BOOTLEG WHISKEY

Robert Mitchum in "Thunder Road," as an outlaw running bootleg whiskey in a fast '57 Ford Fairlane. Mitchum also wrote and sang the song. I've always been a fan of Mitchum and his sleepy anti-heroes that were doomed from the start. He managed to live outside the law, and still be honest. Unless, of course, he was playing the villain, which he did so well in "Night of the Hunter" and the original "Cape Fear." (Speaking of prohibition, Mitchum was also busted for pot in 1948 and served time in jail. Pot prohibition still hasn't been repealed, but that's another story.) I've painted Robert Mitchum several times, and here he contemplates a ring, as well as his own uncertain future.


In 1932, the Democratic Party platform included a plank to repeal Prohibition, and Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for president promising a repeal. In 1933, the state conventions ratified the Twenty-first Amendment, and liquor was legal once again. Suddenly bootleggers were out, and whiskey was back in business. Big business. Nowadays giant corporations make and market the vast majority of booze, but you can still find good, small-batch, artisan distilled whiskeys. And you no longer have to hide it from the cops.

You've got to hand it to moonshiners who tended stills during our stupid governmental ban on liquor. While creepy Christian moralists like Carrie Nation and the teetotalers in the Temperance Union railed against demon rum, these bootleggers made whiskey and sold it to people who felt like having a drink. One of those small-batch, artisan distillers was my own grandfather. It was a stupid law, and my grandpa was anything but stupid. Of course, we've still got creepy Christian fundamentalists telling people what to do, but they lost this battle once and for all. I'll drink to that.

Here's a short history of whiskey making in America:


Here the Grateful Dead perform "Brown-Eyed Women," a bootlegging song, in March of 1986:

RICK STEVES' MARIJUANA CAMPAIGN

Popular travel guru Rick Steves has joined forces with the ACLU to promote the decriminalization of marijuana. Steves, a longtime supporter of a sensible pot policy, admitted five years ago that he smokes pot when he visits Europe. In a Seattle Times article, the Edmunds, Washington-based writer says he's not “pro-marijuana,” but in favor of discussing the laws that affect the 830,000 Americans who are arrested annually under existing marijuana laws. About 90 percent of the arrests are for possession.

“Marijuana use should be treated primarily as a health issue, not a criminal one," Steves said. "In Europe, I've seen how more thoughtful approaches to social issues can really work. Our government's war on drugs sounds very tough and results-driven, but all it really succeeds at is being enormously expensive, tearing families apart and treating nonconformists as criminals."


In a related story from today's LA Times: The American College of Physicians (ACP), 124,000-member group that is the nation's largest for doctors of internal medicine, contends that the rancorous debate over marijuana legalization has obscured good science that has demonstrated the benefits and medicinal promise of cannabis. The ACP is calling on the federal government to ease its strict ban on marijuana as medicine and hasten research into the drug's therapeutic uses.

"We felt the time had come to speak up about this," said Dr. David Dale, a University of Washington medical professor and the ACP's president. "We'd like to clear up the uncertainty and anxiety of patients and physicians over this drug."

The following clip shows Rick Steves interviewed at the 2007 NORML conference in Los Angeles. Ignore the silly song intro. For more Rick Steves at the "Europe Through the Back Door" website, click here.