Odd, Old News: The Big War on Marijuana–100 Years Ago

Fred C. Boden, Special Agent of State Board of Pharmacy, Holding Big Marihuana Plant Which He Seized and Which, He Declares, Contains Enough Narcotics to Put an Entire Army on Rampage

Nuggets of old news are served up by David Heller, one of our local historians.

Odd Old News turns its newspaper gaze back 100 years to highlight how far cultural values and laws have changed with regards to “the deadly marijuana weed”, the “poison marihuana vine”, “loco weed”, “the deadly weed which frequently causes its users to run amok”… known today as cannabis.

Many are familiar with the 1930’s racist demonization of marihuana through its association with minority races, and the federal crackdown aided by such movie classics as “Reefer Madness”. The decades preceding this era show a slowly growing awareness of this “evil menace” to the mental health of the public.

With a long tradition of use in Mexico, marihuana’s spread on the West Coast came from itinerant workers along the border who shared their habit with U.S. soldiers. It also made its way into prison populations. On the West Coast, at a time when opium use was rampant, and its U.S. usage had surpassed that of the Chinese, marihuana was regarded as a drug of the lower classes. Newspapers did their best to portray the dangers of this new drug, said to be more addicting than opium, and one that would render the user hopelessly insane within five years of steady use. Dramatic portrayals of any violent crimes committed by marihuana users reinforced the media image of smokers as criminals.

One’s sub-conscious ego stands amusedly by and observes a second ego go through the most ridiculous capers … Upper left, method of inhaling the drug; below, a deadly backyard crop and a user ‘rolling her own.’

On the East Coast, a different socio-economic class was already familiar with marihuana in its hashish form:
“As early as 1853, recreational cannabis was listed as a ‘fashionable narcotic’. By the 1880s, oriental-style hashish parlors were flourishing alongside opium dens, to the point that one could be found in every major city on the east coast. It was estimated there were around 500 such establishments in New York City alone. An article in Harper’s Magazine (1883), attributed to Harry Hubbell Kane, describes a hashish-house in New York frequented by a large clientele, including males and females of ‘the better classes,’ and further talks about parlors in Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago”.

One East Coast man’s hashish high made the news:

“MR. BINNS TRIES HASHEESH
From the Baltimore Sun, March 6.
A well-dressed young man, who gave the name Binns, came to the City Hospital. He had yielded to a strange desire to enjoy a dose of hasheesh, a drug that produces curious results. He told the doctor that he had some doubts as to the locality of his face, which to him seemed situated at least two feet from where it really was. Then he was dubious whether he had any legs or was simply walking on his chin. The latter idea seemed to have a firm hold on him, for he stamped his feet on the ground a dozen times. His request to be relieved was pitiful. He feared that someone would steal an arm or leg from him. After medical treatment Binns felt better.”(Excerpt from the New York Times, March 7, 1884)

In New York City, authorities recognized marihuana’s evil potential and went to work to eradicate vacant lot and window box grows. In the early days of American marihuana use, dried leaves were mixed into “doped cigarettes”, or crushed and infused into alcohol. At this time, knowledge of the potency of cannabis flowers was not widespread.
The earliest local newspaper account was written in 1905 when the Blue Lake Advocate tried to warn the public:

MADNESS IN PLANTS. Mexican Weed That When Tried Will Drive Men Crazy
Blue Lake Advocate
May 13, 1905
Marihuana is a weed used by people of the lower class and sometimes by soldiers, but those who make larger use of it are prisoners sentenced to long terms. The use of the weed and its sale, especially in barracks and prisons, are very severely punished, yet it has many adepts, and Indian women cultivate it because they sell it at rather high prices. The dry leaves of marihuana, alone or mixed with tobacco, make the smoker wilder than a wild beast. It is said that immediately after the first three or four drafts of smoke smokers begin to feel a slight headache; then they see everything moving, and finally they lose all control of their mental faculties. Everything, the smokers say, takes the shape of a monster, and men look like devils. They begin to fight, and of course everything smashed is a monster “killed.” But there are imaginary beings whom the wild man cannot kill, and these inspire fear until the man is panic stricken and runs…

Alcohol, heroin, and opiates were still the inebriants of choice on the North Coast, much of the news about marihuana came from nearer the border in Southern California. Hispanic workers liked to relax with a marihuana cigarette after a long day of work, it was a much less expensive alternative to alcohol during the prohibition years. In 1921, in order to spare the world “much wickedness”, the Big War on Marihuana was on, led by State Board of Pharmacy Inspector Fred C. Boden:

BIG WAR ON MARIHUANA, WEED WITH CRIME ‘KICK’
Los Angeles Herald
September 22, 1921
Marihuana, the weird “Jazz weed” frequently used by Mexicans and drug addicts, is the cause of much crime, according to Inspector Fred C. Boden of the state board of pharmacy, who is unrelenting in his fight to curb the use of the narcotic. “Eliminate marihuana and crime among the laboring class of Mexicans is appreciably reduced,” says Boden. “Prevent persons from planting and growing the weed and much wickedness is spared the world”

According to the Inspector, whose duties take him from Fresno to the International border, with headquarters here, marihuana is a strange growth, containing properties that astonish even the drug addict.

For instance, says Boden, a bit of marijuana placed in a drink of brandy causes the optimistic indulger to fancy that he witnesses jelly-like pulsations and oriental wriggles in every object in his view. Street cars shake a wicked shimmy for the marihuana smoker.

If a bit of marihuana is sprinkled on a tortilla as it bakes, the lowly delicacy vibrates and sends forth weird tones not unlike those seeping over the walls of a sultan’s harem.

In 1921, knowledge of this new drug in the states was not widespread, “as well as Canabis Indica may be known to medical science, it is an unknown quantity to the ordinary run of people”. This seemed to be the case with one California state prison keeper who claimed to be unaware of the reason why his inmates were “as happy as a lark”. In 1919, Inspector Boden was already on the job, he investigated the prison grounds and found out why prisoners were so happy. Subsequently, laws were enacted to ban growing marihuana on prison grounds. Not to be thwarted, penitentiary dwellers turned to growing peyote cactuses for their “buttons”, about which even less was known, and which were not yet prohibited by law.

(Peyote remains an important sacrament in Native American ceremony despite many years of attempts to end the practice)

GIGANTIC GAME WITH GRIM PLAYERS
Los Angeles Herald
November 21, 1921
Marihuana and Mescal Buttons Cause Demoralization of Many Who Seek Narcotic Stimulants—California Only State to Banish Mexican Plant—Tip Secured in State Penitentiary
Button, button, who has the button?

The famous question of the children’s game may now be used in a far greater game, a sort of gigantic game of hide-and-go-seek, in which Law, Greed, Depravity, Misery Unutterable, and Death are but some of the players.

The game has but begun, and this article is a move on the side of Law and Humanity, an astounding revelation of a new phase of the drug evil, incidentally exposing a grim joke in the narcotic squads of the federal state governments—two grim jokes, in fact.

It’s not very long since the narcotic squads of New York were nonplussed by the appearance of a new drug in the clandestine market of the “hop-heads.” This mysterious thing was clearly not a fruit of the poppy of the Orient; it was neither morphine, cocaine, nor any of the many products of the poppy.

The symptoms were different, and known drug addicts wore seen gamboling about as though they had been feasting on Arabian “bhang” or “siddhi,” or smoking the “ganjah” of the bazaars of far India.

Simple Explanation
Certain habitues of Greenwich Village were having the time of their lives. “They act like they were full of hasheesh,” said some of the officers, who had been in the Far East, “but where the mischief do they get it? They frisk out clean,” meaning that thorough personal search was always vain.

Telegraph wires carried the news to the narcotic squads of Southern California, and there was an audible chuckle, as the explanation was flashed back to the eastern brothers.
“Marihuana!”

Investigation revealed the startling fact that of the thousands of Mexican laborers imported during the war, many were “marihuaneros,” men and women given to the smoking of marihuana, and that they had cheerfully passed their vice on to the Americans who were famishing for the unavailable opium derivatives.

Marihuana is a wonderful plant, indigenous to the Southwest of the United States and the north of Mexico, but which will grow very nicely under cultivation almost anywhere. A shrub, it will, if allowed its full growth, attain a height of 10 or 12 feet.

The serrated leaves, from 8 to 10 inches in length, resemble huge peache tree leaves, both in color and shape. For use as a narcotic the Indians and Mexicans dry and break up the tender twigs and leaves, as well as the flowering pots, until they resemble ordinary granulated tobacco, and only an expert can detect it in the tobacco with which it is mixed to be smoked.

As a matter of fact, the plant is nothing else but the well Canabis Indica of the Orient, the same plant that sends the Malays running “amuck” through the bazaars; and it was formerly a common thing to see a Mexican on the street in California’s southern towns doing a war dance or slashing about with a knife, as he yelled, “matame, mataine!” (Kill me, kill me.)
But, as well as Canabis Indica may be known to medical science, it is an unknown quantity to the ordinary run of people.

It was as late as 1919 that Special Inspector Fred C. Boden of the California state board of pharmacy, visiting one of the state penitentiaries, was astounded to meet large number of his former acquaintances looking as merry as larks, despite the grim walls that surrounded them. He was still further mystified when he noted widely dilated pupils and other symptoms, making it clear that they were “all hopped up.”

“Nonsense, man! Model prisoners; they work in the garden, some of them; they’re getting civilized—like to have things growing about them.”

The keeper’s protest made no impression on Boden. He insisted on visiting the garden.

Marihuana was growing merrily among the beans and other garden-sass, and more marihuana was flourishing wonderfully in little boxes here and there about the institution. Drying leaves of the infant plants were found in old magazines and Bibles about the prison. The keepers were given a lesson in botany, the penitentiary changed gardeners, and California enacted a law making it a felony to have marihuana growing on the premises.

Banish Marihuana
California is the only state in the Union that has a law prohibiting the growing of marihuana and within its boundaries the law has worked wonders. The railroads were forced to clean their rights of way. The big ranches did their full duty, as did the forest rangers on, the great government reserves. Wild marihuana went out of sight and, though it still lurks, dwarfed and mutilated, here and there in a patch of garden tilled by a Mexican, the quantity available is negligible.

Nevertheless the craving for “hop” was not appeased. Deprived of their beloved marihuana, Juan, Jose et al. began to cast about for something else. They found it.

’’These Mexicans have some new kind of hop,” said one of the state board men to the writer. “They call it peyote, but they won’t tell what it is. Their druggists say they don’t know what it is.”

Dr. Fortunate Hernandez, formerly of the Mexican capital, explorer and author of several works on the Indian tribes of northern Mexico, smiled ironically when he was asked about the mysterious “peyote.”

Spineless Cactus
“You will find it in the United States dispensary under the name of ’Peyote,’” he said. “It is a spineless cactus that belongs to the same family as the night blooming cactus. All the Indian tribes of northern Mexico know it well. Some of them used it to manufacture a poison to put on their spear and arrow heads.

“There are, of course, many varieties of cactus. The Indian, who was forced to live on the desert, used many of them. He learned many centuries ago that that almost all of the prickly cacti, when cut open, would give enough moisture to slake his thirst. And he also learned that most of the cacti that are devoid of spines are protected by nature in another way—poison.

“Experience taught him that peyote was a powerful drug. It acts on the heart and brain, producing wonderful dreams and causing great excitement; a drug so strong that a very few large doses will cause permanent insanity. The medicine men fed it to animals to demonstrate their own magical powers, also eating it themselves to produce the frenzy necessary to carry them through their religious ceremonies. Only a part of the plant—the button —is used. These buttons are called ‘mescal buttons.’ This plant grows around Tucson, Ariz.”

Can’t Recognize It
These mescal buttons were also used by the Kiowa Indians’ medicine men during the tribal ceremonies in Nebraska and Wyoming, the celebrants making themselves frantic by eating three or four buttons. The powdered buttons are still used to some extent in Mexican medicine, but the drug is considered valueless by the medical profession in the United States.
Just as marihuana, growing in jars and boxes and carefully tended by the convicts in their cells, was used to lighten the burden of their days, so peyote, with its care-dispelling buttons, can be grown under the very eyes of the men entrusted with the enforcement of the narcotic laws. Not an officer has, as yet, found a plant of peyote that he could recognize; which illustrates the difficulties encountered in combating the drug evil.

Meanwhile, the dream gardens, against which there is no legislation anywhere, flourish. And the question still remains — “Button, button, who has the button?”
Copyright, 1921, L.A. Photo and News Service.