Rolling Stone takes a chill pill - drug control - Brief Article

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, June 1, 1994 by Iris Cohen Selinger

From the magazine that brought us the drug-induced prose of Hunter Thompson and promoted "high" culture in the sixties and seventies comes the May 5 special issue, "Drugs in America." The take of Rolling Stone founder and reported former drug-user Jann Wenner on how to minimize the country's drug problems seems to be yet another instance--along with the August 1993 launch of the bimonthly Family Life--of his maturing point of view. The special issue's article on the dangers of the epidemic use of amphetamines on the West Coast, for example, hardly extols the glamour of drug use. Wenner concedes that there is a change in tone in the magazine's coverage of mind-altering substances. "We understand that people use drugs as part of the American culture. I suppose the difference now is that we recognize the down side of it. The actual drugs themselves have become widely available and are incredibly potent. It's very different from the days when we just had grass and LSD."

But Wenner says the fundamental position of Rolling Stone hasn't changed. "We stood for decriminalization of drug use then, and we do now. The real damage is caused not by the drug use, but by the war on drugs in this country. ... It's about the insanity of prosecuting marijuana users instead of violent crime. It's about sending a drug addict to jail, rather than treating him."

Asked whether the appeal of using drugs has changed for Wenner, 48, since he began publishing 27 years ago, he offers a sobering perspective: "Oh yeah, I think people in their mid-thirties and forties who have been through it or overused it, realize the consequences are too high."