The sixties drug movement

Dakota Smith

“Sheriff John Brown always hated me,
For what, I don’t know:
Every time I plant a seed,
He said kill it before it grow-
He said kill them before they grow.”

-Bob Marley, “I Shot the Sheriff”(off Burnin’, released 1973)

Since the mid 1960’s, when youthful drug use began to make headlines, the entire issue has been debated with growing emotion and hysteria on all sides. The communications media, in their overwhelming, exhaustive, and sometimes boring coverage of the drug problem, have given the general public a certain amount of insight into the nature of drug taking among today’s youth. Which drugs are being taken, how, when, where, and by whom are aspects of the issue which have been thoroughly discussed. The background leading to the current craze, the reasons why the young were and are so amenable to drug-taking, and the attitudes which have made drugs a symbol of the current generation have yet to be objectively analyzed, at least in the ...