These people were closer to priests than outlaws to us since they were providing our sacraments at great personal jeopardy. We needed people to cultivate, transport and sell these sacraments.
All sorts of other plants and substances quickly followed. One thing we didn’t hate was marijuana, which was the primary sacrament from day one. Their relentless campaign to turn everything in America into plastic really annoyed us. The movement was actually deeply ethical and spiritual, and involved respect for nature and native cultures, as well as a deep suspicion for the oil companies, who had emerged as the world’s dominant corporations. The hippies influenced the Beatles, for example, not the other way around. When the hippie generation first emerged around 1966, they had a tremendous, global impact almost immediately.
