(Michael Aldrich is co-director of Amorphia, Inc. and the editor of Marijuana Review. The following article is copyright (c) Marijuana Review 1972.)

The rumor has resounded since October, 1967, when the Boston underground paper Avatar announced: “A major tobacco company has registered as trade marks the names Panama Red, Brazilian Black, and Acapulco Gold. The rumor is that the ffist reefers will be mentholated to ease the harshness oh the throat for those turning on for the first time. On the other hand, the tobacco companies may well lose out when pot is legalized. All those bars, after all, will have facilities awaiting the trade. So look for Schenley’s announcement that it is bottling bhang.”

We at SUNY-Buffalp checked it out immediately at the U.S. Patent Office and discovered it was not true: though several individuals had tried, no one had been granted the trademarks, because in order to register the product names, an applicant is required to market the product immediately – and no one was able to market dope legally. We continued to investigate every few months, and even wrote the major tobacco companies to inquire as their intentions. The response ffpm R.J. Reynolds was typical:

“In reply to your recent inquiry regarding market research on marijuana cigarettes, our company has no plans along these lines, nor have we registered trademarks for the names you mentioned. How or why rumors such as this originate we do not know, but the questions about which you inquired have no factual basis.”

Nevertheless, the rumors persisted – with embellishments, such as the idea that tobacco companies were buying up fields in Mexico for future grass growing. Friendly stockbrokers on Wall Street kept telling us they’d seen TM papers for the names, but no one was able to produce copies of those papers; and although market analysts repeated that tobacco and liquor corps were researching the pot potential, no one was able to procure evidence for the allegation.

At last, in the October 30, 1969 U.S. Tobacco Journal (“the voice of the tobacco industry”), an editorial entitled “Going to Pot?” appeared which denounced marijuana prohibition as “extravagant nonsense” and suggested that cigarette companies might begin marketing grass once it became legal. Tar and nicotine purveyors would “respond as any business would that had a lot of cigarette-making machines lying around.” However, the editorial denied both the trademark rumor and the Mexican land-purchase rumor.

Acapulco Gold On Sale At Head Shops

Amorphia; the non-profit dope legalization collective, is funding itself and a number of other dope-legalization projects, through sales of cigarette papers but they’re papers with a difference.

For one thing the papers are marketed under the name Acapulco Gold. For another, there are several varieties, one of which is made from legal hemp stalk: Acapulco Gold Cannabis.

Amorphia is assisting the four state marijuana initiatives which are either on the November ballot, or attempting to be, in California, Michigan, Washington and Oregon. The California Initiative has received oveT $15,000 from Amorphia, the Michigan Initiative $2,000 cash and $2,500 potential in a gift of Acapulco Gold papers.

Amorphia has realized in the neighborhood of $40,000 in first year sales of Acapulco Gold papers, and according to Blair Newman, one of the collective’s co-chairmen (author Michael Aldrich is the other), could have sold lots more had manufacturing, distribution and importing (the papers must be produced in Spain) hassles been resolved earlier.

Four varieties of papers are available: Rice (white), and Maiz (yellow) at $7.50 per box of 100 packs; Licorice, at $8 per hundred and Cannabis at $25 per hundred.

In addition, Amorphia publishes a quarterly magazine, Marijuana Review, which Michael Aldrich edits. It is available for $2 (third class mail) or $3 (first class) in the U.S. and Canada, or for $5 and $10 respectively outside the U.S. A series of pamphlets is also available. More information may be received by writing:

Amorphia Box 744 Mill Valley, Ca. 94941

Playboy Marketing Pot?

Speculation has been raised in some quarters that it ain’t only the tobacco industry looking to make a killing from legal weed.

The liquor industry - long blamed as purveyors of grass paranoia anyway, bet cause of their fear that it would cut into booze sales — is rumored to be investigating the possibility that it doesn’t cut in ... it just changes. Whisky sales, the* word is, will go down, but beer, wiiie and many different kinds of sweeter hootch go just fine with boo.

But the liquor industry does have one, even better reason for investigating legal dope: booze sales are down 70^> iS some campus areas. The booze companies plan for relegalization would, of course, follow the liquor laws (instituted after prohibition of that chemical): pot could even be sold in liquor stores, and be regulated by state liquor control commissions.

Moving up fast on the outside, ac-

cording to many observers — including Amorphia’s Aldrich and famous pot criminal John Sinclair — is Playboy Corporation. Other pefsons, with other contacts at Playboya claim the opposite however. None of the fumors, however, either or proor coh-Playboy’s pot control, stem from the corporation itself. JkWhat they J(o stein pom is NORML: The National?‘Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which is funded^ by the Playboy Foundation, Hugh Hefner’s tax-loss front. NORML is supposedly funded7 to the tune of $200,000 per yeat, and its staff includes one $18,000 a year lobbyist.

Those' convinced of Playboy’s intentions in the field point to the fact that Playboy has the largest dopesmoking circulation of any npn-news medium in the country and alsoTo the idea that the Playboy Philosophy; which is basically hedonistic, fits perfectly into the masscult idea of whereffrass is at.

Whichever, Playboy has had a propot editorial policy for more years than any othef hational publication, and if grass is5 legalized, it’s going to cash in somehow. If only from a new advertising market.

By this time, the underground widely believedeverything it had heard — and fuel was added to weed flames by a largely fictional rendition of “The Day Pot Goes to Market” in Sales Management: The Marketing Magazine. Before the article appeared, the magazine’s senior editor Steve Blickstein wrote Allen Ginsberg for information on “pricing, packaging, advertising, distribution, market research and everything else that goes into introduction of a new product.”

Although as one of Allen’s secretaries I responded with a long serious analysis of the future market, advocating nonprofit decentralization of sales, the final version of the article as published was a horror-hype of exactly the wrong kind of legalization — a crass commericial exploitation by hypothetical hip entrepeneurs of “Lotus” brand weed, competing with booze tycoons, Mad Ave. promoters and tobacco monsters, with full support from the tax-craving government agencies supposedly “regulating” them.

True (July 1969) had predicted that pot would be legal by 1980, but Sales Management went a step further: it said, for the first time in national media, that legalization was inevitable, quoting the Tobacco Journal editorial to bolster its point, and concluding, “Tobacco companies are counting on their wider ranging distribution channels for quick market penetration,” and “distilleries are equally anxious to get into pot.” Full legalization was predicted for 1976.

Though a fictional exercise, Sales Management’s article was then and is now the best analysis of the problems of pot marketing: production of 100-millimeter half-tobacco joints, a market of 80 million Americans spending over $1 billion a year on pot, massive and well-trained sales forces from liquor and tobacco companies, supply both domestic and imported, superwholesome advertising, packing in quantities of 3, 6 and 20 joint vinyl boxes, pricing at $ 1 a joint to include high federal excise taxes, distribution through liquor stores, drugstores, food chains, head shops, campus bookstores, and an imaginative system of creditcard vending machines. And finally, a few paragraphs about possible regulatory schemes for sale of legal grass, designed by the government to help big business take over the market.

AMORPHIA - “ACAPULCO GOLD”

At its particular point of interjection int'o public consciousness, the Sales Management article served to convince every one who read it, and the millions of people who heard its topics incorrectly, that in fact big business and government were gearing up for dope production and sale already. From Raleigh to L.A., from the Lower East Side to the beleagured remnants of the Haight-Ashbury, everyone believed.

Amorphia, then only a conceptual gleam in our heads, began a careful investigation of all the rumors; and when we confirmed that no one had trademarked the names, we put in the first application for use of “Acapulco Gold” on cigarette rolling papers, prototypes of which were immediately marketed through head shops in New York and San Francisco. Because of our early action, we are assured that if anyone gets the name “Acapulco Gold” we will.

But after three years of hassling with the Patent Office and two refusals on our application so far, it now appears that no one will be able to register the various weed names per se, because they are generic names for types of marijuana and generic names cannot be trademarked. In addition, we discovered that a minor tobacco company in New Vork has a trademark on cigars called “Acapulco” and the Patent Office seems to think that this mark might'conflict with the name “Acapulco Gold” for smoking paraphernalia. Nevertheless, not even the tobacco companies will be able to market grass under the brand name “Acapulco Gold” unless our application is first granted. And if Amorphia gets the mark, we ain’t gonna sell it to nobody. At least, our application disproved once and for all the notion that tobacco companies had registered the names.

Other, non-generic names, however, remained an open field. A hip tobacco company snatched up “Tijuana Smalls” for cigarillos and Consolidated Cigar Corp. on March 30, 1970 trademarked “Hip-Tip,” “Traveller” and “Trips” for cigars, while somebody named Eugene A. Neaderhiser got the rights to the name “Contraband”. Meanwhile the U.S. Tobacco Co. was busy preparing a new short cigar for the market, using their fabled and exclusively-franchised trade name, “Zig Zag.” Filter-tips, indeed.

The Marijuana Initiatives

There are marijuana initiatives being conducted in four states as we go to press. What the initiative process involves in simple: petitions must be signed by enough registered voters to qualify for inclusion on the November ballot in a given state. The deadline is invariably well in advance of November however, and so the results as of July 4 are pretty solid.

Each initiative provides for what Amorphia’s Aldrich calls “a free home market”: it makes the personal use, possession, growth and transportation, etc. of dope legal in the states in which the initiative is proposed. The real test is in November; not everyone, although most, of the petition signers were in favor of making grass legal — some just want to see a public referendum on the matter. In any event, many more votes will be cast than petitions signed.

The status, as of Independence Day, of each Marijuana Initiative: CALIFORNIA: California is definitely on the ballot. They acquired almost 600,000 signatures in a six-month campaign — largely funded by Amorphia. Their problem, now, is to get the issue across to voters. Bob Ashford, C.M.I. head, wants to do this by convening a blueblood panel of experts, of all strifes in relationship to the legal weed qufetion, and bring it before the public. “It’s the only chance,” Ashford added, “for. real drug education — nobody listens to government programs and films, because they’re so one-sided. We want to present a real dialogue. Now if we can round up the credible opposition. If there is a credible opposition.”'

But, Ashford adds, perhaps more seriously! that it is going to take a Lot of money to bring the vote home. “Not one public figure,she reminds us, "Has contributed so much as $5 to C.M.I. because of California’s selection disclosure laws.” (These laws require a list to be kept of the donations and donators to each election campaign, complete with name ana Address.)Wiih weed still illegal it’s not hard to see why movie stars and tv figures would be scared off.What about rock bands? “Not one,” Ashford reiterated. “We’ve had some benefits, atnf bands have been good about that. But tions.”

Does Ashford think C.M.I. will win, making California the first state to legalize grass? “Sure, I think we’ve got a good chance, if we can get the money

we need to let people know what’s going on.”

WASHINGTON: The principle effect of the Washington marijuana initiative, Blossom, was to get 52 of its petitioners busted. Blossom’s marijuana statute would be the most liberal of the four: it provides no age limit for the “home market.” (The others make 18 the legal dope-smoking age.)

The last weekend in June 52 petitioners got rounded up and busted, mostly for possession. Steve Wilcox of Blossom says they will file a collective suit, since the arrests occurred without warrants.

Blossom is also the home base of Robert Burrell, who talked to us about something called The Official Pot Smokers Revue and Road Show Theatre. Apparently, this is an allegorical amalgm of rock groups, guerrilla and other forms of theatre and whatever other madness pertains. Burrell suggested that the OPSRRST would make its big national debut at the National Pot Smokers Convention in Bethesda Md. some time in August. The What? OREGON: In Oregon, the marijuana initiative organization is called M.E.L.O. That stands for Marijuana Education for Legalization in Oregon. Their principal spokesman is Martin Cromie.

M.E.L.O. has a chance; as of Independence Day they were halfway home. Deadline was July 7th, but Cromie said the organization will ask for, and expects to receive, an extension to the 15th.

M.E.L.O. has about 25,000 signaI tures, 40,000 are needed to get on the Lballot. That’s valid signatures, mind; as with all initiatives, roughly 150% is Heeded to ensure certification. Cromie H|ys the chances, to him, look to be “febout 50-50.”

MICHIGAN: Michigan didn't make it. The spearhead was the Rfmbow People’s Party, figuratively Had by John Sinclair, but jfroups all around the state qHckly goL organized (after the M.M.I.’s (latb) inception in Afpril.

At legist, says Linda Ross >of M.M.I.’s Alin Arbor headquarters, the dope legalization fejfeple in Michigan have a helluva mailBTg list for the next attempt. Which will be in Michigan’s 1974 election.

ARIZONA: Arizona s drive is called NORML, and it is largely being-supported by that wihg of the marijuana didn’t look too good at deadline time; 42,000 signatures were necessary, and it looked like the NORML forces would pull in that many, but not enough more to take care of invalidations.

Along came the highly-touted, highly

avoided federal ban on TV tobacco ads, and the tobacco companies found themselves in deep, although temporary, trouble. (Temporary because the tobacco folks found ways to sponsor promotional projects without broadcast

ads, and after a short decrease, tobacco sales again began to increase.) Companies plunged hundreds of millions into nontobacco diversification: albuminum, cereal, large varieties of prepared foods, liquor, wine, freight and real estate; and the industry leaders even took the word “Tobacco” out of their corporate names. R.J. Reynolds, manufacturer of one-third of all cigarettes made in the U.S., reconsidered its formidable plan for “puffed tobacco” blown up like puffed-rice cereal, and evidently decided to shelve the idea and use the bread for 100-millimeter deathsticks and further diversification: within two years tobacco accounted for less than 3/4 of Reynolds income. Still, in the desperate search for ways to recoup sales they thought would go down, everyone in the industry seemed to come to the covert understanding that the natural diversification for cigarette makers was marijuana.

GEARING UP FOR REAL

Suddenly, in the beginning months of 1971, it was no longer just the underground spreading the rumors: it was national newsmedia with adequate, sometimes phenomenal, research departments. Time for instance reported that: “For the ultimate trip, tobacco men are also discussing the potentially heady market for marijuana, and some figure it could be legalized within five years. At least one of the very biggest cigarette makers is rumored to be experimenting with pot cigarettes in Puerto Rico. According to some cigarette marketeers, packs would contain four cigarettes and sell for $1.” An inquiry to Time's research department from Amorphia elicited no response, but at least it was gratifying to see a 25 cent price predicted instead of the dollar-a-joint Sales Management figure.

Columnist Paul Harvey enlarged the rumor early in 1971, and gave away its source: “Wall Street scuttlebutt says some cigarette manufacturers are already geared up — that they are awaiting only a legislative green light -to make and market in your corner store marijuana cigarettes,” and came to the remarkable conclusion (for 1971, when more than 24 million people had tried pot) that “more general acceptance and use of marijuana is inevitable”

United Press International went to the tobacco companies and asked about their pot plots and was told uniformly that none of the . companies were planning anything even remotely connected with marijuana. The Chairman of the Board at Phillip Morris, for example, stuffily intoned: “As a responsible company, we have no interest in anything which is illegal, here at Phillip Morris, and we have held no discussions, nor made any plans concerning, the marketing of that product.” Speaking for all the companies, the Tobacco Institute - the industry’s powerful lobbying arm in Washington — stated flatly: “Rumors about the cigarette industry’s involvement with marijuana' are as persistent as they are false.”

The Dream Come True

One child grows up to be Somebody that just loves To learn

And another child grows up to be Somebody you’d just love To Burn

Mom loves both of them

You see, it’s in the blood

Both kids are good to Mom.

“Blood’s thicker than mud.”

It's a family affair.

There are strange times ahead for the counter-culture if marijuana is legalized. (There are strange times ahead in any case but... )

Everyone will be affected, presumably even those who don’t smoke dope. What are all those record company executives going to do, with 18 year old voting and 18 year old smoking both legalized? How many records can. ecology sell?

One of the central ideas of the whole counter-criminal dope scene has been that almost everyone is a dealer. That, of course, is almost over when grass is legalized. From the bottom to the top, what are we gonna do for money? Plenty of kids are gonna be thrown back into the qualud-to-smack line; there’s not much alternative. How many drugstore clerks does this country need?

Big dealers face an even larger .problem. What to do with the plane? Have to tile income tax returns again. There’s that line of unnecessary contacts to deal with. And new jobs for them present an even larger moral quandry: do you get into cocaine/smack/do wner/speed/acid importation, or do you find a new gig? Maybe that isn’t such a problem after all. Domestic weed is the only sort being legalized — importation is still outlawed, even under the most liberal remedies to the present situation — and there are still plenty of people who prefer Michoacan and Panama Red to San Jose Green and Merion Blue. (If dope is legalized in Kentucky, will, we actually be able to buy Merion Blue Grass?)

Come to that, who’s said anything about over-the-counter drug dealing in the first place? “A free home market,” which is what the marijuana initiatives

talk about, is a far cry from liscensed, commercially packaged dope whether the merchandising is done by freak or foul.

Realistically, of course, if homegrown is o.k., commercial weed ain’t far behind. The counter-culture is still a consumer-culture, by and large, for better or (probably) for worse.

Will sports events have grass concessions in municipal stadia, then? Or will new-puritan blue laws take effect? No grass sale on Sunday? After midnight? Before seven a.m.?

And, what if the bleeding hearts of the liberal right are correct, and we discover that once it's legal nobody wants to smoke it anymore? Unlikely, ain’t it?

We could propose some statutes that might be enacted in a decriminalized marijuana state: how about an antibogarting law? Or a statement on all marijuana packages like “WARNING: Ingestion of large amounts of cannabis has been determined by the SurgeonGeneral to remove 75% of all human aggression.” (Timothy Leary made that claim for weed, incidentally.)

Clearly, we’re in for more rough-sledding than it seems, when grass does become legal. Rock and roll and dope, yes, but fucking in the streets will still be outlawed, and that referendum is gonna take some time getting on the ballot, much less being passed.

Scarcely two months later, Andrew Kopkind and James Ridgeway reported in Ramparts: “Justice Department officials recently asked Phillip Morris to help design and make a marijuana cigarette for test purposes,” and the Phillip Morris representatives had been brought into top-secret. Army meetings with drug scientists, ostensibly to discuss drug problems in the military.

Sensible readers soon wondered the obvious question: why call Phillip Morris in to discuss pot? And the apparent answer was seen forthcoming: because the Army was in the process of declassifying previously top-secret THC research, and wanted to give a representative of the tobacco industry a little preview and perhaps to take bids for the joint-making contract. While this is not specific proof of the tobacco companies’ intent to enter the pot market through the governmentallyopened back door of legal research, it is a good indication that the government has already opted to let the tobacco companies ih on the secrets of mass-produced THC and standardized joints — research which the Defense Department had carried out since 1954.

Somewhere, somehow, somebody in the highest echelons of federal government made the decision in early 1971 to allow select tobacco companies access to previously classified NIMH and Defense Department information on

THC production, standardization of THC percentage and manufacturing of marijuana cigarettes. The Army used to call it “troop incapcitant research,” but for the companies it was good old ordinary market research. And of course the key that made it legal was “drug research” — awarded to the same death-drug pushers who brought you cheap tars, nicotine, cancer, heart disease and bronchitis in pretty, well-hyped cellophane packages.

There it is, flat out; the government has already given the first contracts for marijuana cigarette production to the tobacco companies.

THIN REEFERS PREFERRED

Clear back in 1970, National Institute of Mental Health officials formalized contracts with Arthur D. Little Co. of Boston to synthesize tetrahydro-

cannabinol in KILOGRAM quantities; with Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina to prepare standard high-potency extracts from marijuana grown at NIMH pot farms in Mississippi and elsewhere; and with Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, to analyze the constituents and byproducts of burned standard joints, to determine among other things whether it is more efficient to smoke fat reefers or thin ones. Preliminary results of the Battelle test already circulating in the scientific community, show thin joints are preferable to fat ones because less THC is lost into the air.

NIMH has been sending out standardized 1% and 1.5% THC j'oints to sanctioned research projects for over a year. The precise maker has not been identified) for reasons given in a clipping in my files, sent to me anonymously in Spring 1971 but unfortunately not dated or sourced. “In the name of research,” this establishment-press clipping says, “the U.S. government has gone to pot, but it won’t say Where. The National Cancer Institute has awarded a contract to a suburban Virginia laboratory to make 2 million marijuana cigarettes and then use them to determine if smoking large amounts of marijuana can lead to cancer.” The manufacturer’s name' and location are not given for “security” reasons, but NCI spokesman James F. Kieley said the contractor had already studied the relation between tobacco and cancer under a 1969 contract, and the total cost of the pot-tobacco contracts was $611,448.”

CONTINUED ON PAGE 62.

N. Mexico Leads Pot Legal Fight

New Mexico joined the city of Ann Arbor, Mi. in passing extremely extremely lenient marijuana law at the end of its last legislative session. The statewide penalty for possession of one ounce or less of the herb is now a $25 to $50 fine plus a possible 15 days imprisonment. (The Ann Arbor penalty

is only a $5 ticket, same as illegal parking.)

Senator Otis Echols, the sponsor of the bill, said that he and the Legislative Committee on Drug Abuse were “a little disappointed with the final form of the Bill.” The original version called for a $25 to $50 fine with NO imprisonment for possession.

‘‘We felt,” Echols said, “that even a one-day imprisonment was not morally right. We lost the moral battle but \ye won a statistical battle.”

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 39.

So big business and government have already conspired to begin marijuana cigarette production. If a decentralized, non-profit weed industry using proceeds to fund massive social change (on the Amorphia model) is to be saved for the subculture, the underground must take heed NOW of this out-front warning from the Wall Street Journal:

“Despite public disclaimers that they’re tooling up for production of marijuana cigarettes, some tobacco manufacturers confess that it’s probably just a matter of time. Says a spokesman for one large company: ‘Once it’s legalized, it would take us six months at most to have production rolling.’ ”