The date the Tosh recording was released: June, 1976.
In the late 60's mj became common, with it having been said to me that a lot of Thai sticks and such came into the U.S. via McChord Air Base in the SeaTac area, that being a story circulating in Seattle back then. No customs, no questions, just into local commerce. True or not, that story circulated.
Dope was viewed as pacification of unrest over the stupid Vietnam War, containing China so Indonesia would not go red. Back then Commies were Verboten to move hither and yon to undo our fine old American Capitalism paradigm. An enemy within, and outside, an enemy against "core values."
Since then China has gone Capitalist - big time - where party membership is the badge of being within the prospering elite. We have oligarchs. Russia has oligarchs. China has party oligarchs. All is well, now.
And seventy years after Vietnam protesting and domestic pacification, finally, after Israel has led the comercialization way, money is to be made - that being recognized, taxation to follow, capital doing its thing.
Why the delay? Control. By whom? DEA. Why loosening of the reins? Private Enterprise -- What we all worship. Calling bullshit on bullshit is not unmerited.
So, the story, AP online, carried, for example, by https://www.usnews.com
How much more mainstream can you get? Sure, it was fine back then. Anyone who's used a bong knows of the tar, the regular rubbing alcohol and salt cleaning, tar much of which passes to the lungs as with demon weed tobacco smoke, so figure that out. In old age, lung health is tardily recognized as a thing that could delay the Reaper, old stoners deferring.
Fine national decision making. After seventy years of repression, arrests, and exploitation of a user community by handgun armed contesting illegal traffickers, the DNA DEA snapping up a few folks, no tax income, so the Biden administration is draining a part of the law enforcement industrial complex swamp, a reconfiguration, while the privatized prison lobby-industry is now needing to go after sordid, pitiful copper wire thieves and their junk-dealer enablers now for cell occupancy income, etc. (Don't bet on the junk-dealer enablers being jugged, bet on the small-time busts, as was with mj being the target.) Copper wire theft, with MSM reporting - shaming some Hmong or other Asian types scruffing for money which seems to be what the nation these days is all about. Stupid? Not busting and shaming the purchasing network in wire thefts? You decide.
.................................................
With all that sort of shit, saying "Great Again" is too easy for our giant growing grifter community.
With too many ignorant buy-ins to where red MAGA cap sales prosper. Through the fucking roof, those caps, somebody's cash cow getting milked. Trump network going SPAC. We as a nation might question events and trends.
But, light up, kick back, the DEA faction is easing up, so you should ease up too. Per USAToday -
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will move to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, The Associated Press has learned, a historic shift to generations of American drug policy that could have wide ripple effects across the country.
The proposal, which still must be reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, would recognize the medical uses of cannabis and acknowledge it has less potential for abuse than some of the nation’s most dangerous drugs. However, it would not legalize marijuana outright for recreational use.
The agency's move, confirmed to the AP on Tuesday by five people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive regulatory review, clears the last significant regulatory hurdle before the agency’s biggest policy change in more than 50 years can take effect.
Once OMB signs off, the DEA will take public comment on the plan to move marijuana from its current classification as a Schedule I drug, alongside heroin and LSD. It moves pot to Schedule III, alongside ketamine and some anabolic steroids, following a recommendation from the federal Health and Human Services Department. After the public comment period and a review by an administrative judge, the agency would eventually publish the final rule.
Attorney General Merrick Garland’s signature throws the full weight of the Justice Department behind the move and appears to signal its importance to the Biden administration.
70 years after Tosh sang, an election on the near-term horizon. Tosh tune time. From the 1970s.
__________UPDATE__________
Because prior publishing on Crabgrass has been critical of the current Israeli government and its ultra right-wing political disregard for rights and/or hostility toward other Palestinians, a clarification is needed.
Saying that Israel has been a leader in commercialization of cannabis medicine and recreational use is a fact, not a criticism, nor a meme such as "my son the doctor" or a Protocols viewpoint. Natural product research among organic chemists is a field of existing study, and as to cannabis, Israeli scientists were earlier to reexamine the plant product chemistry than were scientists elsewhere.
A generic search link was given above. From that this item, with another with a parallel story, same website, give a "popular science" level of understanding of the fact that one pioneer Israeli researcher started the medical cannabis natural products research which had been moribund since Anslinger's time, as Anslinger's legacy.
Readers can research him, but basically the story seems to be that after prohibition was repealed Anslinger's bureau had to justify continued funding and marijuana at the time was more popular in a sub-population which could more easily be demonized, so Anslinger segued from demon rum to demon weed.
While cannabis had been a worldwide folk medicine for eons, it became a bastard stepchild for which research grants were largely unavailable in the U.S., and the curiosity by happenstance was greater for a singular Israeli researcher, with growth from there.
That is a story in science, apart from one in economics or in policy. Science overcoming ignorance and bad lore is a good story, apart from the bad story of Hamas and Israel at war, with consequent Gazan civilian suffering beyond reason.
Crabgrass does not wrongly conflate the two threads, and readers should heed the differences.