Remembering the Shooting Stars of the 60's: Hendrix and Joplin --and of course, DRUGS

When Neil Young sings about "the Needle and the Damage Done...and every junkie's like a setting sun" of course I am always reminded of those two Woodstock-days stars, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.

Joplin is being celebrated by a show on Broadway ( did it open yet? Have to check)

Hendrix was commemorated earlier in the year by the Gap, which issued clothes in his honor, mostly T shirts as I remember

In personalities, it was a joke: Hendrix SEEMED dangerous but was apparently a gentle person, whereas the "long suffering" Joplin was the dangerous one, a self-pitying harridan who probably might have killed someone during one of her drunken rages or other shit fits

60% of Americans now favor legalizing marijuana, which is not surprising as it is nowhere near as dangerous as alcohol and cigarettes

But I wonder about this Libertarian scheme of making heroin and cocaine legal and if that really will work or not

They tried it in England and it became a real problem and while pot is cool in the Netherlands they have not been very happy with attracting all the heroin junkies of Europe there

Cocaine and crack have wreaked so much havoc in New York City that it is impossible to ignore ( and of course heroin was one of the main routes by which the AIDS epidemic spread, despite these rather pathetic needle exchange programs)

Of course, we may be in much more danger from anti-biotic resistant super bugs than we are from any painkillers or narcotics

I am old enough to remember the hoopla surrounding Woodstock, none of which I really bought at the time...it obviously was, as Grace Slick once tartly commented, " a lot of stupid people in the mud."

The music remains and a lot of it is great

But I do not expect heroin to become legal in the U.S. anytime soon, despite former underover narcs having told me repeatedly they think it should be, that it and cocaine etc are causing more damage in the long haul by being illegal

But try to convince the hard core Republican base or a lot of the liberals even about that

There is no solution for any of this in sight but I am getting used to situations like this as I get older, just as I do not expect to live to see them complete the Second Avenue subway in NYC

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