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The
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“VICE, CRIME and MARIJUANA”
For
centuries cannabis or hashish has been the dope of assassins.
Now it is being used to corrupt youth, and its use is reflected in
increased crime.
THE AMERICAN LEGION MAGAZINE (pg. 12)
–
March 1963 - Pub. By The American Legion, 1100 West Broadway, Lousiville Ky.,
By RODNEY GILBERT
TOWARDS
THE END of the 11th century a master scoundrel named Hassam ben Sabbah, who
had been a schoolmate of the poet Omar Khayyam in his youth, organized in Persia
an efficient prototype of Murder Incorporated.
His business was blackmail; and he made his demands for tribute
businesslike by having anyone murdered who failed to meet those demands.
According to all ancient accounts, including a colorful story by Marco
Polo, Hassam's agents were drugged before undertaking a murder mission.
Somewhat
later a similar organization, which masqueraded as a religious cult, cropped up
in Syria, with headquarters in the mountains of Lebanon.
This may or may not have been an offshoot of the Persian corporation; but
it became painfully familiar to the Crusaders, who knew its chief as the
"Old Man of the Mountain." Again,
its operators were said to have been drugged before perpetrating a crime.
And
the drug? Marco Polo, telling his
story at the end of the 13th century, makes this clear enough.
Though he did not actually name the drug, he called the killers employed
by the master criminal ashishin, which is a very fair rendering of the Arabic hashshashin,
which means "hashish-eater." Because of the stories which the
Crusaders brought back, this Arabic word, with slight variations in spelling,
became assassin in most European
languages; and because of the part it was alleged to have played in cold-blooded
crime, hashish itself has only to be mentioned to conjure up in the mind of any
reader of Oriental fact or fiction, thoughts of criminal violence.
But
what is hashish? Maybe this is the
right point at which to say that hashish is marijuana and marijuana is hashish.
Unfortunately, this is not generally known.
If it were, people might take more interest in news items, particularly
police court news, mentioning marijuana. They
might properly be disturbed if they realized that today's "reefers"
are made of the identical drug that Hassam ben Sabbah and the "Old Man of
the Mountain" used to dope their thugs before sending them out to murder.
Let
us look into the background of the poisonous stuff. Whatever one calls the drug, hashish, marijuana, or by a
dozen other names, it is very simply made from an otherwise innocent and
commercially valuable plant known to everyone as hemp.
Botanically it is known as Cannabis
Sativa and Cannabis Indica. Some
say that this describes two different species.
Others say that there is only one species and that both names describe
the same thing. To keep out of
trouble, call it cannabis, and be done with it.
The
homeland of hemp is believed to have been Central Asia.
At some prehistoric time it was transplanted eastward into China where it
has been cultivated ever since. Nearly,
if not quite, 2,000 years ago it was introduced into Eastern Europe, and, in a
relatively few centuries, its cultivation spread across the continent and into
the British Isles. Then, after our
earliest colonists began to develop gardens, hemp came to the Atlantic Coast of
America, just as flax did. It is
interesting and important to note that in none of these
continent-wide and then trans-Atlantic extensions of the cultivation of hemp was
there any recognition of the fact that all parts of it, except the woody stem at
the ground, contained a resin that could be used as an exhilarating
"dope." In China,
from great antiquity until the immediate past, throughout Europe, and in
colonial America, hemp was grown solely for the fibre from which rope, cordage
and coarse textile could be made, and for the seeds from which oil was
extracted.
Then,
one is entitled to wonder, when and how did the use of hemp as marijuana, as we.
know it, come to us? The route was
devious. It is assumed that the
discovery of the power of hemp to turn its consumers silly was made in Central
Asia, where that use of it is, still popular and spread southward into India,
Iran, Arabia and the nations around the eastern end of the Mediterranean, where
its use survives today as an infernal nuisance, a demoralizing habit, and as an
occasional stimulus to crime.
Using
hemp as a drug almost certainly came to the Western Hemisphere by way of Africa.
The best guess, is that Arab slave traders took hemp deep into the Dark
Continent, together with instructions for its use as a drug.
Even the little pygmies in central Africa's rain forests know it as
"bangi" from bhang, one of
its most common names, and I grow it to pep up their festivals.
Another
theory as to how marijuana came our way is based on the knowledge that its
intoxicating properties have long been understood in Brazil, where hemp had been
early cultivated as a fibre plant by African slaves.
The slow advance of the use of hemp as a drug, northward to our border,
has no dates. But this we do know.
Prior to 1930 it was virtually unknown in Cuba and the United States.
It had not then crossed the Rio Grande into any American communities
except those frequented by Mexican migrant workers.
Then, suddenly, "reefer" smoking spread like a contagious
disease; the smuggling of marijuana from, Mexico into the United States became
big business, as it is today, and we began to have legislation against the
possession and sale of it. However,
we are just beginning to think and wonder about its relation to juvenile
delinquency.
An
explanation of what is really wrong with the stuff, and the evil effects it
produces can be summarized as follows:
1.
It kills inhibitions.
2.
It produces hallucinations and illusions.
3.
It destroys judgment of time and distance.
I
By
inhibitions I mean those restraints which good upbringing, moral instruction in
school, religious instruction, and community traditions put upon a man or
woman's conduct. These operate both
consciously and subconsciously, and not even the criminally inclined are wholly
free from their influence. But
enough marijuana will dispose of them all, including even the fear of
consequences.
The
young "assassins" described by Marco Polo were introduced into Hassam
ben Sabbah's service by giving them a sample of the life luxurious.
They were then told by the master that if they carried out his
commissions they would be readmitted to his earthly paradise.
This was a great inducement, but scarcely enough to move a decent youth
to go forth and murder in cold blood a man against whom he had no grudge, and of
whom he knew no evil. So he was
doped with hashish, and his compunctions and fears went overboard.
-- (Continued on page 35)
Both
the Bureau of Narcotics and the police of big cities testify that the peddling
of marijuana "reefers" has been stepped up alarmingly in recent years.
So has the incidence of juvenile delinquency grown at an alarming rate in
recent years. How much marijuana
has to do with this latter development it is next to impossible to establish,
for reasons to be explained later. But
that it is playing a part in it is scarcely to be doubted.
Shame
is one of the first inhibiting forces to be jettisoned by women who trifle with
cannabis, according to the police and medical authorities in those
countries where widespread use of cannabis is a problem.
So it is, according to one Brazilian writer on the subject, that no
respectable woman ever touches the stuff. "For
if she does," he wrote, "she is not respectable long."
In
Chinese Turkistan, where half a century ago this writer got his elementary
education in the ways of cannabis smoking and eating, the arrival of visitors in
a mountain village is the occasion for a meshirep
or entertainment. A substantial
feast is arranged, preceded by a musical number, and the equivalent of a
cocktail party. The village girls
assemble at one end of the headman's living room, pound their tambourines, and
sing, rather dolefully. All the
other village men and women sit cross-legged around the padded walls.
When the girls have tuned up, the host begins putting into circulation
little containers of a dark paste known as mayien.
As it is passed along, each man unlimbers his sheath knife, digs out
a bit of the paste, and eats it. This
paste is a mixture of powdered bhang (alias
hashish or marijuana), brown sugar and herbs.
The purpose of this substitute for the cocktail is to make everyone
cheerfully talkative. Except for
one young fellow who was led out in what seemed to be a state of hysterical
merriment, it seemed to do no more than that.
This
writer observed, however, that the women all passed the little mayien
containers along without sampling them, and that it was not offered to the
singing girls. When asked about
this the next day, my host said: "No Turki women but harlots use bhang.
When one of our women takes to it, she is soon every man's
woman."
Those
who have read up on cannabis elsewhere may feel that the foregoing is contrary
to the oft-reiterated statement that cannabis is not an aphrodisiac.
It's true that cannabis is not an aphrodisiac and does not stimulate the
sexual urge. But is does wipe out those inhibiting influences under which
that urge is kept under control by civilized people.
A
few years ago, the New York and New Jersey police went to work on a clique of
young people who were holding marijuana revels on Staten Island and in adjacent
New Jersey communities. It appeared
that young fellows were seducing girls with the help of marijuana cigarettes, at
parties which became promiscuous sex orgies.
Two of these girls, arrested during a raid on such a festivity, were
asked why they smoked "reefers." Their reply was, "Because it
makes us feel sexy." This was not an accurate appraisal of the effect of
the drug. All it, did for them was
to release their normal "sexy" urges from all the controls that they
had been brought up to impose upon them. Thus,
released from such checks as shame and fear of consequences, they were free to
go sex wild. How much of this we owe to our Latin neighbors who keep us
supplied with our hashish, who knows?
Insane
crimes of violence brought on by over-indulgence in cannabis are not so common;
but when they do occur they are humdingers.
Early in February, 1914, after crossing the Gobi
Desert from northwest China, this writer entered the big Hami oasis in
Chinese Turkistan and found the community agog about a ghastly crime.
It was perpetrated by a normally meek and gentle Turki who herded a few
sheep not far from the commercial community.
With the New Year festival near, he had come into town to try to sell a
couple of fat sheep to a butcher of his acquaintance.
There he was immediately cajoled into a bhang smoking party. The
calabash water pipe went round and round, and the shepherd, who had never smoked
the stuff before, became loquacious to the point of hilarity.
Around the shop were hung legs and quarters of sheep and cattle.
These seemed to fascinate him, and he made incoherent remarks about them.
Finally the butcher, seeing that his guest had had more than enough, led
him outside and urged him to go home. When
the shepherd had returned to his own abode, his wife was abroad; but his
16-year-old daughter met him in the doorway.
He pushed her back, drew a knife and cut her
throat. He then proceeded to cut her up, as he would an animal,
and to strew her members about the shack.
When
his wife returned and viewed the horrible scene she ran screaming to the
neighbors, who disarmed the mad shepherd and dragged him off to town.
He was soon sober enough to explain to the authorities that he had
mistaken his daughter for a hog and had cut her up with the idea of having a New
Year pork feast. Nothing could have
done him less good than this explanation; for the idea of a Moslem craving pork
was almost as disgusting a thought as his terrible crime.
He had been executed the day before I arrived, and, for the time being,
bhang smoking was certainly in bad odor.
Another story of an insane illusion came from
Brazil in an official report only four or five years ago.
A heavy cannabis smoker had gone to a railway station to meet a friend.
He was thoroughly doped before he went there.
As he stood on the station platform a train pulled, in and stopped.
Passengers began descending the steps of the car.
The cannabis smoker got it into his befuddled head that what he saw was a
hostile mob charging him, to do him in.
For
some unexplained reason he carried a revolver.
This he drew, and fired six shots at the descending passengers.
What the casualties were, and what was done with the dope-crazed madman,
did not appear in the report. But
that does not detract from the fact that where cannabis is available to the
mentally unsound, such things can happen.
Next
comes consideration of a really serious current problem the effect of marijuana
on the vision of the driver of a vehicle in our modern traffic, or upon his
judgment of what he sees. There
are differences of opinion about almost everything pertaining to marijuana, but
there seems to be no doubt in any competent observer's mind that a few
"reefers" can seriously affect any man's judgment of time and
distance.
Now
I must tell another story; one about my introduction to this problem.
Once upon a time I stood in the doorway of my inn in Turfan.
That city is reputed to be the hotest in Central Asia because it is
surrounded by red hot deserts and is several hundred feet below sea level.
This was near midsummer, so most of the population had taken shelter
indoors. My old innkeeper and I
were commenting on the heat. There
was no traffic on the town's main street except for a few pedestrians hugging
the shade of the buildings.
Then,
as we watched, down the street came a lone horseman at an easy lope.
He bowed to us from the saddle, and then, a second later, came a near
tragedy. Three men, whom we had not
noticed, emerged from an adjacent doorway, and just as horseman was saluting us,
one of the three, an elderly man, started to dash across the road.
He was, of course, ridden down, but was not seriously hurt. As the rider came back to protest that he could not possibly
have avoided the jaywalker, and as numerous persons were putting the latter on
his feet and dusting him off, we got the explanation from the injured man.
First,
he and his friends had just emerged from a bhang smoking party.
Of course he had looked up the street before trying to cross it.
Of course he had seen the horseman coming; but, he had been coming very,
very slowly, and was at least 50 paces up the street when the bhang smoker his
dash. There was naturally much
discussion of this among those who, had assembled; and it was from this that
this writer learned for the first time how cannabis can play the deuce with
one's estimates of time and distance. So
it is easy to see how, "reefer" smoking may,
and probably does, play a part in many traffic accidents caused by some
fellow's inexplicably careless driving. In
all such cases the police are on the alert for evidence that the careless one
had been drinking too much. This is
not very difficult these days, and cases of persons charged with reckless
driving while "under the influence" are proved.
But how often do we hear of a man being charged with responsibility for a
traffic accident while under the influence of marijuana?
Or for that matter, how often do we read that a man caught redhanded-in
crime of violence, or that a juvenile delinquent picked up in a gang-war
killing, was under the influence of marijuana?
This writer has never seen such a news item, and he doubts that they
appear.
The
reason for this is very simply explained. Unlike
a drunk, the guilty survivor of a traffic accident who has been a heavy smoker
of "reefers" is likely to walk steadily and talk coherently.
Furthermore, and most important of all, it cannot be detected on his
breath or in his blood. No test has
yet been devised by the medical fraternity to prove that a trouble-maker had
been doped with cannabis. Even if
he has a "reefer" or so on his person, the police cannot prove that he
has, been smoking any.
This
being the frustrating situation of those who would like to hold our consumption
of hashish responsible for its share in our troubles, the reader might be
interested in knowing where marijuana stands legally.
First
of all, be it known that the smoking of marijuana is not, in itself, a violation
of any law. Eating it, as they do
in many parts of Asia, is not yet popular among our demoralized elements, nor is
drinking infusions of it, as is done in India, popular.
But such indulgences would be no more illegal than "reefer"
smoking, anyway.
What
is punishable under the Federal Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, or under the various
State laws, is the unlawful acquiring, possession or sale of it.
Since no person is registered under the Federal Act at this time to
produce marijuana in the United States, substantially all the hashish available
to the underworld in this country is smuggled in from abroad -- and most of it
from Mexico. Relatively
trifling quantities of cannabis can be, and are, legally imported for medical
and scientific experimentation. Though
vague hope persists that cannabis may prove to be an antibiotic, few medical men
are interested. The World Health
Organization, in 1952, reported that the use of cannabis in medicine was
virtually obsolete, and that its continued use was no longer justified.
A few decades ago cannabis appeared in the United States Pharmacopeia as
a source of drugs used in American medical practice.
It will not be found in current editions of that work.
This
did not, of course, put a ban upon cannabis in American practice, but it
coincided with the consensus of medical opinion in the United States, and it
simply is not readily available from pharmaceutical outlets.
The
penalties for unlawful acquiring or sale, under the above-mentioned Tax Act of
1937, as amended, are surprisingly heavy. The
mandatory sentences for unlawful sale are not less than five years, nor more
than 20 years for the first offense; nor less than ten years, nor more than 40
years for the second. These
penalties are surprising because the law was enacted at a time when many small
medical groups and individuals were busy giving marijuana a thorough
whitewashing. Their confreres and
other interested persons were led to believe that the smoking of a little hemp
at a social gathering was no more pernicious than the dispensation of a little
hard cider at a husking bee.
One
of the extenuating claims for the innocence of marijuana was that use of it did
not result in "addiction." The
meaning of this is that a person might smoke or eat cannabis for an unlimited
time, and yet, when deprived of it, have no craving for it.
This is not unchallenged, but it is so generally true that nothing is to
be gained by quibbling over it. Yet, as a British Indian Army surgeon protested
to this writer in Singapore many years ago, there is only too often a mental
condition, as a result of prolonged over-indulgence in cannabis, which is an
even more serious disability than a true addict's craving for a drug.
The commonest result is loss of memory.
This
took the writer back to another of his memories of bhang in Chinese Turkistan.
It was in Urumchi, the capital of that Chinese province of Sinkiang,
(meaning, believe it or not, the New Frontier).
I
was taking a stroll one midsummer day along the main thoroughfare of the big
Moslem suburb of Urumchi (Tihua, to the Chinese), when I met an amiable young
Turki whom I had not seen for some weeks. When
I demanded to know where he had been hiding he explained that he and a couple of
friends had been on a hunting trip in the hills.
While I was being regaled with an account of the trip, another
well-dressed young Turki came shuffling slowly towards us, and my friend stopped
his recital to stare at him. He might have been good-looking if he had had a trace of
expression on his face, but he was staring blankly ahead of him with no more
showing of hum an intelligence on his features than one might expect from a man
in a trance. He would have made his
way past us if my young friend had not caught his arm, swung him around and
hailed him by name. He did then put
on an expression of hopeless puzzlement, mumbled incoherently, and dropped his
eyes. He did not move, but just
stood with sagging shoulders as though waiting for us to do something with him
or to him.
After
some hesitation my friend took from a pocket under his broad brocade sash one of
those little metal boxes of mayjem which the elegant ones carry to offer one
another, as Mongols offer each other their snuff bottles.
He opened the lid with a knife, dug it into the paste, and produced a
small-sized pill on the tip of it, which he proffered to the stupid one, who
took the knife, put the tip in his mouth, swallowed what was on it, and handed
it back. We waited what seemed to
me some very long minutes. Then the light of intelligence began to dawn on his vapid
face. After another long minute my
friend said sharply: "Who are you?"
With
a sheepish look the other murmured: "My name is Aziz ... and you are
Ibrahim Akhum, my good friend." He
looked at me, raised his brows, as he realized for the first time that I was a
foreigner, and gave me a stiff little bow.
When he finally announced that he was going home, and Ibrahim was sure
that he was fit to go, a few bows ended the episode, and he was off down the
street at a good clip.
"His
father is wealthy," Ibrahim explained.
"He owns hundreds of camels. Aziz
keeps his books, but he smokes bhang all day and half the night; he rarely
leaves home, but when he does and is too long abroad, this is what happens.
He forgets his name and where he lives, and recognizes nobody.
There are others like him here in Urumchi."
In
the foregoing this writer certainly has not provided a complete catalogue of all
the demoralizing effects that cannabis, hashish, bhang, or marijuana can have
upon the human mind and character. He
would have to go to Egypt, or Syria, to Turkey, or India to learn all the
reasons why governments detest it and fight it.
Although
hemp has been grown throughout Europe for something like 2,000 years as a
valuable source of fiber and oil, and although the use of hashish has been
unfavorably known in adjacent parts of Asia for at least 1,000 years, the use of
cannabis as a narcotic did not cross the Hellespont until shortly before
marijuana was inflicted upon us. Then
it was brought into Greece by soldiers returning from Turkey.
In
Greece it is regarded as no light burden on society.
Much has been published by both official and medical authorities about
the association of hashish with crime, with citations of cases running into the
hundreds. Here, the growing
use of the stuff is only 30 years old and in the estimation of most of our
people, who learn next to nothing from the news about its potentialities, its
major purpose is to develop gaiety at the parties of the glamorous.
That there is a markets for it among juvenile delinquents has not yet
sunk into the national consciousness. Only
recently, the New York police gave some publicity to the vigorous campaign they
are conducting against the peddlers of “reefers" --- marijuana cigarettes
--- to high school and college students. This
they have found has reached the status of big business.
Nor
have the police much knowledge that it is contributing to sexual debauchery
among young women. So far as we
know, no underworld boss has yet aspired to be a Hassam ben Sabbah and to turn
young marijuana-bribed assassins loose on us.
But there is nothing in the history of the stuff to persuade us that that
isn't in the offing. Our
medical folk haven't yet come up with a formula by which we can put
responsibility for a traffic accident on a marijuana smoker, but that does not
rule out the great likelihood that "reefers" play a part in such
crashes.
In
short, the public is not yet awake to the fact that those who smuggle marijuana
into this country from Mexico, and then peddle it in our big cities, with
ever-heavier pressure on the school-age market, are guilty of a serious assault
upon the nation's morale.
The
penalties imposed in 1937, and the strengthening of the penalties by the Federal
and State governments since then, do say all of that.
But it is a notorious fact in the legal world that police, prosecutors,
judges and juries are never keen on convictions which call for heavy. penalties,
while public opinion continues to look on the offenses so heavily penalized as
rather picayune doings. Here
remember prohibition!
The
reader may by now be curious to know how this poisonous stuff is prepared for
export to us. It is very simple.
Any Mexican peon who can grow a, little hemp can prepare marketable
marijuana. The leaves and flowers
are dried and ground. The resultant
particles are then put through a sieve. The
coarse stuff is then ground and sifted again, and the fine-grained quantity is
ready to be packaged and smuggled across the Rio Grande to underworld operators
who make the "'reefers" and distribute them to the pushers.
"Reefer" peddlers get anywhere from a
quarter to a dollar each for them.
It
is because of this traffic that we no longer grow hemp for those industries that
use the fiber and hempseed oil. Such cultivation is subject to permits, and the harvesting
and marketing of hemp is subject to so many checks that, in normal times, the
farmer who once grew it as freely as he did wheat or potatoes will not bother
with it. But there is a
demand for it. The fiber has many
familiar uses, and the oil goes into soaps, paints, linoleum and other products.
So it was that during World War II, when virtually all shipping was
serving our armed forces, the importation of foreign hemp and oil came to a
standstill, and prices rose sufficiently to make it worth while in a half-dozen
States to struggle with the formalities and grow hemp again.
But after the war, when foreign fiber and oil began coming in again at
low prices, hemp production in the United States fell off once more.
During recent years not a single acre of hemp has been grown in this
country under the Marijuana Tax Act.
This
does not mean that hemp has vanished utterly from the American landscape.
Clumps of wild hemp may be encountered almost anywhere.
All big birds are fond of the seeds; and some small animals, like flying
squirrels and chipmunks, add them to, their winter stores, losing some by the
way. Every year New York City's police turn out for their autumn
hemp harvest, cutting all they find growing in vacant lots and on uncultivated
land in the outlying boroughs. Their
haul is always surprisingly large, amounting to some hundreds of pounds.
If all State authorities were equally assiduous, it would probably be
found that there is enough wild hemp in the country to make a huge number of
"reefers." The best reason why it doesn't happen is that the average
dope, pusher probably would not know a hemp plant from a cabbage.
But that may not always be true.
Finally,
there is little point in using so many words to establish that marijuana is just
as dangerous a drug in the United States as hashish has long been known to be in
Asia, unless one can suggest ways of checking its distribution and discouraging
its use.
To
begin with, it must be said that there can be no overnight solution of this
problem. There must, first of all,
be nation-wide appreciation of its seriousness.
Heavy penalties play their discouraging part when they are imposed.
But they are not imposed unless public opinion insists that the police
deliver culprits in court, and unless the courts are convinced that public
opinion favors the imposition of heavy sentences.
Public
awareness of marijuana as a subverter of morals and morale is therefore the
first essential condition to a solution of the American hashish problem.
To this the press can contribute enormously by
taking seriously every criminal case in which marijuana plays a part, and by
encouraging the police to expose more such cases.
It
would help if the silly Mexican word "marijuana" were gradually
abandoned, if hashish were substituted for it, and if newspaper readers were, as
often as possible, reminded that "assassin" means hashhish.
Then, too, the medical fraternity could perform a great service by taking
a new look at the physical and psychological effects of cannabis on body and
mind, and giving some publicity to its findings.
Last but not least, state and local school
authorities should go into action to convince all students that marijuana, alias
hashish, the "assassin's" dope, is an abominable drug.
Then we would be making a start on the solution of our hashish problem.
THE END
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