A bill authorizing marijuana use for Ohioans with certain medical conditions and a recommendation from their doctors went into effect Sept. 8, but the drug has been present in Athens for decades.
Pot permeated local news media in the '70s, surfacing in crime coverage, letters to the editor and creative columns that offer a glimpse into the history of Ohio University’s campus drug culture.
“The biggest business in Athens — conceived and run entirely by students or those of student age — is dope,” read an article published in the first Sunday edition of The Post in February 1970.
The article proceeded to list prices for drugs from marijuana to cocaine, quoted by a consensus of local drug dealers consulted by The Post in an effort to keep readers from “getting screwed.” Columbian weed was the most expensive substance listed, at $35 an ounce.
“That’s the same price per weight as the metal gold, but reports say it’s worth it — one subject reported a 36-hour high,” the article elaborated.
For those looking to try something different with their stash, The Post published a full page of recipes in which pot was a main ingredient. Before describing treats like a “Bloody Mary Jane,” “Pot-e de Fois Gras” and “Pot Roast,” a few clarifications were made.
“When selecting your marijuana, choose a relatively good cooking grade grass — domestic is fine," Andy Alexander, a former editor of The Post and now a visiting professional teaching journalism, wrote in January 1970. "Save the imported dope for before and after dinner joints.”
Pot was so prevalent on campus that the 1970 Athena Yearbook described student apathy toward the drug in an article that claimed the novelty of smoking was wearing off as it became more accessible.
“When The Post published in January half-a page of recipes for a complete dinner in which marijuana was a major ingredient, campus reaction was surprisingly low-keyed,” the article said.
The same yearbook referenced a four-part series detailing drug habits at OU published in the Dayton Daily News at the end of March 1970. Dale Huffman, a columnist for the Daily News followed a dealer selling marijuana to students and commissioned a poll detailing campus drug use.
The results of that poll, which asked questions of approximately 10 percent of the OU population, showed that 41 percent of students had tried marijuana, but 84 percent knew where to get the drug “right now.”
“You can see it being used freely in campus gathering places … including dormitories," Huffman wrote. "When I accompanied a young dealer selling ‘stuff’ to students, he delivered it from room to room in a men’s dormitory as if he were delivering milk.”
By 1973, marijuana policies in the dorms were becoming more lax thanks to Bruce Gaynor, a new director of judiciaries who instructed residence life staff to overlook marijuana practices.
Gaynor said he favored more lenient discipline for marijuana-related offenses because he wanted his staff to focus on other areas, such as hard drug cases.
Welden Witters, an associate professor of zoology at OU in 1977, also believed drugs on campus were an inevitable occurrence, and used his laboratory to anonymously test street drugs to save students from consuming contaminated substances.
A student could assign a number to their drug, then slip it under the professor’s door or into his mailbox with no questions asked. The professor would then test and destroy the drug, letting the local media know if harmful substances were present.
“I’m not antidrug, because they are valuable, but they are extremely overused,” he said in a Post article.
Ohio legislative efforts in the early '70s aimed to encourage light first offense penalties for marijuana possession, and some bills pushed for decriminalization altogether. Those efforts were supported by several letters to the editor that appeared in the pages of The Post, including one entitled “Speak up, toke up.”
“It has been estimated that over 80 percent of students at this campus and at others across the nation use grass regularly," it read. "So why the ‘crazy’ laws and why not legalization? Toke up a petition now.”
