If pot had never been discovered...

The Russians supposedly gave lots of opium to chinese in order to keep them peaceful and control them. THis led to great addictions to opium in China

Krispy Kreme and Dunkin Donuts would have been nothing.

Most of creativity was inspired by drugs...

None of this!??!!



My early years would have been REALLY boring!!

We would still be getting stiff on lichen, cactus, and fermented June-bugs.

That, and the textile industry wouldn't be using so much chlorine or patented synthetics.

There wouldn't be so many goddamn college jam bands hogging the show space in this town.

Ah, but on the flipside, I would have missed those high school Saturday nights listening to Dark Side of the Moon in my basement.

Thanks for bringing up a subject that is almost taboo in this country, that is discussing hallucinogens objectively. So called drug education consists of virtually nothing more that just saying "No."

Pot and the other stronger hallucinogins were responsible for more than the anti-war sentiment in this country. I think they were responsible to a large extent for the great cultural change that occurred during the sixties.

The people of the fifties were extremely repressed and conservative. Timothy Leary referred to that conservativsm in the phrase "the Soviet Mid-West."

The U.S. was still in a militaristic mood riding the wave created by the victory of WWII. All men wore military haircuts. To wear hair touching your ears or collar made you a virtual outcast. Parents were shocked by the hair style of the early Beatles, which, looking back, made them look like nothing more than choir boys..

I think people were, and still are, more afraid of the hallucinogens than the downers, including the ultimate downer, heroin. People using hallucinogens radicalize society, especially spiritually: America, for a whort while anyway, became peaceful. Someone said—and I forget the author—that god came to America in the form of hallucinogens. People use downers to kill pain, physical and psychological so people pity them or disdain them, but they don't fear them like they do hallucinogin users.

Half a million law enforcement people -- from the DEA to the local fuzz narcs -- would be out of work.

Whatever would the good people at ZigZag do?

resort to making zippers..

Q.) What did the Deadhead say when he ran out of pot?

A.) What's that horrible noise?

I don't know about Russia, and this is off-topic, but in the 18th century England did a flourishing drug trade with China. England grow opium in India then traded it—illegally—to China for tea and manufactured goods. When China tried to stop the trade England launched the opium wars. China was dealt a tragic and humiliating defeat.

I would have..um..I mean...pot smokers would have done other drugs instead.

One of these days I'm going to try some pot.

Just to see what all the fuss is about.

The statement that Russians supplied the Chinese with opium is completely without foundation. In the mid-1680's, Sofia Alexeevna, the regent for the boy Tsars, Ivan and Petr, agreed to make war on the Turks by attacking their proxies, the Crimean Tatars. As a consequence, she sent agents to negotiate a settlement with the Qing dynasty over the dispute about the Amur river valley. There was virtually no contact between Russia and China from 1689 until the mid-19th century. The treaty of Nerchinsk established the border, and set up trade agreements--but the Russians became involved in the politics of Europe, and turned from an eastward view to a westward view. All the trade was local (i.e., from Siberia). Opium is not produced in Siberia.

As Coluber correctly points out, the opium in China came from the English. The Chinese demanded payment for any goods in silver. They barred the import of nearly everything the English had to offer. But the English hit upon the idea of importing opium from India, so that the trade route to China to get silk and tea was not a dead loss. Without the least regard for the consequences of the opium trade for the Chinese people, they persisted in bringing opium into the country illegally. Here you will find Wikipedia's very brief but comprehensive description of the opium wars.

That's what I thought, but of course I didn't have the data Setanta does to back up my opium opinion.

Gus, that was wonderful.

I've smoked opium but not in years. I'd smoke some right now though given the opportunity. And do a couple fo Yager bombs. After all it's Saturday night.