PROTEST: PROHIBITION AND POT

[Music] we took this goldfish and put him into 3% alcohol solution he died in 40 minutes we then put him into uh pure alcohol to preserve him as a specimen and within a very few minutes the gold dissolved in the fish and ran out into the alcohol leaving the fish as white as a piece of not paper this goldfish is not the first poor fish that has lost his gold when he took to alcohol marijuana alter your perception of reality it does uh create a condition within the Mind where the ideas move very uh fluidly and without inner relation one to the other it distorts your perception of reality it may in high doses cause hallucinations ideas of death it may depress the individual so that for example one Congressman reported a classmate of mine triy of his rather tried marijuana and committed suicide [Music] these are people breaking the law for 14 years from 1919 to 1933 the great majority of Americans protested against prohibition they deliberately broke the law which said no person shall manufacture sell barter transport import export deliver furnish or possess intoxicating Liquors [Music] The Rum Runners poured Barrel after Barrel into Atlantic Seaboard ports from such Island outposts as Havana and Nassau only an occasional arrest was made when federal agents destroyed an Al Capone Brewery in Chicago the notorious gangster complained of the double standard when I sell liquor he said it's bootlegging when my Patron serve it on a silver tray it's hospitality creative Americans made whiskey and everything from spatoon to fire extinguishers while the prohibitionist led by Evangelist Billy Sunday fought to save the noble experiment from repeal the saloon are Dead's an Egyptian mommy she's too dead to skin but her ghost hangs like a moral paralysis over our land but no man woman or child alive today will ever live to see the stars and stripes way more over an open license FL in the United States my friend of America when I was a farmer boy of only 16 I went into an old Saloon while you couldn't go legally unless you were 21 and I took this hand and passed the money across the counter of that Saloon in maretta jorger and bought the RI lior that sent me staggering home on my mother's broken heart my dear young girl the young man who seeks to have you take a drink does not do it because he loves you he has some other motive my dear boy do you want your sister to yield to such Temptation or be let astray ethyl alcohol has two characteristic actions it's a solvent and a dehydrant these two actions are safe and useful on inanimate substances outside the body but these same two actions are the cause of injury on living tissue when taken into the body in the form of beer Ale Wine cider rum whiskey gin or Brandy you're the enemy of every law of God and man in the name of 28 million school boys and girls I smash them up above your hand alcohol is a deadly double narcotic irritant brain poison it clogs the liver it rots the kidneys it inflames the stomach it hardens the arteries it weakens the heart it softens the brain it lowers the defensive power of the white blood corpuses it decreases the oxygen absorbing and oxygen carrying power of the red blood corpuses is just as truly a habit forming poison as morphine or cocaine and if you drink enough of it it will give you a green brain and a red nose and a white liver and a black heart and put the yellow streak clear through you if I were president of the United States I would do with this forish and question like Teddy Roosevelt did with every question he tackled I use a big stick on a big job a big way they say well people don't obey it we'll repeal it all right then repeal the Ten Commandments they don't obey them and yet no law on the statute books is enforced 100% And You Know It The Distillery on the hillside now is still and the men they take their Tipple from the Ripple of the real the boys they go home sober and M she don't cry Glory Hallelujah Uncle Samuel stay dry this convention wants repealed the Democratic Convention in [Applause] 1932 your candidate want repal Franklin deleno Roosevelt called for repeal of the 18th Amendment and I am confident that the United States of America wants repel a cold glass of beer sounded Mighty refreshing in the midst of the Great [Applause] Depression this is more than a political campaign it is a call to arm give me your help not to win folks alone but to win in this crusade to restore and America to its own [Applause] people Franklin Roosevelt's Landslide victory in the November election gave congress ample reason to act a resolution was quickly approved providing for an amendment calling for the repeal of [Music] prohibition repeal ended the first experiment expent to write moral legislation into the law of the land it also brought to a close a dangerous period of crime and [Music] violence when America looked back few could understand how prohibition had ever been allowed to happen in 1919 comedian Will Rogers explained it if you think this country ain't dry he said just watch them vote if you think this country ain't wet just watch them drink you see will explained when they vote it's counted but when they drink it ain't today marijuana LSD speed and many other drugs are used by a segment of the public who rationalize the illegality in the same schizophrenic or double standard way many Americans did during the 14 years of Prohibition are the comparisons valid are the dangers the same should the public have the right to decide hearings are held in Washington in an attempt to find answers to difficult questions last year in California alone marijuana arrests of young people under 18 years of age increased 180% yes sir because there's more clandestine manufacturer there also more opportunity for illegal importation of the drug across the borders of the uh North and South there's a great element of danger in the secret use or abuse of these drugs we are currently observing an increase in the presence in usage of the drug known as speed which is methampetamine a stimulant drug which can be taken either by injection or orally even in the hippie communities the word is out speed kills the truth is we are ignorant regarding the actual amount of drug abuse in this country it's it's a very difficult fact back to Asain we have to be very careful when we talk about use to define use and not throw together the young person who has tried any of these drugs once in in the spirit of Adventure in the spirit of seeking in the spirit of uh wanting to know what it's all about with those with that relatively small group which has made drug use an important part of their lives I think it's not a crucial difference whether 15% of our college students use marijuana or LSD or whether it's only 6% as has been reported by different investigators it seems to me the problem would require solution if it were just 1% or less and I'm sure you agree as I understand the uh legislation itself LSD will be a misdemeanor marijuana is 10 years which of course is a felony two to 10 as I with discretion provided it is a felony so you have even though the marijuana from your own testimony is is certainly less dangerous you have a more severe penalty than you'd have for LSD which is considerably more dangerous and then what we're asking is for the young people to try and comply with uh this kind of uh legislative jumble and expect uh and expect them to show some respect for the law let me put it this way there are always a group of people in society who if there is not a law will carry out a certain act but when a law does exist they will not engage in that act so it's with that portion of society that the law may have the greatest impact there are many young people in our colleges who do not use drugs who do not intend to use drugs who do not approve of drug use who still defend the right of other young people to use drugs at the same time we must consider the changing attitudes among our young people particularly who regard drug use particularly marijuana use with alarming tolerance alcohol is our most widely used drug in every pharmacological and medical sense it is a drug but most people prefer to call it a beverage and do not include it in their definition of drug or of Dangerous Drug we haven't been successful in eliminating the abuse of alcohol is in our society this continues to be a problem uh and so we have to proceed with the understanding that this is less than a perfect world every drug and I'm talking now about alcohol about nicotine about about caffeine about medical drugs all kinds of drugs are potentially dangerous drugs and I think this is the message that we must get to our young people the problem must be viewed in the forboding spectrum of things to come if we fail to deal effectively with it now but I would like also to point out that if you think that the use of marijuana is purely a phenomenon of the college student I think you are making a very great mistake marijuana want a drug primarily used by lowincome groups is today available in the affluent suburbs in colleges and high schools and in the military estimates on users in the United States range as high as 20 million in Great Neck New York a welltoo community with an outstanding school system students comment on their exposure to the drug problem I think it all stems from the home and at a home at a poor home it's the problems that confront them I think that uh what the school tries to do is good but uh it can only pick up where the parents leave off I think they probably start because of a basic insecurity um they don't know what they want they trying and Escape reality so that they don't have to think about what is going to come in the future and so they start taking drugs people who are not able to adjust to school life to community life I think these are the people who go to narcotics I think that it definitely Ely is is a result of a uh of this type of Personality uh rather than our uh uh active people who fit in very well in in our community they have to escape from the reality from the world that they live in and find a reality that they're happy in what I found startling was the accessibility of drugs in gr neck almost a quarter of the students in the school had seen people using drugs or had been able to purchase drugs at one time this is the part of the poll which I found most surprising people do have a tendency once they hear about narcotics and dope to blow it out of proportion I don't think it's fair to great now well many of them are are kind of bored with W with life at this point um although I've been told that many adolescents of our age aboard with life at this point um I just think they take it for kicks today a young person with a Narcotics conviction regardless of his background will find it difficult to enter teaching law or to gain employment in many Industries a young person who broke the law during the 14 years of Prohibition was with a majority and in the main went unpunished protest is being heard today on both sides of the question should drug use be legalized or should the penalties for its use be made more [Music] severe [Music] the