INTERVIEW / Jonah Raskin : Paul Krassner Is Still Smokin' at 80

Paul Krassner at his 80th birthday party.
The counterculture was
a spiritual revolution:
A Rag Blog interview with Paul Krassner 

As the editor of The Realist, Krassner taught me not to take myself too seriously and not to gaze with absolute reverence at the icons of the Sixties.

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / June 7, 2012

Alive and well and still kicking, with a satirical brand of biting humor that’s right on-target and as deadly as ever, Paul Krassner is an American national treasure.

In April 2012, he celebrated his 80th birthday with his daughter and grandchild. During the first week of June, he published, in a new, updated edition, his 1999 marijuana compendium, Pot Stories for the Soul. (Soft Skull Press; $17.95).

Right about here, and now, the ethics of the profession demand that I make a full disclosure. Krassner and I belong to the vast American underground that began before 1776 and that like him is still going strong. I’m also in his new book, along with Kate Coleman, Lynn Phillips, Robert Anton Wilson, and the usual suspects: Tommy Chong, Hunter S. Thompson, Wavy Gravy, Allen Ginsberg, and more.

The provocative editor of The Realist, as well as one of the zaniest of the zany Yippies, and a founding brother of the underground press, Krassner surely needs no introduction, at least not to survivors of the Sixties, readers of The Rag Blog (to which he is a semi-regular contributor), and to lovers of political satire from any generation.

Still, it might be helpful to remind the old, the young, the in-between, and even those in the know, that Krassner belonged to Ken Kesey’s band of outlaws, the Merry Pranksters, that he testified at the Chicago Conspiracy Trial, and that he has written or edited 11 books, several of them classics of American humor: Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut; The Winner of the Slow Bicycle Race; and the superlative, Who’s to Say What's Obscene?: Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America Today.

Unafraid to poke fun at himself and unafraid to move at the pace of a turtle, not a rabbit, he has outlived many of his hilarious and deadly serious co-conspirators including Jerry, Abbie, Phil, and Stew (Rubin, Hoffman, Ochs, and Albert). As the editor of The Realist, Krassner taught me not to take myself too seriously and not to gaze with absolute reverence at the icons of the Sixties.

In 1970, when I submitted an article to The Realist about my experiences in Algeria with Eldridge Cleaver and Timothy Leary, he promptly changed my title and published it as “Eldridge & Tim & Kathleen & Rosemary.”

The previous year, moviegoers had flocked to theaters to see Paul Mazursky’s romantic comedy, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, with Natalie Wood, Elliot Gould, Robert Culp, and Dyan Cannon. Ads for the movie depicted the two couples in the same bed together. With a sharp eye on the sense and nonsense of pop culture and an unerring sense of satire, Krassner ran, on the cover of The Realist, a cartoon of Eldridge, Tim, Kathleen, and Rosemary in bed together.

I don’t know if they laughed, but I did, and thanks to Paul I have been laughing ever since, as much as I can, even when it hurts.


Jonah Raskin: The new, updated version of your old book is entitled Pot Stories for the Soul. Why the “the soul” and not “the head”?

Paul Krassner: It was a takeoff on the series of books entitled Chicken Soup for the Soul. I suppose if those books had been called Chicken Soup for the Head, then my book would be titled Pot Stories for the Head.

Why do you think that President Obama -- a pot smoker as a teenager -- is so opposed to pot now?

Fear of losing the election. Maybe Big Pharma threatened not to fund his campaign. But it's still a mystery. After all, his position on same-sex marriages "evolved" because of the polls. The irony is that if he had been busted as a teenager, he would never have been elected president.

In the title of your book, why do you call it pot and not weed, marijuana, cannabis, or grass?

It just felt right: the rhythm and the informality.

Do you really think that pot has medicinal values, or is that concept just a stalking horse for legalization for recreational purposes?

I absolutely believe it has medicinal values, not only because of research, but also from my own experience. Even if it could only relieve stress, the cause of so much disease is stress. Medical vs. recreational is a false distinction -- it's the anti-pleasure movement in action. Nobody ever says you should drink red wine and eat dark chocolate for their medical properties, but not for enjoyment.

Is there any truth to the rumor that The Realist was published on hemp paper?

It's a great rumor, though false, but if I had to do it all over again, it would be true.

Do you think that there’s a Yippie gene and that some are born with it and some not?

I think that every child is born with innocent irreverence, but it's canceled by the osmosis of cultural repression. It’s retrieved by those of us fortunate enough to break through society's brainwashing.

Few if any plants take more abuse than marijuana. Why is that? What’s so funny about marijuana?

What's funny is that Prozac is expensive and a side effect is suicidal tendencies, whereas marijuana can be grown in your window box for free, and the "worst" side effect is the munchies.

In 1968, the Yippies called for the legalization of marijuana. It’s almost 45 years later. Why didn’t legalization happen?

The influence of anti-pot propaganda, and the fact that Richard Nixon ignored the advice of the commission that he authorized.

If pot makes you forget what would you most like to forget after taking a hit?

I'd like to forget, but can't, that there are so many prisoners serving time, as Lenny Bruce said, "for smoking flowers." The abuse of power without compassion extends to the injustice and inhumanity of American drones killing children in Pakistan.

I suppose at your age you don’t think pot will be legalized in your lifetime?

It's not impossible. All the president has to do is have it removed from Schedule One of dangerous drugs. Maybe I'm just optimistic from smoking too much pot. High Times once published a questionnaire, and one of the questions was, "Is it possible to smoke too much pot?" A reader responded, "I don't understand the question."

Is there pot in Heaven, in Hell? Who’s more likely to smoke it: god, the goddess, the devil?

There's pot in Heaven on Earth, not in Hell on Earth. Only the Goddess of Reefer Madness knows why it's called Devil Weed.

Who are the leading pot smokers in your Hall of Fame?

Willie Nelson, Bill Maher, Jack Herer, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Valerie Corral... the list goes on.

And what enforcement figures are the main figures in your Hall of Shame?

Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Ronald Reagan, the DEA, and the prison guards’ union.

In a group, how can you tell the pot smokers, growers, and smugglers on trial from the lawyers who defend them?

The defendants are the ones who supply their lawyers.

Are you stoned now?

Of course, it was on my to-do list.

Can you tell me where I can buy a righteous joint or two?

Most likely from your students.

You were born before TV, before the fax, email, the cellphone, Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Would you like to return to the golden age of radio?

I prefer to live in the present; it's a matter of choice. I decided to quit Facebook after I reached 5,000 "friends." It just became too much of a distraction.

What were the 1960s about, other than sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll?

At its core, the counterculture was a spiritual revolution, replacing religions of control with disciplines of liberation.

What would Lenny Bruce say about pot if he were alive today?

"Hey, this shit is fucking powerful."

[Jonah Raskin, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, is the author of Marijuanaland: Dispatches from an American War, For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman, and American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” and the Making of the Beat Generation. Read more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.]

• Listen to Thorne Dreyer's three hour-long interviews with Paul Krassner on Rag Radio, and read Paul Krassner's writing on The Rag Blog.

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Rag Radio : Activist/Journalist Jonah Raskin, Author of 'Marijuanaland'

Jonah Raskin, photographed at a Rag Blog Happy Hour at Maria's Taco Xpress in Austin, Texas, Friday, Oct. 7, 2011, after appearing on Rag Radio with Thorne Dreyer. Photos (above and below) by James Retherford / The Rag Blog.
Activist/journalist Jonah Raskin, author of Marijuanaland
on Rag Radio with Thorne Dreyer. Listen to it here:

Thorne Dreyer’s guest on Rag Radio Friday, October 7, 2011, was California-based activist and journalist Jonah Raskin. Raskin has written about cannabis politics and culture since the 1970s and his latest book is Marijuanaland: Dispatches from an American War, published by High Times Press. Set in California's “Emerald Triangle” during the unsuccessful Prop. 19 campaign to legalize some marijuana possession, the book looks at marijuana-influenced culture, politics, economics, medicine, and law -- and we discuss all this in our Rag Radio interview.

Raskin has authored 12 books, including biographies of Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and Jack London, and he created the story and characters for the stoner movie Homegrown. A professor at Sonoma State University in northern California, Raskin teaches communication law and American literature. He is a longtime contributor to The Rag Blog and has written for the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and many other publications. Jonah also was active in the Sixties with SDS and the Youth International Party (YIPPIE).

Cannabis activist, science writer, and Rag Blog contributing editor Mariann Wizard, who also participated in this Rag Radio interview, reported on The Rag Blog that Raskin, in researching Marijuanaland, “visited with pot growers young and old, activists for and against legalization, newspaper editors, sheriffs, medical patients, healthcare providers, and friends-of-friends along the way…”

Jonah himself spent some of his early years in the "Emerald Triangle," the three California counties -- Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity -- that, according to Wizard “produce some of the most legendary smoke grown…” Raskin’s father, an attorney with old-left roots, had been a rumrunner in the latter days of alcohol prohibition and “grew a personal pot patch… where young Jonah shared the sacred herb with his parents and others over the years.”

Jonah Raskin (right) with Rag Radio host Thorne Dreyer at the KOOP studios, Austin, Friday, Oct. 7, 2011. Photo by Mariann G. Wizard / The Rag Blog.

Rag Radio -- hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer -- is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live on the web. KOOP is a cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas.

Rag Radio, which has been aired since September 2009, features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history. After broadcast, all episodes are posted as podcasts and can be downloaded at the Internet Archive. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio is also rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (Eastern) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA. Rag Radio is produced in the KOOP studios, in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation.

Also see:

• BOOKS / Jonah Raskin's 'Marijuanaland' by Mariann G. Wizard / The Rag Blog / Sept. 29, 2011
• Pancake and Rye in 'Marijuanaland' by Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / Oct. 5, 2011
• Occupy Austin: This is Just the Beginning by Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / Oct. 10, 2011
• And more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.

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Jonah Raskin : Pancake and Rye in 'Marijuanaland'

Pancake and Rye in 'Marijuanaland'

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / September 5, 2011

Longtime Rag Blog contributor Jonah Raskin, author of Marijuanaland: Dispatches from an American War, will sign books at a Rag Blog Happy Hour, Friday, Oct. 7, 5-7 p.m., at Maria's Taco Xpress, 2529 S. Lamar Blvd in Austin. Everyone is welcome. Raskin will also be signing books Saturday, Oct. 8, at Oat Willie's, 617 W. 29th (2-4 p.m.), and Brave New Books, 1904 Guadalupe (5-7 p.m.).

Jonah Raskin will be Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7-FM (and streamed live on the Internet), Friday, 2-3 p.m. Also, please see "Jonah Raskin's Marijuanaland" by Mariann G. Wizard and other articles by and about Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.

[The following is an excerpt from Jonah Raskin’s Marijuanaland: Dispatches From an American War, published by High Times Books.]

I had met Pancake and Rye in February and followed Pancake around for about eight months. (His brother, Rye, had other matters to attend to.) Pancake showed me their indoor and outdoor operations and talked almost without stopping about politics, pot, his two favorite authors -- Tom Robbins and Kurt Vonnegut -- and his all-time favorite TV show, South Park, which had played, he felt, a crucial role in his development.

Pancake went to work for his dad after graduating high school and learned how to grow legal flowers such as roses and zinnias. “For a while, I hated roses,” Pancake told me. “I once planted 2,500 bare-root roses, thorns and all, and after a while I began to call them ‘bastards.’” For cannabis, on the other hand, he had a real affection; the pot plants were his “darlings.”

During his teens and early twenties, he was in full-blown rebellion, he told me, against his parents, his family, and whatever else came along. He and Rye were both arrested for possession by a cop they knew from their high-school days, and who had never liked their irreverent style. The arrest didn’t deter them from their newfound mission: to grow the best marijuana ever.

Their parents were worried about them, and for a time the family came apart. Then they decided to turn on Dad; he started to smoke marijuana and enjoyed it, and felt pride for his sons who grew such unconventional flowers. The old father-sons rivalry faded away, and the family that smoked together grew closer.

“I started to grow pot when I was a teenager,” Pancake told me one day when we were driving around town in his battered station wagon. “Most of my classmates smoked -- the honor-roll students and the auto-shop guys. I didn’t like the idea of buying weed from someone else; I wanted to be able to smoke my own pot -- and then, after that, I wanted to make enough money by growing it to support myself.”

Pancake parked the car, and we went into a garden-supply store where he bought bags of fertilizer and a pair of clippers. Then, back in the car, he continued his tale.

“At the start, I was a guerrilla grower because I didn’t have land of my own,” he said. “I grew it in a creek bed in direct sunlight; I had to walk a mile or so to get to the site. I pumped water out of the creek and visited the garden every three to four days. I made enough money my first season to move out of my dad’s house, rent my own place and buy a car.”

One day in August, Pancake picked me up at my house and we drove together for about two hours to reach his garden, 1,600 feet above sea level, and also above the highest level of fog that rolled in from the Pacific. Before we left my place, I had shown him my pot, but Pancake was unimpressed. True enough, it wasn’t exactly commercial-grade.

Pancake and his brother were growing on a 40-acre parcel that their father owned. When I arrived, I noticed the American flag at the gate and another flag with the words “Don’t tread on me.” Pancake explained: “We’re libertarians -- we believe in states’ rights. We want the federal government off our land and out of our lives.”

For protection, they had a few guns, but mostly they relied on two ferocious watchdogs, Nightshade and Mugwort. The dogs never took a liking to me, and I did not mess with them.

All around the hills and valleys, their neighbors were growing marijuana; the two brothers knew about these nearby gardens because they routinely scanned the landscape with binoculars and the gardens popped up -- especially at the end of the season, when they were the only green around. “I was relieved to know my neighbors were growing,” Pancake told me. “That meant they had their own and weren’t going to poach my plants.”

Outlaw grape growers existed side by side with the pot growers in these parts. The grape growers did not bother with permits from the county and did not follow county rules and regulations; it was too expensive. Even if the grape growers were caught and fined, it would be less expensive than paying the necessary fees for the vineyards.

In addition to marijuana, Pancake and Rye grew vegetables and fruits: tomatoes, basil, pumpkins, apples, blueberries, grapes and corn. They had a grove of olive trees for olive oil. They installed solar panels for electricity and pumped water from a spring down the hill to a large tank uphill; gravity then delivered that water to their plants.

Self-sufficiency was their goal, and they were getting there quickly thanks to marijuana. Before long, their enterprise would be sustainable.

[Jonah Raskin's latest book is Marijuanaland: Dispatches from an American War, published by High Times Books. A communications professor at Sonoma State University and a former Yippie activist, Raskin has written about cannabis politics and culture since the 1970s. Raskin has authored a dozen books, including biographies of Abbie Hoffman, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack London. Read more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.]

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BOOKS / Mariann G. Wizard : Jonah Raskin's 'Marijuanaland'

The Rag Blog and Rag Radio present Jonah Raskin in Austin

Jonah Raskin will be our special guest at a Rag Blog Happy Hour, Friday, Oct. 7, 5-7 p.m., at Maria's Taco Xpress, 2529 S. Lamar Blvd. All are welcome. And on Saturday, Oct. 8, Jonah will do book signings at Oat Willie's Campaign Headquarters, 617 W. 29th, from 2-4 p.m., and at Brave New Books, 1904 Guadalupe, from 5-7 p.m.

Jonah Raskin will also be Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, 2-3 p.m., Friday, Oct. 7, on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin and streamed live on the World Wide Web.

Marijuanaland:
Dispatches From an American War

By Mariann G. Wizard / The Rag Blog / September 29, 2011

[Marijuanaland: Dispatches From an American War by Jonah Raskin (High Times Books, 2011); Paperback, 154 pp. $12.95.]

Jonah Raskin has written about marijuana (cannabis) politics and culture since the 1970s. A professor at Sonoma State University in northern California, he teaches communication law and American literature and coordinates an undergraduate internship program. Jonah has authored 12 books, including biographies of Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and Jack London, and Field Days, about farm workers, organic farms, and farmers' markets.

Outside academia, he created the story and characters for the stoner movie Homegrown, starring Billy Bob Thornton, Kelly Lynch, Hank Azaria, Ted Danson, and Jamie Lee Curtis. He’s a regular contributor to The Rag Blog and has written for the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Reader, Village Voice, and the International Herald Tribune. Jonah also was active in the Sixties with the Youth International Party (YIPPIE).

I knew much of this before reading Raskin's latest, Marijuanaland, but didn't know he'd spent some growing-up years in the "Emerald Triangle," the three California counties -- Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity -- that together produce some of the most legendary smoke grown, in great quantities and with the openness and civic pride of public harvest events much like Texas' annual watermelon, peach, and other agricultural fests.

Jonah's dad, a retired attorney who'd been a youthful rum runner in the waning days of alcohol prohibition, grew a personal pot patch after retiring to northern Cali, where young Jonah shared the sacred herb with his parents and others over the years.

In some ways, then, Marijuanaland is a personal memoir, a coming-home story by the smart young fellow who went to the city and became a hot-shot college professor, returning to his roots. As with most everyone who tries to go home again, there is some bitter with the sweet as he sees the effects of long-time-passing on parts of the once-immortal wilderness of youth.

Raskin connects the nickname "Emerald Triangle" with the equally-famed "Golden Triangle" of southeast Asia, where much of the world's heroin originated before globalization really got rolling. He doesn't mention the maybe-mythical "Bermuda Triangle," where Atlantic and Caribbean meet Outer Space.

My own limited northern Cali exposure, however, made the connection clear to me. In Mendocino County, I visited the House of Hathor (chapel of the Egyptian cow-headed goddess); saw endless acres of blooming pink azalea forest, like a far planet in an old Star Trek episode; and lounged around quaint, politically-correct Mendocino-by-the-Sea, where there are no cell phone towers, the main grocery store is an organic co-op, and human carnivores are rare. Off-shore drilling is a constant threat to the spectacular coastline.

In Humboldt, mountainous roads wind through log-cabined communities where everyone knows everyone else, or give glimpses of hand-hewn estates clinging to impossible slopes. Forested hills go straight up and down, crossing coldwater creeks, and up and down again to rocky strands where the tide comes in fast through narrow inlets. Whalers and rum runners used these coves and foundered on these cliffs; crabbers and kelp-collectors use them still.

Vast Trinity County, northernmost of the three, remains virtually untouched by development. Mining, lumber, and ranching interests dominate the economy but leave most of Trinity unpopulated.

Since the 1970s or so the whole tri-county area has been the Hippie Heaven of the Western World, far as I know; where straight people try to act hip so as not to feel gawky. It's a place where community runs deep. It's a place where an outlaw can just about disappear.

Passage of California's medical cannabis law, Proposition 215, in 1996, wrought many changes in the Triangle. Enormous profits in sales to cannabis dispensaries -- themselves springing up on every corner, spurring zoning and licensing battles statewide -- attracted a new class of growers, without local or even counterculture roots and devoid of ethics, wreaking environmental chaos in the primeval forest.

At the same time, increasing heat along the U.S.-Mexican border and completion of the infamous "border fence" south of San Diego pushed some enterprising Mexican pot growers to move to el Norte, cutting shipping and distribution costs and bringing their product closer to the consumer, growing in the national forests and other parkland in slash-and-burn fashion.

That both of these unpleasant results of partial cannabis legalization are due to its partiality is evident to serious observers. Demand for cannabis far exceeds its therapeutic or strictly medical use. The one inexorable law of capitalism is that demand produces supply; a law not subject to legislative or even popular repeal. California activists succeeded in 2010 in placing Proposition 19 on the November ballot, to legalize, tax, and regulate cultivation and sale of recreational cannabis in California despite continuing federal prohibition.

Marijuanaland, subtitled Dispatches from an American War, begins just as the campaign for Prop. 19 began in earnest and meanders through a year in the cannabis growing cycle, looking at marijuana-influenced culture, politics, economics, medicine, and law in the Emerald Triangle. Raskin visited with pot growers young and old, activists for and against legalization, newspaper editors, sheriffs, medical patients, healthcare providers, and friends-of-friends along the way. His quest ended as Prop. 19 went down to defeat and plants that had survived arbitrary annual raids on sun-drenched hillsides were harvested.

I've long known that the so-called "drug war" is a war of violence waged against certain drugs and people, but at first saw the subtitle as a kind of subculture marketing tool, like the full-color center section photos of spectacular plants, cured buds, and proud-but-headless growers in classic High Times magazine style.

But in the Triangle, the drug war is more than feds vs. heads. It's long-time growers torn between a comfortable, rather smug "outlaw culture"; the prospect of lower profits and more competition balanced against legal status (a potentially enormous cost savings; many growers keep a lawyer on retainer). It's sheriffs carefully timing raids to fall after most ganja has been harvested; who clearly know the folly of prohibition but love the shiny toys -- helicopters, spy equipment, and such -- the drug war offers its troops. It's small town newspaper editors who think marijuana is evil and oppose legalization but pay the printer with half-page ads from pot defense lawyers.

As debate over Prop. 19 rose, some elected officials proposed copywriting trade names like "Emerald Triangle" much as wineries protect the names of their cultivars. In others, officials called for repeal of Prop. 215 and stronger enforcement.

Activists hedged their bets, favoring legalization for some growers but not others, especially not the newcomers from south of the border. There was deep division as well on specifics of Prop. 19, with some seeing it as a step forward, away from the current chaos, and others seeing the tax-and-regulate provisions as a cop-out, unworthy of support.

Some were suspicious because the initiative was first launched and supported not by a "traditional" marijuana advocacy group but by cannabis dispensary innovator Richard Lee of "Oaksterdam" (Oakland); others, sick and tired of "traditional" advocacy careerism, wanted change in their lifetimes.

Throughout the Prop. 19 campaign, public and private meetings throughout the Triangle revealed sharp divisions between those who felt themselves inundated with profit-seeking outsiders, local growers with or without vision and confidence, patients afraid of losing access to their medicine, and other interest groups.

Prop. 19 lost in the counties of the Emerald Triangle by as much as 3-1. A record cannabis harvest was hanging in the drying barns as votes were counted. Prices fell despite the defeat. Today, while marijuana is sold and smoked rather openly almost everywhere in California, the Drug Enforcement Administration continues to raid California's legal medical cannabis providers and sheriffs continue selective enforcement against growers in rural areas.

If "the Garden of Eden is within you," so is the Garden of Evil. The drug war, Raskin shows, is being fought in the hearts and minds of straights and stoners alike, where activists elsewhere like to envision a liberated zone.

Marijuanaland makes the pitfalls of partial legalization, profit-based politics, and widespread misinformation painfully clear. In the latter category is the book's perpetuation of the myth that "Cannabis indica" is a separate botanical species from "Cannabis sativa," the latter somehow inferior as a smoking herb.

From a botanical standpoint, this is hogwash; there is no agreement on whether indica is even a legitimate variety of C. sativa, but there is total agreement that C. sativa is one species much as Homo sapiens is; that is, any pot plant can (theoretically) breed with any other; since the plant is polymorphous, it has every evolutionary reason to remain one species, indivisible. Those who think otherwise contribute to outrageous retail prices for cannabis consumers; "indica" is but a marketing tool.

Raskin writes humorously of Triangle parents who work hard in the trade, make good money, and provide their kids every advantage in an area where non-marijuana-related income is limited. Whether the kids flee rural isolation for the city, "never to return," or become low-achieving slackers content to smoke Dad's weed and rodeo their ATVs through the forest, they're bound to disappoint, at least for a while. Some things never change.

But the real crux of generational conflict on legalization is that some older users still think they're part of a minority and fear change. Crying, "What about the children?" gains no traction against certain facts: the harm to children of having a parent jailed cannot be overstated.

Wherever cannabis use is decriminalized, use by teenagers drops substantially. And with 40+ years worth of kids like Raskin nurtured by pot-smoking parents in hundreds of communities all over the USA, demonstrably no more are bad apples than other youths of similar age and economic circumstance. The kids are, pretty much, alright.

The question America faces today is whether to cling to a world of scarcity and individual competition or find a new model of plenty and social cooperation. A huge majority of second- and third-generation "hippies" and perhaps of 20- and 30-somethings are creative, self-assured, resilient, tolerant, and determined to build the sustainable future we have utterly failed to leave them. The cannabis plant, in its entirety, offers a strong material basis for that future.

To move beyond even the present tug-of-war between state and federal authorities on voter-approved medical legalization, activists must launch more rigorous educational efforts and more successfully urge people out of the "emerald closet" of silent complicity. We must re-vision a world in which human beings love one another, respect the earth, and strive to relieve suffering in all living beings. Marijuanaland will offer many clues to the thoughtful on what is needed.

Cannabis is more than just a mildly naughty weed that makes flirting more fun, or a powerful medicine for pain and alienation. It isn't just an endlessly renewable source of nontoxic fuels and fibers. Or the most nutritious food known to man. It is also a plant teacher, and until human beings recognize that there is other intelligent life on earth and heed its wisdom, we will bar ourselves from the Garden.

[Mariann G. Wizard (www.WordsWorth.biz ) is a Contributing Editor to The Rag Blog and longtime advocate of cannabis legalization (www.CannabisResource.com ). She regularly reviews and writes about medical cannabis and regulatory issues, among other topics, for the American Botanical Council. She volunteers and consults with the Texas Hemp Campaign and other legalization advocates. Read poetry and articles by Mariann G. Wizard on The Rag Blog.]

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