I was watching the PBS documentary "The Boomer Century" last night. We had just been talking about the "crisis of authority' created by the Vietnam war, e.g. LBJ and General Westmoreland exaggerating the "body count" and "progress" in Vietnam, and the UW Madison authorities conspiring to spin the violent breakup of a peaceful protest as a "mob" and "riot" for which the students were to blame. On last night's program, Dr. Andrew Weil added another dimension: the discrepancy between what officialdom told people about marijuana--it will drive you mad, make you do insane things, land you in an asylum--and what was actually experienced. That certainly is correct...people DID try to scare kids with films like "Reefer Madness," which only widened the credibility gap when the kids tried wacky tabacky. That's not to say it was harmless--far from it--just that the adults promised your head would spontaneously combust with the first iinhalation.
So add marijuana to body counts, lights at the end of the tunnel, peaceful protests-turned-riots...the lies just kept piling up.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
does lsd count? i know ourfriends at the cia thought it was a truth syrem and found out other wise. so that might have had some impact on that and other illegal drugs since so little was known. ddt tests also came back and it was learned how harmful it was to the enviroment. it was great for malaria but no study was produced for nearly 40 years
Post a Comment