I was in Portsmouth; Ohio where for some time I had been trying to learn how to attend the city council meetings where laws were passed. I learned the meetings weren't merely for the small body of council members, but also for the public in general. However, there was a membership and if some one from the public wanted to attend a meeting, he must have been invited by a member. I also learned that George Musser (a Portsmouth acquaintance whom I knew briefly in 1970) was one of the members of the city council.

Typically, at council meetings, the floor was thrown open to resolutions and debate over the resolutions. If the resolutions passed, they became law in Scioto County, Ohio.

I managed to enter one meeting. Before arriving, I had written my own resolution which proposed the legalization of marijuana. Before the meeting began, I passed out some literature to try to persuade as many people as possible to vote in favor of my resolution.

The meeting was opened and some other business was first attended to. A speaker read all the resolutions. Finally he arrived at my resolution which also stated some reasons why marijuana should be legalized. One reason was that approximately 80% of young people were already smoking marijuana and were therefore in blatant violation of the law. As a consequence they had lost much respect for the law.

My resolution also mentioned that the writer of the resolution smoked 345 grams of marijuana a year. The speaker (obviously opposed to the resolution) declared, "That just gives you an idea of what the idiot is like who wrote this thing."

At the end of my resolution were the signatures of five or six people. My signature was at the bottom of the list.

When the speaker asked for a motion to pass the resolution, I stood up and said, "I do so move."

Someone to my right seconded the motion and asked me if the resolution as it stood could actually be passed into law in Scioto County.

The speaker threw the resolution open to debate. Some people seemed concerned that the small body of people present could vote on the resolution and pass it into law. They seemed to think a resolution of that type would require a vote of the entire county and not merely of the small number of people present at the meeting.

A girl asked whether the word "marijuana" might not include other "dangerous and killing substances." I didn't have the floor at the moment, but I thought if that were true, then any substance which was legalized could include "dangerous and killing substances." The girl then produced a list of "dangerous and killing substances" and began reading it. The first substance on the list was something called "brown blabba." I had no idea what brown blabba was, but the crowd began laughing when they heard the name.  The girl proceeded to read off the rest of the list.

Meanwhile I began looking around the room trying to determine whether there would be enough votes to pass the resolution. I saw Dave Richter (a former high school schoolmate) and Brenda Boley (a fellow law student); they obviously would vote against the resolution. But I saw many people who would surely vote in favor of the resolution. A question still remained whether this assembly had the power to pass the resolution into law. Some serious discussion ensued as to the actual nature of the resolution.