Perhaps it wasn’t mushrooms, back then, in the 1970s, when I was waiting in line at an airport.
I was about to check in for my flight, and a guy ahead of me, looking like a hippie, had just sauntered up to the counter.
It seemed he was under suspicion.
Apparently sensing something from the airport official’s demeanor, the hippie guy had decided to have some fun.
‘Maybe it’s in my shirt pocket,’ you could hear him saying to the airport official, behind the counter. ‘Or under my belt, wanna check there? Or, in my backpack? Maybe tucked in my socks?’
Marijuana… weed? Did he have any on his person, us folks waiting in line were wondering.
Hearing his banter with the official, people behind me, started giggling.
Back then, some hippies, and others, were questioning authority, due to Vietnam War angst, mainly. The hippie-looking guy, apparently playing around with the airport official, was bringing laughter to the folks around me… and to me, eventually, as well.
I was getting all embedded in business, around that time, early in my career, and I was way more conservative. But I couldn’t keep from laughing, anyway.
It was the liberals – or the ‘libs,’ as they’re being called, now – who were questioning authority, it seemed, in the ’60s and ’70s. Now, it’s the conservatives – can we call them ‘tivs,’ for short? – who seem to be doing that.
But differently, and maybe dangerously? Because the tivs’ apparent flirtation with authoritarianism and authoritarians, could wind up destabilizing folks’ freedom, and maybe do away with it, entirely.
But… back to that airport, and the 1970s.
Reading Daily Post editor Bill Hudson’s editorials about psychedelic mushrooms and Proposition 122, got me thinking about the airport official perhaps having drawn some conclusion about the hippie guy. That came to mind, along with Mr. Hudson’s words about plant-based consciousness-altering substances, having “been part of the human experience since forever.”
I got to thinking about WNBA star, Brittney Griner. She’s facing nine years of incarceration in a Russian jail, because officials “at a Russian airport allegedly found less than a gram of hash oil in her luggage.” People Magazinewas among many media reporting the basketball star’s dire situation.
Nine years for a miniscule amount of a plant-based oil seems to be much ado about nearly nothing.
I was thinking about the many millions of people jailed, here in America, often for minor infractions of the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, which, as noted in Bill’s editorial series, was brought about by people desiring “the power to lock up people who shared a certain lifestyle, but who were doing nothing to harm anyone.”
That hippie sort of guy having some fun at that airport counter, where I was in line, waiting to be processed, you might say, was maybe lucky he wasn’t hauled off, patted down and sentenced to the slammer.
Maybe he didn’t have even a fraction of a gram of any particular plant-based conscious-altering substance in his shirt pocket, or under his belt, or anywhere else, for that matter.
But even if he did, could it really have amounted to much, if anything?
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.