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Health
-
Oct. 1938 pg. 14
Marijuana --- The Weed of Crime and Madness
- As told to R.F. McCartney by Dr. Arthur La Roe.
President American Narcotic Defense Association, Inc.
Click To Enlarge Photo
DOPE in its various
forms morphine, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, et cetera-is one of the most serious
menaces facing civilization today. Many,
of course, will feel that the threat of war that fills our newspapers is the
most deadly; but those who believe that have never had any experience with
narcotic addiction, and, even if they had, they would feel that the narcotic
habit is too remote from them or any member of their family even to consider it
as a possible source of personal danger. They
would perhaps think that it is a vice limited to the drifters, to the shiftless
wanderers, and to those who spend their lives in haunts with which they are not
familiar. What an illuminating
picture this article will present to such persons, who, alas, in their lack of
actual knowledge, believe themselves and their children safe from this scourge
of humanity!
Dope is older than
recorded history, and it has always been the cause of great unhappiness to its
addicts, their families, and their friends.
It has brought slow, lingering, agonizing mental torture to its victims,
until they have finally been released by death, which often is a violent one.
In this article let
us single out one narcotic---marijuana. The
weed producing the drug is cultivated in practically every continent in the
world, and in many sections it grows in a wild state.
While not indigenous to the United States, it is to be found growing
practically everywhere. In many states it flourishes as a roadside weed.
In 1936, in New York City alone, the police destroyed some 37,000 pounds
of marijuana plants, and no one could hazard a guess at the quantity that was
grown without their knowledge. So
point number one against marijuana is its ready availability.
Click To Enlarge Photo
Marijuana
is the Mexican name for Indian hemp, the fiber of which is used in the
manufacture of rope and twine, cloth and hats.
Its seed forms a part of the birdseed you may buy for your feathered
pets. A drying oil is obtained from
the seed too, which may either be used as a substitute for linseed 'I or for a
special oil in artists' supplies. The
pistil of the flower has a very distinct use in pharmaceutical preparations.
Marijuana, therefore, has a number of commercial uses.
This is point number two against it, for it would be difficult to
legislate effectively against its cultivation for such legitimate purposes;
therefore it could always be shipped for such use, and be diverted to form a
source of supply for dope peddlers and their victims.
As
a drug or dope, marijuana may be either smoked as a cigarette or in a pipe; it
may be chewed; it may be mixed with candy; or it may be dissolved in an
alcoholic beverage. That is the
third point against it, for a drug that can so easily be mixed and consumed in
such a wide variety of "blinds" is easy to circulate under a number of
guises. The most favored form,
though, in which marijuana is used in this country is as a cigarette, and, as
such, it has many sobriquets: reefers, muggles, Mary Warner, grifo, moota, and
mooters; some even call it a joy stick.
REEFERS
are not difficult to obtain. Just
recently in a large Eastern city, a girl of fifteen went out from school at
lunch time to buy some fruit from a peddler standing in front of the building.
She was offered a "nice new kind of cigarette, which gives a
different thrill, at two for a quarter." Her father, well-informed parent
that he was, had previously told his children about narcotics and narcotic
peddling. As a result of his
foresight, three fruit peddlers handling reefers as a side line--or as a main
part of their business outside schools were arrested and convicted.
Click To Enlarge Photo
But what of the
effect of marijuana? In the files
is a case of an eighteen-year-old boy in Georgia, which shows the ease with
which reefers may be obtained and the early effects of smoking them.
In the boy's own words the report reads:
Photographs
with this article are by the courtesy of W. J. Garrity, chief of police, Santa
Barbara, California.
"While
walking around the vegetable curb market in Atlanta, I passed the stand of the
hot tamale man, who asked 'Do you want any hot tamales?
I said, 'Don't you have anything stronger?'
He said yes, and sold me two marijuana cigarettes for twenty-five cents.
I had never seen this kind of cigarette before.
I smoked one of them, and it gave me a headache.
Then I smoked the other one, and began to feel it. My mind changed in a
queer sort of way. I craved some
more of the cigarettes, and, not having any money, I pawned my shoes for a
dollar, and bought a bag of dried leaves to roll my own.
After a couple more cigarettes, I began to feel as if I were on top of
the world. I would walk up to
anyone and ask for anything without hesitancy.
Then I felt as if I would do something desperate.
However, I was very tired, and fell asleep. I stayed asleep for two whole days and nights."
This
is, in one sense, a mild case history to quote. The usual procedure is that after the school child gets
beyond his financial depth to supply his craving he voluntarily turns to theft,
or it is suggested by the peddlers. The
thieving may be confined to the boy's own home, or it may take the form of
stealing tires and parts from cars, rifling slot machines, burglary, holdup,
and, not infrequently, murder, so strong does the need become for this
stimulant. Often, too, marijuana is
the introduction to the hypodermic needle and stronger narcotics.
MARIJUANA is
not a drug with which to fool or to take any chances. If you are ever offered it, and it is quite possible that you
will be, summon all your will power to refuse this chance for "a new
thrill." It would be a "thrill" that must inevitably carry shame
and degradation to you, and in but a short space of time criminal tendencies
would be aroused to such an extent that the electric chair would loom as the
answer to that innocent first desire for a new thrill."
Here are three just
such authentic cases:
It happened in
Florida. A young boy marijuana
addict, while still under the influence of marijuana, believed that a number of
persons were trying to cut off his arms and legs; so he seized an ax and killed
his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister.
Click To Enlarge Photo
It
happened in Colorado. In August,
1936, in Colorado a sex-mad degenerate brutally attacked a young girl.
He was convicted of assault with intent to rape, and was sentenced to ten
to fourteen years in the state penitentiary.
Police officers knew definitely that the man was (Please turn to page 25)
under the influence of marihuana. It
was stated by a resident at the time that this was one case in hundreds of
murders, rapes, petty crimes, and insanity that have occurred in southern
Colorado in recent years because of marijuana.
Click To Enlarge Photo
It happened in
California. A man under the
influence of marijuana actually decapitated his best friend. Then, coming out from the effects of the drug, he was as
horrified as anyone could be at what he had done.
The
marijuana vice is not one to sidestep. Reefers
are sold by peddlers to customers in poolrooms, dance halls, and the like; but
their sale is by no means limited to such places.
It is no respecter of persons or caste, and newsboys and the children of
the wealthy are all liable to be victims to some smooth-tongued peddler or
"friend."
The
dope addict, no matter to what narcotic lie or she may be a slave, is not a
victim of habit, as is so generally thought to be the case.
Instead, such a person has a very definite disease.
His body chemistry, his glandular functions, and his mental processes are
different. Because of these
differences, he comes to require the drug in much the same manner that we may
require water, milk, or the stimulation of coffee.
Laws
have not been devised to cope with the situation in its true status.
Dope addicts are arrested, held in if their condition is serious, they
are or, sent to a hospital. There
they are given a few shots, and are released.
There is one hospital maintained by the Government for drug addicts, with
a large waiting list, and a second one is in the process of construction.
These hospitals, though, are mainly to keep addicts under observation,
for there is no such thing as a cure for a dope victim.
He or she is doomed to a life of misery, a life of desire for the drug,
and to lucid periods of intense anguish for the crimes committed while under its
influence.
Click To Enlarge Photo
The
dope addict is considered an outcast; his family is disgraced whether or not he
has started on his career of crime. It
is a doleful picture, due to the fact that the law and the individual user have
a wrong concept of the real status of the dope victim.
He is a sick man; cautioning anyone against marijuana there is little
that can be done. Commissioner H.
J. Anslinger, Chief of the Bureau of Narcotics under the Treasury Department,
has some two hundred fifty men on his staff.
This is a mere handful to cope with such a major problem, especially when
one considers that these men are supposed to prevent all dope from entering our
seaports or from coming in across our borders, and that they are expected to be
able to cover the entire continental United States and all its possessions in
the search for home-grown marijuana and the home-made marijuana cigarettes.
A new Federal law became effective October 1, 1937,
regulating marijuana in much the same way as the heavier drugs are regulated by
the Harrison Act. In addition to
this, each of the states has a law covering the use of marijuana.
Therefore, so far as legislation is concerned, the country is well
covered; but eternal vigilance has to be maintained against illicit traffic in
narcotics.
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