"On behalf of the prosecuting attorneys of this county, I welcome you."
We sat in the rear fringe of a crowd of about 1500 in the main ballroom
of the Dunes Hotel. Far up in front of the room, barely visible from
the rear, the executive director of the National District Attorneys'
Association - a middle-aged, well-groomed, successful GOP businessman
type named Pat rick Healy-was opening their Third National Institute on
Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. His remarks reached us by way of a big,
low-fidelity speaker mounted on a steel pole in our corner. Perhaps
a dozen others were spotted around the room, all facing the rear and
looming over the crowd . . . so hat no matter where you sat or even
tried to hide, you were ways looking down the muzzle of a big speaker.
This produced an odd effect. People in each section of the Lroom tended
to stare at the nearest voice-box, instead of watching the distant figure
of whoever was actually talking up front, on the podium. This 1935 style
of speaker placement totally depersonalized the room. There was something
is and authoritarian about it.
Whoever set up that system was probably some kind of Sheriff's auxiliary
technician on leave from a drive-in theater in Muskogee, where the
management couldn't afford individual car speakers and relied on ten
huge horns, mounted ontelephone poles in the parking area.
A year earlier I had been to the Sky River Rock Festival in rural
Washington, where a dozen stone-broke freaks from the Seattle Liberation
Front had assembled a sound sys tem that carried every small note of an
acoustic guitar - even a cough or the sound of a boot dropping on the
stage - to half - deaf acid victims huddled under bushes a half mile
away.
But the best technicians available to the National DAs' convention in
Vegas apparently couldn't handle it. Their sound system looked like
something Ulysses S. Grant might have triggered up to address his troops
during the Seige of Vicksburg. The voices from up front crackled with a
fuzzy, high-pitched urgency, and the delay was just enough to keep the
words disconcertingly out of phase with the speaker's ges tures.
"We must come to terms with the Drug Culture in this
country! . . . country . . . country . . ." These echoes drifted back
to the rear in confused waves. "The reefer butt is called a 'roach'
because it resembles a cockroach . . .cockroach . . . cockroach ..
"What the fuck are these people talking about?" my attorney
whispered. "You'd have to be crazy on acid to think a joint looked like
a goddamn cockroach!"
I shrugged. It was clear that we'd stumbled into a prehis toric
gathering. The voice of a "drug expert" named Bloomquist crackled out
of the nearby speakers: ". .. about these flashbacks, the patient never
knows; he thinks it's all over and he gets himself straightened out for
six months . . . and then, darn it, the whole trip comes back on him."
Gosh darn that fiendish LSD! Dr. E. R. Bloomquist, MD, was the keynote
speaker, one of the big stars of the conference. He is the author of
a paperback book titled Marijuana, which - according to the cover -
"tells it like it is." (He is also the inventor of the roach/cockroach
thoery . . . )
According to the book jacket, he is an "Associate Clinical Professor of
Surgery (Anesthesiology) at the University of Southern Cllfcruia School of
Medicine" . . . and also "a well known authority on the abuseof dangerous
drugs.: Dr. Bllomquist "has also appeared on national network television
panles, has served as a consultant for government agencies, was a member
of the Committee on Narcotics Addiction and Alcoholism of the Council
on Mental Health of the American Medical Association." His wisdom is
massively reprinted and distributed, says the publisher. He is clearly
one of the heavies on that circuit of second-rate academic hustlers who
get paid anywhere from $500 to $1000 a hit for lecturing to cop crowds.
Dr. Bloomquist's book is a compendium of state bullshit. On page
49 he explains, the "four states of being" in the cannabis society:
"Cool, Groovy, Hip & Square" - in that descending order. "The square is
seldom if ever cool," says Bloomquist. "He is 'not with it,' that is,
he doesn't know 'what's happening.' But if he manages to figure it out,
he moves up a notch to 'hip.' And if he can bring himself to approve of
what's happening, he becomes 'groovy.' And after that, with much luck
and perseverence, he can rise to the rank of 'cool."'
Bloomquist writes like somebody who once bearded Tim Leary in a campus
cocktail lounge and paid for all the drinks. And it was probably somebody
like Leary who told him, with a straight face, that sunglasses are known
in the drug culture as "tea shades."
This is the kind of dangerous gibberish that used to be posted, in the
form of mimeographed bulletins, in Police Department locker rooms.
Indeed: KNOW YOUR DOPE FIEND. YOUR LIFE MAY DEPEND ON IT! You will not
be able to see his eyes because of Tea-Shades, but his knuckles will be
white from inner tension and his pants will be crustedwith semen from
constantly jacking off when he can't find a rape victim. He will staggerr
and babble when questioned. He will not respect your badge. The Dope Fiend
fears nothing. He will attack, for no reason, with every weapon at his
command - includtng yours. BEWARE. Any officer apprehending a suspected
marijuana addict should use all necessary force immedately. One stitch
in time (on him) wil usually save nine on you. Good luck.
The Chief.