Interestingly, one of the primary reasons pot doesn't get legalized is that the police have no way of checking if users are under the influence. I've had several policeman tell me as much. I even had a state trooper tell me on I-75 they didn't even care about pot anymore.

Some pot today is much stronger than what was around in the 60's and 70's. In high school in the early 70's, weed went for $10-15 a lid (an ounce). It was Mexican, all leaf, no buds. Every once in a while, some "black Michoacan" would come through. That stuff was good, light fluffy bud mixed with leaf.

The mid-70's saw the importation of Colombian weed and prices jumped to $35 an o-z. The Mexican stuff also jumped in price. I can remember a flood of Acapulco Gold in spring of '75. The stuff was excellent, but shot through with seeds (almost 1/2 the weight). Pot took on a different look too. It was being compressed in trash compactors before being exported.

Then the sinsemilla craze hit about 1980 or so. Wow, the stuff was all bud and strong. A far cry from the Colombian and Mexican we were used to. And it was being grown locally, in the hills of eastern Ohio. Sinsemilla became quite the cottage industry, from California to Kentucky. And prices went crazy. $200 and up was nothing.

I'm pretty much out of the loop these days, but what I see now is "chronic", what we used to call commercial-grade Colombian/Mexican stuff. It's average from what I can tell. And then there's 'dro. That's as good a weed as there ever was. E-v-e-r.

I was having coffee with a friend the other day who's the head librarian at a local university. We were trading war stories, and he mentioned coming across Nepalese temple balls, which was a high-grade hashish, on a trip to Asia in the 60's. Hash used to make the rounds in the 60's & 70's, and I asked my friend what ever happened to it. He emphatically (!) stated no one needs it anymore as pot is so much better. There's a lot of truth to that.

What I find most distinctive between "now" and "then" is the violence of the drug culture. I knew a couple of heavy-duty dealers in the 70's, and for the most part, they didn't own guns. It was B.C. (before crack). The influx of cocaine in the 80's gave rise to the "scarface" mentality. Gangs moved into the drug market, particularly bikers from what I saw. Dealing with them, you put your life in their hands. Even pot growers suffered. In recent years, I've come to know some folks who moved back into eastern Ky to grow weed 20-25 years ago. Elsie's husband got killed back in the woods years ago by some good ol' boys. Of course, the kids of those good ol' boys who hated dope and made moonshine are growing it themselves these days. Those hills are riddled with well-armed dopers now.

To me, it's all gotten so convoluted. Everyone's raised the stakes: the druggies, the mfg'ers (legal or not), and the law. Drugs, both legal and illegal, are BIG money. And I still wonder, coming back to pain meds, how mfg'ers and wholesalers reconcile their books to cover all the pills hitting the street. The UN even puts illegal drugs as the largest article of world trade in dollar terms. Estimates vary though. But it's big, real big. How's all this stuff get across borders without some form of gov't collusion?

Follow the money? Control drugs and you're going to make a lot of moolah. A far cry indeed from the 60's and 70's.