On the Right

New York, August 20—Excuse me, but I am off on drugs again. I have found myself, during the past months, brooding over the drug problem as all of us have done, and from time to time passing along to you this or that insight, as I have taken it from others whose concern is full-time. The desire for knowledge about drugs and drug-control is greater than for any other subject and for the best reasons. All of us know of someone who has been killed in the Vietnam war. For every victim there, there are a dozen who are potentially victimized by drugs. Representative Edward Koch of Manhattan has been struggling to get through Congress a simple bill the purpose of which would be to set up a Presidential commission to survey conflicting data on the matter of marijuana. The support for that bill was sleepy as recently as two years ago. Now it is strong; and not impossibly, when the bill actually comes up for a vote, it will pass all but unanimously. The reason is that many congressmen, many senators, are discovering that their own children, or the sons and daughters of their best friends, are in fact smoking pot. Why should that surprise them? If the sons of Ethel Kennedy and Sargent Shriver are caught smoking pot, why should it surprise us if the son of Francis of Assissi smokes pot?

The assumption has been all along that it will be government agencies, government researchers etc., who will save us; who will give us the information we need. There are recent signs that we will not need to depend on them. There is, for instance, the book by John Kaplan called Marijuana—The New Prohibition (see page 955). However, I have in recent days come across a young man whose existence I urgently wish you to know about, if you are interested in the drug problem and whose programs I enthusiastically applaud, not only because they are brilliantly informative, but because my friend—his name is Laurence O. McKinney—never understood why it was necessarily a function of the government to take the lead in enlightening the American people on the matter of drugs.

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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New York, August 20—Excuse me, but I am off on drugs again. I have found myself, during the past months, brooding over the drug problem as all of us have done, and from time to time passing along to you this or that insight, as I have taken it from others whose concern is full-time. The desire for knowledge about drugs and drug-control is greater than for any other subject and for the best reasons. All of us know of someone who has been killed in the Vietnam war. For every victim there, there are a dozen who are potentially victimized by drugs. Representative Edward Koch of Manhattan has been struggling to get through Congress a simple bill the purpose of which would be to set up a Presidential commission to survey conflicting data on the matter of marijuana. The support for that bill was sleepy as recently as two years ago. Now it is strong; and not impossibly, when the bill actually comes up for a vote, it will pass all but unanimously. The reason is that many congressmen, many senators, are discovering that their own children, or the sons and daughters of their best friends, are in fact smoking pot. Why should that surprise them? If the sons of Ethel Kennedy and Sargent Shriver are caught smoking pot, why should it surprise us if the son of Francis of Assissi smokes pot?

The assumption has been all along that it will be government agencies, government researchers etc., who will save us; who will give us the information we need. There are recent signs that we will not need to depend on them. There is, for instance, the book by John Kaplan called Marijuana—The New Prohibition (see page 955). However, I have in recent days come across a young man whose existence I urgently wish you to know about, if you are interested in the drug problem and whose programs I enthusiastically applaud, not only because they are brilliantly informative, but because my friend—his name is Laurence O. McKinney—never understood why it was necessarily a function of the government to take the lead in enlightening the American people on the matter of drugs.