Marijuana: Just Ignore It

From an interview with Germaine Greer in the January 1972 issue of Playboy magazine:

Playboy: How do you feel about pot?

Greer: I think it's pretty good. It's a relaxing sort of drug. It helps people cool out a bit and see what the connections are between things they were too uptight to see before. It's produced a new kind of mind, I think. People are much more introspective than formerly. In an uncritical sort of way, they're actually observing patterns of behavior without a desire to classify them with all the old household psychology terms. I think if marijuana could replace cigarettes and liquor, we'd be doing everybody a service.

Playboy: Contrary to what you're saying now, haven't you gone on record against the legalization of pot?

Greer: Yes, but my position doesn't contradict what I just said. I've pointed out that, at the present time, marijuana is the people's traffic. When it's legalized, it will be taken away from the people and a situation will develop in which its production and marketing are controlled by the same firms that now sell cigarettes. I've even heard that names like Acapulco Gold and Panama Red have been copyrighted by the cigarette firms and that they've already designed the marketing for marijuana and they're just waiting for the signal to go. And, of course, governments will tax it to death. It'll be as degraded as tobacco is in cigarettes, so that the marijuana just won't be the same thing. Now we smoke fresh marijuana or hashish and we know how to distinguish good from bad. So I say to the kids, "Do you really want to pay even more than you pay now? And do you want to know that smoking marijuana is financing nuclear armaments and wars in Vietnam and all that crap?"

Playboy: But don't you agree that whatever disadvantages legalization may introduce, it would at least eliminate jail sentences for users?

Greer: I don't want them to legalize marijuana, I just want them to ignore it. I mean, they didn't outlaw boiled eggs and then legalize them, did they? They just let you eat them. You know, it's like this silly society to talk about legalizing things that we all simply ought to be able to take for granted.


https://www.playboy.co.uk/the-articles/interview/64877/1/Playboy-Interview-Germaine-Greer/commentsPage/1/contentPage/14