DBWI: Hippies use drugs

I was watching a documentary about the 60s, and I noticed the heavy emphasis of the hippies against putting unnatural chemicals in their bodies. What if the opposite was true, and how would it come about?

My guess is to have Timothy Leary's influence with the government to be lessened or otherwise removed, so as to avoid the "the government is trying to control us!" mentality. Any other thoughts?
 
Given that the hippie movement was a counterculture of sorts I would suggest that the legalisation and mainstream use of such substances prior to the 1960s would work. Alternatively, you will need a PoD that butterflies away the criminalisation of said mind-altering things. The *hippie movement would sort of resemble straight edge I suspect.

I don't know how you'd do that, though.

(I'm new here BTW.)

Edit: This looks more like a WI than a DBWI to me.
 
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OOC: The point of a DBWI is to answer "in character." In case I wasn't clear, in this universe, hippies refused to use drugs, the opposite of OTL.
 
OOC: The point of a DBWI is to answer "in character." In case I wasn't clear, in this universe, hippies refused to use drugs, the opposite of OTL.

OOC: Oops. Hope this is more in line with what is required. Again, I'm new here.

As I understand it hippies being clean stemmed from being against the Vietnam War; there was a leak about a paratrooper unit being supplied with psychoactive drugs, including marijuana and LSD, in an attempt to create soldiers with no fear of death and total loyalty to orders, no matter how horrific.

The substances were eventually supplied to the public by various pharmaceutical companies using the soldiers, and top military personnel, as a marketing device - the profits were astronomical. Drugs were, and always have been, a symbol of the ruling classes and their warmongering.

Change the image of the military to being clean-cut and free of such intoxicants and that might make them a symbol of rebellion, not compliance.
 
To be honest, this seems to me to be a bit too far-fetched even by alternate history standards. The hippies were a subculture that emphasised self-improvement, appreciation of nature, free love etc - not exactly compatible with zonking your brains out on hallucinogenic trash. Look how many of them were influenced by the writings of Buddha, Rand and Heinlein - and look at the small business movement that flourished among the hippy culture. That emphasis on keeping a clear head, facing life calmly and voluntary co-operation is probably the reason so many hippies became millionaires in the late sixties and seventies - and certainly the reason for the growing popularity of jogging, yoga and other forms of exercise, not to mention the decline in smoking that led to the implosion of the tobacco industry in the eighties. If for some reason they'd got into drugs instead, none of that would have happened - the sixties youth generation would have ended up being a bunch of indolent slobs. In other words, introduce drugs into the culture and the hippies wouldn't have been hippies anymore.
 
Exactly, the hippies were "the counter culture." And, while I'm going to straight up admit that mainline Protestantism (we're talking about the Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Presbyterians here) held a lot of the pro-peace, social justice positions Hippies were just the counter culture and Christianity is the dominant religion in America.

There was a really quick agreement between White and Black Protestant churches engaged in social activism that they would fight the illegality of marijuana. Attacking the War on Drugs and the Vietnam War became simultaneous, especially when musicians, artists, and social activists began to be arrested left and right for what's basically trumped up charges.

I mean, how could marijuana stay illegal when hemp was farmed just two decades before desegregation and its criminality was pretty clearly anti-Black and anti-Hispanic in nature.
 
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