50 Years Ago
Redwood High School athletic director Bob Trappmann caused a bit of a fuss when he resigned as athletic director (but not as football coach) in reaction to a ruling on the question of long hair on athletes. Trappman has championed the short-hair look on Redwood athletes. He was overruled by new superintendent Bob Torrey, who said that pending a thorough study of the whole issue, the Tam High School District athletes can wear their hair as they see fit.
-Newsgram, 10/1/69
In consideration of these presently available facts, the Board of Directors of the Marin Medical Society makes the following recommendations:
- That truly scientific investigations be increased and encouraged, with a greater degree of cooperation by the narcotics agencies than has been evidenced in the past.
- That in spite of the apparent innocuousness of the commonly available form, marijunana not be legalized, at least until it has been more thoroughly studied.
- That drug laws at all levels of government should relate more realistically to the pharmacology of prohibited drugs (Marijuana is not a narcotic, and should not be classified as such), and to the actual dangers of a particular drug to the individual and to society. And in accordance with this principle, that the penalties of marijunana possession and usage be reduced, to better fit the seriousness of the crime.
-Don Sower, Executive Director, Marin Medical Society (letter), 10/1/69
40 Years Ago
Just as Governor Brown signed legislation permitting the legal use of marijuana for medical purposes, California Attorney General George Deukmejin launched an all-out assault on crops of sinsemilla, the large and potent marijuana plants grown in the North Coast section of California. The new medical marijuana law, which takes effect January 1, 1980, will give cancer chemotherapy patients access to marijuana under a program to be directed by the Research Advisory Panel. California is the 14th state to enact such legislation.
Joanne Willams, 9/28/79
…Apocalypse Now, for all its intentions, for all the immense talent and money lavished upon it, offers at best no more then the glint of a candle. At its worst, it is a moral and filmic failure.
–Irving R. Cohen, 9/28/79
30 Years Ago
Oil drilling off California’s central coast would create a terrible mess: oil spills, air pollution, tanker traffic and offshore drilling platforms as tall as 25-story buildings. All this for enough fuel to run the country for 30 to 45 days. That’s the bleak scenario in a 330-page, $95,000, two-year report commissioned by the six coastal counties. That’s pretty much what drilling foes have said for years. They wanted a tome to back them up.
-Steve McNamara, 9/29/89
20 Years Ago
Federal Aviation Administration chief Jane Garvey demonstrated her confidence in the agency’s ability to prepare for potential year-2000 computer problems by buying a ticket aboard an American Airlines flight from Washington, D.C., to Dallas on New Year’s Eve. Garvey and Ray Long, head of the FAA’s Y2K program, are scheduled to be in the air at midnight Greenwich Mean Time, the standard used by air traffic control systems.
-Roland Sweet, 9/29/99
— Compiled by Alex T. Randolph
