Carl Sagan: A Cannabis Advocate

Carl Sagan is well known and beloved by many even outside of the scientific community where he worked. He dedicated his life to educating the general public on why understanding space and the world around us is so important for peace and understanding—a task that his protégé, Niel deGrasse Tyson, is taking on today. But what many don’t know is that Sagan was also an outspoken cannabis advocate.

His 1969 essay on cannabis, written under the pseudonym “Mr. X,” is full of insights on the plant, it’s psychoactive and mind-expanding properties, and how it can be used to enhance life. It was eventually incorporated into the book Marihuana Reconsidered, published in 1971.

One might expect this essay to focus on dry aspects of cannabis use that would only be clear to other scientists, such as chemical compositions and how they interact with the brain, but there is hardly any of this in the iconic writing. Instead, Sagan takes the same conversational, inviting tone that he uses in his famous series Cosmos, or his science fiction novel Contact.

Sagan focuses on such intricacies as the way cannabis enhances sex, food, music and art, pointing out that he was never fully able to appreciate all the subtle flavors in food or the tones in a song before enjoying these things on cannabis. In the spirit of the ‘60s, he also talks about the “trip” aspect of cannabis and how it can cause one to see visions and hallucinate, although he also points out that it is a very mild “trip” that one can “come down” from easily simply by thinking his or her way out of it.

Even more interestingly, amidst the humor of the essay and the observations about life, color, and adventure being enhanced by cannabis, Sagan admits to having had some profound ideas while under the influence. Although he concedes that using cannabis makes it more difficult for him to ponder the type of high-level scientific problems he usually deals with, he also claims that he came up with some of the humanities-based concepts he has lectured and written on while high, such as a theory about the origin of racism.

Sagan was a man who was very full of wonder for the universe and everything in it, so it is not surprising that he brings that same childlike, and yet attuned and intelligent, wonder to the subject of cannabis. Anyone reading this essay will again be reminded of the joy associated with their first time smoking and the wonderful enhancing abilities of cannabis, as well as humbled by the power it has to expand even the most high-functioning minds.