cannabisnews.com: In the Land of the Lotus Eaters





In the Land of the Lotus Eaters
Posted by FoM on November 30, 2000 at 20:47:05 PT
By David V. Mitchell 
Source: Point Reyes Light
Mendocino County voters this month sent local law enforcement a message to continue its low-key approach toward pot growers, which ironically is the approach Marin County used throughout most of the 1970s.From 1974 until 1980, no one was prosecuted in this county for growing marijuana, no matter how big his patch was. But in 1978, Jerry Herman was elected district attorney, and in 1980 he pressured the Board of Supervisors into a 4-1 vote to resurrect a county narcotics squad. Supervisor Gary Giacomini cast the dissenting vote.
In 1998, Herman retired in disgrace, with much of Marin angry that he had continued to collect a $132,000 per year salary for 18 months after he quit coming to work because of ill health. Unfortunately, we are stuck with the legacy of his grandstanding, which grew out of rivalry with former Sheriff Al Howenstein.Under Howenstein and his predecessor Lou Mountanos, residents with small pot patches felt free to call deputies if pot thieves showed up. The officers would arrest the thieves and leave the patches alone. It was a policy designed to prevent vigilante action, and it worked.However, in 1984 after the policy ended, a grower in Novato was forced to kill a thief who brutally attacked him after the grower caught the 19 year old raiding his pot patch. (The grower was eventually exonerated of murder on the basis of self-defense.) Score one for the stupidity of Herman’s anti-pot policies.In the days before Herman, Marin citizens and officials realized marijuana use just isn’t that serious – although the Nicasio School Board in 1967 decided principal Garnett Brennan had gone too far when she publicly announced she had smoked pot for 18 years.Herman tried to claim his get-tough-on-pot policies merely reflected changing national attitudes notwithstanding the fact that President Jimmy Carter three years earlier had proposed the federal government decriminalize possession of less than one ounce of pot. And in 1978, the following year, Dr. Peter Bourne, Carter’s aide for drug abuse, disclosed he smoked marijuana on occasion, as did current State Senate Pro Tempore John Burton.About this time, the County of Sonoma disbanded its once-aggressive narcotics squad while over in Oakland, Court of Appeals Justice Paul Halvonick was found to be growing marijuana at his home.With all this going on, then-State Senator Barry Keene polled his constituents and found that 78 percent of them favored reducing or eliminating penalties for marijuana growing.Despite a national disconnect between politicians and the public regarding marijuana laws, the California Legislature led by then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown did reduce to a $100 misdemeanor the penalty for possession of up to one ounce of pot.With Americans these days increasingly dissatisfied with the human and financial cost of locking up pot traffickers, the states of California, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington have in the past four years decriminalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes.This week, the US Supreme Court agreed to decide if states can allow seriously ill patients to be treated with marijuana despite federal laws to the contrary. A lower court decision had given the Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Club the go-ahead to distribute pot, but the Clinton Administration appealed the ruling.The odd thing about all this is that marijuana and drugs similar to it have been used in Western Civilization since at least the time of Homer in the 9th century BC.Awhile back, it occurred to me that in college I had read in Homer’s Odyssey about something that sounded remarkably like the lethargic euphoria associated with marijuana. Unable to find the passage on my own, I asked Point Reyes Station attorney Bob Powsner, a parttime scholar of the classics, for help.As Powsner informed me, the passage describes the sweet melancholy that overcame members of Odysseus’ crew in "The Land of the Lotus Eaters." After consuming "the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus," Homer said, "they longed to stay forever, browsing on that native bloom, forgetful of their homeland."Commenting on the crew’s consumption of the lotus, by which Homer probably meant the jujube berry, not the lily, Denton Snider in 1895 wrote: "The will is broken, all activity is stopped; the land of idlers it is, relaxed in a sensuous dream life, in which there is a complete collapse of volition."The "complete collapse of volition" may not be all that bad when the alternative frequently is rowdy drunkenness. Nor is being "relaxed in a sensuous dream life" necessarily a waste of time. Astronomer Carl Sagan claimed to have reached many of his insights while stoned.By now, the federal "war on drugs" has become a war on people of color. Thousands of innocent, minority motorists have been stopped, questioned, and searched in the last 15 years. Why? Because the US Drug Enforcement Agency in 1986 began encouraging local police to stop cars occupied by "people wearing dreadlocks and cars with two Latino males traveling together," Wednesday’s Chronicle noted, while also reporting that the Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled such traffic stops are unconstitutional. Unfortunately anti-drug warriors in Washington, such as Senator Dianne Feinstein of Stinson Beach, don’t know Homer from Jethro.Source: Point Reyes Light (CA)Author: David V. MitchellPublished: November 30, 2000Copyright: 2000 Tomales Bay Publishing Company/Point Reyes LightContact: editor ptreyeslight.comWebsite: http://www.ptreyeslight.com/Related Articles:Green Potting Plantshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7779.shtmlO Mendocino, How Green Is Your Ballot?http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7690.shtmlLife As Usual in Emerald Trianglehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7643.shtmlCannabisNews Articles - Mendocinohttp://cannabisnews.com/thcgi/search.pl?K=Mendocino
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Comment #2 posted by J.R. Bob Dobbs on December 01, 2000 at 11:25:16 PT
Homer vs. Rex Banner
  Whether it was hash or heroin, the point is, they laid in the sweet smelling fields and had fun for a while and then moved on. I'd like to see the DEA's version of this passage, in which the ancient greeks, in their dope-addled moments, are beset upon by narcs from neighboring Crete, who haul them off to rot in jail for twenty years.  "We're sorry, Dorothy, we can't let you in to Emerald City because you test positive for poppies. We'll need some fur from the lion, some straw from the scarecrow, and if the tin man could just provide us with an oil sample..."
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Comment #1 posted by TroutMask on December 01, 2000 at 07:43:16 PT
maybe not MJ
My understanding of the lotus reference was that it referred to opium, not MJ. Of course, I may be wrong...
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