Harvest time is here and a new season begins. Even the gray routine of American cities seems to quicken in autumn; the rhythm of nature establishes itself anew like a returning theme in a symphony as the gathering winds blow leaves of sere, and yellow, and pale, and hectic red off the trees, down the streets and up your pants.
Your Winter '75 issue carried a section called "Wonder Weeds of Mexico." Porque no Popo azul? Having traveled through Mexico every winter for nine years, I think the best smoke of the south is the infamous "Popo blue." Popo gets its name from the bluish hue it gets toward maturity.
Q: How can you tell if you've got a real psilocybin-containing mushroom? —Leroy Schwartz, Bismarck, No. Dak. A: Break off a piece of the fresh mushroom. If the injured area turns bluish within a half-hour, chances are good that it contains psilocybin.
Destruction of Evidence OK'd by U.S. Attorney's Office
Double Jeopardy Nixed in Jersey
Missouri Decision Protects Informants
Supreme Court Limits Border Patrol Stop-Search Power
Tranquilizers Put to Rest
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The DEA has agreed to conform to ten minimum requirements in handling dope smuggling cases along the Mexican border following a warning from U.S. Attorney Harry D. Steward of San Diego that California federal attorneys will refuse to prosecute many DEA cases as they are currently prepared.
Researchers around the world have found evidence that the body, when subjected to severe pain and stress, automatically manufactures substances with narcotic effects similar to those of morphine. Work on the subject began in 1971, when Dr. Avram Goldstein, head of the Addiction Research Foundation in California, found that within the mammalian brain there are molecules that he described as "highly specific" opiate receptors.
After nine years of uneasy Chinese occupation and socialization, the Dalai Lama fled the Red Army invasion of Tibet in 1959. Since then he has been busily organizing communities for some 80,000 Tibetan refugees who have made their way to India, Nepal, Bhutan and Europe; he has established archives and centers for the study and preservation of lamaistic Buddhism, Tibetan culture and traditional medicine and astrology; and he has continued to work for the peaceful return of his followers to their homeland and for the reestablishment of religious freedom in Tibet.
The U.N. Commission on Narcotics reported that dope authorities from all over the world seized 17,000 tons of marijuana, 8 tons of morphine, 6 of heroin and 3 of cocaine between 1967 and 1973. A promotional booklet published by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), which is used extensively as a reference source by the media in the U.S., claims that 730,000 tons of pot, 8,083 tons of ganja seeds and 20 tons of cocaine were seized last year under Operation Buccaneer alone.
A recent seizure at Treat Mountain, Georgia netted police there a C54 four engine cargo plane allegedly used to transport a ton and a half of marijuana from South America. Also confiscated were 85 kilosized bricks of hashish. The plane landed without damage at night on a makeshift runway as it was spotted coming in low over the trees by sheriff’s deputies.
Two armed DEA guards brought 200 pounds of Colombian gold pot into a Senate Internal Security Subcommittee hearing recently, as part of an effort by Jerry N. Jensen, Deputy Director of the DEA, to show that pot is “big business.” The weed was part of an 800-pound cache seized in New York City, and was termed “perhaps the highest quality ever confiscated.”
Following the revelation that the CIA gave LSD to unsuspecting subjects for over a decade, the East Bay Municipal Utility District assured East Bay residents that a detailed LSD decontamination plan had been devised as early as 1967.
Two DEA agents kidnapped by Mexican dope smugglers were shot in a gun battle with their abductors that erupted on the desert outside San Luis, Mexico, south of Yuma, Arizona. Special Agent Donald Ware, 40, was listed in critical condition after sustaining wounds in the arms, legs, abdomen and groin; agent Roy Stevenson, 41, was listed in fair condition with wounds in the arm and leg.
Security World, a monthly magazine which serves to inform police and private security personnel of up-to-the-minute developments in the field, has recently published a guide for spotting dope users that lists "sudden, unexplained affluence" and a "musty odor or body stench" among its tell-tale symptoms.
One thousand demonstrators gathered behind the White House July 4th to smoke three pounds of reefer and kick off the Yippie bicentennial celebration's Campaign '76. A call was issued for national action next year against the GOP presidential convention to be held in Kansas City, and the Democratic convention scheduled for New York City.
The state government of Guerrero, Mexico has announced that, as a result of an anticorruption drive, all 22 guards have been jailed at the Acapulco Prison, and in the same city, all 86 plainclothes policemen have been confined to their headquarters.
Playboy magazine has done a major interview with Timothy Leary in which he attempts to clear his reputation. Leary has been believed by some to be cooperating with federal authorities investigating the Weathermen and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love.
• Two Colorado law enforcement officials were arrested on dope charges following an investigation by the state's organized Crime Task Force. Arrested were Telluride city attorney, Robert Korn, 33, for dispensing marijuana, and Richard Unruh, 33, the deputy district attorney assigned to San Miguel County, charged with possession and sale of cocaine.
During studies conducted at the Maryland Research Institute in 1965, Dr. Stansislov Grof, chief of psychiatry, discovered that the use of Niamid, an antide pressant drug, could alleviate many of the symptoms of LSD ingestion. Grof administered the drug to 11 patients for a period of four weeks, then gave them LSD for ten days and found that they were nearly immune to its effects.
The Soviet press has recently accused Red China of massive narcotics dealing to earn billions of dollars in foreign exchange. Heroin dealing has become a familiar charge against the communist government of mainland China. It was first heard during the Vietnam war and more recently in the international press.
Governor Milton Shapp endorsed removing criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana, and legislation was proposed to put possession of marijuana in the same category as traffic violations. $100 fines would replace possible jail terms.
After Thames Valley, England, police ran a campaign urging people to hand in drugs that they weren't using, they collected 100,000 assorted pills, 22 bottles of cyanide, 6 bottles of strychnine and 64 pounds of arsenic.
“The most marijuana we had was one pasture field,” said Bill Holub, Weed Commissioner of Black Hawk County, Iowa. “Oh, we have some in the fence rows. And there are fields of it up by Janesville—by the acre there in the creek bottom. But other than that, there’s almost none left.”
Melbourne, Australian, police reported finding a 20-year-old man dead and five young men and a girl wandering dazed, incoherent, bruised and nearly nude after eating wild lilies containing the drug atropine, a central nervous system inhibitor.
According to two pharmacologists at the University of Illinois, an almost endless supply of opium is only as far away as the neighborhood bakery. Drs. Frank Crane and Norman Farnsworth have recently harvested six milligrams of opium from plants that grew from poppy seeds scraped off the top of bakery dinner rolls.
A long-secret Navy report released on the sixty-ninth anniversary of the great San Francisco earthquake reveals that carousing mobs rushed saloon after saloon in the stricken city, guzzling stolen liquor while 28,000 buildings went up in flames and 600 people lost their lives.
U.S. Customs inspectors arrested two Colombian women and seized ten pounds of cocaine at Port Everglades, Florida, when they arrived there aboard the cruise ship Italia. The women were identified as Gil Helena, 31, and Anna Beatriz Tarquino, 58, both of Cartagena, Colombia.
Rigoberto Melchor Moreno, described as a well-to-do farmer and rancher in Parral, Mexico, declared from the witness stand at his heroin trial in El Paso, Texas, that between 80 and 90 per cent of the farmers near Parral grow marijuana on Mexican government land.
A spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union says that court affidavits show that 22 federal agencies admit to conducting electronic surveillance either within this country or abroad. John Shattuck of the ACLU says that the affidavits were filed after Maj.
Linda Ross, ex-editor of the Ann Arbor Sun, has been ordered by a federal court in Michigan to pay a narcotics agent $40,000 in damages for the “emotional harm” he allegedly suffered after his picture was published by the Sun. Ross says she ran a photograph of undercover narcotics cop Arthur Burns as part of a campaign to show that narcs were concentrating on marijuana users and ignoring harddrug sellers.
City officials in Tempe, Arizona, after a six-month experiment, are recommending that police departments across the country replace their helicopters with blimps. Tempe police have been using blimps to hover over “highcrime areas” instead of helicopters, which make so much noise that perpetrators are forewarned of their presence.
The Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency recently heard testimony from a panel of four high-school students who told the legislators that dope and violence have replaced reading, writing, and arithmetic in their schools. Debbi, 18, of Akron, Ohio, and Kevin, 17, of Adelphi, Maryland, said that 9 out of 10 of their classmates get stoned during a typical day at school.
A suburban Houston couple who refuse to be identified report that they wiretapped their daughter’s telephone for seven years and turned all doperelated information to local narcotics officers. The parents told the Houston Post that they hooked up a device to a home extension in 1967, when their daughter was being “difficult.”
Joseph Curre was sentenced to 570 to 1100 years in prison after pleading guilty to 34 counts of conspiracy to sell narcotics. Judge James Barbuto of Akron, Ohio, issued the maximum sentence on each count. Curre will be eligible for parole in ten years.
Another chapter in the continuing comedy of errors perpetrated and performed by dopes and dopers around the world. • In mid-August, smugglers and Bahamian police staged a shootout in a clearing on Grand Bahama Island where 40 tons of reefer were piled high and ready for transport.
“You don’t get into a unit today in Germany without being propositioned on hard drugs,” according to a provost marshal officer at Emery Kasenre, an army base in West Germany. Military police under Sgt. Robert Lathan, head of security at the base, say that when the officers leave the installation for their homes at the end of the day, it is “taken over” by dope dealers.
Senator James Eastland, chairman of the Internal Security Subcommittee, recently announced a new federally funded project to determine the potency of the marijuana reaching American consumers. $50,000 is being added to the budget of the University of Mississippi’s ongoing marijuana research program to survey the strength of confiscated pot in the face of evidence that people in this country are smoking grass much stronger than that of the 1960’s.
The mysterious “enema bandit,” so-named by baffled police in the mid-1960’s during a rash of incidents near the University of Illinois in which a ski-masked man forcibly administered enemas to his female victims, has struck again. In Urbana, Illinois, police report that the unknown shit-head broke into the homes of two women recently, held them at gunpoint and purged their bowels.
The Valley of Sibundoy is a strange and beautiful world. Because of its natural isolation by rugged mountains, the Indian villages within it have developed unique customs, particularly in regard to the use of plants. In fact, some of the plants themselves are unique, as we shall see, and one Colombian botanist I know says a man cannot really call himself a botanist until he has worked in Sibundoy.
Nineteenth-century America has oft been called “a dope fiend’s paradise,” owing to the fact that opium, morphine, cocaine, cannabis extract, nitrous oxide and various other neo-taboo highs were then freely and cheaply available to all comers.
As we predicted in last year’s “Harvest Herald," the new crop is not going to be a bumper crop because of generalized political and economic factors, as if the vagaries of weather were not enough. But despite widespread U.S. government-generated narc heat, the scarcity of fertilizer and a so-so year weatherwise, this year’s dope crop will be adequate to fulfill most of the rising consumption patterns around the world.
In 1957, dope smuggling wasn’t on my mind. I’d come to San Francisco to become a writer, to record the whole San Francisco scene. The city was full of dope then, but it was a different kind of dope, heady stuff spewed out at the drop of a joint by the streetcorner poets, writers and gangling neo-bohemians called beatniks.
God knows where you heard it first. Maybe you were skimming the afternoon paper the day Amy Vanderbilt wrote it up. Or caught the three-minute segment on NBC’s recent marijuana special. Or somebody trying to keep a straight face told you about it while you toked up with oxygen-mask force.
California has a vast penal empire. Fuck up in one of their lesser joints and you’re headed for Soledad or Q. Get too rowdy for those cesspools and you’re Folsom bound. That’s the end of the road—almost. Smack in the heart of Folsom is a special solitary-confinement slammer designed to hold the most dangerous men in the country.
Like the dim red dens and delicately painted pipes of opium itself, Claude Farrère’s Black Opium transports the reader into realms of terrifying beauty and illusion. Since its publication in 1911, when it was immediately hailed by Anatole France as a masterpiece of French prose, it has become a small classic of its genre, an elegant work that belongs with the best of Coleridge, De Quincey and Cocteau.
An autumn moon is rising and all across America a cool wind blows in the annual harvest. Just beyond bountiful fields of greengold domestic pot, the sound of a fiddle can be heard—it’s county fair time! Everyone gathers from miles around to enjoy the herbs of their labor and honor the finest produce of the season.
Exile in Babylon and Other Dredful Jamaican Knowledge
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J.B. Alexander
Ras Ibo reaches into his leather pouch and pulls out a five-inch-long yellow rectangle. “These be corn leaves,” he explains to a visitor as he packs and rolls one leaf tight with herbs. “We cut them and then dry them out.” After rolling the leaf, which he calls a spliff, Ibo ties it tight with a small string.
Tattoing is an age-old body language—the carnal code of bikers, dopers and lovers. And the master of today’s needlefreaks is Spider Webb, of Mount Vernon, New York. President of the Tattoo Club of America, Spider is the man who said, “Getting a tattoo is like losing your virginity—there’s no going back.”
When getting gussied up becomes a hassle and you’d rather just tie one on, scarves simplify the vestion question with a quick twist of the thumb and wrist.
The publication of Aldous Huxley's Doors of Perception (1954)—amidst the intellectual wasteland of Eisenhower's America—had a cultural impact few books have ever achieved. The British author's fortieth book describes the day in Los Angeles when Huxley, then nearly 60, “cleansed" his “doors of perception" with mescaline.
For whatever political reasons LBJ could create, Theodore J. Flicker’s The President’s Analyst was released in 1968 with a minimum of fanfare and left to twist slowly, slowly in the wind. While it received good reviews, it did no great box office business and was soon taken off the circuit, only to reappear in succeeding years in a profusion of art theaters and late-nite showings.
Drinking fungus juice is a big fad in Japan, with thousands turning to the liquid in an effort to cure or prevent everything from headaches to cancer. Author Fumio Niwa says it cured his arthritis, Buddhist priest Kon Toko insists it improved the quality of his voice, while the head of the Defense Agency, Michita Sakata, maintains that since he started on the juice he no longer suffers from constipation.
JUST ANOTHER TRUCKSTOP (RELEASE: 1 Elgin Avenue, London W9, England, $1.50.) RELEASE has grown considerably since it was founded in 1967 to assist people who fell afoul of Britain's stringent drug laws. Today it contains multitudes of advisors, paralegal aides and consultants who will help you squat, abort, migrate, divorce, travel, etc.
"Shaken or stirred?" Or perhaps a little of both? If you don’t mind getting your buds bruised a bit, any of these three weed cleaners could fit your nit-picking needs. For example, simplicity buffs will love the Juana Shaker (left). Its design is preIndustrial Revolution—no movable parts but your arm—and the material is unbreakable soft plastic. Just pack with contraband and shake. The motion of the notion will give your potion some commotion. $4 from New Thought Enterprises, P.O. Box 212, West Linn, Ore., 97068.
Thought Enterprises
Marygin
$5
The Marygin (center) is the workhorse of the clean weed set. What it loses because of a small stash-tumbler it makes up in stunning colors and solid construction. If you have energy and patience to crank the stuff through the revolving basket-sieve, Marygin gives you a fair shake with see-through style. $5 from Marygin, Inc., P.O. Box 5827, Tucson, Ariz., 85703.
Thought Enterprises
Clean Machine
$4.50
For those who miss “flour power”, the Clean Machine (right) is a pot-cleaning favorite. While the Juana Shaker and the Mary Gin come only in plastic fantastic, the Clean Machine is made of durable tin and can double as a flour sifter in times of no dope. Rotate the crank to agitate the weed with a two-pronged beater and watch the shake sift through the wire screen to the bottom. Painted white and adorned with red apples and a cap that reads “The Clean Machine”, it is advertised as “inconspicuous”. $4.50 from The Whiz Brothers, Ltd., Bromwell, Dept. 201, Box 34, Ravena, N.Y. 12143.
Thought Enterprises
HP-45 calculator
$245
Is adding your weak point? Taking some from many? Going forth and multiplying? Dividing and conquering? Or converting pounds to ounces? Whatever your mathematical mind-block, you'll find a handy technological solution the easy way, with Hewlitt-Packard's HP-45 calculator. This handy pocket cogitator is popular with people who count on dope because has a built-in factor for converting pound/ounces to grams/ kilos. A boon, right? Indispensable for rolling a number. $245, from Hewlitt-Packard, 1501 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto, Calif. 94304.
Thought Enterprises
Rocket Socket
$32.50
“Turn, Dick Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London.” That was sound advice in 1475, and it’s sound advice for armchair astronauts today, with the Lunar Turret Pipe—three individual bowls on a turret. Shift the Buick-like three-holer at will as you explore the uncharted regions of your mind, without stopping to refuel. If your mission is to party, quick-change to the large party bowl. Comes inside a velvet-lined box with Allen wrench, screens, insulator disk and directions. $32.50, from L.T. Company, Box 3301, Champaign, Ill. 61820.
Thought Enterprises
Coca Canoe
$5
Put aside that snaggle-toothed Gillette and scratched mirror. Next time you’ve got rocks to grind, why not do it in style with this simply elegant mortar and pestle of nonporous mother-of-pearl, just like many licensed apothecaries use? $5, from Dharma Trading Company, P.O. Box 12121, Gainsville, Fla. 32604.
Thought Enterprises
Dialer McDope
Remember how your dealer used to be your best friend? You would spend hours on the phone giggling over anything that came into your heads—the price of primo Afghani hash, the number of seeds in that last pound of Mexican—and plan the future when you would both be big shots. Today he’s living uptown, and you have so many connections your fingers ache from dialing. Relax. Now friends old and new are as close as your Western Electric card-dialer phone system. Just punch out your most-called numbers on plastic memory plates. Then slip the appropriate card into the slot and activate the start bar. Quicker than you can say “Hello, Monica,” the number is dialed and that welcome voice is on the line. For information, contact The Phone Company.
Thought Enterprises
Leather Weed
$5
Black leather does so much for weed. And when the eight glass vials are snapped into position—watch out stranger. Please and tease with a variety of mind-snuffing doses, or mix favorite blends for special occasions. $20, it comes with your name engraved at no extra charge. The same people also make roach clips—elegant pheasant feathers laced to alligator clips (gold and silver pheasant available) for $5 each. Mary, 81 E. 7th St., New York, N.Y. 10003.
Thought Enterprises
Biomate
$9.95
Learned Zen monks used to spend months calculating their separate biorhythmic cycles: sensitivity (23 days), intellectual (28 days) and emotional (33 days). Today, they can do it at the turn of a dial, with the $9.95 Biomate. The first half of each cycle is a positive, energetic phase, while the second half is a negative, recuperative phase. As the cycles move in and out of phase, the organism experiences critical points that require “special attention.” Used by Swissair flight programers, racetrack touts and anyone who needs to know how he—or anyone else—will be feeling on any given day, the Biomate needs only a birthday in order to project the strong, weak and blah days of anyone born in this century. From The Captain’s Corner, Box 502, Old Chelsea Station, New York, N.Y. 10011.
SWAHA, by Bhagwan Das and Amazing Grace (Amazing Grace, R.D. 1, Fort Edward, N.Y. 12858). Bhagwan Das is a Westerner who grew wise in India. He traveled with his guitar alone, and picked up infrequent checks from his family in California as he went along.
The prices listed are the latest available, but do not necessarily reflect average prices, only par ticular prices as reported to us. High Times welcomes anonymous reports, but please be specific about the area, type, quantity and quality of dope referred to.
Samuel Putnam, who translated our excerpt from Black Opium (originally in French), is given a chapter of his very own in an engaging, obscure book entitled Strange Communists I Have Known. It’s by Bertram D. Wolfe. Thought you might like to know.