got 30 years for passing a joint that wasn’t even his, while white college kids doing a lot worse were getting off with a wink and a nod.^[13]  The blatant hypocrisy was starting to erode respect for the law in general, and that was alarming to bedrock conservatives like William F. Buckley and Milton Freidman.^[14]  All over the country lawmakers were taking another look at marijuana penalties and by the time Jimmy Carter got to the White House, eleven states had reduced possession to the equivalent of a traffic ticket.^[15] 

At this pivotal moment, President Carter turned over the helm of national drug policy to a man who actually knew something about the problem.  Stanford-trained psychiatrist Peter Bourne had helped open the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, and his observations of the street scene in San Francisco convinced him that prison was the last thing most of these kids needed. As drug czar, he hammered away at his close friend Jimmy Carter and finally convinced him that the law should be changed.  On August 2, 1977, the President told Congress, “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself,” and for the first time in four decades of criminalization, the White House called for the elimination of penalties for possession of marijuana.^[16]  It looked, for an instant, like the rules of engagement for the drug war were about to be rewritten.

But while Peter Bourne may have had a clear picture of the medical issues, he was incredibly naive about marijuana politics.  An Englishman by birth, he failed to grasp the symbolic connection between reefer and the cultural war that had split the U.S. since the onset of Vietnam. To at least half the country, marijuana was emblematic of the unpatriotic, long-haired anti-war counter-culture—not just a drug, but a flag of anarchy. These citizens had not abandoned the field. They were waiting for a strategic opening and now it was at hand.

By the mid-70s there were plenty of advance warnings that the country was once again on a collision course