Throwback Thursday: Cannabis on Campus, 1978

 

Journal 1978: Pot Smoking on Campus in San Diego

This little time capsule from Channel 8 in San Diego showcases the attitudes of people in that city toward cannabis in the late '70s, back when the plant was still very much illegal in all 50 states.  Having been to San Diego in more recent years I can attest that this is in line with the general mood of the laid-back beach city, which does not reflect the attitudes of most of "Flyover Country".  In those days pot was still smuggled in from countries like Mexico, Colombia, Jamaica, Thailand & Afghanistan where it was grown outdoors & smashed into bricks or "patties" for easier transport.  This report briefly mentions the Mexican paraquat scandal--a cruel and criminal act that still hasn't gotten the scrutiny it deserves.  

Despite its illegal status, weed was extremely popular in the 1970s & nearly became fully legal under President Carter.  Then Ronald Reagan came along and turned the country into a giant police state.  Prior to that, workplace drug testing was not a thing & the idea of DEA helicopters hovering over your home looking for cannabis plants or any other kind of plant would've sounded like something out of a bad Hollywood script.  Thankfully, cannabis growers didn't let this deter them--they kept coming up with innovative ways to improve their techniques through the '80s, when "sinsemilla" (seedless) weed revolutionized the industry, and the 1990s when hydroponics and other indoor grow methods elevated the game to yet another level.  

While there's no denying that today's weed and weed laws are miles better than those of the 1970s, it would've been nice if growers would've preserved more of those old landrace strains so newbies like me could compare, say, a Thai Sativa to a Nepalese or Jamaican Sativa.  It's also a bitch having to pay so much for a single seed these days when half the bag used to be filled with (essentially free) seeds.  In my opinion growers have focused too much on flavor and smell with these hybrid strains at the expense of standardized predictable effects.  We should've gone the route of measuring terpenes, THC & the CBD/G/N cannabinoids instead of using subjective "Sativa/Indica" descriptions also.  But for someone who was smoking The Patty well into the 2000s, I really can't complain.

As for cannabis CULTURE, nothing will ever beat being able to walk into a dispensary legally & pick out a strain or product from a variety of items (unless it would be sitting at a coffee shop & ordering ganja with a latte & biscotti).  And I don't miss having to hide and smoke out of aluminum cans and other toxic contraptions, giving $$$ to shady middlemen who came back with neither money nor weed, etc.  Still, there's something oddly romantic about the outlaw aspect of illegal weed... about belonging to a class of condemned and misunderstood people that includes the likes of jazz musicians, hippies, Rastafarians, Beatniks, hipsters and at least a few Olympic athletes.  Is that sense of coolness worth the stress of freaking out every time you hear a police siren in a rap song?  Ehh, no.  But it's always good to keep records of history so we can see how far we've come.