Barry Vogel Interviews Richard Johnson — Part 4

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From BARRY VOGEL
Radio Curious
Originally broadcast February 19th, 2008
Transcribed by Dave Smith
Parts 1|2|3|4
[Full Interview on MP3 available for download here]

A Revolutionary’s Memorial In His Own Words (cont.)

Barry: Tell us about your personal experience with marijuana.

Richard: Well, I stopped smoking about 3 years ago.

B: Why?

R: My lungs are shot… I have congestive heart failure… I don’t drink and I don’t smoke.

B: Do you eat marijuana?

R: Oh no.

B: Have you ever?

R: It makes me want to pass out. I remember eating a brownie at a rock concert and I was prostrate for about two and a half hours. What happens is that my blood vessels expand and my heart can’t keep up and I can’t stand up… I have to stare at the ceiling and try to breathe.

B: Well, Richard, I can’t help but asking,

Barry Vogel Interviews Richard Johnson — Part 3

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From BARRY VOGEL
Radio Curious
Originally broadcast February 19th, 2008
Transcribed by Dave Smith
Parts 1|2|3|4
[Full Interview on MP3 available for download here]

A Revolutionary’s Memorial In His Own Words (cont.)

Barry: Richard, I want to stay with marijuana for a bit. Some people have said that the concept of medical marijuana is a political ruse… that many people enjoy marijuana just as many people enjoy wine… but we don’t hear of medical wine. Why do we hear of medical marijuana? Why not just allow marijuana to be?

Richard: I don’t know. I favor complete decriminalization. I believe medical marijuana was sold to the people of California in Proposition 215 as a half-way step to decriminalization in order to benefit people who are suffering, who needed medical marijuana, for example, on their way to die, or undergoing chemotherapy… and it is compassionate. So the voters of California said ok, for these suffering patients we will decriminalize marijuana, but only in this way. However, because it is only a partial decriminalization, it has created the situation that you noted before… the crime, the environmental abuse, the foreigners coming in, under the guise of medical marijuana… because partial decriminalization of a banned substance creates the anomalous situation of ample supply and high price simultaneously which contradicts a lot of economics… that’s what partial bans do. The way I state it is that medical marijuana is a government-granted franchise

Barry Vogel Interviews Richard Johnson — Part 2

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From BARRY VOGEL
Radio Curious
Originally broadcast February 19th, 2008
Transcribed by Dave Smith
Parts 1|2|3|4
[Full Interview on MP3 available for download here]

A Revolutionary’s Memorial In His Own Words (cont.)

Richard: The more we environmentalists fail to hold [our local representatives] responsible for their votes, then we have failed to get electoral power. Now, as fully-realized spiritually-liberated beings, a lot of us think that going for political power is evil or selfish or bad. All we have to do is get rid of that idea and instead replace it with the idea that political power would be good if it were in our hands, and what we need to do is get some and exercise it… and what we need to do is select environmentalists. That would be a good half-way step I would like to see accomplished in my lifetime… to elect at least three, if not five, supervisors to the Board of Supervisors.

Barry: When you say “fully-realized spiritually-liberated beings” who did you have in mind?

R: (laughing) I was being facetious. Some of us think that we are fully-realized spiritually-liberated beings but we are not, as you know. I’m thinking of the left, the environmental community, the pot-smoking, back-to-the-land folks.

B: In your estimation, what percentage of the electorate does that community make up in this county?

Barry Vogel Interviews Richard Johnson — Part 1

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From BARRY VOGEL
Radio Curious
Transcribed by Dave Smith
Parts 1|2|3|4
[Full Interview on MP3 available for download here]

A Revolutionary’s Memorial In His Own Words

Welcome to Radio Curious. I’m Barry Vogel.

Few people in Mendocino County who are not elected officials have created as much enmity and as many disruptive relationships as has Richard W. Johnson, Jr., who since 1984 has been the owner, editor, and publisher of four local newspapers under the banner of Mendocino Country.

Richard Johnson died March 16, 2011, at age 66.

This interview, intended as a tribute to his life, was originally broadcast February 19th, 2008, and he claims, among many other things, to be the original organizer of California’s Certified Organic Farmers; the recipient of The Walking Stick Award from the Mendocino Environmental Center in 1992 for promoting ocean sanctuary off the Mendocino Coast; and was the original proponent of Measure G on the 2000 ballot.

When I invited Richard Johnson to visit Radio Curious, he said he would like to discuss the amazing but little understood and seldom appreciated Richard Johnson… his life and times.

We touched on those and a few other topics in this conversation, recorded in the studios of Radio Curious,