We had the opportunity to ask the Bear, aka Augustus Owsley Stanley III, the famous acid maker of the sixties, a few questions. Bear was the soundman for the Dead for many years, and actually manufactured the LSD for the famous Acid Tests of the mid-sixties.

[Click on the Bear to go to the Bear's own site]

ED (Entheogen Dot):
How do you feel about the law and it's effect on you?

(Bear:)
I have no fear of the authorities at this point in my life, nor am I ashamed of my use of the sacramental substances. So far as the “law” is concerned, men may stand up and try to command the sun to rise and the tide to go out, but that doesn't make it “law.” Man's laws are not well suited to the attempt to control religious and personal behaviour beyond that which is truly necessary to protect life, limb and property. Even in the most usual sense, there is a difficulty in assuring the democratic process in the presence of too many proscriptions on private and personal, mutually consensual behaviour.

(ED:)
I can concur with you there. As to where our readers heads are, most have used LSD at some point in their past, most are interested in growing their own hallucinogenic plants and using them for spiritual discovery. Some of our readers are from outside the United States, and the laws of the US do not apply to them.

(Bear:)
I am outside the US, and you are mistaken, the US has forced the entire membership of the UN to sign a treaty called the “Single Convention on Drugs” under threat of economic sanctions. This international “law” makes all the usual drugs just as illegal everywhere in the world as they are in the US, yes, yes, even in Holland. Although they allow pot, they still have the laws on their books. So in some countries, like Malaysia and Thailand and Singapore, you find people executed for possession. Of course this is “approved” behaviour, even though the actual application of the death penalty in those countries is in the nature of racial and political suppression. As the death penalty is to a certain extent in the US, targeting minorities and the poor. Oh, didn't you know that the poor in the US are under heavy threat? The origin of the cannabis laws was as much racial as it was to suppress the hemp industry.