Early Marijuana Etiquette

Safe in a corner by a window, beer in hand instead of champagne, I tried to put pot smoking in perspective with etiquette, even in a humorous vein, and tried to get the changing world to fit changes that I myself had made.

The Etiquette Of Pot

La Salle's "Blue Room" hosts an intriguing lot. Overflow dinner crowds eat there: groups reserve it for private parties: Theatre Out of a Suitcase rehearses its plays around imaginary trees and telephones. On any given evening, walking past. one can catch a glimpse of employee parties, Jane Fonda or a local author. Or a bicycle that someone has parked in the corner nearest the kitchen.

The clientele sometimes can be formidable. Look-alike lawyers in look-alike neckties link arms around the political candidates who visit town, shoving less conventionally dressed journalists against the walls. In the Blue Room, feminist groups celebrated the recent Supreme Court decisions supporting the rights of women to have abortions. (Not having been invited, I watched from a distance and didn't try to offer my congratulations.) And a curious, but lively, gathering of what seemed to be bureaucrats and sales people bought autographed copies of a young woman's guide on the etiquette of pot smoking there.

Having been invited in a round-about way (one of the few perks that freelance journalists get is a ticket or an invitation to an event that his editor doesn't want to attend), I mingled for a few minutes but found few faces that I recognized. Safe in a corner by a window, beer in hand instead of champagne, I tried to put pot smoking in perspective with etiquette, even in a humorous vein, and tried to get the changing world to fit changes that I myself had made.

America's middle-class discovered marijuana less than two decades ago. Before that it was almost exclusively the domain of migrant farm workers and artists, writers and musicians who gathered in places like North Beach and Greenwich Village to share ideas and experiments. In 1959, border guards were more intent on hassling student-travellers for illegal copies of Henry Miller than they were for caches of weed. Jazz musicians grew marijuana on San Francisco fire escapes and were only criticized because the plants were less attractive than dieffenbachia or rhododendrons.

That changed in the early '60s. Pot, like long hair, became a symbol of social protest. College students risked unreasonable criminal penalties to smoke it. There was no etiquette-only bonding together against what was perceived as oppression. Sharing a joint (particularly in areas where conservative politics were the norm) became a dangerous, defiant and highly enjoyable-act.

I left LaSalle's Blue Room to the etiquette learners. distressed that this heritage of social protest somehow has been replaced by middle-class hip posturing. Not that there shouldn't be etiquette for those who want it (or want to satirize it) but because smoking a joint no longer is a political act. As a nation, we've slid backwards from those "turbulent years." Pot smokers dress well, drive new cars and own businesses. Diplomats with correctly crooked little fingers euphemize the butcherings of desperately hungry natives in Chile, Guatemala and El Salvador. Educators demand a return to rote learning. I wonder what symbols the next revolution will bring? - By Robert Joe Stout in Viewpoint City Lights, for the Chico Record, 1983

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia