VLVL the war on drugs

[jbor]

> I believe that credit for the early years of CAMP goes largely to California
> governor George Deukmejian, a Republican who took office in 1983, rather
> than his predecessor Jerry Brown.

In the real world the Domestic Cannabis Eradication and Suppression Program
and DEA Air Wing had been operational in California (and in Hawaii,
"someplace far across the ocean" p.3, and also important elsewhere in the
text) from 1979. Jimmy Carter was President at the time, and Jerry Brown was
Governor of California:

http://www.dea.gov/pubs/history/deahistory_02.htm

By 1984 this Program had widened to many other states, a situation Pynchon
alludes to at 49.24-6:

http://www.dea.gov/pubs/history/deahistory_03.htm

And, meanwhile, back at the text, in Vineland in 1984, "everyone watched the
scope of the CAMP crop-destruction effort growing without limit, *season
after season*" (220), the "Vineland County Sheriff, Willis Chunko ... showed
up *every* autumn" to pose for the tv cameras beside confiscated marijuana
or armed with a flamethrower himself, and he had "featured Holytail on his
shit list *for years*" (220-1; my emph). Pynchon is certainly aware of the
fact that the "federal-state" (49) campaign against pot growers in Northern
California was not one which had only just begun in 1983 and, in fact, in
his text he emphasises the point that it had been going on for a number of
years prior to the time in which his narrative takes place -- according to
the historical record, 1979 is when the *federal* DEA, with the co-operation
of state and local authorities, mounted a concentrated campaign there, one
almost identical to that which is described in the text -- even if some of
his readers seem unwilling to acknowledge these facts.

best