contents
A Nice Place to Put a University, page 5 Gene Mason
Interview:   Marlene Dixon, page 7
Sue Anne Salmon and Gretchen Marcum
"Pollution, " a drawing, pages 8 and 9
by Norman Adams, a student at the Louisville School of Art
looking back--on Robert Kennedy's 1968 Appalachian tour, page 11 Rick Bell and David Holwerk
James Baldwin on the Black Panthers, page 13
verse:   Jonathan Greene, Thomas Baker, Tom Lewis, page 14
music: Fathers and Sons, page 14 Dan Fisher
The blue-tail fly is published monthly by blue-tail fly,  inc. at 210 W. Third Street, Lexington,  Ky. 40507.   Send money.
blue-tail fly
February, 1970 vol. 1, no. 5
staff:   Guy Mendes,  Rick Bell,  David Holwerk, Jack Lyne,  Bucky Young,  Nick DeMartino, Sue Anne Salmon, Chuck Koehler, Gretchen Marcum, Julie Mendes,  Don Pratt,  Doug Stewart, Kevin Hill,  John Simon,  Geoffrey Pope,  John Beckman, Ron Genin,  Tony Urie and Becky Martin.
Dope dope
Though our cover question was not entirely serious, the thought was no doubt present following mid-month drug raids here which netted 31 people.
Lexington's not-so-mod-squad raided the Operation Deep Freeze coffeehouse where they arrested three people on drug charges (the coffeehouse manager and his wife and a girl who alledgedly had a Cex of some sort in her possession), and 18 others"including 11 minors"on a variety of charges such as disorderly conduct, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and loitering.
And within the next 24 hours the cops (with the help of student narcs) busted four residences and nine more people on dope charges. Another arrest for disorderly conduct (made at the police station when a friend of one of those being incarcerated hollered after him "Don rtell them anything.") brought the total to 31.
It was the first large scale bust to hit the local head community since last spring and it loosed the usual tremors of paranoia, rumors and weak jokes about going back to Bud ¢ The local narcs revelled in their victory, declaring"Viet-cong-body-count-style"that they'd seized aout S5.000 worth of grass and acid.
Louisville's dope scene has been similarly hassled. Frank Burke, newly elected mayor of the city, campaigned on a promise to fight the "growing drug menace" (among other things) and seems bent on keeping his word. In December, 15 people were indicted on drug charges after a couple of mass raids. Seven more were arrested this month.
And if University of Louisville students seem even more paranoid lately it might be because over 60 narcs have taken up temporary residence- on the campus from February 16 to 27. The Southern Police Institute, now a part of l'1's newly created School of Police Administration, sponsored its 16th Annual
Mid-Winter Seminar on "Narcotics and Drug Abuse: Enforcement and Case Development." SPI has been training police officers and chiefs primarily from the Dixie states, for over 20 years, and has been the primary"often solitary-education that many policemen receive beyond the high school level.
An SPI brochure declares, "Far too many narcotics cases are being dismissed or not prosecuted due to improper and inadequate police knowledge and investigative procedures." The seminar is an effort to help narcs and other cops bust dopesters with greater skill and accuracy.
Meanwhile, out in Colorado the University of Denver suffered the largest single drug bust to hit a college campus. On January 21, 37 Denver cops conducted a nighttime raid on four campus dormitories and eight off campus housing units busting a total of 42 students. That total easily surpassed the 28 arrested at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in the much-publicized 1968 bust. The University of Denver student senate allocated $4,000 in student feeds to help meet the bail costs of those arrested.
And the U.S. Senate passed the "no-knock" drug bill by a vote of 70-15; approval is expected in the House.
But there is good news on other fronts. Martha Mitchell to the contrary, the killer weed may well have definite medicinal uses"according to long-secret medical research just made public in The Washington Post.
The Attorny General's missus, who is well on her way to becoming a high camp folk hero, recently asked the chief medical officer of the Narcotics Bureau in Washington to burn some grass for her so she could take a wiff and be able to identify it if need be. "The next morning I woke up with the most horrible reaction you can imagine," she said. "My eyes were completely closed, my face was
swollen and I had the skin of an elephant."
The medical reserach, done ten years ago at the Army chemical welfare laboratory at the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, was disclosed when the proceedings of a 1969 National Institute of Mental Health conference were published. According to Dr. Van Sim of the Edgewood Arsenal, marijuana may be effective in treating tetanus, migraine, high blood pressure and sunstroke.
Marijuana, the scientist noted, lowers blood pressure for as long as 36 hours"an effect that may be helpful in treating patients with high blood pressure. Pot also quickly lowers the body temperature of experimental. subjects by as much as three degress"a possible cure for extreme cases of sunstroke. Sunstroke currently kills a large number of its victims when it is severe enough to render them unconscious. An injection of marijuana serum might save those lives.
Sim also cited the work done in the 1940's by the late Dr. Walter Siegfried Loewe of the University of Utah, who found a tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, or synthetic marijuana), "very effective" in preventing epileptic seizures when given in small doses.
Loewe's studies, Sim lamented, were stopped because of political pressure and fear of possible addiction. At that time, medical researchers had not proved beyond doubt, the impossibility of physical addiction to marijuana.
The research disclosed in the newly published proceedings of the 1969 meeting join the overwhelming body of past work in substantiating the claim that marijuana is far superior to alcohol. No solid research has documented claims that marijuana hurts people. And there is evidence to the contrary: for example, unfinished work in Boston reportedly indicates that motor control of experienced users improves when they smoke.
On the legal front, an organization
named Right A Wrong has formed to act as a marijuana lobbying group. Made up of straight business types, Right A Wrong's main purpose is keeping lines open to politicians; its founders believe grass may be legalized before the end of the Nixon administration. "They may throw this one to us as a bone," one of the organizers said, "so we won't bug them on the race problem, the war and poverty. The government works in ways like that."
The organization's main worry is fear of a takeover by left-wing radicals, which, in a sense, is already happening. Right A Wrong had originally proposed a huge July 4 smoke-in in Washington D.C. this summer. But after radicals (namely the Youth International Party) expressed interest in the event, Right A Wrong decided it was a bad idea and backed out.
Another fledgling group, Amorphia, Inc., seems to have its corporate head in a better place. Still mostly on paper at this point, the group hopes to invovled 300 leaders in arts and letters, sciences and medicine who will push for the legalization of marjjuana while cooperating on the fight against abuse of the true "hard" drugs. It will be a profit corporation ($5 a share) that would seek to become the major grass manufacturer and distributor. Revenue"figured to be about $2 billion a year"would create an economic foundation for development of what Amorphia calls "revolutionary life styles"support of over 100 p00 people in prototype integrated communities." Right A Wrong hopes to involve people like Margaret Mead, Buckwinster Fuller, Tom Wolfe and Marshall McLuham. Their job would be to sway the 85 percent of the Gallup Poll public now opposed to legalization.
If, between now and 197? when dope is legalized, you should find the police knock, knock knocking on your front door, there are a number of things you should remember:
February, 1970