FREE THE WEED 08
A Column by John Sinclair
First off, I’d like to thank all the people in my home town of Flint who came out
to celebrate my birthday with me and the great band called Glowb at Churchill’s
earlier this month. I had a great time and I’d like to give thanks to my friend Chris
Kotarski and my publisher, Ben Horner, who threw the party for me.
I was born October 2, 1941 in Women’s Hospital on the west side of Flint. My
earliest years were spent in a little house on the bend of M-21 in Elba, just east
of Potter’s Lake, but I grew up in Davison, went away to college for a couple of
years and then returned to Flint and graduated from the University of Michigan—
Flint College in the spring of 1964.
I smoked my first joint in Flint just about 50 years ago and I’ve been getting high
on a daily basis ever since—except for the three years I was incarcerated in one
Michigan prison or another. I was first busted for weed in the fall of 1964, not
long after I’d moved to Detroit to attend graduate school in American Literature
at Wayne State University, and I began a lifetime of marijuana legalization
advocacy in January 1965.
I’ve been a poet since I was in college and I think it’s important to note that the
marijuana legalization movement was kicked off by a pair of eminent modern
poets in New York City: Allen Ginsberg and Ed Sanders. One day very early in
1965 I received in the U.S. mail an announcement that the bards had organized
a social action group called New York LEMAR (Legalize Marijuana) and called
their first demonstration for later in January. This is the demonstration that
produced the classic photo of Allen Ginsberg in an Uncle Sam top hat carrying a
placard that said POT IS FUN.
I took a few tokes, slid a stencil into my electric typewriter and punched out a
message heralding the formation of Detroit LEMAR, then strapped the stencil
onto the mimeograph machine at our Detroit Artists Workshop and printed out a
couple hundred flyers for immediate distribution around the WSU campus.
That’s how I got my start as a marijuana crusader. I was busted a second time
by the Detroit Narcotics Squad in August 1965—marijuana was then legally
classified as a narcotic—and I wanted to mount an immediate challenge to the
constitutionality of the Michigan statute. But my attorney, a great guy called Mike
Leven, explained that the penalty upon conviction for my crime of delivering
marijuana would be a minimum mandatory sentence of 20 years in prison, with
the possibility of life imprisonment.
My attorney convinced me that he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he was
responsible for losing my case in Recorders Court and causing me to be sent to
prison for 20 years to life. So he talked me into copping a plea and serving six
months in the Detroit House of Correction with another three years of probation
added on to the two years I was already serving.
I got out of DeHoCo in August 1966 and returned to my life in Detroit as a poet,
underground journalist, cultural organizer and vocal opponent of the marijuana
laws and the police who enforced them. As a consequence, I was busted for the
third time in January 1967 for giving two joints to an undercover policewoman
three days before Christmas.
This time I was determined to fight the law under which I expected to be
charged year after year, and happily I found sympathetic—and daring—legal
representative by a great attorney, Sheldon Otis, who was soon joined by a
young associate named Jusrin “Chuck” Ravitz. They prepared a comprehensive
legal challenge to the Michigan marijuana law and began to pursue it in Detroit
Recorders Court, which appointed a three-judge panel—for the first time in
Michigan jurisprudence—to consider our constitutional challenge.
The panel ruled that the issue couldn’t be decided without a conviction on
appeal, and both the Michigan Court of Appeals and the Michigan Supreme
Court upheld this decision, so I went to trial 2-1/2 years later, in July 1969, on a
charge of possession of two joints. (The transfer charge was dropped the day
before trial.)
In order to keep the record clear for our appeal, I offered no defense except
on constitutional grounds: that marijuana was not a narcotic and a ten-year
sentence for possession was cruel and unusual punishment. My conviction was
entered and I was sentenced on July 28, 1969 to 9-1/2 to 10 years in prison.
Despite the lofty nature of my constitutional challenge to the law and the
innocuous nature of my crime, the courts would not allow me an appeal bond
while my case wound its way through the appeals process and I was sent to
Jackson Prison, then to Marquette Prison in the Upper Peninsula for a year
under maximum security, then back to Jackson under maximum security for
another year and a half.
The Michigan Court of Appeals refused appeal bond on the grounds that I was
a danger to society, a decision also upheld by the Michigan Supreme Court, so
I remained under severe incarceration until December 1971 when the Michigan
Legislature enacted a new drug law that removed marijuana from the narcotics
classification and reduced the sentence for possession to one year.
Since I’d already served 29 months of my unconstitutional sentence and my
argument on appeal had already been heard by the Supreme Court, I was
granted an appeal bond and released from prison on December 13, 1971. Three
months later the Supreme Court agreed that the previous marijuana law was
unconstitutional and reversed my conviction. I’ve been free ever since.
Marijuana has remained illegal all this time, although the Michigan Medical
Marihuana Act of 2008 passed by the vote of 62% of Michigan citizens
has opened a window onto a new era for the marijuana user, although law
enforcement is loath to give up its power over the lives of the innocent people
who are victimized by the bizarre machinations of the War On Drugs.
I don’t know exactly what made me recount this story here except perhaps the
passing of an extraordinary milestone in the form of my 70th birthday and the
current agitation to further reform the marijuana laws and decriminalize our
beloved herb after another 40 years of arrests and convictions of thousands and
thousands of marijuana smokers.
It’s time to take the police out of the picture as far as this benevolent herb and
powerful medicine is concerned. In fact, it’s way past time, and it can be done by
continuing the struggle in the courts and at the ballotbox to institute a rational and
humane methodology for responding to and answering the needs of people who
smoke marijuana for whatever reasons.
It’s none of their business! Let It Grow! Vote Green in 2012!
—Detroit
October 24, 2011
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