The Epic Story of Dr. Lester Grinspoon - Part 2

The Ballad of John and Lester

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During the seething cultural clashes of the early 1970s, President Nixon, who was known to overindulge in alcohol, tried to get John Lennon and Yoko Ono expelled from the U.S. due to a prior pot charge. He wanted to dispense with them as they had become very prominent and effective thorns in his side, by opposing the Vietnam War with the ‘Give Peace A Chance’ campaign. Nixon’s legal team claimed that John had been admitted into the U.S. improperly, as U.S. immigration policy prohibited entry to anyone convicted of any drug offense. Years earlier, Lennon had been arrested for possession of a minor amount of marijuana in England and, at the time, had been advised to plead guilty to this misdemeanor charge.

Leon Wildes, the lead attorney representing John and Yoko, had discerned that it wasn’t actually “marijuana” or cannabis that John had been arrested for, but “cannabis resin” also known as hashish.

According to Wildes,

I needed to prove that cannabis resin was not marijuana. I was told by my friend Alan Dershowitz [back when he was a credible attorney] that Dr. Lester Grinspoon of Harvard Medical School was one of the best doctors in the country and an expert on marijuana. I called Dr. Grinspoon and asked,

"Is cannabis resin marijuana or what?"

"Oh," he said, "cannabis resin is not marijuana. It's hashish!"

"Dr. Grinspoon, name your fee. I need your testimony."

He said, "I'm very sorry. You can cite my book, but I don't testify anymore."

According to Wildes, “I was very disappointed and tried to reach some other doctors. Then I got a call from Dr. Grinspoon.

"Mr. Wildes…I have a special personal situation. I have a 12-year-old son Danny who has terminal leukemia. Since we first spoke, I found out that he idolizes John Lennon. If you can get me some things autographed by John Lennon, I will be happy to testify at my usual rates."

My dad would have defied gravity or moved mountains for my dying brother Danny. In NYC for the trial, he was invited to dinner with John and Yoko. After dinner, they then gave him a tour of Apple Studios. I can’t fathom what it would be like to visit these hallowed grounds – my entire childhood was spent listening to the Beatles. My dad was deeply impressed by Lennon, whom he described as exceptionally kind, thoughtful, and articulate.

At the trial, during his questioning, Attorney Wildes included,

“Dr. Grinspoon, is cannabis resin marijuana?”

“No, cannabis resin is not marijuana,” Dr. Grinspoon replied.

“Is cannabis resin a narcotic drug?” Mr. Wildes asked.

“No, cannabis resin is not a narcotic drug,” Dr. Grinspoon replied.

John and Yoko won their case, in no short measure due to my dad’s expert testimony. According to the judge,

We are, in this case, called upon to decide whether Lennon's 1968 British conviction for possession of cannabis resin renders him, as the Board of Immigration Appeals believed, an excludable alien under 212(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) which applies to those convicted of illicit possession of marijuana. We hold that Lennon's conviction does not fall within the ambit of this section.

John and Yoko sent flowers to our house afterward, and my two older brothers, Danny and David, ended up with personally autographed records, and other enviable swag. Sadly, this long-suffering author, the smaller of two younger twins, the runt of the litter, received nothing.

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When my dad needed permission to use a Beatles quote in his book ‘Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered’, he wrote the following letter:

Dear Mr. Lennon:

You may recall that about 5 or 6 years ago I testified at your trial as an expert on marihuana. I believe it was shortly after my first book, Marihuana Reconsidered had been published by Harvard University Press. Since that time I have published several other books in the area of so-called drugs of abuse…I am now working on a comprehensive study of psychedelic drugs. This will also be a scholarly book and it will be published by Basic Books.

At one point in the manuscript, we quote the verses from “Tomorrow Never Knows” by you and Paul McCartney. The verses we should like to quote are as follows:

Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.

It is not dying, it is not dying.

Lay down all thought, surrender to the void.

It is shining, it is shining –

That you may see the meaning of within.

It is being, it is being.  

I understand that it is very cumbersome to get permission to quote anything from the Beatles. Would it be possible for you to cut through this red tape and see to it that we have permission to quote the above in this present book? I would be most appreciative if you could help us out with this matter.

With best regards—

                                                       Lester Grinspoon, M.D.

John Lennon promptly sent the letter back. He had drawn an arrow pointing to the section with the lyrics to ‘Tomorrow Never Knows” and hand wrote that this was, “Inspired by Tibetan Book of Dead”. He wrote on the bottom of the letter, “It’s O.K. with me…” and signed his name.

What can one say about this except…holy shit!

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It is impossible to fully convey how pervasively my dad inspired me. The home environment he provided was electrifying. The living room of my childhood was constantly inhabited by the most brilliant academic luminaries of the day, such as Dr. John Mack (my dad’s med school roommate and fellow psychiatrist, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his psychoanalytic biography of Lawrence of Arabia), his other best friend Carl Sagan (who also won a Pulitzer Prize for ‘Dragons of Eden’) and others, such as Alan Ginsberg (who, in a parched voice, said to me, “boy, get me some water” – at the time, ten year old me was like ‘who the fuck is this?’). With humor, bonhomie, and passion, they passed around the Peace Pipe and espoused some of the most innovative and thrilling ideas that a pre-teen could possibly be exposed to.

My dad’s writings inspired me. I can’t describe how paradigm-demolishing it was to read both ‘Marihuana Reconsidered’ and ‘Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered’ in my teens. My dad was challenging the way things were, especially the War on Drugs, right when it was gearing up, as well as the political and intellectual complicity of the medical establishment. He was articulating a vision for a better world. These books are exhaustively documented and meticulously, ruthlessly argued.  Overlooked in his myriad academic achievements are how beautiful his writing was, and how carefully he sculpted each sentence.

Of course, reading these texts, and listening to the loquacious, convincing academics in our living room, made for some awkward experiences at DARE meetings in middle school. I was armed with a priori knowledge that it was all based on lies and propaganda, and my attitude was somewhat less than respectful. Through my teenage eyes, the police waddled in every year, attempted to bludgeon us with onerous concepts such as ‘amotivational syndrome’, and then barely had the animation to go back for more donuts. I couldn’t help but ask myself who was more motivated, these stale and uninspired messengers of an unchanging, untrue message, or the weed-smoking intellectuals I witnessed at home, such as Carl Sagan, who were literally changing the world, and how we all think about it, before my very eyes.

I also worshipped my dad’s fearless, messianic recklessness when driving our small, zippy and unreliable motorboat in the fog, deep into the ocean, during storms – anything to catch a bluefish or to have a raw naval adventure. He seemed authentically to be in his happy space when the engine would sputter in the middle of the Atlantic, we’d be alone and adrift, for hours, with menacing clouds on the horizon. He’d mournfully start honking on the foghorn to see if, perhaps, there was someone within earshot who could eventually toe us back to shore. Underneath his staid academic trappings, my dad was an original and free spirit.

Most of all, I was inspired by his unwavering conviction, and lived example, that anyone - even a broke Jewish kid from the suburbs of Boston, who suffered many losses, who had to work all kinds of odd jobs as a teen to help his family make ends meet – anyone can, and must, join the struggle to make the world a safer and more humane home for all of us. He never stopped trying to contribute to his vision of utopia, until his last breath.