The sixties were a time of changes. Racial integration was starting to happen, the "womens' movement" was getting underway, birth control pills became available, Timothy Leary introduced the world to LSD, it became all too obvious that smoking pot wasn't going to kill you or turn you into a heroin addict. The nice seventy-something year old white haired lady a few houses down the street decided to see if the mushrooms the neighborhood teenagers were gathering would make good mushroom soup. Every afternoon a bunch of elderly ladies would sit down with a bunch of teens, listen to the the 'Dead and the 'Stones, knit, drink coffee, and everybody would be giggling, but the ladies wouldn't smoke.
The young men didn't want to go off to an unpopular war. Many went to Canada. The war backfired in a way nobody could forsee. Kids who never would have moved from beer to pot in this country came back from 'Nam confirmed smokers. Good old Uncle Sam offered them the G.I. Bill. They went off to college. Some majored in agriculture. Pretty soon people were cross breeding various strains of cannibus sativa. They understood genetics. They learned about hydroponic gardening. Cultivating corn in Iowa was just so boring! Not when you could be raising pot ten times as potent as grandpa used to smoke. And all of this happened with your tax dollars courtesy of Republican presidents and Republican administrations. Who was it that said "...but I didn't inhale!"
