When large numbers of individuals with shared values engage in certain patterns of drug use, the political consequences can be serious. The Yippies of the late 1960s and early 1970s provide such an example.

Rather than quietly retreating from society as part of the baby-boom's countercultural (hippie) revolution, the Yippies shocked those with conventional values in the United States through spectacular media events. Thousands of young Americans shared the antimaterialistic values of Yippie leaders Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. In 1967, Hoffman dumped dollar bills from the visitors' gallery onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. In 1968, another protest event was staged—the Chicago Yippie Convention—timed to coincide with the Chicago Democratic Presidential Convention and considered an opportunity to protest the VIETNAM War.

Yippies challenged the establishment with a Festival of Life and invited drug-using hippies to attend; it included LSD seminars, rock shows, light shows...