Do you think that recreational drugs was at an all time high in the 70’s was because of the trauma the public witnessed in the 60’s with all the assassinations?

16 comments

1. 1. Are we sure it was at an all time high in the 70s, and not today with legalization/decriminalization?

   2. I would think that the trauma of veterans returning from Vietnam would be a far *far* bigger factor.

2. I would think it’s higher today, though I can’t be bothered to look it up – and it’s tricky to measure anyway.

3. It was high because of Boomer do-not-judge-ism

4. I think young men coming home from war had more to do with it than assassinations

5. I don’t think publicized assassinations had any impact on drug consumption in America

6. I think drugs were at an all time high in the ’70s because they were available, there was much less of an enforcement effort simply because it hadn’t caught up with the drug distribution networks and the fact that so many legal pharmaceuticals were being used, as well as newer drugs, like LSD and the early days of crack. I don’t think it had a single thing to do with assassinations, the war or the phases of the moon. It was kids getting high, same as it’s always been.

7. I don’t believe your premise is true at all. Recreational drugs are way more common, potent, available, and even legal.

   People forget that the stoner hippies of our collective romanticization of the 60s were not a huge portion of the population.

8. Agree with the older comments. Vietnam is likely a bigger cause. Also, the Industrial jobs were starting to go elsewhere.

9. No, it wasn’t driven by public assassination. Drug use of that period came as a result of the counter-culture movement, which draws its origins from the youth of the time rebelling against the ideals of segregation, rigid family dynamics, glorifying warfare with Vietnam, and government or authority control *(e.g.- “The Man”)* over individual citizens, taking away their rights to expression and self-determination. My dad was in high school and college during desegregation and the Vietnam War. He told me that, at the time, he felt it was ironic that the US government was so gung-ho against the Soviets and Communism being anti-freedom, while at the same time forcing kids off to war and treating a good chunk of the population as second-class citizens who were barred from a lot of the country simply because they were born black. He fell into the counter-culture movement and started smoking pot precisely because society told him not to.

   Second, I’d argue it’s more common today.

10. Probably more the result of multiple factors, including:

    Flock to cities and urban areas in the 40s and 50s and more exposure to new ideas (and as a result, new substances)

    Higher standard of living

    Increased economic and racial/social unrest

    Children of parents with WWII-related trauma / PTSD

    General increase in social freedoms and opportunities

    Vietnam War-related protests / hippie movement

    Vietnam War-related trauma / PTSD

    You could probably name many others

    I wouldn’t include assassinations in the list, though.

11. 1. The 70s was a time of economic depression and political strife (stagflation, the Watergate scandal, etc). There were also a lot of shell-shocked veterans returning from Vietnam. These conditions made it more likely for people to turn to recreational drugs as a means of stress relief.

    2. The hippie counterculture was prominent before all of the assassinations in the late 1960s. LSD and marijuana were all over the place in cities like San Francisco.

12. Big brain take

13. People took drugs in the 70s because the government told them they couldnt.

14. No.

15. Probably not.

    I’m basing this entirely on my grandpas experience with the JFK aassassination. He was at work and someone walked in and said “someone killed the president!” And my grandpa went “huh, wow” and then completed his whole workday and went home to dinner and watched it on the news.

    I was somewhat disappointed in the answer since I had asked what it was like, I thought it would be more exciting

16. The assassinations were shocking. But far worse was the Vietnam War American body count EVERY NIGHT on every network news channel. As a family we would be sitting down for dinner with the TV on in the background. Dad lost it one night. I guess we just tuned it out. It was such a sad time.