Paranoia is just a bump on the way to the governor's mansion.

One of the many folks running for governor in California's recall election is the director of Los Angeles NORML, Bruce Margolin, an attorney who has made the legalization of marijuana the centerpiece of his campaign. He insists that if every toker in the state voted for him, he would win in a landslide. Although David Letterman jokes that Margolin merely "wants to reduce the cost of Taco Bell's chalupas," the candidate vows to pardon all nonviolent pot prisoners and to file a states' rights lawsuit challenging the federal government's right to dictate marijuana law.

States' rights...not just for racists any more.

Calfornia NORML coordinator Dale Gieringer calls Margolin "our favorite son." According to Gieringer, a Margolin victory would go toward solving numerous state problems at once. For starters, he points to research that shows that a major dent in the California State budget would be achieved by the legalization of marijuana.

"The raising of $1 billion in excise taxes, the generation of $240 to 400 million in sales tax revenue, and the creation of an industry comparable to California's wind industry which could involve 50,000 jobs and $1.4 billion in wages are some of the advantages," says Gieringer, also citing "incalculable savings to the state as a result of decreases in law enforcement, criminal prosecution, and enormous incarceration costs."

Not everyone sees it that way. I recently wrote to drug czar John Walters and asked the same basic question that I pose to every interviewee on the subject: "If you had a son or daughter who tried smoking marijuana, do you think it would be fair for them to go to prison?"

I received a form letter in return:

"Dear Sir or Madame: The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has received your inquiry and it is currently being processed. An Information Specialist may reply to you, depending on the nature of your message. Sincerely, ONDCP."

My own first encounter with pot occurred over 40 years ago, when a friend, John Wilcock, passed a joint to me in a theater lobby at a performance of Arrabals' Automobile Graveyard. At the time, Wilcock was writing a column for the Village Voice called "The Village Square," which first appeared in the paper's 1955 debut issue. For his 50th column, he invited me to write a parody of it, but the Voice refused to print it on the grounds of "bad taste."

It wasn't the only "Village Square" column they declined to run. There was a report on Jehovah's Witnesses' doorstep-marketing and a column about bidets, which Wilcock said were becoming popular in the U.S. after travelers had encountered them in Europe. After spiking an early column about Tim Leary and drugs, they refused to allow him to receive mail at the office in case people sent dope in the mail.

When Wilcock began writing a column, "Other Scenes," for the upstart East Village Other, he was told by the Voice to make a choice, because they wouldn't allow him to appear in both weeklies. He was paid $5 per Voice column at first, eventually getting $20. After a few years, they said they were broke and couldn't pay him at all, though he could continue writing the column for free. A few years after he ended his 10-year association with the Voice, it was sold for $7.5 million.

In the course of his work, Wilcock had come to realize that, to smoke pot safely, it was necessary to be very aware of your environment.

"For example," he recalls, "in a crowded theater lobby, if you took drags and exhaled carefully, you could notice who became aware of the smell and how they thought about it (positive or negative), but they couldn't see where it was coming from. Once when I was at a crowded Guggenheim opening, standing with artist Marty Greenbaum smoking a joint, a guard started towards us. I was about to hastily extinguish the weed when Marty advised me to watch how the guard would walk 10 paces towards us, pause, half turn, stand still for 20 seconds and then turn around and retrace his steps. Which is exactly what he did. And we kept on smoking."

Indeed, Wilcock offered me my first joint in that theater lobby during intermission at a performance that we found somewhat boring. As I was in my "I'm high on life" stage, I turned down his offer. During the second act, however, I was still bored, but Wilcock seemed to be laughing at everything, and as a result I swore off ever getting stoned because I didn't want it to affect my critical judgment. But vows are made to be broken and, in the words of Albert Brooks, "Smoking pot helps make boredom more tolerable."

For the last nine years, Wilcock and Bob Perlongo have been compiling an as yet unpublished book, Marihuana: The Weed That Changed the World. "Clearly it has changed the world of most individuals who enjoyed it," he writes in the introduction, "so many of whom know that they have altered not only physically by becoming more aware of their bodies, but also through mind shifts brought about in their attitudes and beliefs."

One filmmaker, whose experience with marijuana goes back almost half a century, notes in the book, that "It is hardly a coincidence that the '60s protests against the Vietnam war and calls for the decriminalization of marijuana were the twin aspirations of the 'underground press' agenda when it would have been nearly impossible to find an alternative paper anywhere in the world that didn't proclaim these as its immediate goals."

Wilcock, meanwhile, tells me that his early mentions of marijuana in the early-60s Voice columns were almost certainly the first positive references to the subject to appear in a New York newspaper.

I have finally received yet another form letter from the ONDCP Drug Policy Information Clearinghouse, based on a recent inquiry. This one states: "We have forwarded your e-mail to Mr. Walters office at the Office of National Drug Policy."

Will Mr. Walters ever reply to my simple query? I may still be inhaling, but I ain't gonna hold my breath for that.

Paul Krassner can be reached at [paulkrassner.com].