The drug era exploded

Hippies have always been known to experiment with drugs. They were one of the first generations to take drug use to such a high level. Marijuana (pot, grass, Mary Jane), LSD, speed, and other hallucinogenic or mind-altering drugs were hippie favorites. The young counterculture used drugs primarily as a way of escaping from the disillusionment of the times. It helped to turn away from Middle America to focus inward on one’s self.

When marijuana was condemned to be harmful to the user’s health, the hippies refused to believe it. Many youths felt that the older generations, while objecting so forcefully to their use of drugs, were being hypocritical because of the social acceptance of drinking, smoking cigarettes, which were possibly more addictive and harmful than pot, and the extensive adult use of prescription drugs.

When the facts rolled in, they didn’t lie. In 1958, there had been less than ten thousand arrests throughout the country on drug charges. By 1968, that figure had reached to 162,000, with hundreds of thousands more taking drugs but avoiding detection by the law. In addition, the age level of those arrested dropped drastically. In 1958, only thirty-five percent of those arrested had been under twenty-five; in 1968, almost seventy-five percent were. Soon middle and high school kids were trying to “get-high” with anything and everything in sight. Their experimentations were drastic. The youngsters were sniffing model airplane glue, eating morning glory seeds, and baked banana peel scrapings, and smoking catnip, all of which were alleged to be hallucinogenic.

A man known as Professor Timothy Leary was very popular in the sixties. He was the high priest of the drug culture to the hippies. Leary was fired from Harvard University with Professor Richard Alpert for LSD experiments with students. In New York, they founded the League of Spiritual Discovery, a religion declaring LSD as its holy sacrament, in part of an unsuccessful attempt to maintain legal status of the use of LSD and other psychedelics for the religion’s adherents, based on a “freedom of religion” argument. Prescribing LSD even for seven-year-olds, Leary created the famous motto, “Turn on, tune in, or drop out,” meaning that one should use drugs, get in touch with the psychedelic experience, and drop out of contemporary society.



In a 1968 interview with Dane Archer, Leary told Archer, “Laws are made by old people, who don’t want young people to do exactly those things young people were meant to do- to make love, turn on, and have a good time.” Drug use began to have an even harsher affect on society, especially between parents and teenagers. Which lead to the sudden rise in teenage runaways. In 1968, it was estimated that the number was over half a million, almost doubled that of just four years earlier.