Evidence, textual and physical, about the Bard’s indulgence.

Wanna know how William Shakespeare was so far ahead of his time in regard to wondrous wordplay and wildly imaginative scenes and sonnets? Well, it could be that the loquacious Bard was hitting the bong! According to a recent report in The Independent, forensic analysis of 400-year-old fragments found cannabis residue on pipes and stems scattered on Shakespeare’s property.

A team from the Institute of Evolutionary Studies in South Africa conducted a chemical analysis of the 17th-century artifacts, excavated in 2001, from Stratford-on-Avon, and found marijuana on eight of 24 clay samples on the grounds, including four pot-positive pipes from his own garden.

Lead researcher Professor Francis Thackeray (University of Witwatersrand) thinks weed may have helped inspire history’s greatest playwright, pointing out a line from Sonnet 76.

“In Sonnet 76 he writes about ‘invention in a noted weed.’ This can be interpreted to mean that Shakespeare was willing to use ‘weed’ (cannabis) for creative writing (‘invention’),” Thackeray went out on a limb to explain. “In the same sonnet it appears that he would prefer not to be associated with ‘compounds strange,’ which can be interpreted, at least potentially, to mean ‘strange drugs’ (possibly cocaine). Sonnet 76 may relate to complex wordplay relating in part to drugs, and in part to a style of writing associated with clothing (‘weeds’) or literary compounds.”

Two additional pipes from the excavation area did indeed test positive for cocaine—or coca leaves—said to have been brought back from Peru in the late 1500s by Sir Francis “Vacuum-Cleaner” Drake. While these coca-contraptions were near Shakespeare’s domicile, they weren’t actually on his property, so it’s doubtful Bill was hitting the crack pipe.

Plenty of stuffy scholars are scoffing at the notion Shakespeare used cannabis (while probably themselves scraping dusty ancient snuffboxes for residue). “I suppose it’s remotely possible that Shakespeare and his family were getting a buzz from what they were smoking,” harrumphed Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt, “but I very much doubt that it played any meaningful role in his life.” Not willing to give up his own afternoon hot toddys, the English prof continued, saying, “Alcohol is a much more likely stimulant for Shakespeare’s imagination, and even that is probably unimportant.” Uh, FYI, Prof, #MarijuanaIsSafer.

Given his place and time, you couldn’t really blame the brilliant Bard for craving a little pick-me-up during his famous 18-hour writing binges. Tea, coffee, espresso, and RedBull were unavailable then, and everyone, including the Sweet Swan of Avon, has a vice. In fact, Brits had been hitting the pipe for centuries, as well as using hemp for paper. (Pope Innocent VIII put a damper on open use when he singled out cannabis as an unholy sacrament of the Satanic mass. #ReeferMadness) In fact, in 1563 Queen Elizabeth I issued a formal decree forcing land owners of 60 acres or more to grow cannabis or be smacked with her cane (and a £5 fine).

It is of course possible that this is much ado about nothing, and that someone else was smoking ganja out of the Bard’s bud-pipes. Nevertheless, I have decided to throw some scientific evidence of my own (read cockamamy hearsay) into the marijuana mix, proving once and for all that Shakes was a sacred stoner: It’s said that Shakespeare coined over 2,000 words in his lifetime, including eyeball, gossip, gnarled (gnarly, dude!), unreal (Bro!), dwindle, puking, laughable, rant, hobnob, buzzer, besmirch, beached, bedazzled, cold-blooded, zany, addiction, arch-villain, new-fangled, swagger, and drugged! Heigh-ho and Great Tilly-Valley, that’s buzzed brainstorming at its best!

And more obvious evidence—his inspired insults! No poet could come up with linguistic gymnastics such as beslubbering, clapper-clawed, beef-witted, loggerheaded, flap-mouthed, bum-bailey, unmuzzled, onion-eyed, and miscreant without being high as a pox-marked pignut!

To inhale or not inhale, that is the question. A report from Psychology Today notes that cannabis can evoke psychotomimetic symptoms, or what’s known as “peak consciousness,” allowing users to break free from pedestrian associations and connect seemingly unrelated concepts—a key element in creative thinking. Whether or not Shakespeare smoked salvia or imbibed indica, I bid you adieu with wondrous and trippy words from The Tempest, Act III, Scene 2—evidence he’s high on life, or weed, or the wings of angels.

At thy request, monster, I will do reason, any reason.—

Come on, Trinculo, let us sing.

(sings) Flout ’em and scout ’em,

And scout ’em and flout ’em.

Thought is free.

Our King County Sheriff is outspoken in his support for legalization.

The sky has not fallen because we have legalized marijuana in Washington. Is it going to work long-term? I don’t know; we’ll have to wait and see. But clearly, what we were doing before—the War on Drugs—did not work, so it was time to try something new. The citizens suggested legalizing marijuana—and I support it.”

It’s a reasonable-enough statement, but somewhat surprising in that it comes from our own King County Sheriff, John Urquhart. “I still think it was a good decision for the citizens of Washington,” Urquhart told me in an interview last week. “The initiative [I-502] passed statewide with 56 percent supporting it, and 63 percent in King County, so that’s clearly what the citizens wanted.”

Urquhart’s outspoken support of legalization isn’t being taken all that well by some members of law enforcement. Urquhart did a TV ad last year on behalf of the (successful) Oregon Measure 91, and members of the Oregon State Sheriff’s Association took him to task. “How dare he use his position as a sheriff to spoon-feed Oregonians blatantly false information about Washington state,” said Clatsop County Sheriff Tom Bergin, “right before an Oregon election.”

Jefferson County Sheriff Jim Adkins not only didn’t like Urquhart’s ad, he went NIMBY gun-slinger with a zinger. “You don’t see any Oregon sheriffs going up to Washington to weigh in,” Adkins blasted in a statement. “He needs to get his nose out of our state and show some respect. The issues we face are different.” Like neck beards and living on a swamp-river, I presume.

Members of the Oregon Sheriffs Association claimed Urquhart’s statements were misleading, citing state patrol reports that showed stoned driving arrests had increased. In the ad, Urquhart rightly claims tax revenue is up, wasteful arrests have been eliminated, and DUIs in our state are down, implying that legal weed may have something to do with all these results.

While it’s true DUIs are down overall (DUIs have dropped 25 percent since 2009), arrests involving pot and driving are up. The most current stats from the Washington State Patrol show that cannabis-related DUIs since December 2012 (when we legalized it, man) have gone up, from 988 in 2011 to 1,362 in 2013. A Washington Traffic Safety commission report last week showed the frequency of drivers in fatal crashes who tested positive with THC in their systems (alone, or in combo with booze or other drugs) was highest in 2014 (75) as compared to the previous four-year average (36).

“There have been more arrests for driving with marijuana in their system,” Urquhart admitted, “but, overall, fatality crashes have not gone up. There haven’t been any studies in Washington where there’s a direct causation from legalizing marijuana [to road fatalities]. There might be a correlation, but we’ll need more research on that.”

And the reason for more stoned drivers? “Well, for one, we’re looking for stoned drivers. Because of all the publicity around it. And now we have a per se standard. So we’re watching for that—and obviously there will be more arrests. As they test more blood—they’re gonna find more people with THC. The question then will be, how long has it been in their system? Did it affect their ability to drive? And what other drugs might be in their system?—including alcohol.”

But surely, since ganja has gone legal, officers in the field have constantly had to tackle out-of-control stoners at sex-crazed parties, right?

“No. Not at all. From what I’m hearing from my deputies, it’s a big yawner. No change for them whatsoever. What I have told them, if people are smoking marijuana in public, use your discretion like you would with drinking in public, or like speeding. Don’t be afraid to write a citation. So they’re doing that. But I haven’t heard any pushback.”

I asked the Sheriff if it was strange to be a voice for legalization. “To be honest, it’s very, very weird. I have been a cop for 40 years, I spent a good amount of that time doing drug investigations, and was a street-level narcotics investigator. And now, in some quarters, I’m the face of all this. Most police chiefs and sheriffs don’t want to speak out on this, regardless of their what their personal feelings are. And of course, the police chief has to kowtow to who the mayor is. A sheriff has more freedom. I just don’t care, to tell you the truth.” (FYI, the Washington State Sheriffs’ Association wrote a letter to the Oregon sheriffs during the campaign, clearly stating that Urquhart’s views were not endorsed by the organization.)

Urquhart isn’t a Lone Ranger (Lone Reefer?) on legalization. Founded in 2002, LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) is a group of over 5,000 current and retired cops, judges, and prosecutors committed to ending decades of failed drug policies. Like Urquhart, they don’t like the trillion dollars spent on the failed War on Drugs or the $80 billion spent on incarceration in the U.S. each year—which could instead go to rehabilitation, job training, and education.

At a press conference last month, executive director Major Neill Franklin explained LEAP’s position: “As our nation’s top police and prosecutors reflect back on their careers, we have come to understand that many of the so-called tough-on-crime principles to which many of us gave our lives are flat-out wrong,” said Franklin. “We can reduce crime and incarceration at the same time, but to do that we need alternatives to arrest, balance in our laws, and continued improvement in community relations.”

Every 45 seconds a person gets busted for marijuana. This adds up to more than 700,000 pot-related arrests in 2014 alone. Of 1,561,231 total drug arrests last year, weed made up 45 percent of ’em. Of the 1,700 daily cannabis busts, 88.4 percent were solely for possession. Still, Urquhart understands that not all law enforcement will agree with his stand on legalization, and he’s fine with that—so long as they have ideas of their own on failed policy.

“The only thing that gets me pissed off is when police chiefs criticize the decision that the citizens of Washington made, for legalizing marijuana, but offer no alternative to that. They all know the War on Drugs doesn’t work. What are we going to do differently? Marijuana is one small step. Let’s see if it works. It’s a grand social experiment. And it appears to be taking hold.”

Never thought I’d say this, but there’s almost too much marijuana in the news as of late. With cover stories this month in both Time (by local journalist and former Seattle Weekly scribe Bruce Barcott) and National Geographic (“The New Science of Marijuana”), you can’t walk by a newsstand or go online without getting a contact high. Of course it’s great that mainstream publications are finally treating the subject of cannabis in a more mature manner, rather than continuing to deliver cliched jokes about smokescreens and . . . contact highs. Still, I wish Time and Nat. Geo had saved some for later. Like good ganja, ya gotta space the hits out.

SMOKED SALMON
In addition to the weed-news deluge, a plethora of cannabis culture stories make me want to roll things back to the days of Reefer Madness. Take marijuana-infused salmon. Please.

The owner of Rosenberg’s Bagels in Denver created a seriously smoked salmon when he recently infused the fish with cannabis. The process involved introducing marijuana into Everclear (which extracts the THC, the psychoactive element in ganja), then spreading the tincture over the fish for 72 hours before cold-smoking it (in the traditional way).

“The flavor is really great, not that weed-brownie flavor that you try to cover up with chocolate,” noted general manager Nicholas Bruno. “The dill, lemon, and cannabis—everything melds perfectly with the fish.” While the deli may have made a news splash, they’re ruining a perfectly wonderful fish, as well as some damn fine weed. (The lox/cannabis combo was more stunt than serious sales effort, as all marijuana edibles in Colorado must be clearly labeled and packaged in single doses of 10 mg or less.) I’ll say this much: Don’t even think about ruining our Copper River salmon by infusing it with pot. (Though Copper River Chronic does have a nice ring to it . . . )

Point is, not everything has to be infused with cannabis. Yoga classes are being combined with getting high, for example. Not necessary. Your yogic bliss should be enough for mind, body, and soul, so that it doesn’t require taking bong hits during bandhasana. A company introduced cannabis K-cups last week (Catapult coffee pods retail for $10 each), infusing your morning by truly waking and baking. How ’bout ya don’t!? Moderation, people.

SELLING TO MINORS
The state’s Liquor and Cannabis Control Board just busted four of the 22 recreational-marijuana stores they tested for selling to underage shoppers, which is—without a doubt—a serious screw-up. (As a point of comparison, Colorado did this kind of check last June after their retailers had been open six months, and all 20 passed the test.) The biggest reason these failures are so outrageous is that the board had announced to all recreational shops a month before that they would be doing compliance checks. Many journalists are calling the busts a major setback for marijuana (including Seattle Weekly’s own Daniel Person, declaring “Recreational Pot Is Having Its First PR Fiasco”). In fact, I think it’s just the opposite: A legal system, with due diligence, probing for violations and nailing those not in compliance sounds like a well-reasoned plan that moves in the right direction. (And indeed, idiots selling to underage kids should lose their licenses.) The rest of the stoned state gets a second chance—as every one of the 138 retail operations in the Evergreen State will be checked for compliance by the end of June. #getittogetherpeople

WE LEGALIZED IT—AND WE LIKE IT
Even with bumps in the rasta road, surveys from Public Policy Polling show that in the two states that legalized cannabis, the people like the law—even more than when they voted it in. Fifty-six percent of us here in Washington approve of the recreational weed law, and 37 percent dislike it. In the 2012 referendum, the same percentage of folks approved, but 44 percent voted against the intiative. Better still, 77 percent of voters say the new laws have either had a positive effect or no effect at all. In Colorado, a different poll confirmed the trend. Sixty-two percent of voters there support the new ganja laws, an increase of seven percentage points from the vote tally in 2012.

Survey says: It’s all good.

CLEMENCY
Finally, in a bit of good news related to a previous column (“Prisoners for Pot,” May 13), the governor of Missouri commuted the sentence of a man serving a life term for marijuana. Gov. Jay Nixon’s commutation makes Jeff Mizanskey, 61, eligible for parole after being jailed for 22 years under Missouri’s three-strikes law. Part of the reason for the governor’s move? Four hundred thousand people had signed a change.org petition requesting clemency. Mizanskey’s not free yet, but he’ll plead his very strong case before a parole board this summer. A nonviolent offender, Mizanskey has been a model prisoner—and has served a longer term than many rapists, child-molesters, and murderers. (Parole accepted!)