Marihuana Use Among the New Bohemians

Abstract

The cursory look at the arrest statistics for marihuana possession and sale in most of the American states suggests that usage is increasing enormously. The traditional shape of marihuana demand and distribution seems to have shifted beginning sometime in the early 1 960's. A partial explanation of the shift is that potential youthful users were no longer convinced that marihuana's effects were harmful. For decades there has been some dispute over the drug's effects. The reports published by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics described marihuana's effects as very strong, often leading to violence, often accompanied by nausea at the early stages, creating wild hallucinations, fostering wild exotic outbursts subjecting the user to a loss of moral control, resulting in a loss of will power so that any far-fetched suggestion was likely to be followed, creating vast distortions in time and space, and often causing the user to blank out--either on the scene or retrospectively so that whatever weird behavior occurred was forgotten the following day .1 Others reported that marihuana's effects were mild, leading to affability, high but pleasant spirits, mild distortions of time and space which were considered pleasant, increased sensitily to taste, musical sounds, colors, and touch and a mild release of some inhibitions.