Search Results for: Marijuana

Hollywood and Vietnam

Longreads Pick

A look back at how filmmakers handled the Vietnam War, and how they worked with the military—or ignored their recommendations—to get them made:

“In coming to the Pentagon with his plans in May, 1975, Coppola told Public Affairs officials that his initial script would need considerable work, especially the end, which he considered ‘surrealistic.’ While recognizing that the screenplay had considerable problems, the officials forwarded it to the Army with the recommendation that the service should work with the director so that the completed film ‘will be an honest presentation.’

“The Army found little basis to even talk to Coppola, responding that the script was ‘simply a series of some of the worst things, real or imagined, that happened or could have happened during the Vietnam War.’ According to the service, it had little reason to consider extending cooperation ‘in view of the sick humor or satirical philosophy of the film.’ Army officers pointed to several ‘particularly objectionable episodes’ which presented its actions ‘in an unrealistic and unacceptable bad light.’ These included scenes of U.S. soldiers scalping the enemy, a surfing display in the midst of combat, an officer obtaining sexual favors for his men, and later smoking marijuana with them.”

Source: Film Comment
Published: Sep 1, 1979
Length: 19 minutes (4,831 words)

Mugglemarch

Longreads Pick

Following the massive success of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling has written a novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy:

“Rowling told me, ‘Very recently, I met a girl in a shop. She was in her early twenties, and she came up to me and said, “May I hug you?” And I said yes, and we hugged. And she said, “You were my childhood.” That’s an amazing thing to hear.’

“Some people find this disheartening. In Edinburgh, I met Alan Taylor, a journalist and the editor of the Scottish Review of Books, who despaired of Rowling’s ‘tin ear’ and said of her readers, ‘They were giving their childhood to this woman! They were starting at seven, and by the time they were sixteen they were still reading bloody Harry Potter—sixteen-year-olds, wearing wizard outfits, who should have been shagging behind the bike shed and smoking marijuana and reading Camus.'”

Author: Ian Parker
Source: The New Yorker
Published: Sep 24, 2012
Length: 37 minutes (9,343 words)

Rethinking schizophrenia as a brain disorder that requires medication, and recognizing that part of the cure is looking at the social factors that cause mental breakdowns:

By the time I met her, Susan was a success story. She was a student at the local community college. She had her own apartment, and she kept it in reasonable shape. She did not drink, at least not much, and she did not use drugs, if you did not count marijuana. She was a big, imposing black woman who defended herself aggressively on the street, but she had not been jailed for years. All this was striking because Susan clearly met criteria for a diagnosis of schizophrenia, the most severe and debilitating of psychiatric disorders. She thought that people listened to her through the heating pipes in her apartment. She heard them muttering mean remarks. Sometimes she thought she was part of a government experiment that was beaming rays on black people, a kind of technological Tuskegee. She felt those rays pressing down so hard on her head that it hurt. Yet she had not been hospitalized since she got her own apartment, even though she took no medication and saw no psychiatrists. That apartment was the most effective antipsychotic she had ever taken.

“Beyond the Brain.” — Tanya Marie Luhrmann, The Wilson Quarterly

Beyond the Brain

Longreads Pick

Rethinking schizophrenia as a brain disorder that requires medication, and recognizing that part of the cure is looking at the social factors that cause mental breakdowns:

“By the time I met her, Susan was a success story. She was a student at the local community college. She had her own apartment, and she kept it in reasonable shape. She did not drink, at least not much, and she did not use drugs, if you did not count marijuana. She was a big, imposing black woman who defended herself aggressively on the street, but she had not been jailed for years. All this was striking because Susan clearly met criteria for a diagnosis of schizophrenia, the most severe and debilitating of psychiatric disorders. She thought that people listened to her through the heating pipes in her apartment. She heard them muttering mean remarks. Sometimes she thought she was part of a government experiment that was beaming rays on black people, a kind of technological Tuskegee. She felt those rays pressing down so hard on her head that it hurt. Yet she had not been hospitalized since she got her own apartment, even though she took no medication and saw no psychiatrists. That apartment was the most effective antipsychotic she had ever taken.”

Published: Sep 6, 2012
Length: 16 minutes (4,055 words)

How Lisette Lee, a privileged young woman with ties to the Samsung fortune, turned to drug trafficking:

Lee would go on to tell federal authorities a lot of things about herself: that she was a famous Korean pop star as well as the heiress to the Samsung electronics fortune; she was so emphatic on this last point that on police paperwork agents listed ‘heiress’ as her occupation. Back at home in L.A., Lee called herself the ‘Korean Paris Hilton’ and played the part of the spoiled socialite, with two Bentleys, a purse-size lap dog and, especially, her commanding, petulant personality that kept her posse of sycophants in check. It was as though Lisette Lee had studied some Beverly Hills heiress’s handbook: how to dress, how to behave, how to run hot and cold to keep people in her thrall – in short, how to be a modern celebrity. But all of that would begin to unravel – amid the crowd and confusion on the Columbus tarmac that June 2010 evening – once a drug-sniffing German shepherd padded over to the van and sat down, signaling a hit.

Agents threw open the van doors. Inside the suitcases were more than 500 pounds of marijuana in shrink-wrapped bricks. In Lee’s crocodile purse were three cellphones, $6,500 in cash, a baggie of cocaine and a hotel notepad scrawled with weights and purchase prices totaling $300,000: a drug ledger.

“The Gangster Princess of Beverly Hills.” — Sabrina Rubin Erdely, Rolling Stone

More Erdely

The Gangster Princess of Beverly Hills

Longreads Pick

How Lisette Lee, a privileged young woman with ties to the Samsung fortune, turned to drug trafficking:

“Lee would go on to tell federal authorities a lot of things about herself: that she was a famous Korean pop star as well as the heiress to the Samsung electronics fortune; she was so emphatic on this last point that on police paperwork agents listed ‘heiress’ as her occupation. Back at home in L.A., Lee called herself the ‘Korean Paris Hilton’ and played the part of the spoiled socialite, with two Bentleys, a purse-size lap dog and, especially, her commanding, petulant personality that kept her posse of sycophants in check. It was as though Lisette Lee had studied some Beverly Hills heiress’s handbook: how to dress, how to behave, how to run hot and cold to keep people in her thrall – in short, how to be a modern celebrity. But all of that would begin to unravel – amid the crowd and confusion on the Columbus tarmac that June 2010 evening – once a drug-sniffing German shepherd padded over to the van and sat down, signaling a hit.

“Agents threw open the van doors. Inside the suitcases were more than 500 pounds of marijuana in shrink-wrapped bricks. In Lee’s crocodile purse were three cellphones, $6,500 in cash, a baggie of cocaine and a hotel notepad scrawled with weights and purchase prices totaling $300,000: a drug ledger.”

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Aug 31, 2012
Length: 32 minutes (8,007 words)

Police are recruiting young drug offenders to become confidential informants on drug cases—with little training and tragic consequences: 

According to a confidential deposition from a friend of Hoffman’s, the police made it clear that run-of-the-mill pot busts wouldn’t be sufficient to work off her charges. Instead, the friend said, the cops were looking for large quantities of ‘heroin, cocaine, crack, Ecstasy, guns.’ The Florida State student told her about a young man he’d seen dealing drugs at a car-detailing shop near campus—the man, whom he knew only as Dre, might have access to Ecstasy and cocaine, and possibly more. Hoffman, it turned out, had just had her Volvo worked on by Dre at the same shop, and he had joked about the car’s pungent marijuana smell. Soon, she was wired up and dispatched to the shop, where, using her friend’s connection, she put in a request to Dre’s brother-in-law, Deneilo Bradshaw, to buy a stash of cocaine, fifteen hundred Ecstasy pills, and, as she described it, a ‘small and pretty’ handgun. The order was large, by any standard. She wanted the drugs for friends who would be visiting from Miami, she explained. And the gun? ‘I’m a little Jewish girl,’ she told Bradshaw, as police listened via a surveillance device. ‘I need to be safe.’

By early May, the deal had been arranged. She was to show up with thirteen thousand dollars, and they’d make the swap—at Bradshaw’s parents’ house, in a quiet green neighborhood on the outskirts of Tallahassee. Behind the scenes, the police worked up an Operational and Raid Plan, which involved more than a dozen local and federal agents.

“The Throwaways.” — Sarah Stillman, The New Yorker

More from The New Yorker

An inquiry into a neighbor’s suicide leads a man to discover links between heavy marijuana use and psychosis among people who suffer from mental illnesses:

One afternoon recently, I met Dr. Roger Roffman, professor emeritus at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work, in his office up on Roosevelt Way. He has a calm demeanor and a cozy office set up for counseling sessions: He has been studying marijuana dependence for nearly 30 years. I had sent him the police report about Rosado in advance. He offered me some tea and then sat on the couch under his third-floor window and said, ‘The research would tend to indicate that she was loaded for an explosion.’

The moment he began to speak, it began to rain.

He said what loaded her for an explosion was being sexually abused as a child and then using marijuana heavily and then experiencing psychosis. Citing data from UK researchers published in Psychological Medicine in 2011, he said, ‘In some case examples where forced nonconsensual sex occurred during childhood, there was a risk from that experience for later psychotic illness, and that risk was exaggerated, made even greater, if the individual used marijuana.’ In the data, researchers found that if an individual’s sexual trauma and marijuana use both began before the age of 16, their chances of being diagnosed with psychosis later on was ‘over seven times’ greater. The researchers wrote that among other stress factors thought to contribute to psychosis—like ethnicity, employment, drug use, and family history of mental illness—sexual trauma was one ‘few researchers had acknowledged.’

“The Woman in 606.” — Christopher Frizzelle, The Stranger

More from The Stranger

The Woman in 606

Longreads Pick

An inquiry into a neighbor’s suicide leads a man to discover links between heavy marijuana use and psychosis among people who suffer from mental illnesses:

“One afternoon recently, I met Dr. Roger Roffman, professor emeritus at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work, in his office up on Roosevelt Way. He has a calm demeanor and a cozy office set up for counseling sessions: He has been studying marijuana dependence for nearly 30 years. I had sent him the police report about Rosado in advance. He offered me some tea and then sat on the couch under his third-floor window and said, ‘The research would tend to indicate that she was loaded for an explosion.’

“The moment he began to speak, it began to rain.

“He said what loaded her for an explosion was being sexually abused as a child and then using marijuana heavily and then experiencing psychosis. Citing data from UK researchers published in Psychological Medicine in 2011, he said, ‘In some case examples where forced nonconsensual sex occurred during childhood, there was a risk from that experience for later psychotic illness, and that risk was exaggerated, made even greater, if the individual used marijuana.’ In the data, researchers found that if an individual’s sexual trauma and marijuana use both began before the age of 16, their chances of being diagnosed with psychosis later on was ‘over seven times’ greater. The researchers wrote that among other stress factors thought to contribute to psychosis—like ethnicity, employment, drug use, and family history of mental illness—sexual trauma was one ‘few researchers had acknowledged.'”

Source: The Stranger
Published: Aug 21, 2012
Length: 26 minutes (6,578 words)

In the first four years as the first black president, Obama has largely avoided addressing race directly. Some historical context:

Thus the myth of ‘twice as good’ that makes Barack Obama possible also smothers him. It holds that African Americans—­enslaved, tortured, raped, discriminated against, and subjected to the most lethal homegrown terrorist movement in American history—feel no anger toward their tormentors. Of course, very little in our history argues that those who seek to tell bold truths about race will be rewarded. But it was Obama himself, as a presidential candidate in 2008, who called for such truths to be spoken. ‘Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now,’ he said in his ‘More Perfect Union’ speech, which he delivered after a furor erupted over Reverend Wright’s ‘God Damn America’ remarks. And yet, since taking office, Obama has virtually ignored race.

Whatever the political intelligence of this calculus, it has broad and deep consequences. The most obvious result is that it prevents Obama from directly addressing America’s racial history, or saying anything meaningful about present issues tinged by race, such as mass incarceration or the drug war. There have been calls for Obama to take a softer line on state-level legalization of marijuana or even to stand for legalization himself. Indeed, there is no small amount of in­consistency in our black president’s either ignoring or upholding harsh drug laws that every day injure the prospects of young black men—laws that could have ended his own, had he been of another social class and arrested for the marijuana use he openly discusses. But the intellectual argument doubles as the counterargument. If the fact of a black president is enough to racialize the wonkish world of health-care reform, what havoc would the Obama touch wreak upon the already racialized world of drug policy?

“Fear of a Black President.” — Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic

More Coates