10. Looking Back: When

I hope your book will correct the myths that every time one smokes marijuana, one is flown away to some la la land, that one is suddenly attracted to flowers, that one's intelligence is progressively or instantly depleted, that one will try the hard stuff next, that it's wrong.

— a smoker in Michigan

The 1970s

The vast majority of Americans who use marijuana began to do so in the 1960S or 1970S. The actual decade in which a user first turned on is of considerable significance and represents a dividing line between what are now two distinct marijuana-smoking generations, united by an uneasy truce.
    "I think our generation let yours down," a graduate student in her mid-twenties told me, "although you guys were a hard act to follow." Many smokers in their thirties would be quick to agree. They look back nostalgically to a time when, as they see it, marijuana stood for something, whether it was alienation from accepted standards, a spirit of community, freedom, or simply rebellion and mischief. Many smokers are reluctant to let go of the 1960s, which were, as one cynic put it, "too beautiful to live, too profitable to die." Mark recalls:

Our generation was forced to make decisions. It was us against the system, and both sides knew it. We fought against Vietnam, against racism, against repression. The draft was breathing down our necks, and anything we could do to avoid it was all right. We knew we represented a break with what had gone before. We knew we were different, that we would continue to be different. And dope was the glue that held the counterculture together.

    In sharp contrast to the sixties smoker, the seventies user tended to be far more casual and relaxed about marijuana. Smoking no longer had to have a meaning; it was simply there, to be enjoyed. Perhaps the most dramatic illustration of the difference between the two generations centers around the bong, a kind of elaborate water pipe with hoses and chambers to insure a cooled and potent smoke. Originally a Thai device from the late seventeenth century, the bong was introduced to American smokers in the early 1970s. It is popular because it is fun and also because it provides a more concentrated smoke that uses up less marijuana than most other methods. Every teenager and college student I interviewed knew what a bong was; even their friends who didn't smoke marijuana were familiar with it. But when I asked the same question of people who had begun smoking during the 1960s, I was frequently met with blank stares. Most of them, including daily smokers, had never even heard of a bong, much less used one. Similarly, the relatively older smokers were far less likely than their younger counterparts to visit headshops and showed less interest in High Times and other drug-oriented publications.
    It is the younger smoker, more affluent, better informed about drugs, and less fearful about being caught, who is responsible for the tremendous growth of the drug paraphernalia industry since 1975. A single issue of High Times in 1978 carried advertisements for the following marijuana-related items: hand-crafted wooden bowls for cleaning marijuana, priced up to $100 each; various kinds of scales to weigh cannabis; devices to detect the bugging of rooms and telephones; playing cards with pictures of marijuana leaves on them; a "Connoisseur's Calendar;" "stash" containers disguised as beer cans; marijuana-leaf jewelry; sterling silver roach-clips; a magazine called Dealer; books on growing marijuana in and out of doors; a special belt for hiding joints; various kinds of bongs and rolling papers; a "hydropot" kit for growing marijuana in water; and a "power hitter" that enables the smoker to inhale a rush of smoke squirted at him from a plastic tube.
    For those who preferred to shop in the comfort of their own homes, there was Ralph Garcia and his "tokerware parties." Garcia operated his New York business as though he were selling Tupperware, holding parties in people's houses to sell everything but the drugs themselves. The person giving the party had to invite at least eight friends, receiving 20 percent of the evening's earnings in return, as well as a complimentary pipe.[1]
    One of the biggest success stories in the paraphernalia business is E-Z Wider rolling papers. The company was founded in 1972 by Burton Rubin, a young smoker who observed that fellow users would inevitably glue together two cigarette rolling papers when making a joint. To make the task less cumbersome, Rubin developed and marketed a wider paper. Today, Robert Burton Associates is an impressive business with offices on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan and a factory in the city's downtown area. In 1978, one of their radio ads won a prestigious Cleo Award. It consisted of a sexy-sounding woman rushing through the following message:

E-Z Wider, the double-width rolling paper, knows that by now a lot of people are used to sticking two little pieces of rolling paper together in order to roll a good smoke, and why not? All you do is pull out two leaves of any ordinary paper, then carefully examine each to determine which pieces are striped with glue. Once you know for sure, take one of the papers and place it on the table. Then, holding the second paper with the thumbs and fingers of both hands, bring the paper to your mouth, stick out your tongue, and in one or two strokes, depending on how dry your mouth is at the time, lick the entire end of the paper, preferably the one which contains the glue. Then quickly reach for the paper you placed on the table earlier, and carefully affix the underside of the paper that you just licked. Be careful to line the papers up correctly before connecting them, and try to avoid excessive overlapping. Then all you have to do is wait for them to dry.