to prison. Meanwhile, thousands of at-risk, nonviolent prisoners remain behind bars with outrageously long sentences, and Trump is talking about withholding federal education funds if schools decide they'd rather not confine students and teachers in an unsafe space this fall.

I agree with Adam Schiff: "With Trump there are now two systems of justice in America: One for Trump's criminal friends and one for everyone else." (NPR missed the "criminal" when they reported that this morning.) Kamala Harris tweeted, "Trump commutes the prison sentence of Roger Stone while the officers that killed Breonna Taylor are still free. The two systems of justice in this country must end."

Johnson's case was highlighted at the 2019 State of the Union speech.

Trump made a public spectacle in 2019 of granting clemency to Alice Marie Johnson, a black grandmother who had served almost 22 years for a first-time, nonviolent drug crime until she was advocated for by Kim Kardashian. On her reality show, Kim is shown meeting about Johnson with Trump, who only wants to talk about her suck-up husband Kanye West.

Johnny Depp Admits to Initiating His Daughter with Marijuana

Lily-Rose and Johnny Depp

Lawyers for the UK tabloid The Sun are trying to smear Johnny Depp as a bad parent who "encouraged" his 13-year-old daughter to smoke marijuana during a trial brought about by Depp's $50-million libel suit against the publication for calling the actor a "wife-beater." His former wife Amber Heard has alleged that Depp was abusive during their 15-month marriage, which he has denied, claiming that he was the victim of domestic violence in their relationship.

Asked about his own cannabis use during his marriage to Heard, Depp said it was "very helpful with regard to anxiety, sleep, sense of well-being, calmness," according to Metro UK. He was then asked by attorney Sasha Wass if that was why he "encouraged" his daughter Lily-Rose Depp to try weed when she was 13.  Depp replied that he never encouraged his daughter to try cannabis, but told her if she wanted to try it to come to him instead of trying it elsewhere.

"My daughter was 13 years old and, as we all know, at 11, 12, 13 years old, when you go to high school parties you are approached by people who will want to give you drink because they’re drinking," Depp said on the stand. "They are doing cocaine at 12 and 13, they are smoking marijuana at 12 and 13, they are taking ecstasy at 12 and 13. You don’t want your 13-year-old going into some paranoid tailspin and I knew that the marijuana I had myself, that I smoke myself, is trustworthy, is a good quality and I was bound and determined not to have her try any drugs out there in the world because it’s too dangerous."

Hear Hugh Downs on Hemp

Hugh Downs with Barbara Walters in 1969.NBC Newswire

Today we hear
the sad news that Hugh Downs has passed away at the age of 99.

Born in Akron on Valentine's Day in 1921, Downs served in the Army and began his career in broadcasting as a radio announcer in Lima, Ohio. Downs helped establish the enduring “Tonight Show” franchise in 1957 when he joined the show as Jack Parr's announcer and sidekick. He hosted the game show “Concentration” from 1958 to 1969, was a “Today” show anchor for nine years from 1962 to 1971, and cohosted ABC’s “20/20” with Barbara Walters from 1978-1999, when he retired.

On his ABC News radio broadcast in November 1990, Downs read in his velvety voice a 20-minute story about hemp, at a time when activists (like me) couldn't even get the word "hemp" in the newspaper (they would always change it to "marijuana"). A cassette tape of Downs's commentary produced by documentarians known as "She Who Remembers" became part of hemp activists' toolkit in LA and beyond, when education happened one-on-one with handmade and xeroxed flyers, cheap hemp cloth and twine imported from China or Eastern Europe, hemp seed sold as bird seed, and our bible: Jack Herer's book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes: Hemp and the Marijuana Conspiracy.

Paltrow Power Puffs in "The Politician"

Gwyneth Paltrow Plays a Candidate Who Definitely Does Inhale in The Politician

Taking a break from weightier and fascinating shows like Who Killed Malcolm X, The Two Killings of Sam Cooke, and Who Shot the Sheriff on Netflix, I've been watching Season 2 of The Politician, starring the talented Ben Platt (Dear Evan Hansen) in the title role as the ambitious young candidate Payton Hobart, this time up against seasoned state Senator Dede Standish played by Judith Light ("Who's the Boss?") at her brittle best, and Bette Midler as her wily campaign manager for an extra comedic cherry on top. 

Paton's mother Georgina, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, is coming into her power this season, with Paltrow perfectly spoofing the public perception of her as an entitled Hollywood princess for whom everything comes too easily. Georgina languidly smokes from a hookah in one scene as she mounts a Marianne Williams–style campaign for California's Governor, during which she proposes seceding from the union, arguing that, "Most of our federal tax dollars go out of state to people who think that we are pot-smoking, Satan-worshipping abortion doctors or something." Elsewhere, she utters lines like, "Sorry sweetheart, I don't remember young people, it's a tic I have," and "I'm going to get stoned and have a bath."

RIP Dr. Lester Grinspoon, Marijuana Reform Pioneer

Dr. Grinspoon's pioneering book, from
back when "marijuana" was spelled with an "h"

Dr. Lester Grinspoon, a pioneering advocate for marijuana reform, has passed away one day after his 92nd birthday, aka "Lester Grinspoon day."

A Harvard professor, Dr. Grinspoon "started out investigating what he expected to be the dangers of marijuana and ended up writing the classic Marihuana Reconsidered (1971), a scholarly debunking of then-current myths about the herb's supposed evils," writes Cal NORML's Dale Gieringer.  "Lester became an influential force for enlightenment in the 1970s decrim movement and was one of NORML's earliest supporters. Later, he published Marihuana: The Forbidden Medicine, about the medical benefits of marijuana, which he had witnessed first hand through his son Danny's struggle with cancer chemotherapy."

As well as his many accomplishments, Dr. Grinspoon’s work inspired my VeryImportantPotheads website (which spun off into this blog), starting with a stirring speech he gave at the April 2001 NORML conference “outing” himself as a marijuana user, saying, "I was 44 years old in 1972 when I experienced my first marijuana high. Because I found it both useful and benign, I have used it ever since.” As High Times reported, "He called for people in the business, academic and professional worlds to come out of the closet regarding marijuana. To that end, he's pursuing what he calls the 'Uses of Marijuana Project' (marijuana-uses.com), an ethnographic exercise on how pot has enhanced users' lives."

50 Years Ago: Barbara Streisand Turns On The Owl

In the 1970 film The Owl and the Pussycat, Barbra Streisand plays Doris, a struggling model/actress living in New York who turns a few tricks to get by. When nerdy would-be writer and bookstore clerk Felix (George Segal) reports her activities to their landlord, she confronts him and rocks his world.

Leading up to the film's climax, Doris pulls out a joint and says, “Now I’m going to make you happy. It’s gonna put you in a very good mood.” Felix resists, telling her he’ll do it only after she whispers a bribe into his ear, announcing he was doing so to demonstrate that, “I have a certain free will, I am not a square person, and I am if I wish to be, perfectly hep.” She replies, “I’m hip you’re hep.”