Author Ryan Grim discussed his new title at Busboys and Poets
Posted July 1st, 2009 by busboys
This is Your Country on Drugs
“Strolling around Burning Man and being unable to find acid is something like walking into a bar and finding the taps dry.” Discussing the extensive absence of acid in the drug scene during the early 2000s, Huffington Post journalist Ryan Grim introduced his new book, This is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America, to a full house of DC progressives at Busboys and Poets’ Langston Room on Monday, June 29th. Acid and LSD availability comes in waves, Grim explained, but a noticeably long drought of the drugs led Grim to present the issue with a professor and drug policy expert. Grim summarized the conversation:
Grim: “There’s no acid in the United States.”
Professor: “These kinds of drugs come and go.”
Grim: “No, there’s no acid, and there hasn’t been for a couple of years.”
Professor: “How do you know?”
Grim: “I’ve looked. It’s not here.”
After a gentle reprobation by the professor, they consulted public drug use information, and sure enough, acid and LSD consumption had plummeted in the early 2000s. “This was not a trend,” Grim noted, “This was an event!”
What caused the great acid casualty of the early 2000s? How has U.S. drug policy shaped not only how much drugs we consume but what kind of drugs we consume? From a single silo of acid in the rolling plains of Kansas to a “coked” meeting between President Jimmy Carter’s White House and marijuana reform advocates in 1977, the unseen history of drug policy in the United States spans both the Americana landscape and the beltway tabloids – all of which for Grim inevitably lead to a murky basement of privileged New Yorkers huddling around mattresses and puke pales while awaiting the arrival of an Incan shaman from Spain to send them on their ayahuasca induced journey.
Grim offers a fascinating historical account of drug use in our country, and his journalistic report disavows much of what many Americans consider common sense in the discussion of drug policy. Pick up this book, and check out other events at Busboys and Poets to encourage progressive voices in the public dialogue.
–Zach
