Weed Warriors
The cannabis we smoke, vape and eat owes its increased legal status to pioneering activists
“Please, Playboy, keep up your fight against our barbaric marijuana laws.” This January 1969 entreaty from a reader, regarding a Texas man who had received a 50-year sentence for selling a matchbox full of marijuana for $5, was one of more than three dozen letters about marijuana the magazine printed that year alone. One reader had been busted for .87 milligrams—about “four seeds and 15 grains of leaf”—found in his former apartment. The husband of another faced up to 10 years in prison for possessing 20 milligrams, about seven thousandths of an ounce. At the time, selling pot to a minor in Georgia could get you life in prison; a second offense, the death penalty. A simple possession sentence in Louisiana? Up to 99 years in jail.
To most observers, the punishments clearly did not fit the crimes. Personal liberties were at stake, and that was enough to catch Playboy's attention—though of course the pleasurable aspects of pot use fell squarely within the magazine’s wheelhouse as well. Playboy had been covering marijuana-related topics since at least 1960, when it convened a panel of jazzmen including Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie to talk about narcotics and music. Later that decade, the magazine published a professional assessment entitled Pot: A Rational Approach. “Not only is marijuana comparatively harmless on the face of all the evidence,” wrote trailblazing psychiatrist Dr. Joel Fort, “but there are even reasons to believe it may be beneficial in some cases.” The title could well describe the course of action that publisher Hugh Hefner felt his magazine should take when it came to the drug. It would not endorse but would explore, calling attention to unjust laws and outmoded thinking. Supporting Americans’ prerogative to choose came naturally to Hefner, who early in his multi-installment Playboy Philosophy had declared he would maintain “the right to hoot irreverently at herders of sacred cows and keepers of stultifying tradition and taboo.”
Then, in 1970, Hefner met an ally. The state of pot in America would never be the same.
Keith Stroup, a young lawyer in Washington, D.C. who had been radicalized by the Vietnam war, was trying to establish the country’s first pro-pot consumer advocacy lobby—a revolutionary idea well-suited to the era. The newly formed Playboy Foundation, he thought, might grant him some much-needed support. Stroup applied for funds and was eventually invited to make his case to Hefner in Chicago, where he explained that with his nascent National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws he would campaign against marijuana prohibition and advocate for just laws and the fair treatment of users. A few days later, Stroup got an offer of $5,000 from the foundation, with the possibility of more funding should his organization demonstrate its value. It quickly did.
Then, in 1970, Hefner met an ally. The state of pot in America would never be the same.
Keith Stroup, a young lawyer in Washington, D.C. who had been radicalized by the Vietnam war, was trying to establish the country’s first pro-pot consumer advocacy lobby—a revolutionary idea well-suited to the era. The newly formed Playboy Foundation, he thought, might grant him some much-needed support. Stroup applied for funds and was eventually invited to make his case to Hefner in Chicago, where he explained that with his nascent National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws he would campaign against marijuana prohibition and advocate for just laws and the fair treatment of users. A few days later, Stroup got an offer of $5,000 from the foundation, with the possibility of more funding should his organization demonstrate its value. It quickly did.
“Within a few months, Playboy had committed to $100,000 a year in direct funding to NORML,” Stroup says. The funding lasted throughout the decade. In addition, the magazine donated free full-page ads, which Stroup estimates brought in about $50,000 for NORML every time they ran, and Playboy held NORML fund-raisers at both the Chicago and Los Angeles mansions. The magazine’s coverage, including a 1977 Playboy Interview with Stroup, was also a boon to the group, which needed to win the hearts and minds of tokers and teetotalers if it was to effect real change.
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“During the 1970s, whenever we would help some poor victim get out of jail who’d been locked up on a nonviolent marijuana offense, the Playboy Forum would feature that case,” Stroup says. “It was incredibly helpful to us.”
Stroup and other NORML lobbyists crisscrossed the country, seeking out state-level legislators willing to introduce decriminalization proposals and using the funding to send expert witnesses to the state hearings, “so that legislator looked like he knew what he was doing rather than looking like some radical,” Stroup says. It worked: From 1973 to 1978, 11 states decriminalized marijuana, starting with Oregon. NORML also decided to take its battle to court, bringing the very first lawsuit against the government for classifying cannabis as a Schedule 1 drug—a designation it shares to this day with heroin.
Today, 66 percent of Americans support legalization—a far cry from the mere 12 percent that did in 1969. To a significant degree, this shift in public opinion is due to the work NORML has done over the decades. “But for that incredible support of the Playboy Foundation and Hugh Hefner individually,” Stroup says, “I don’t think NORML would have lasted beyond the first six months.” We’ll smoke to that.
Stroup and other NORML lobbyists crisscrossed the country, seeking out state-level legislators willing to introduce decriminalization proposals and using the funding to send expert witnesses to the state hearings, “so that legislator looked like he knew what he was doing rather than looking like some radical,” Stroup says. It worked: From 1973 to 1978, 11 states decriminalized marijuana, starting with Oregon. NORML also decided to take its battle to court, bringing the very first lawsuit against the government for classifying cannabis as a Schedule 1 drug—a designation it shares to this day with heroin.
Today, 66 percent of Americans support legalization—a far cry from the mere 12 percent that did in 1969. To a significant degree, this shift in public opinion is due to the work NORML has done over the decades. “But for that incredible support of the Playboy Foundation and Hugh Hefner individually,” Stroup says, “I don’t think NORML would have lasted beyond the first six months.” We’ll smoke to that.
From the Spring 2019 Playboy.
