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Ace Backwords on Pot

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LITerary Classics

Acapulco Gold
by Edwin Corley
Warner Paperback Library 1972

Michael Evans works in an advertising agency that is hired to do an ad campaign for marijuana, in great secrecy. The tobacco company that plans to market it is convinced that it will be legalized as soon as the newly elected president takes office. After all, it was the 18-year-old vote that got him into office.

Evans used to blow some weed in college, but says, "I think the drug scene stinks...One of my best friends freaked out on LSD and spent four weeks in Payne Whitney." But he decides to do the work, because it means a huge raise and besides, if his company doesn't take on the account, some other company will anyway.

An attractive college student named Jean is in on the secret, because a Nader-like professor has assigned her to learn about the ad business from the inside. Evans and Jean go to Jamaica with the tobacco tycoon, who plans to bring home a planeload of pot to get a jump on the manufacturing process.

The author has one of his characters quote an article from the New York Daily News of September 8, 1970, where the report of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence recommended legalization of marijuana for people of 18 or older. "By harsh criminal statutes on marijuana use and in light of evidence that alcohol abuse accounts for far more destruction than any know chemical substance today," the panel concluded, "we have caused large numbers of our youth to lose respect for our laws generally."

One character says that in the mid-sixties, a couple of the big tobacco companies bought land in Kentucky and Mexico, with cannabis cultivation in mind. Evans gets quite a lot of useful information from Jean. She points out, for instance, that kids are skeptical of Establishment claims about the dangers of pot, because they know nothing horrible has happened to their friends who have tried it, so they don't believe government claims about how bad speed and heroin are.A lot of rhetoric is spouted between members of the advertising team and the tobacco representative, all showing ambivalence of one kind or another.

For instance, marijuana is capable of being abused. "But that kind of reasoning would eliminate booze, cigarettes, cars, food, sex and everything else that's fun." The tobacco tycoon explains the slyness of the prohibitionists responsible for the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. "Congress knew that passing a law outlawing possession of Cannabis would probably be unconstitutional....You just had to fill out a million papers and pay a tax. That was for 'handling.' Then if you wanted to sell or give some away, you had to make out some more papers for 'transfer.' Whereupon the state cops, who did have laws against holding the stuff, moved in and busted you."

In the course of their conversations, the various characters bring to light some of the extreme penalties. In North Dakota, there was a time when possession, first offense, meant 99 years at hard labor. In Georgia, a second offense for selling could get a death sentence. In Michigan, the minimum sentence for murder was two years, and the minimum sentence for marijuana twenty years.

Jean also alerts the team that the factory will have to retool. It can't use the same machinery as for tobacco cigarettes, because there would be too much waste. A smaller, thinner cigarette is needed for pot. She also suggests that, since joints are passed around, a germicidal filter might be a good selling point.

Of course Evans and Jean get together in the sack and he discovers that sex was never so good. The initial advertising campaign is designed to subtly suggest that the main benefit of smoking pot is to enhance your sex life.

The discussions about the ethics of the thing continue. Is marijuana dope, or not? One character points out that people can get addicted to anything, even Coca-Cola, aspirin, or coffee. One says of pot, "It doesn't happen to be my pleasure, but I don't see any virtue in denying it to others who do enjoy its effects. I don't maintain those effects are completely harmless, but neither are the effects of all those other things." Evans himself defines dope as stuff that causes physical addiction, complete with withdrawal symptoms, not merely dependence.

He's actually developing an open mind - largely because of the sex with Jean. Then he discovers the big secret: why the head of his ad agency is willing to take on the project. This man had reported his son to the police for smoking pot, and in the course of the police raid, the boy was injured and spent five weeks in the hospital. Then, even though the boss spent a lot of money on the best lawyers, his son was still sentenced to thirty days in jail and two years probation. "But those thirty days were too much. I don't know what they did to him in there, but Collin emerged from jail a hardened deviate. Collin my son, flaunts his homosexuality." The enormous load of guilt he carries makes him see the wisdom of legalizing pot, so other boys won't be converted to faggotry.

Then somebody blows the whistle on this preparation for legalization, and the tobacco honcho has to go see the Vice-President-elect. Much to his surprise, it turns out that this man is also in favor of legalization. Because if it's sold commercially, there won't be "dirty pot", treated with heroin. The incoming V.P. wants "to see marijuana sold on the open market, cheaper than any pusher can sell it. He wants pot taken out of the hands of the syndicate to remove the easy way for the hoods to addict kids onto something stronger."

Evans proposes to Jean. But she confesses she has been a spy all along, and her hidden agenda is actually to prevent legalization, because marijuana is dope, as proven by the fact that she herself is addicted to it. Evans goes back to his ex-wife, and stays with the ad campaign, though he is now an empty man, only doing it for the money.

It's hard to tell if the author himself suffered from terminal ambivalence, or if he saw this whole morality tale as a way to put forth a lot of pro-cannabis rationality and still get away with publishing the book. Perhaps he felt, or was warned, that it wasn't permissible to come out in favor of legalization without throwing up a smokescreen (ha ha) of contrary arguments as well. Kind of like the censorship code that movies had to follow in the old days, where it was required that any sexually active woman must die before the end of the picture.

*****

Pixiedust drawing: Dr. Agon