• To celebrate the coming of spring, we’ve put together an especially budding issue this month. The big news is that an illegal crop—you guessed it, marijuana—is now estimated to be the most valuable agricultural product in the country. With consumer demand holding at high levels, with the well-publicized financial problems that beset farmers, with a growing perception by the average citizen that reefer madness propoganda is dead wrong, it’s not surprising that 1985’s crop was considered to be the largest in dollar value of all crops grown in the U.S.A. Whether this estimate by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws will affect government policy remains to be seen.
Having just arrived back in the USA after living in Europe for six years I was shocked by the prices my fellow heads pay for the magic herb. In Europe herb was a fourth of the price and the smoke was primo. Maybe it's because freaks in Europe are not so greedy, enjoying comradeship of the waterpipe.
We know you worry about cancer and food, but what do you really know? The links between diet and cancer are clear and convincing, but having the details at your fingertips has been difficult—until Odin Corporation came up with the "Thought for Food...Cancer Prevention Table," a handy device that outlines what's good for you and what's not.
Shock Discovery: COCAINE IN TEABAGS FOUND TO BE HARMLESS
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Coca Is Not Cocaine
A Beneficial Export Product?
A Remedy For The Cocaine Blues?
A Policeman's Dilemma
Another Urinalysis Glitch
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Dean Latimer
Health-food shops from coast to coast were abruptly besieged late last winter by thousands of customers eagerly seeking an item called "Health Inca Tea," after a quartet of eminent research scientists reported in The Journal of the American Medical Association that several popular American brands of "health" teas contained authentic Peruvian coca leaves, complete with nature's own cocaine.
DRUG ENFORCEMENT Administration agents, their supervisors, and even DEA administrator John Lawn himself will be subjected to mandatory urine tests for drugs, the ultrasensitive narco agency promised early last apring. “It will apply to all of us,” pledged Lawn in an excutive memorandum to all 4,200 DEA personnel, including clerks and janitors: “myself, our upper management, and all employees alike.”
The Oregon Marijuana initiative offers Americans the first chance to choose marijuana policy.
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KEVIN ZEESE
The benchmark of our democratic society is supposed to be that the people choose the government and the laws reflect the views of the people. Even though tens of millions of Americans have chosen to use marijuana, we have not had an opportunity to choose marijuana policy.
Every day, letters and phone calls pour into the HIGH TIMES offices, asking the same questions about the rising tide of urine testing. HIGH TIMES has published several articles about this ugly phenomenon in the past, and will continue to expose the cruel and unconstitutional practice as more and more horror stories about its abuse come to our attention.
The American Connection—Anyone interested in America’s drug problems will find this book by John Pekkanen a hard hitting expose of the unethical drug companies, and of the compliant roles of the medical community and the government in creating and perpetuating drug addiction and abuse.
Trans-High Market Quotations publishes the most current and relevant dope data. Send your reliable and unbiased information to THMQ, do HIGH TIMES, 211 East 43rd St., New York, NY 10017.
Once more, as we do on occasion, we are departing from our usual, single drug format to address a larger issue. Designer drugs have gotten a lot of press in the past year. Many states, and the federal government are rushing legislation onto the books for dealing with them.
Home of the love generation. Spawning ground of the hippies. The Original psychedelic community. Haight Ashbury was this and more. Few events have had a more profound impact in America than the spread of LSD. After poring over thousands of secret Government files (obtained through the Freedom of Information Act), authors Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain have compiled the definitive history of the psychedlic revolution.
Back by popular demand: Aphrodite, goddess of love, returned to San Francisco after an 18 year absence.
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The goddess was summoned by 400 people at a recent "Neo Psychedelic Coming Out Party" held at the Farm, a volunteer-run animal and vegetable farm which also hosts concerts and other events. While geese cackled outside, a black-robed priest and a priestess wearing a paisley dress and white kerchief lit a fire in a black pot and distributed pieces of freshly baked, triangular bread to the crowd.
Keep telling yourself...it’s only a movie. We’re talking about emotion, here, emotion out of images, rapid-cut edits: cut to exotic airstrips, cut to lavish haciendas cut to hearings before Senate sub-committees, cut to guest-shots on the “Today” show.
According to figures recently released by The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), our current administration's heartfelt plans for the eradication of marijuana have gone awry. Thanks to a bumper marijuana harvest, increased indoor growing, and a drop in the price of corn, an illegal crop has become our country's most valuable crop for the first time in history.
SURVIVAL RESEARCH LABORATORIES (S.R.L): All-American, clean-cut, grease mechanics. Hard bodies rippling with steel between their hands, cynical smiles on their faces. Mark Pauline, Eric Werner and Matt Heckert are a trio of terror always ready to gear up for accelerated action and razorbladed brutality.
BUD OF THE MONTH This picture is from my harvest. The bright red haired plants were very tasty and very potent. One bong hit and you fly. —Anonymous, Hollywood, CA GARDEN OF THE MONTH I noticed that New York had missed out on the Harvest issue (Nov.'85) and thought that I would remind the growers that good herb is produced in this area.
College Students head to Florida for fun, sun, suds, and surf
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ROSE MARY PASSANTINO
Rob Sirota and his two roommates from the University of Kentucky are standing on line, waiting to get into the Button, the most notorious club on Fort Lauderdale's 20-block beachfront strip. It's three o'clock in the afternoon; they've been awake for two hours and have already consumed two-and-half six packs of Budweiser.
Like a little sting in your sweet? Try Bee Buzz Honey, made by some very happy bees which were placed in marijuana fields. These bees collected pollen from some of the best plants around and eureka: a new, stimulating taste treat was created. For a sample jar, send $9.99 to Bee Buzz Honey, Box 1865, Columbus, Indiana 47201.
Zelco Industries, Inc.
GROLITE GROWING
$34.95
Say you've got a black thumb? That your gardening touch is a real killer? Save your plants with the "itty bitty GroLite," a powerful mini-light which duplicates the growing rays that help indoor plants flourish. With a clamp that fits any size pot, the light's telescopic arm can be raised up to 40 inches, to have it always four inches above foliage for the proper light density. The special UL-approved low-voltage A/C adaptor included with the "itty bitty" GroLite plugs into any 110V receptacle, and operates for just pennies a month. This tiny dynamo retails for an amazingly low $34.95; ask for it at your favorite gardening supply store or contact Zelco Industries, Inc., 630 South Columbus Avenue, Mt. Vernon, NY 10550.
Zelco Industries, Inc.
stickers
Want to get the attention of that leadfoot wheeling along behind your car? Divert tailgaters with these new stickers from the company that brought you the famous $3 "Grow America Green" logo mug. A four pack of bumper stickers is a mere $6.50 (for sample messages, see photo); three rolls of thumb-size stickers are $850 (perfect for your books and bongs). A box of 30 large balloons goes for $7.50 (specify "round leaf" or "long bud" balloons). Postage and handling is a paltry 75¢ per item. Send your order to MPS Group, P.O. Box 11400, Cleveland, Ohio 44111. They'll also send along a free catalog of products, yours for the asking.
There are a number of reasons why growers may wish to extend the season late into the fall. Planters in northern climates or cooler areas may need the extra time to have even their short season varieties develop large buds. Connoisseurs may wish to grow long season varieties that usually do not ripen in their area.
The NORML Legal Committee held its winter meeting in Key West, Florida, December 6 and 7. The purpose of these meetings is to provide information for defense lawyers so that they can win more cases. The two day schedule includes a series of seminars and a lot of socializing.
1. The Silos, About Her Steps (Record Collect). How many ways can you rephrase your countrified Velvet Underground/Gram Parsons fixation and still have it sound fresh and surprising? I count eight on this superb, quiet album from the Lower East Side.
“On a controversy scale of one-to-ten, It’s a sure ten,” claims Jeffrey Bloom, author-director of ABC’s recent made-for-TV movie, “The Right of the People.” Michael Ontkean (photo left) played a young district attorney who fights for justice in an unjust social order—i.e., he’s a liberal.
Welcome to the retro-future. The setting is London: the time it Christmas, sometime in the 20th Century. Plagued by terrorist bombings and populated by mindless automatons wearing identical blue-grey suits, the city is a raveling snarl of pneumatic tubes, communications wires and cooling vents.