LIFE Archive: Marijuana
November 24th, 2008 by Alex
Google does some pretty cool stuff (while earning more money than most of us can imagine). Shit, that’s how most the people who read tFS have found our site.
Adding to the coolness factor, Google digitized thousands of images from LIFE Magazine. It’s an amazing catalogue of heritage for all of us, with pictures dating all the way back from the 1860s until the 1970s.
I decided to scan through the LIFE library and take a look at how marijuana use has been documented over the decades. Let’s take a trip through memory lane and see some visuals from the past…
(Warning: 9 more images so have the bandwidth ready.)
First, let’s start with a set of marijuana tracking & arrest images from 1969:
US Customs agents tracking nationwide marijuana ‘market,’ during “Operation Intercept.”
LA Country sheriffs pulling over Hell’s Angels members looking for anything illegal, including marijuana. Angel on left, being frisked, is known as Roseberry.
A car trunk full of marijuana trying to be smuggled into the US from Mexico.
Customs agents burning confiscated kilo-bricks of marijuana.Now let’s check out some random images:
Research scientist Dr. Reese T. Jones, adjusting electrodes monitoring a volunteer’s brain response to sound during experiment at Langley-Porter Institute using controlled dosages of marijuana.
Failed cover image for a 1967 article on pot.Now some actual cover images:
A 1996 Time cover on kids and smoking pot.
A 2002 Time cover about the growing issue of marijuana legalization.Finally, one image that I have no idea what the hell is going on:
A boy, smoking weed… no date and no context.
