In the fall of 1974, for my first year radio documentary in Radio and Television Arts at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University), I did an interview with Dr. Alexander Sumach, the then recent author of Grow Your Own Stone. The book advocated that a solution to the illegal use of marijuana at the time, was to allow law-abiding Canadian citizens the opportunity to grow it on their own, for their own personal use. This 'radical' book was later banned in Canada for a while. Now, of course, it's possible to grow cannabis legally in Canada for certain authorized purposes. How times have changed.
But, for a moment, take yourselves back to 1974. The law on the books was still being enforced at that time, to the extent that you could go to jail for seven (yes, 7) years for simple possession of marijuana. Imagine. You have a small bag of weed, or a few joints, in your apartment, your university residence, your home...
If you were caught, you could go to jail for the better part of a decade...
With that sobering thought, enjoy this interview, and remember the times during which it was recorded. If you're wondering...yes, I have permission to post this interview with Dr. Sumach. The interviewer (me) was a rather too serious and overly sincere first year radio student in a polytechnic, and of course Alexander Sumach was much younger then, too. So, forgive our early affectations, and enjoy the interview for what it now is - an historical document.
After the successful publication of various editions of "Grow Your Own Stone", Dr. Sumach also published A Treasury of Hashish. Both sets of covers from the editions are presented here, for archival purposes.
If you have feedback about the documentary, please drop me a line: .
Right-click, Save on this link to download the documentary (approximately 10 Mbytes, .mp3 format)