{"id":484,"date":"2026-07-01T05:39:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T05:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=484"},"modified":"2026-07-01T05:39:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T05:39:12","slug":"this-week-in-nation-history-reefer-madness-on-campus-and-park-avenue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=484","title":{"rendered":"This Week in \u2018Nation\u2019 History: Reefer Madness on Campus and Park Avenue"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<div>\n<div>\n<article>\n<header>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>Activism<\/li>\n<li>October 26, 2013<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1>This Week in \u2018Nation\u2019 History: Reefer Madness on Campus and Park Avenue<\/h1>\n<h1>This Week in \u2018Nation\u2019 History: Reefer Madness on Campus and Park Avenue<\/h1>\n<h2>\n<p>Our endorsement of marijuana legalization comes after decades of questioning the fundamental assumptions of the War on Drugs.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=482\">Birthright Citizenship Lives to Die Another Day<\/a><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<section>\n<time>October 26, 2013<\/time><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>On Thursday, October 31, <em>The Nation<\/em> will publish a special issue about marijuana, with our first-ever endorsement of national legalization. But as early as 1966, <em>Nation <\/em>contributors were questioning the fundamental assumptions of marijuana prohibition, as well as the cultural attitudes and government policies that culminated in Nixon\u2019s declaration of the War on Drugs in 1971.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>In \u201c\u201d (January 31, 1966), Mervin Freedman and Harvey Powelson, a psychologist and a psychiatrist, respectively, questioned whether the growing use of drugs in the American counter-culture was really as alarming a development as mainstream authorities were making it seem:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>It is difficult to fashion a serious case against smoking marijuana except that a user will find himself in serious trouble if he is caught by the police. The effects on society at large, were pot smoking to be as ubiquitous as the consumption of alcohol, are unknown, but within the current limits of use, there is little evidence that marijuana damages the individuals who smoke it.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Freedman and Powelson also wrote about the political meaning of marijuana and hinted that prohibition was counter-effective, as it only heightened the drug\u2019s allure:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The consistent pot smokers are for the most part graduate students in the arts, philosophy, the humanities and, to some extent, in the social sciences. The rebellion they express in many ways, pot smoking among them, stems from their disillusion with American life and values\u2026. Aside from enjoying pot\u2019s intrinsic satisfactions\u2014relaxation, heightened sensibility, etc.\u2014these students get pleasure from sharing a rebellious, illegal activity. The more rebellious or \u2018anti\u2019 the movement, the greater the likelihood that pot smokers will be drawn to it.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>But within a few years pot went mainstream, as the novelist Maitland Zane wrote in \u201c\u201d (December 7, 1970).<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Remember the hip flasks of Prohibition? Nowadays on Park Avenue and in Pacific Heights the daring fashion is to smoke grass. Thirty years ago, virtually the only people who smoked tea, as it was then called, were outcasts\u2014jazz musicians, artists, blacks, Mexican-Americans. Even in the early 1960s, pot smoking was considered by most middle-class white people to be <em>outr\u00e9<\/em>, scandalous, dangerous, criminal. Then came The Pill, Vietnam, rock music, sexual liberation, widespread alienation from the American of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon\u2026Nowadays it\u2019s not just the longhairs of Cambridge and Berkeley who are into marijuana. It\u2019s also their little brothers and sisters, some as young as 9. And for the first time, their parents\u2014and grandparents\u2026<\/p>\n<p>San Francisco, with an enormous population of homosexuals, is tolerant of \u201cdeviant\u201d behavior, and this extends to pot smokers. Nowadays, instead of being jailed, they\u2019re routinely put on probation. Fourteen hundred otherwise law-abiding people were dealt with in that way during the first nine months of 1970.\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Drug policy has only grown more repressive in the past forty-three years, criminalizing thousands upon thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens and handing out punishments much harsher than mere probation. Our special issue next week will highlight prohibition\u2019s pernicious effects\u2014as we did in two previous special issues on drug policy in 1999 and 2010\u2014and will look at the history of the legalization movement and plot new strategies for taking it national in a progressive, humane and responsible way.<\/p>\n<p>* * *<\/p>\n<p><em>Subscribers to <\/em>The Nation <em>can access our fully searchable digital archive, which contains thousands of historic articles, essays and reviews, letters to the editor and editorials dating back to July 6, 1865.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=480\">What Is the American Economy?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<footer>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>                Submit a correction<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>                Send a letter to the editor<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>                Reprints &amp; permissions<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>\n<p><span> Katrina vanden Heuvel<svg>\n<\/svg><br \/>\n<\/span>Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of <em>The Nation<\/em>, America\u2019s leading source of progressive politics and culture. An expert on international affairs and US politics, she is an award-winning columnist and frequent contributor to <em>The Guardian<\/em>. Vanden Heuvel is the author of several books, including <em>The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in The Age of Obama<\/em>, and co-author (with Stephen F. Cohen) of <em>Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev\u2019s Reformers<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=478\">We\u2019re Having the Wrong Conversation About College Graduates<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n<\/div>\n<p><input\/><br \/>\n<input\/><br \/>\n<\/footer>\n<\/article>\n<p>Ad Policy<br \/>\n<!-- <a class=\"inifiniteLoader\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/new_infi_loader.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a> -->\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Nation Magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>This Week in \u2018Nation\u2019 History: Reefer Madness on Campus and Park Avenue - 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