“They smell bad, have diseases, and are lazy”: RCMP officers reporting on hippies in the late sixties

Abstract

At the end of the sixties, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (rcmp) ordered officers engaged in undercover operations to send reports on drug users and especially hippies. This paper argues that collecting information on hippies was a useful weapon in the battle against softening penalties for marijuana offences since the federal police force was among the strongest opponents of legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana for recreational purposes. By depicting hippies in very negative terms, the rcmp was able to describe them as a threat and argue against their cultural, social, and political demands on the grounds that this was necessary to preserve society as it was.