Bennett Notes Drug Legacy of Woodstock

Drug policy director William J. Bennett complained Tuesday about the “memory distortion” in the nostalgia that has welled up around the 20th anniversary of the Woodstock festival.

The 45-year-old Bennett, a one-time guitar player and fan of early rock ‘n’ roll, recited what he called a “casualty list from Woodstock” of rock performers, including singer Janis Joplin, who died in later years from drug overdoses.

Bennett, who as a graduate student at the University of Texas in the late 1960s had a blind date with Joplin, said “part of the legacy of Woodstock was tolerance of drugs, and let us be glad that is over, rather than wishing it were back. We do not want 1969 back in terms of its view of drugs. We’ve come too far.”