: A History of the Drug and Sex Counterculture
and Its Censorship in the 20th Century
Ecerpts:
Most people think of the 1960s when they think of the counterculture.
Writers such as Hunter S. Thompson and acid gurus such as Timothy
Leary openly flaunted the use of drugs during those decades. In the film
Easy Rider, two hip young men traveled across the southern US on Harley
Hogs. Along with them was a generous supply of marijuana. The trip was
financed by a huge cocaine deal. Towards the end of the film, they took
LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) with some prostitutes. This was not the
first film to portray marijuana use, but unlike other films, there seem to be
no adverse consequences for using these drugs. Easy Rider was made in
1969, at the height of the 1960s drug counterculture.
Actually the “counterculture” that came to light in the 1960s started in
the mid to late 1950s and lasted until the mid-1970s. Many of the hardcore
counterculture events took place in 1969, the last year of the ’60s decade.
To most Americans the 1960s brought about rebellion against authority,
drug use and sexual promiscuity. But those things did not appear from
nowhere. They had their roots in small minority cultures that took place
years earlier.
The use of drugs and sexual promiscuity did not start in the 1960s.
Various drug- and sexual-oriented cultures have emerged since the
founding of the United States. Such cultures have come and gone over the
last thousand years. Opium parlors popped up in such cities as San
Francisco and they had white customers as well as the stereotypical
Orientals. Brothels were legal and even taxed during the wild west of the
mid-1800s.
Drugs have influenced our culture since the earliest civilizations. The
earliest known record of cocaine use is found on a three-inch ceramic
head of a Valdivian in Ecuador, in 1500 BC.1 Hector Berlioz wrote
“Symphonie Fantastique” in 1830, inspired by an opium dream he had.
Writers from the last three centuries have written on their drug
experiences. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes, was
devoted to opium. Fritz Hugh Ludlow wrote the classic Hashish Eater,
(published in 1857).2
There has been a history of literature and pop culture that thumbed its
nose at the puritanical and conservative political culture of early America.
At the turn of the century (about 1910), the Masses, a Greenwich Village
magazine, fused the cultural radicalism of American Bohemianism with
radical socialist politics. Various anarchists’ publications of the late
1800s promoted fee-love.
In recent years, as then, there have been attempts to suppress culture
that offends the puritan values of the US. By the 1990s politicians and
pundits of the right, far right and center left have called for a “culture war”
against the movie, music and television industry. This is not just for the
portrayal of drug use, but for sex, too much violence, themes involving
suicide, the acceptance of homosexuality and a number of other taboos as
well.
The US Senate held a three-hour hearing, November 6, 1997, to
criticize violent and “anti-social” song lyrics. Senator Sam Brownback,
R-Kansas, made it clear he wanted to shame the music industry into acting
more responsible.3
“Looking at the lyrics of some of this music... particularly in the shock
rock and gangster rap area, it’s very violent,” Brownback said. “It’s
hateful to women, much of it is quite racist, it glorifies things like cop
killing and date rape that I think everyone in society agrees is wrong.”4
These attacks are nothing new. At the beginning of the 20th century
Anthony Comstock introduced the Comstock Act. Comstock was a
Christian social activist who promoted censorship laws to suppress
anything of a sexual nature. He not only campaigned against pornography
and sinful behavior, he lobbied for federal and state anti-obscenity
legislation.5
Most drug laws were passed before or after the time of alcohol
prohibition. The main difference between alcohol and most other drugs
was that the other drugs were more closely linked to minorities in the eyes
of the public. Cocaine was associated with blacks, opium the Chinese and
marijuana the Mexican immigrants. Yet alcohol was seen at the time as a
vice of European immigrants. These immigrants were considered a threat
to the traditional middle-class values that have often been summed up as
White Anlgo-Saxon Protestant (WASP).
In the film Prohibition, Thirteen Years That Changed America, Ed
Asner, narrator, explained that “middle-class America feared that their
own moral values would be overwhelmed, corrupted, dragged down. For
many, Prohibition became a control mechanism, something to enforce
their values.”6 As the film further states, America had a large influx of
immigrants, who brought many aspects of their culture with them. As an
example, the German immigrants believed drinking beer was a normal
part of socializing. American Protestantism is based largely on
Puritanism. That philosophy was largely gone from Europe, but not from
the US.
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