Planet News

Senate Fights the "Cannabis Epidemic"

"The scale of the cannabis epidemic makes it a matter calling for urgent national consideration." recently charged Senator James O. Eastland (D. Miss.), chairman of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. At the same time he announced that the committee will continue "its investigations of the impact of the drug traffic on U.S. security."

The SISS, affectionately known as the Eastland Committee, is the Senate version of the McCarthy-Era House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). They have conducted such campaigns as a 1970 investigation into the "Extent of Subversion in the New Left."

The committee's surveillance and harassment techniques include photographing people entering and leaving private homes, the cataloguing of license plates seen at an SDS convention. and the subpoenaing of banks records to determine sources of funding.

Eastland charged that the increased use "of marijuana and hashish has been brought about, in part, by a militant pro-marijuana propaganda campaign conducted by many New Left organizations and by the entire Underground press ever since the Berkeley uprising." He also said the increase in use was because "a number of highly publicized reports...have taken a rather benign attitude towards marijuana."

The Senator also expressed alarm that the "qualitative escalation from marijuana to hashish" is now leading to a further escalation to hash oil. He charged that "since ordinary hashish with its 10 percent THC content can result in hallucinations and grave disorientation, and since one drop of 'liquid hash' is enough to get the user stoned, it is clear that two or three drops could have mind-blowing consequences."

--LNS