Louis Silverstein thinks marijuana never gets the respect it deserves.
This should not be the case, said Silverstein, a professor of liberal education at Chicago's Columbia College and author of Deep Spirit & Great Heart: Living in Marijuana Consciousness, in which he takes a more profound and enlightened look at the popular illegal intoxicant.
"Marijuana use, if afforded the respect it deserves as a plant, teacher and guide to living in a higher state of consciousness in a disciplined manner, can be good for you," he said in an e-mail interview. "Marijuana can at its essence make us aware of heaven not as a place, but as a state of consciousness."
Silverstein indicates there is a problem when a drug that is highly regarded by everyone from teenage burnouts to academic scholars is still criminalized. He attributes this to fear instilled in the public through media sensationalism and government propaganda and asks what the real underlying threat of mind-expanding drugs in America is.
"Explorations into the human possibility afford us the opportunity to rise above the commandments of our mercantilism," he said. "Shop, buy, consume, we are what we own and possess. Watch the screen and dream the mass dream."
The book is narrated in a diary-like form and chronicles the life of Ganja, a man who ritualistically smoked marijuana for over 30 years, calling it his "ambrosia" and a gateway into "the tree of knowledge." Ganja's diary entries during the last two years of his life include more ethereal and sometimes far-fetched visions about how marijuana's secret powers lead to a divine consciousness.
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It is unlikely many pot-smokers try to undertake "journeys revealing an immersion into an imminent and transcendent ultimate reality," as Silverstein suggests. But within a few pages of the introduction, there are several very cogent claims that marijuana is definitely worth more than the average recreational smoker gives it credit for.
The book addresses the complex and polarized social and political issues raised by marijuana Silverstein takes a look at history and compares today's drug policy to McCarthyism, saying the "Just Say No or Say Nothing" approach to marijuana leads to mass paranoia. He goes on to say the war on drugs is this generation's Cold War.
Like many other pro-marijuana writers, Silverstein said the war on drugs is futile. While this is anything but a revelation, he puts it more eloquently than your average crackpot when he concludes, "The human urge to gain the effects of drug use ultimately is so strong that we cannot be either educated or frightened out of it. History teaches us that it is fruitless to hope that drugs will ever disappear, and that any effort to eliminate them from society is doomed to failure."
