Panama and paraquat
Nicholas von Hoffman
Washington In the last couple of days before the vote on the accursed Panama Canal treaty, the mass Media went slightly crackers on the subject. The smallest hesitation by any senator about his vote was broadcast everywhere while analysts filled the air with unconvincing explanations as to why Jimmy Carter had to 'win' this one. When at length he did win this One we were told this could mean that he Would have 'momentum', a quality which is highly prized in these parts in athletic teams and presidents.
Immediately after the treaty's ratification, albeit mutilated by Senate amendments, General Omar Torrijos, the supreme one of the republic of Panama, decided to act in blatantly banana ish fashion by telling Barbara Walters and other lesser television n,ews personalities that, had the Senate railed to ratify the agreem,ent, he and his followers were ready to rush Teddy koosevelt's ditch and destroy it. In the country at large, both sides in this dull controversy were getting boos, hisses and catcalls as an indifferent public grumbled about grown-up, adult senators spending so much time arguing over something of So little intrinsic importance. Other than the media which are always scavenging for stories of simple-minded, vapid conflict, the evidence is that scarcely two per cent of the Population was emotionally involved in the Not so for paraquat. During prohibition, rot-gut was the name applied to the fouler sorts of whisky distilled in the rusting radiators of abandoned model-T Fords. Today's equivalent is a form of lung-rot Marijuana which has been poisoned with a herbicide called paraquat. This substance is being sprayed on the pot fields of Mexico at the behest of and with equipment and technical advice from the Atterican government. Smuggling of the devil weed across the Rio Grande into the United States is supposed to go on at the rate n_f hundreds of thousands of tons a year. N_ evertheless, it is a particularly bitchy thing tor the administration to do when, at the !eine time, it is advocating the decriminalisation of the stuff. (What is meant by decriminalisation is making it legal to pos!Less small amounts for one's own use while '"e laws against selling or growing grass continue in force.) Since paraquat-poisoned Pot is suspected of causing lung damage if innoked over an undetermined but pro.113nged period of time, regular users are Lerious at cowardly politicians who dare wink at grass-smoking by advocating decriminalisation and then toady to the Puritan vote by poisoning the product.
And there are a lot of pot-smokers in this fair and free land. No good figures exist, yet it does appear that among students of all classes from the age of perhaps fourteen onwards, sizeable percentages are regular, although not necessarily heavy, smokers.
White-collar workers and professionals in their thirties and forties often serve pot or hash along with the after-dinner cordials and coffee. The current realities are best explained by a Nevada marijuana retailer, known in the business as Black Widow, who says, 'back in the 'sixties marijuana was hard to come by and dealers were, by and large, underworld-type characters whom one met on street corners and in parking lots and phone booths. It was all very clandestine and cloak-and-dagger, but then I was in my twenties and the paranoia merely added an adrenalin rush to the spice of life. As I grew up, so did the rest of my pot-smoking generation and we are now the establishment, salaried and respectable — but still potheads. This has created the demand for a new-type dealer, one who is part of the middle-class culture, who operates dis creetly, honestly and dependably. The business has moved from the streets of the ghettoes into the middle class parlours.
'The majority of the dealers and suppliers I've known in the past few years are in the business in order to support another, legitimate endeavour, e.g. artists for whom dealing provides a living so they can paint or sculpt, photographers, movie-makers, writers, crafts people, mental health professionals who can treat the poor. We are the highly educated but low-income segment of this society. I am one of this number. I built my business up very slowly —i.e. safely —and now clear about 1,300 dollars a month, not a fortune but enough to support me and provide the means for getting out of the business in the near future to do what! really want to do. And now we have to worry about the pot being contaminated with herbicide. That makes me furious. Of course, I'll protect myself and my customers by having all imported marijuana chemically analysed before I sample or sell it. But that's just an additional hassle and expense.'
There is hope for Black Widow. Economically marginal American farmers have begun to cultivate the illegal weed on a fairly big scale so that not only is a declining percentage of the pot smoked imported but domestic sinsemilla is considered the bestquality grass available anywhere by a dealer like Black Widow.
Other drugs, both of pleasure and therapy, were on people's minds when Betty Ford, the former President's wife, put herself into a Southern California hospital announcing she had become physically dependent on both alcohol and another drug, widely supposed to be the musclerelaxer and tranquilliser, Valium. She blamed herself, but the circumstances of the pinched nerve in her neck and painful chronic arthritis indicate it was her physicians who addicted her.
Beneath the general sympathy for a very popular public figure is more grumbling about doctors and their promiscuous and reckless prescription of every kind of drug. The word latrogenic,' now defined here to mean physician-caused illness, is gradually becoming a generally understood word as more and more people realise they have been turned into j unkie s by their doctors and that tens of thousands of hospital admissions are for patients suffering from the medicine prescribed for them by their not-so-friendly family healers. Doctors' prestige hasn't yet dropped to that of used car salesmen and politicians, but when Donald Kennedy, head of the Federal Drug Administration, made a I speech recently and called the multibilliondollar anti-cancer research effort 'a medical Vietnam,' there were few surprised faces,.
While America continues to screw up its courage to admit that the chemical feast has caused a nasty bellyache, the government did take fitful action. Andrea Brown, a high school teacher in Montgomery County, Maryland, was put on administrative leave without pay when it was discovered she was warning her students about the paraquat menace and distributing a mimeographed sheet explaining how they could get their dope tested to see if it were safe.
On the cheerier side, the Bureau of the Census reports that 1,508,000 unmarried persons now live with a member of the opposite sex in what is defined as 'a twoperson household.' Although the tax laws in the United States decidedly favour not getting married, the Bureau rejected that hypothesis, declaring instead 'it seems likely that most of them were partners, roommates, companions or friends.' And that just about covers it, dear English people.
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