A Column By John Sinclair
Hi
Dr, Michael Aldrich, Co founder of LEMAR, which was California Marijuana Initiative (CMI) 50 years agoeverybody, welcome to wintertime in America for another year, and please join me in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking California Marijuana Initiative (CMI), the first attempt by citizens to directly change the law through the petition process.
I had the honor and privilege of participating in this effort by California potheads to take the foot of the police and courts and prisons off the neck of the marijuana smoke.
I was drafted by Dr. Michael Aldrich into the California movement and elected to the board of directors of the Amorphia corporation, a nonprofit agency that raised money for the legalization struggle by manufacturing and selling rolling papers under the brand name Acapulco Gold.
Under the direction of Amorphia chief Blair Newman, Amorphia pioneered the creation of hemp rolling papers, a form of smoking accessory theretofore nonexistent.
Blair worked closely with Spanish rolling paper manufacturers to develop the correct blend of materials for the paper, then supervised their manufacture and their packaging into the distinctive green-and-gold packaging, heralding the presence of Acapulco Gold papers.
When California smokers decided that it was time to make a head-on challenge to the state cannabis laws, Amorphia political director Gordon Brownell led the charge to underwrite the grassroots effort by committing to the CMI what amounted to Amorphia’s net profits from the sales of its rolling papers.
As Everett R. Bolles of the New York Times put it back on October 10, 1972, in probably the first instance of national attention to the marijuana legalization movement:
“SAN DIEGO, Oct. 9—The distributors of a cigarette paper made especially for ‘pot’ smokers are providing the principal financial backing for a proposal on the California ballot Nov. 7, [1972,] that would legalize the use of marijuana by adults.
“Bearing the name of Acapulco Gold and made from the ‘denatured’ leaves of the Cannabis, or marijuana, plant, the brown tissue thin papers are imported and sold by a San Francisco company, Amorphia, Inc., whose officers include a former member of President Nixon’s White House staff.
“The company, incorporated in California as a nonprofit enterprise engaged in ‘social reform,’ has contributed $15,000 thus far from its sales of Acapulco Gold to promote support for the California marijuana initiative, known as Proposition 19 on the state ballot.
“An additional sum of $5,000 has been contributed by Amorphia to campaigns attempting to ‘decriminalize’ marijuana in Michigan, Oregon and the state of Washington.”
When he refers to Michigan, he’s talking about the help that Amorphia gave to the Michigan Marijuana Initiative of 1972, of which I was the spearhead, and although we were a long way from a win, we started the process that eventually resulted in the legalization of medical marijuana in 2008 and of recreational weed in 2018.
Gordon Brownell cites the results of a 1972 statewide poll that indicated that two thirds of California’s voters were opposed to relaxing marijuana controls. “Until recently, we were concentrating on registering the newly enfranchised 18 to 21 year olds, who are almost solidly behind Proposition 19,” he said. “Now we’re going after the straight voters, the squares, who do not use marijuana.”
The New York Times reporter adds, “Proposition 19 would remove all criminal penalties from personal possession, cultivation and use of marijuana by persons 18 and older.”
He also reports that “Amorphia was the principal source of funds for promoting the California Marijuana Initiative” to the tune of “about $50,000.”
Well, as it turned out, it wasn’t their financial support of our collective legalization efforts that drove Amorphia into bankruptcy, it was the costs associated with the elongated process of developing rolling papers actually made of hemp products.
The legion of CMI veterans who are still alive in our 70s and 80s recently got together in San Francisco in person and via Zoom to celebrate our 50 years of effective activism and look together toward a future in which Amorphia’s goal of “Free, Legal Backyard Marijuana” finally becomes a reality—when the growing and distribution of marijuana is treated like the farming of carrots or tomatoes and not as some kind of shady, harmful activity.
As the New York Times reported in 1972, “More than 200,000 Californians have been arrested on marijuana charges in the last two years. Enforcement costs during that period have been estimated at more than $175 million.”
Of course this figure kept increasing for another 50 years, until the armed minions of law enforcement amassed billions of dollars and unequaled arrest powers as the perpetrators of the war on drugs, and it’s one of the great achievements during my lifetime of people striving for freedom and justice and the right to their pursuit of happiness.
But until these thugs in the police forces, courts and legislatures are ultimately and completely deprived of their power over our lives as marijuana consumers, we will continue to shout FREE THE WEED!
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