How the Grinch Stole Cannabis

Maribuana Reconsidered

by Lester Grinspoon, M.D

Quick American Archives

474 pages, $19.95

So you've seen your future and it involves a hairnet?

You remember the day Greg Brady got a perm and innocence was lost forever?

You know what Shaggy and Scoob were really doing in the back of the Mysterymobile?

To quote from Dr. Lester Greenspoon's Maribuana Reconsidered, "I knew there was no Volkswagen on the ceiling and there was no Sandeman salamander man in the flame" It's kinda like the admission that, finally, there is no God. How lucky for us that the "Harvard University Press Classic" is now back in print.

You're a slacker, or so they say. This may be the book for you. It kept me mildly amused for about half of its four hundred pages.

At the very least, if you read Maribuana Reconsidered, you can arm yourself with a few useful sets of statistics and some interesting cocktail party factoids. For instance, the sacred plant was so useful that Henry VIII required its cultivation by English farmers, and George Washington himself had a crop.

More importantly, you can strengthen the case against your more straight-laced, beer-drinking Harvard colleagues. Grinspoon has shaped a compelling and coherent argument against claims that pot is any more dangerous than, say, alcohol.

In an updated introduction to the 1994 edition, Grinspoon makes it clear that his intent is neither to encourage nor to stigmatize those who partake of the demon flower. This is just the facts, ma'am, a fogie's guide to Xanadu. Grinspoon has collected and synthesized a great deal of information, and he gives ample to time to the anti-weed agenda. The author quotes a few scary tidbits from the FBI: "He [the user] becomes a fiend with savage or 'cave man' tendencies. His sex desires are aroused and some of the most horrible crimes result..." Horrible crimes, not the least of which were Dingo boots, halter tops and the Average White Band.

Perhaps this will contribute to your already ample research on the topic of stimulating user conversations. "Have you ever noticed that the architecture of Leverett Towers is clearly projectile and phallic whereas Claverly Hall is mammary?" "Have you ever noticed that the words 'gender issue' sound a lot like 'genital tissue?"' Usually at this point, someone decides that it would be a real good idea to break out the Air Supply album.

But this research is after all, personal and subjective. Grinspoon, by necessity, aims for generalizations. Maribuana Reconsidered is a long book, equal parts history, biology and psyche, with a little bit of philosophical speculation thrown in for good measure. You might want to skip a few of the more boring chapters, particularly "From Plant to Intoxicant," which will only interest the most finicky connoisseurs.

More compelling are the case studies from history and literature presented in "Acute Intoxication-Literary Reports." Grinspoon includes everything from Theophile de Gaultier's observations of "a multitude of bodiless heads like cherubims, with such comical expressions" to Alan Ginsburg's musings on the benefits of snibidish, all vigorously footnoted.

"Acute Intoxication: Its Properties" is an unnecessary chapter. The drug's effects are well-known, well-documented, and often disconcertingly evident in our neighbors. One sensitive lad I know suffers from a sudden and inexplicable inclination toward flash photography while under the influence.

In a section discussing the motivations of the average user, Grinspoon makes some interesting correlations between the "intellectual" atmosphere of a college and the rate of drug use among its students--they're supposedly directly proportional.

Grinspoon's account of the drug's effects are both scarier and, somehow, more prosaic: "Micropsia and macropsia (or megaplosia) have been frequently reported [as well as] the sensation that [people and objects] are rushing toward [the user] at tremendous speed, increasing in size as they approach." He doesn't mention that this peculiar sensation can happen stone-cold-sober when trying to get an autograph at Disney World. I was seven. I was so excited. I walked right up to the Mouse and thrust a pen in his face. Suddenly, I heard a disconcertingly masculine voice emanating from the oversized plastic head, and it spoke to me. It spoke to me. And it said: "Look, kid, my hands are too big." Talk about sensory dissonance.

Unfortunately, much of the prose suffers from an acute seventies tinge. Describing the typical user's reaction, Grinspoon writes. marijuana "heightens (or so they assert) capacity to feel, to appreciate, to perceive, AND TO SHARE." The Brady undertones elude poor Grinspoon, but the subtext of 70s culture adds to the book's entertainment value. This increases with the level of THC in your system.