Timeline

[Robin Landseadel]

from Reefer Madness
by Eric Schlosser:

	[. . .] After more than a decade in which penalties for marijuana
	offenses had been reduced at both the state and federal levels,
	the laws regarding marijuana were made much tougher in the
	1980s. More resources were devoted to their enforcement, and
	punishments more severe than those administered during the
	"reefer madness" of the 1930s became routine. All the legal
	tools commonly associated with the fight against heroin and
	cocaine trafficking—civil forfeitures, enhanced police search
	powers, the broad application of conspiracy laws, a growing
	reliance on the testimony of informers, and mechanistic
	sentencing formulas, such as mandatory minimums and "three
	strikes, you're out"—have been employed against marijuana
	offenders. The story of how Mark Young got a life sentence
	reveals a great deal about the emergence of the American
	heartland as the region where a vast amount of the nation's
	marijuana is now grown; about the changing composition of the
	federal prison population; and about the effects of the war on
	drugs, a dozen years after its declaration, throughout America's
	criminal-justice system. Underlying Young's tale is a simple
	question: How does a society come to punish a person more
	harshly for selling marijuana than for killing someone with a
	gun? [. . .]

	. . . Mark A.R. Kleiman, an associate professor at Harvard
	University's Kennedy School of Government, finds this to be a
	rare instance in which protectionism actually worked. The anti-
	drug movement and the burgeoning American marijuana crop
	led the DEA to devote more of its resources to marijuana
	investigations. Kleiman estimates that by 1988 federal anti-
	marijuana efforts totaled approximately $970 million—about 20
	to 25 percent of all federal drug-enforcement expenditures. By
	1992 federal convictions for marijuana outnumbered those for
	heroin, crack cocaine, and LSD combined. The DEA's
	Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program began in 1979 in
	two states, California and Hawaii; it now looks for marijuana-
	farming operations—called "grows" or "gardens" by members of
	the trade—in all fifty states.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199408/schlosser

On Feb 10, 2009, at 9:22 PM, Michael Bailey wrote:

> . . . historical approaches seem like focusing on the hand rather  
> than where
> it's pointing.

. . . so why are Pynchon's books so specifically and deliberately set  
in such particular times and places, with so much detail concerning  
the cultural detritus of those times and places? Why are Vineland and  
the Crying of Lot 49 [and the soon to be issued Inherent Vice] set in  
such specific sites in California? Why 1964 & 1984? Why does Pynchon  
go for the historical approach?

> Truthfully I don't see anything more than oblique
> references to Judi Bari via the passing mention of wasteful logging
> practices; I think if he were an Earth Firster, he'd have found a
> publisher willing to issue the books on hemp.

Most of Vineland is concerned with Cointelpro styled operations and  
the intertwining of these Cointelpro styled operations with the DEA.  
Thus all the maneuvering of Zoyd by Hector and the linking of Hector's  
DEA activities with Brock Vond's Cointelpro operations. Zoyd isn't  
popped by Hector because Zoyd's growing weed—he's "only a pawn in  
their game." Zoyd is busted because of Frenesi's active involvement in  
Cointelpro and Zoyd's own peripheral [as it turns out, poor sap]  
involvement with Frenesi.

Pynchon may not be pointing directly to Judi Bari but Pynchon is  
pointing directly at C.A.M.P. and the various abuses of power that  
C.A.M.P. enables. Point of fact is that Judi Bari's car bomb blew up  
in May of 1990 and Vineland was published in January of that year, so  
a one for one correspondence is not possible° and never was anyway.  
Vineland is a work of fiction, after all. But the Earth First!  
activities and the abuses of  C.A.M.P.  were big news items in the  
alternate press of the greater Northern California area in the late  
1980's. KPFA's coverage comes to mind and sister Pacifica station KPFK  
in L.A. is name-checked in Vineland. I was involved with KPFA as  
engineer and DJ in the late 80's and would hear of the events in  
California's old-growth forests on KPFA's morning & evening news.

	"What, you - you guys gamble, w-with federal funds? Holy cow,
	maybe there is a budget squeeze around here!"

	"We're nobody's protege this administration, State Department
	hates our ass, NSC thinks we're scum, if Customs don't steal it
	out from under us, Justice and FBI try to either run it or fuck it up,
	and frankly," lowering his voice, "notice how cheap coke has
	been since '81? However in the world do you account for that?"

	"Roy! Is you're sayin' the President himself is duked into some
	deal? Quit foolin'! Next you'll be tellin' me George Bush."

	Roy kept a prop Bible on his desk, useful when he needed to
	get along with the born-agains in the Agency. He opened it and
	pretended to read. "Harken unto me, read thou my lips, for verily
	I say that wheresoever the CIA putteth in its meathooks upon
	the world, there also are to be found those substances which
	God may have created but the U.S. Code hath decided to
	control. Get me? Now old Bush used to be head of CIA, so you
	figure it out."
	Vineland, 353/354

All of Pynchon's books are to some extent concerned with spying and  
spycraft and [in particular]* those aspects of the spy network that  
work in opposition to those basic freedoms that supposedly are the  
hallmarks of the good ol' USA. In any case, Pynchon seems far too  
paranoid to join Earth First! or issue his books on hemp paper: that  
sort of action would result in precisely the sort of attention the man  
would want to avoid.

> . . . the type of reader I am, largely escapist, makes me respectful  
> of
> his privacy, first because coming back out from the story into reality
> is the opposite way to where I want to be heading,
> and 2nd it's as if he were my dealer for these dreams and I don't want
> to intrude on his private life...e's already sharing what he wants to
> in the text, don't meddle in the affairs of wizards, etc etc

I can't help but notice the environment that his characters are placed  
and the enormous overlap of those places with my own personal  
experience. My mother be-friended Judi Bari and managed to get  
[wrongfully] CAMPed for obviously political reasons. The connection of  
Zoyd's story to the plight of many others who reside in the green  
triangle is the central thread in the story of Vineland. If one  
extends Vineland into Against the Day, the historical details of our  
slow devolution into a "Scab-land Garrison State" emerges in greater  
focus. The role the Pinkertons have to play in AtD devolves into the  
development of Cointelpro and other modes of the State spying on its  
own, destroying lives in the process.

> still, I'm having a lot of fun with the heresy notion, and that
> initially didn't light my fire either, so - carry on if that's what
> you're into...

Note that the heresy theme folds back to some of the most important  
aspects of TRP [the V] 's family history. I'm sure that your  
exploration of heresies is very much on-point as Pynchon gets rather  
specific regarding opposition to various dogmas, in particular in  
Gravity's Rainbow. There's plenty of heterodox action in Mason & Dixon  
that went over my head—I'm long overdue for a re-reading of the wacky  
adventures of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. Dwight Eddins "The  
Gnostic Pynchon" goes into much more detail concerning heresies. I  
suspect [from what I've read so far] that you would find much of value  
there as well.

°Unless the dude's REALLY good at scrying . . .

*There's plenty of background on the development of the CIA in GR.