Putting the 1960s on Trial
Prosecuting Canada’s “Johnny Reeferseed,” Rosie Rowbotham
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12970627 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Greg Marquis (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 279-308 |
| Publication date | 2024-06-25 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Social History of Alcohol Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0887-2783 • E-ISSN: 2640-7329 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/731801 |
| OpenAlex | W4399998636 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 7 |
In the 1970s and 1980s, federal prosecutors conducted three lengthy trials against Robert Rowbotham for importing and trafficking hashish, an increasingly popular part of Canada’s illegal cannabis market. Rowbotham, a “hippie capitalist,” made a defiant speech in defense of the counterculture after his 1976–77 trial, where writer Norman Mailer testified as a defense witness. In the early 1980s, after being released on early parole, Rowbotham became involved in a large hashish smuggling operation, uncovered by electronic and physical surveillance and testimony from his co-accused. In 1985 Rowbotham and 11 accomplices were convicted, and many were sentenced to serious jail time. At a sentencing hearing musician Neil Young testified in favor of soft drugs. This article argues that in the political and legal climate of the war on drugs, prosecutors and judges involved in the Rowbotham trials employed the specter of the “bad ’60s” to demonize counterculture ideas that supported decriminalization, an approach that framed recreational drug use as nostalgic, immature, antisocial, and out of date
Criminology · Political science · Canadian Identity and History · Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
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