Reefer Madness – 1895 to the Present – Chapter 8: 1950-1960 – Real Gone Beatniks

The 1950s. There wasn’t very much hemp growing any more. And cannabis medicine bottles were just a memory. But all the racism, parental hysteria and ignorance surrounding the effects of cannabis from yesteryear had been carried over into the media of the 1950s. To fight all that crap, the lovers of jazz (and pot) had a new type of champion: the “Beats” – sometimes called the “Beatniks” by the squares. By the late 1950s, these Beat writers and poets started a cultural movement, transforming the world of jazz music into a smokey “scene” – similar to how the hippies turned rock music into a smokey “scene” a decade later.

Special thanks to the Cannabis Museum for sponsoring the creation of this series. The introduction to this series (Reefer Madness – 1895 to the Present) can be found here. Chapter 1 can be found here. Chapter 2 can be found here. Chapter 3 can be found here. Chapter 4 can be found here. Chapter 5 can be found here. Chapter 6 can be found here. Chapter 7 can be found here.

“While opium can be a blessing or a curse, depending on its use, marihuana is only and always a scourge which undermines its victims and degrades them mentally, morally, and physically. . . . In the earliest stages of intoxication the will power is destroyed and inhibitions and restraints are released; the moral barricades are broken down and often debauchery and sexuality results. Where mental instability is inherent, the behavior is generally violent. An egoist will enjoy delusions of grandeur, the timid individual will suffer anxiety, and the aggressive one often will resort to acts of violence and crime. Dormant tendencies are released and while the subject may know what is happening, he has become powerless to prevent it. Constant use produces an incapacity for work and a disorientation of purpose. The drug has a corroding effect on the body and on the mind, weakening the entire physical system and often leading to insanity after prolonged use.”

• Harry J. Anslinger and William F. Tompkins, The Traffic in Narcotics, 1953 (1)

“Simultaneous raids up and down the Peninsula smashed a flourishing marijuana ring early yesterday and netted 15 peddler suspects, most of them teen-agers, two of them girls. The raiding operation, described as the biggest and smoothest in years, climaxed a two and a half month investigation during which a reserve sheriff’s deputy took up quarters in a San Mateo house and posed as a marijuana dealer. The reserve deputy, whose identity was withheld, posed as a ‘real gone Beatnik,’ with hair down his neck, a Van Dyke and a fancy moustache, yellow leopard-skin shoes and pegged trousers.”

• “Big Roundup of Marijuana Suspects – ‘Beatnik Cop’ Smashes Peninsula Dope Ring,” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, January 7th, 1959 (2)

“Real gone – Very much in love. Also unstable. Hmm, there’s a difference?”

        – Fifties Web, 1950’s Slang (3)

The stigmatization of pot in the 1950s followed a similar pattern to that stigmatization which came before and that which came after. It was part exaggeration, part imagination, but mostly whatever the scapegoater thought would most frighten their audience – whatever sounded both most believable (mostly based previous propaganda campaigns or on what little knowledge the public at large had of the cannabis high and/or acute cannabis overdose) and most horrifying. The same pattern was used against all prohibited drugs – the idea of differentiating between abuse and beneficial use of these drugs was never entertained.

As in previous decades, the 1950s were a decade where the race of the person getting arrested only mattered when the arrestee was not white. When white people were arrested, it was sometimes their vocation – but never their race – which was mentioned. The not-so-subtile message was clear: certain races or professions had a proclivity to criminal behaviour. The darkies and the musicians and entertainers were dangerous … and evil. Another common double standard popular then appears to some of us today as similarly suspect: if a user was caught doing something bad, blame was put on the use of the drug. If a user was known for doing anything exceptionally good, a causal relationship was never implied.

In the 1930s, resistance to reefer madness stigmatization came mainly from the jazz community. In the 1940s, there was resistance from a number of places, including the Mayor of New York, Robert Mitchum fans … and the jazz community. In the 1950s, the resistance came mainly from a group of jazz-loving writers known as “The Beats” – sometimes they were called “Beatniks” – and their peers became known as the “Beat Generation.”

They were the subculture that gave birth to many future counter-cultures: the hippies and the punks and all that came after. They listened to jazz, and their style grew out of the jazz culture and the marijuana culture that came with it – but it wasn’t the happy jazz music that arose from the whorehouses of Storyville in New Orleans, or the subsequent upbeat jazz of the 1920s or 1930s. It was post WW2 jazz – post Nazi Germany jazz – a type of jazz that was mixed with a tacit understanding of what totalitarianism was. It was jazz mixed with an eerie feeling that even western countries could someday slip into fascism. There were major and minor chords. The fifties were happy, but were also Kind of Blue.

The Beats were there to record and share the few first tentative unconscious steps necessary to push the world in the other direction – away from fascism and towards its opposite: towards love and freedom, doing so through writings and recordings and sharing their experiments with love and freedom. The three writers that had the most profound effect on the debate over pot in the 1950s were the three core writers of the Beats: William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac. According to one author;

“The Beats were the first generation of writers for whom cannabis was central, both to the experiences they recounted and to the prose style in which those experiences were rendered (and, insofar as Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs frequently wrote while stoned, to their compositional methods as well).” (4)

According to Ginsberg, the “demystification and/or decriminalization of some laws against marijuana and other drugs” was one of the “essential effects” of the Beat Generation. (5)

The three works of these three Beats that formed the foundation of Beatnik culture were undoubtedly Burroughs’s Junky, Kerouac’s On The Road, and Ginsberg’s Howl. Each one of these works mentioned marijuana – in the context of stigma-free beneficial use scenarios – never as a threat, always as a boon, or at worst a complication. Perhaps the popularity of these writers can be explained as a manifestation of the same forces that resulted in Robert Mitchum’s popularity immediately after his cannabis arrest in the previous decade – the public was voting with its consumer dollars, and a large chunk of them were supporting those that took positions that destigmatized pot and debunked the Reefer Madness mythology.

Image #1: “William S. Burroughs at the coffee house,” Loomis Dean, 1959                                  https://electronicsquid.tumblr.com/post/619215903041748992/william-s-burroughs-at-the-coffee-house-loomis

In Junky (1953), Burroughs attempted to differentiate between heroin users and cannabis users – or “tea heads” as he called them. In baring his soul to the world and sharing with it his vast experience in drugs – both hard and soft – Burroughs could speak from personal experience how cannabis was not a hard drug, and did not deserve to be criminalized. He wrote;

“In 1937, weed was placed under the Harrison Narcotics Act. Narcotics authorities claim it is a habit-forming drug, that its use is injurious to mind and body, and that it causes the people who use it to commit crimes. Here are the facts: Weed is positively not habit-forming. You can smoke weed for years and you will experience no discomfort if your supply is suddenly cut off. I have seen tea heads in jail and none of them showed withdrawal symptoms. I have smoked weed myself off and on for fifteen years, and never missed it when I ran out. There is less habit to weed than there is to tobacco. Weed does not harm the general health. In fact, most users claim it gives you an appetite and acts as a tonic to the system. I do not know of any other agent that gives as definite a boot to the appetite. I can smoke a stick of tea and enjoy a glass of California sherry and a hash house meal. I once kicked a junk habit with weed. The second day off junk I sat down and ate a full meal. Ordinarily, I can’t eat for eight days after kicking a habit. Weed does not inspire anyone to commit crimes. I have never seen anyone get nasty under the influence of weed. Tea heads are a sociable lot. Too sociable for my liking. I cannot understand why the people who claim weed causes crime do not follow through and demand the outlawing of alcohol. Every day, crimes are committed by drunks who would not have committed the crime sober. There has been a lot said about the aphrodisiac effect of weed. For some reason, scientists dislike to admit that there is such a thing as an aphrodisiac, so most pharmacologists say there is ‘no evidence to support the popular idea that weed possesses aphrodisiac properties.’ I can say definitely that weed is an aphrodisiac and that sex is more enjoyable under the influence of weed that without it. Anyone who has used good weed will verify this statement. You hear that people go insane from using weed. There is, in fact, a form of insanity caused by excessive use of weed. The condition is characterized by ideas of reference. The weed available in the U.S. is evidently not strong enough to blow your top on and weed psychosis is rare in the States. In the Near East, it is said to be common. Weed psychosis corresponds to more or less to delirium tremens and quickly disappears when the drug is withdrawn. Someone who smokes a few cigarettes a day is no more likely to go insane than a man who takes a few cocktails before dinner is likely to come down with the D.T.’s.” (6)

Image #2: Junkie, William Lee (William S. Burroughs), 1953, Ace Books

Aside from the fact that Burroughs was wrong about “weed psychosis” – there is no real evidence of it existing anywhere – even in countries with a history of high-potency cannabis cultivation – Burroughs got most of the basics of the effects of cannabis correct: minimal withdrawal symptoms, provides the munchies, zero aggression, sex is more enjoyable and impairment & delirium is acute (a result of large doses) and goes away shorty after consumption ends.

Burroughs had once tried his hand at growing and dealing pot in 1947, but found that it wasn’t the type of profession that one could be a success immediately at – there was a cultivation learning curve and successful distribution under prohibition usually required a large client list created over a long period of time – and so that career was quickly abandoned. (7)

In an address Burroughs gave to the American Psychological Symposium on September 6^th, 1961, he addressed the beneficial use of many drugs, including cannabis:

“It is unfortunate that cannabis (the Latin term for preparations made from the hemp plant, such as marihuana and hashish), which is certainly the safest of the hallucinogen drugs, should be subject to the heaviest legal sanctions. Unquestionably this drug is very useful to the artist, activating trains of association that would otherwise be inaccessible, and I owe many of the scenes in Naked Lunch directly to the use of cannabis.” (8)

In On The Road (1957), Kerouac puts cannabis use in the context of a tool for thinking about the big picture – the architecture of the universe and one’s own place in it – and how conducive pot smoking is in big-picture-thinking;

“We were smoking marijuana, and it made me think that everything was about to arrive – the moment when you know everything, and everything is decided for ever.” (9)

Image #3: “Heroic Portrait of Jack Kerouac,” New York, Fall 1953                                                      https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Heroic-Portrait-of-Jack-Kerouac–New-Yor/7ECFE9A1811F6EB9

The title of the book has a pot connection – “Gone on the road” was Kerouac’s friend Neil Cassady’s code for being high on grass. (10) And Kerouac’s special code word for cannabis was “Elitch” – after an amusement park where he and his friends liked to get stoned. Apparently, he used it as a tool for inspiration, introspection and vision-quests;

 “With my inexhaustible supply of Elitch, I daily dive into these dim regions and crawl to the surface with the stub of a pencil, sweating, to record what I have observed.” (11)

Image #4: On The Road, Jack Kerouac, 1958 UK edition, Andre Deutsch setantabooks.com

Image #5: On The Road, back cover, Jack Kerouac, 1958 UK edition, Andre Deutsch setantabooks.com

In a book of poems published posthumously, Kerouac expressed his views on human medical autonomy in a poem called “My Views on Religion”:

Revoke the Harrison Act! It is a Barbaricact – It will cause desperate criminalsand gunmen to arise from our midst,for evidential reasons – Ope nope –It’s like Prohibition, it won’t, work,– If the people want alcohol and dopelet em have alcohol and dope and allthe poison they can get if poison they want– you can’t tell the people what to take in themselves – you can’t stopthe people – I say this in the name of Peaceand I am not a Communist I’m a Dove (12)

In the poem Howl (1956), Ginsberg wrote about how he saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by the madness of oppression and discrimination in general, and cannabis prohibition in particular, when he wrote (within a long list of the unfairly destroyed people he knew);

“. . . who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York . . .” (13)

Image #6: “Allen Ginsberg, utility man S.S. John Blair first back from Galveston-Dakar Doldrums trip, I handed my camera to the radio-man on the ship’s fantail, smoking what? In New York harbor, circa October 30, 1947.”                                                                                                                     https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.143959.html

Image #7: Howl, Allen Ginsberg, 1956                                                                                                    https://www.manhattanrarebooks.com/pages/books/127/allen-ginsberg/howl-and-other-poems?soldItem=true

Image #8: “Ginsberg Poems Cleared By Court,” The Montgomery Advertiser, Montgomery, Alabama, October 8th, 1957, p. 3

Ginsberg was definitely the most dedicated to cannabis activism of the three writers, and would take part in significant protest, organizing, writing and lobbying in the proceeding decades. Ginsberg became prominent in the debate over cannabis policy in the 1960s. His “First Manifesto To End The Bringdown” – published in 1966 – is a most accurate and useful description of the effects of cannabis, and reading and appreciating it is, in this author’s opinion, a key part of both understanding and utilizing the inspirational and performance-enhancing effects of cannabis properly. This and other works by Ginsberg will be examined in much more detail in the following chapter.

1950 provided the world with a few anti-pot films – the first one from Argentina. It went by many names depending on where it was released: Marihuana (original title), Haschich la drogue qui tue (Belgium), Maconha – Traficantes do Vício (Brazil), La drogue qui tue (France), Marihuana, el tabaco negro del diablo (Mexico) and The Marihuana Story (USA). It was released in various countries within The Americas and Europe between 1950 and 1962. (14)

Image #9: “MARIHUANA: EL TABACO NEGRO DEL DIABLO” (THE BLACK TOBACCO OF THE DEVIL) Movie poster, 1950                                                                                                                    https://redaccion.lamula.pe/2016/10/29/el-tabaco-negro-del-diablo-afiches-vintage-contra-la-marihuana/manuelangeloprado/

Image #10: The Marihuana Story, movie poster from 1950 (Spain / Argentina)                               http://www.thecannachronicles.com/the-marihuana-story-1950/

Image #11: “Pablo Urioste is a respected surgeon, but he is forced to experience a nightmarish world after his wife, a marijuana addict, dies at a nightclub. He tells his story to the police, and tells stories of how he is hooked, beaten, blackmailed, and includes some bad-trip flashbacks. Ms. Quiroga tries to help him, but there is little hope for Dr. Urioste after undergoing THE MARIHUANA STORY.”                                                        https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0127017/

Image #12: “‘Hashish the drug that kills’ (Haschisch la drogue qui tue/haschisch, het dodend gift), Belgian movie poster 1950”                                                                                                www.thecannachronicles.com/hashish-the-drug-that-kills-1950/

This author was unable to find an online copy of the film, and the only easily available description of the plot seemed to verify that it was part of a campaign to assign cannabis an undeserved reputation for demonic possession and/or lethality:

“… this Latin American import tells of a man’s struggle against drugs, which claimed his wife’s life. The further he gets involved with drugs, the more apparent it becomes that he will be a victim, too.” (15)

An interesting snippet of news came out of the Middle East in 1950. Apparently, the new state of Israel had begun to compete with neighboring Syria and Lebanon for the hashish market, with wonderful results for the consumer;

“Hashish growers in Syria and Lebanon are finding competition from Israel pretty tough, they say. The paper ‘Elsahafi Eltaeh’ says prices have dropped from 600 Egyptian pounds ($1,500) for 1.2 kilograms to 50 pounds. Hashish is a form of dope. It is illegal to produce it.” (16)

Image #13: “Hashish Competition Hot,” Lincoln Journal Star, Lincoln, Nebraska, February 15th, 1950, p. 28

Aside from the lovely idea of buying 1.2 kilos of primo hash for about 120 bucks, it occurred to this author, after reading this news item, that today’s various competing entities in the Middle East could have easily limited their “competition” to who could provide the best hash at the lowest price, the results would have been the creation of the greatest tourist mecca in the world and enough income for all who lived in the region to benefit. It’s still not too late to switch over to that economy and away from the current “military enforcement of sketchy Old Testament-based real estate deals” economy. The same could also be true for other war-torn regions of the world. The whole “swords into plows” medicinal-herb peace dividend is real, and still an option.

The newspapers of the 1950s were filled with photos of recently arrested suspected pot peddlers hanging their heads in shame or proud narcs and their captured plants, flowers or resins – often without the need to repeat the myths of reefer madness or the stepping stone. (17) And like previous decades, the media would mention if the perpetrator was a “negro” or a Mexican, and maybe mention if a perpetrator was white – if there were non-whites also mentioned in the article. The race of the cops was never mentioned.- they were 100% white, 100% of the time.

Image #14: “Marijuana Haul Made In State,” The Charlotte Observer, Charlotte, North Carolina, March 5th, 1950, p. 1

Image #15: “MARIJUANA SEED SEIZED BY POLICE,” The Asheville Times, Asheville, North Carolina, March 8th, 1950, p. 11

Image #16: “EVEN IN SAN QUENTIN!” Berwick Enterprise, Berwick, Pennsylvania, May 11th, 1950, p. 13

Image #17: “Negro Is Held On Marijuana Charge at Lufkin,” Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Corpus Christi, Texas, June 8th, 1950, p. 4

Image #18: “Eight Seized as Police Press Marijuana Drive,” The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, California, August 11th, 1950, p. 27

Image #19: “$33,000 WORTH OF MARIHUANA,” Victoria Advocate, Victoria, Texas, September 13th, 1950, p. 1

Image #20: “Negro Arrested for Possessing Marijuana,” Corpus Christi Times, Corpus Christi, Texas, November 16th, 1950, p. 24

Image #21: “Marijuana Killer Of Five In 1933 Is Hanging Suicide,” The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, December 7^th, 1950, p. 26 See chapter 6 on the strange circumstances surrounding the 1933 Licata killings.

Image #22: “Dope Raids,” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, March 10th, 1951, p. 8

Image #23: “Lost In History – Marijuana party, 1950.” facebook.com

The assumption that these people being arrested or these plants being destroyed were harmful people/plants and not helpful people/plants had been – for the majority of those living in English-speaking countries – firmly established in the previous two decades, and it no longer needed to be explained in the text that accompanied the arrests. It was a simple matter of referring to cannabis as “dope” or as a “narcotic,” implying cannabis possessed similar toxicity and withdrawal severity to opiates. With those who had the ability to explain the actual truth of the matter limited to the margins of society (mostly jazz musicians and those who would later be called beat writers), the attempted genocide of the herbally autonomous was now set to automatic, and appeared unstoppable.

When the dangers of pot were mentioned at all, the new spin that would be most likely to accompany such stories in the 1950s seemed to be the “stepping stone” theory – that cannabis use led to heroin use;

“Another board member suggested more emphasis should be given to the fact that marihuana users usually graduate to heroin, and for the heroin habit they need from $6 to $15 dollars daily.” (18)

Image #24: “Student Education Urged To Defeat Marihuana,” The Evening Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, May 4^th, 1951, p. 31

“Mr. Wells, who has spent many years running down dope peddlers here and on the mainland, pointed out tersely, ‘Marihuana is the stepping stone to the use of heroin’ – one of the most deadly narcotics known to man.” (19)

Image #25: “Marihuana Plants Seized,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Honolulu, Hawaii, May 19^th, 1951, p. 12

“The girl admitted to McKnight that she had planned the “tea party” but had to cancel it at the last minute because she was unable to get any ‘sticks’ (marijuana) and ‘horse’ (heroin).” (20)

This is not to say that the old spin of Reefer Madness – cannabis use causing permanent insanity – was abandoned entirely. It still occasionally found its way into the stories that focused on the multiple horrific effects of pot smoking:

“‘By their overtly hostile, provocative and intransigent attitude toward authority they constantly invite punishment.’ . . . ‘Hemp drug (marihuana) addicts were suffering from toxic insanity. This drug is known to have a marked effect upon the intellectual processes, which become irregular, or even partially or totally suspended. Acute mental derangements due to marihuana are marked by extreme vehemence of the mania . . . Mental, moral and muscular manifestations are pronounced. The individual looks confused, has bright, shining eyes, which are almost always heavily congested. If at liberty, he is violent and may run amuck. Under excitement, he may commit murder without any reason or provocation.’ . . . A boy friend taught her to smoke marihuana. As many as 40 teenage boys and girls got together for ‘tea rides.’ Then they ‘made love.’ Rita said the ‘guage’ helped their love making and made it ‘more interesting.’ They bought their ‘reefers’ openly on street corners ‘near schools’ and in front of ‘candy stores.’ Now most of them are ‘on the horse.’ They have become heroin addicts.” (21)

Image #26: “Marijuana Garden Found in Atlanta,” Macon News, Macon, Georgia, May 24th, 1951, p. 29

Image #27: “BIGGEST MARIJUANA CASHE SEIZED,” Evening Star, Washington, D.C., June 2nd, 1951, p. 4

Image #28: “BIGGEST MARIJUANA CASHE SEIZED,” Evening Star, Washington, D.C., June 2nd, 1951, p. 4

Image #29: “L.A. teen-age narcotics ring smashed; four arrested,” Daily News, Los Angeles, California, June 27th, 1951, p. 3

“Studies show that persons who use marijuana for a period of time suffer a mental breakdown and the drug definitely is a breeder of crime in mentally unstable persons. Scientists will tell you that the dangerous effects of marijuana is that it prepares a person for the risky road into the stronger narcotic. Then the real trouble starts.” (22)

Image #30: “MARIJUANA IS NO INNOCENT WEED,” The South Bend Tribune, South Bend, Indiana, June 27th, 1951, p. 9

Image #31: “MARIJUANA IS NO INNOCENT WEED,” The South Bend Tribune, South Bend, Indiana, June 27th, 1951, p. 9

None of the “studies” mentioned in such articles were ever named. Once in a while the old mythology of Reefer Madness also found its way into stories of pot busts;

“Prolonged use of large doses of habitués, and the single large dose taken by a novice may cause criminal maniacal acts. Moreover, even small quantities can destroy the will power and the ability to convert and control thoughts and actions, thus releasing all inhibitions viciously. It is frequently used by criminals to bolster their courage, and is most dangerous of all is the person under the influence of marihuana at the wheel of an automobile. His illusions as to time and space destroy judgment as to speed and distance and when 80 miles seems like 20 he often leaves a trail of fatal accidents in his wake.” (23)

“MARIJUANA smokers will cry or laugh hysterically without provocation. They run the gamut of emotion and sometimes thing they are floating in an ink bottle. Influenced by marijuana, law abiding men have become strong arm robbers. Mild-mannered men have become killers.” (24)

Image #32: “WEEDS, NOT MARIJUANA, DUPE COPS,” The Waco Times-Herald, Waco, Texas, July 16th, 1951, p.1

Image #33: “AN ACRE OF MARIJUANA,” The Democrat And Leader, Davenport, Iowa, July 31st, 1951, p. 11

Image #34: “BURNS MARIJUANA PATCH,” The Democrat And Leader, Davenport, Iowa, July 31st, 1951, p. 11

Image #35: “EXAMINES MARIJUANA CIGARET,” The Democrat And Leader, Davenport, Iowa, July 31st, 1951, p. 11

Image #36: “OFFICERS WITH EVIDENCE,” The Daily Times, Davenport, Iowa, August 1st, 1951, p. 1

Image #37: “QUESTIONED AFTER DRUG PROBE,” The Daily Times, Davenport, Iowa, August 1st, 1951, p. 1

Image #38: “DOPE PEDDLERS,” E. Chicago Fights Marijuana Weed,” The Times, Munster, Indiana, August 12^th, 1951, p. 58

Image #39: “THE HEMP WEED,” E. Chicago Fights Marijuana Weed,” The Times, Munster, Indiana, August 12^th, 1951, p. 58

Image #40: “THE CITY COURT SCENE,” E. Chicago Fights Marijuana Weed,” The Times, Munster, Indiana, August 12^th, 1951, p. 58

Image #41: “RESIDENTS LIVING,” E. Chicago Fights Marijuana Weed,” The Times, Munster, Indiana, August 12^th, 1951, p. 58

Image #42: “MAKE DOPE PEDDLERS subject to corporal punishment. Judge Anthony A. Filipiak (left) head of the Lake county juvenile court, declared. He is shown discussing with Walter Hammond, probation officer, a proposal by Gov. Henry Schricker urging corporal punishment for persons who sell or give dope to children.” “E. Chicago Fights Marijuana Weed,” The Times, Munster, Indiana, August 12^th, 1951, p. 58

Image #43: “POLICE CHIEF MARTIN ZARKOVICH,” E. Chicago Fights Marijuana Weed,” The Times, Munster, Indiana, August 12^th, 1951, p. 58

Image #44: “MARIJUANA,” E. Chicago Fights Marijuana Weed,” The Times, Munster, Indiana, August 12^th, 1951, p. 58

Image #45: “Discover Patches Along Railroads, in Empty Lots,” E. Chicago Fights Marijuana Weed,” The Times, Munster, Indiana, August 12^th, 1951, p. 58

Image #46: “Mexico Providing Marijuana Source,” Leader-Telegram, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, September 7th, 1951, p. 10

Image #47: “Mexico Providing Marijuana Source,” Leader-Telegram, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, September 7th, 1951, p. 10

Image #48: “White Wing Squad Tackles Biggest Marijuana Crop,” Brooklyn Eagle, Brooklyn, New York, September 19th, 1951, p. 3

Image #49: Police Inspector Peter Terranova, commanding officer of the narcotics squad, flanked by Anthony Cristiano, a Department of Sanitation workman (and member of the White Wing Squad), and Frank Creta, general inspector. photo: Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Collection.”When Weed Grew Wild in Williamsburg,” John Passmore, Jan 23, 2014                                                          https://www.wnyc.org/story/weed-in-brooklyn/

Image #50: “4 Arrested On Suspicion Of Cultivating Marijuana,” Hawaii Tribune-Herald, Hilo, Hawaii, October 10th, 1951, p. 1

Image #51: “Marijuana Grower Pleads Guilty Here; Sentence Deferred,” Muskogee Times-Democrat, Muskogee, Oklahoma, October 20th, 1951, p. 1

Of course, the parental hysteria card was played often;

“‘Young people are particularly susceptible to the smoking of marijuana cigarets,’ Wildman said. ‘We must have the co-operation of everyone in stamping out this menace to our young people.’” (25)

“The marijuana ring is alleged to have been pushing sales among students of Continuation and Balboa High Schools, which have been under narcotics investigation recently. Inspector Lennox Etherington, head of the police narcotics squad, said the retail peddlers were ‘small but persistent and of a dangerous type because they enticed youths.’” (26)

“Sheriff’s officers hailed a Lower Valley man Wednesday and said he had been supplying marihuana to ’15 or 20’ Lower Valley teenagers. A number of arrests preceded the raid on the home of Satero Madrid, 25, 725 Hampton Road, where 219 illicit cigarettes and a small amount of of bulk marihuana also were seized. Deputies, saying more arrests were in the offing among Lower Valley users – some of them high school students – refused to go into detail on what charges some of those previously arrested were held.” (27)

“Police indicated they planned to question several other persons. They hinted that narcotic selling to juveniles may be involved.” (28)

“(18-year-old) Fred Rivera, who admitted helping his brother grow the plants, was also booked on suspicion of cultivating marijuana and a charge of statutory rape. Police said he told them he had been intimate with the 17 year old girl present at the marijuana party.” (29)

The parental-hysteria technique was often adopted during this era. 1951 saw the first printing of Marijuana Girl by N. R. de Mexico – the version of the book with the blonde girl on the cover. The debate over the effects of marijuana became the subject of the inner dialogue of a seducer of young girls:

“After all, looking back on it, he hadn’t done anything wrong. What was wrong with taking a girl to a night club? Nothing. And the marijuana? Nobody in all of history had ever been hurt by marijuana, at least to Frank’s way of thinking. There were traps to the stuff, of course, as nobody knew better than Frank: psychological traps, the traps of getting to depend of the stuff to fill psychological needs – the way a person might get to depend too much on liquor or the movies. But there were all sorts of medical evidence to prove the stuff itself was harmless and non-habit-forming and that all the things usually said against it were no more than meaningless nonsense of ignorance.” (30)

Image #52: Marijuana Girl, N. R. de Mexico, UNI-BOOK #19, 1951, image from DOPE MENACE – The Sensational World of Drug Paperbacks, 1900-1975, STEPHEN J. GERTZ, FERAL HOUSE, Port Townsend, Washington, 2008, p. 7

Image #53: Back Cover, Marijuana Girl, N. R. DeMexico, Beacon Book, Canada, Universal Publishing and Distributing Corporation, 1960 edition

Later on in the book, a different character conflates chronic pot use with pot abuse in his dialogue with a fellow tea head – a re-occurring theme in the prohibitionist mythology of today;

“I’m putting gauge down, Don.”

“Why, man? Ain’t nothing wrong with gauge.”

“I know. But you got to put things down once in a while. You got to put them down so you keep being sure who’s boss. Like liquor. Even cigarettes. You got to keep in the habit of being on top of things.”

. . .

“But you can’t get hooked.”

“Not the way you can with hops or junk. Not with your body. But you can get mentally hooked, like with any kind of crutch. You get so the way you feel happy is with grass, not with yourself. I know a cat’s making maybe forty bucks a week, which is real beat loot, and he spends about twelve of it for gauge. He just lost the habit of balling without his hay. If he runs out, he can get along. But he’ll go for it the first chance he gets. And it comes before most other things. Not like horse. Not before food. But it comes right after food for this cat.” (31)

The problem with painting dependency as inherently pathological is that dependency is actually only a problem if it interferes with your life goals – if the thing you were dependent on were harming you. The epiphany missing from the anti-cannabis crowd was (and continues to be) that it is possible to use cannabis, coca and opium products properly, to the individuals benefit, without harm.

Some addictions – indeed some dependencies – are beneficial, for example the vast majority of the daily use of caffeinated beverages by the general population of “western” nations falls under “non-problematic/beneficial use,” as does the chewing of coca in the Andes or the use of kava kava in the Pacific islands or the use of guarana in the Amazon. Stimulants, relaxants, euphorics, aphrodisiacs and performance-enhancers of all types are used to mitigate extreme conditions: high altitudes, stressful situations, the fatigue that comes with being enslaved or otherwise limited to subsistence wages, living in the belly of the beast of Babylon in an age of crisis. The use of these drugs to deal with these conditions increase both the quality of life and the chances of survival – the situations they mitigate are chronic. Daily use – even dependency – is appropriate if the user feels like it’s helping in some way.

This is not to say that breaks from using cannabis or any other drug are not advantageous. Breaks can be good for many reasons – an illness sending body signals to cut back or quit, an unpleasant task that doesn’t lend itself to a herb that slows time down, a chance to switch to other herbs or therapies to see if they work better, a chance for tolerance levels to be reduced in order for effects to be more pronounced in the future, or a chance to remember a time when one wasn’t relaxed, hungry, happy, inspired and focused all the time in order to re-affirm one’s preferences – but if the little voice inside is telling you to be high instead of low, it’s perfectly ok to listen to it. Just concentrate on getting your dose right to maximize the desired effects.

The 1951 book Musk, Hashish and Blood by Hector France appeared in paperback for the first time (the first hardcover printing being in 1900 or 1902, the second in 1930). In it the author recounts his time as a French soldier in Algeria. In the sixth chapter – In Hashish Land – he recounts his first experience smoking hashish. After some initial unpleasant hot puffs through a kif pipe that hurt his lungs, he then began to experience the typical euphoria of the initiate;

“The pain went off by degrees, leaving behind a feeling of languorous happiness much more intense than that experienced at first. As puff succeeded puff, I felt a mighty, ineffable delight come over me, a heart-felt, lasting feeling of enjoyment, and absolute oblivion of all the incommodities and sorrows of life! I felt myself the center of a world-pervading love. Eager to share my bliss with all the other guests who had seemed to me a somewhat ragged, poverty-stricken crew, I called the Caouadiji, and feeling in my pockets I tossed him with the gesture of a Sultan a handful of copper coins and little silver pieces, bidding him regale the company with coffee, kif and anisette, and send for dancing girls!” (32)

The protagonist then proceeds to hallucinate a bunch of naked dancing girls, while the other people in the room did as well. The part that doesn’t pass the smell test is the part where the protagonist confuses his fantasy with reality. I suspect this is a bit of exaggeration on that authors part, as I myself have done heroic doses of hashish, and while experiencing many eyelid cartoons, none of them could possibly be said to appear so real as to be confused with reality as France’s visions did in his story. It seems like it could either be an exaggeration or a complete work of fiction by someone who never actually smoked hash . . . but pleasure-fixations and heightened imagination are two things that can be said to be elements of the cannabis high when smoked by a novice, which combined with artistic license gets you this type of story. Hector France appears to be more sensationalist than scapegoater.

The December 1951 issue of Detective World featured prominently large font red text boldly announcing “I PEDDLED DRUGS TO YOUR KIDS” (33) – with an image inside the magazine of a swarthy dealer captured by the police, posed behind his massive stash of sticks and stems that was typical of 1951 black market cannabis arrest photos.  The story inside consists of a story about how marijuana smoking leads to marijuana dealing, which leads to heroin dealing. What goes unstated is the fact that it is the black market that results from prohibition – not the effects of the pot itself – which is the “gateway” or “stepping stone” between soft drugs and hard drugs. The stepping-stone theory would remain a popular prohibitionist trope for decades to come.

Image #54: “I PEDDLED DRUGS TO YOUR KIDS,” DETECTIVE WORLD, Detective World Incorporated, New York, New York, December 1951

Image #55: “I PEDDLED DRUGS TO YOUR KIDS,” DETECTIVE WORLD, Detective World Incorporated, New York, New York, December 1951, p. 34

Image #56: Teen-Age Dope Slaves, Harvey Comics Library #1, April 1952                https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=71378

Image #57: Teen-Age Dope Slaves, Harvey Comics Library #1, April 1952, p. 6          https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=71378

1951 was the year the short story “The Hashish Trail” was published in Battle! – a war story magazine out of Australia. The sub-title promised;

“A trail blazed in gunpowder across the desert wastes led to another powder – hashish!! Powerful beyond violence, the drug made ‘dopes’ of many who bested the gunpowder . . .” (34)

In the story – set in WW2 – the protagonist learns how the Nazi soldier plans to subjugate the Arab world;

“The Arab was demanding ‘hashish,’ the German refusing, the Arab cajoling, and finally the German pulled out a paper packet from his pocket and flipped out a cigarette. The Arab took it with a swift, hungry grab, and promptly squatted to smoke it. ‘You see my friend,’ the German waved a stubby hand at the squatting figure dragging avidly at the dope-laden cigarette, ‘that is how we are helping to destroy these filthy Arab folk.’” (35)

In 1952, Australia provided possibly the most white-supremacist fantasy ever with The Case Of The Dope Dealers by Martin Frazer. The cover depicted a white policeman grabbing the arm of a knife-wielding black dope dealer. According to a Swedish blog, the “dope” in question was marijuana. (36) The following passage removes any doubt about which “dope” turned Stimson – the black villain on the cover – into a crazed savage:

“The drawer with the false back lay on the top of the desk. Blake was forcing it open with a stout paper-knife – Stimson’s own! Inside was a cardboard box – the size of a cigar box. It was filled with cigarettes. The coloured man darted forward avidly – one hand clawing out. Tinker grabbed him and held him back. He fought and wrestled, his eyes bulging from his head. Blake extracted a cigarette and tossed it to him in pity, and the man went back to his corner, satisfied. ‘How did you come by these, Stimson?’ snapped Coutts. Stimson just glowered savagely. ‘I’m not talking,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I want a lawyer!’ ‘We’ll send one to your cell later on,’ retorted Coutts. ‘You’re under arrest.” (37)

Image #58: Martin Frazer (Percy A. Clarke), THE CASE OF THE DOPE DEALERS, THE SEXTON BLAKE LIBRARY · 3rd series · Issue 270 · Aug. 1952

The obviously racist cover is a powerful reminder that the entire drug war has always been a form of white supremacism, and once in a while the propagandists provide the most blatant evidence of this being the case.

In the February 9^th, 1952 issue of Illustrated magazine (a UK version of Life Magazine) a photo essay entitled Marijuana appeared. The photo essaymay have appeared earlier in Ebony magazine, because the author, Robert Lucas, wrote for them, and the photographer, Wayne Miller, appeared to have more in that series that weren’t published in Illustrated. The article was accompanied by a side bar relating to the situation in the UK, filled with undeserved stigma;

“It finds most of its victims among the young. When a London dance club was raided, all but one of ten men (nine of them white) who possessed the drug were under thirty. Smoking reefers may lead to a craving for other, more dangerous drugs such as heroin and opium. Crime – even murder, is likely through the vicious influence of or desire for marijuana. Victims are put at the mercy of unscrupulous peddlers who will bleed addicts of all their money.” (38)

The main body of the text does quote from the LaGuardia Committee, but then goes on to quote a Dr. J. D. Richard, formerly head of the U.S. addiction research hospital at Lexington, Kentucky;

“‘The real harm that results from the chronic use of marijuana is the development of the habit of escaping all the discomfort or unpleasantness by the use of some substance . . . This may change an energetic, efficient, valuable member of society into a regressed, valueless person who has side-stepped life. He may not be a danger to his group; he certainly does it no good. Such an effect – the disintegration of a personality – is worse than death; a substance able to produce it should be avoided as one would avoid the plague.’” (39)

Image #59: “Marijuana,” Illustrated, February 9^th, 1952, p. 28                                                           https://www.stressedanddepressed.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/1952IllustratedMagazineOCR1.pdf

Image #60: “In smoking reefers, the cigarette is held so that it barely touches the lips. Smokers inhale deeply, drawing in air at the same time as the smoke.” “Marijuana,” Illustrated, February 9^th, 1952, p. 29   https://www.stressedanddepressed.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/1952IllustratedMagazineOCR1.pdf

Image #61: “Marijuana,” Illustrated, February 9^th, 1952, p. 31                                                           https://www.stressedanddepressed.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/1952IllustratedMagazineOCR1.pdf

Image #62: “Marijuana,” Illustrated, February 9^th, 1952, p. 31                                                           https://www.stressedanddepressed.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/1952IllustratedMagazineOCR1.pdf

Image #63: “Reefer Madness: Mid-Century Anti-Marijuana Propaganda In Movies And Books,” May 30, 2015  https://flashbak.com/reefer-madness-mid-century-anti-marijuana-propaganda-in-movies-and-books-35558/

Image #64: “Reefer Madness: Mid-Century Anti-Marijuana Propaganda In Movies And Books,” May 30, 2015  https://flashbak.com/reefer-madness-mid-century-anti-marijuana-propaganda-in-movies-and-books-35558/

Image #65: “$16,000 Haul of Marijuana Seized by Deputies Here,” The Tampa Times, Tampa, Florida, February 15th, 1952, p. 2

Image #66: “2 Nabbed Here in Narcotics Ring,” The Tampa Times, Tampa, Florida, March 13th, 1952, p. 2

In the following article from 1955, yet another example of drug war racism (the race of the non-white suspects being mentioned while the white suspects race was not an issue) was provided;

“…two officers emptied their pistols at a Negro driver who attempted to run down one of them when the officer approached his car . . . entering the house they had under surveillance, the officers arrested a 32-year-old woman. A search of the house, they reported, revealed 35 marihuana cigarettes on the first floor, two pounds of loose marijuana in the cellar and four matchboxes of loose marijuana in another room. Lieutenant Carroll said the loose drug is worth about $1600 a pound. . . . the same officers went to a house in the 900 block West North avenue, where they arrested a man and a woman. … At 5:30 A.M. the group moved to the 200 block Aisquith street, where they arrested a man. Lieutenant Carroll said several marijuana cigarettes were found, together with six hypodermic needles and syringes. A negro woman was picked up in the next raid, which took place at 6:15 A.M. on the second floor of a house in the 1600 block East Madison street. One marijuana cigarette was found there. Fifteen minutes later, in the final raid of the night, the quad went back to the same house and arrested two third-floor occupants, a man and a woman.” (40)

Image #67: The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Virginia, April 4th, 1952, p. 39

Then, as now, there were rebel academics who managed to get the counter-argument into the mainstream media. For example, the April 6^th, 1952 edition of the Louisiana newspaper The Sheveport Times reported in a headline that stated very clearly: “Smoking Marijuana Rarely Cause Of Narcotic Addition, Expert Says.” This maverick lawman – interviewed by a maverick reporter – debunked the stepping stone theory and then demystified some of the growing process and then explained the retail price points for good measure. The article began;

“Contrary to popular belief, most narcotic addicts do not begin their addictions by smoking marijuana. This statement by a former Louisiana state narcotics inspector explodes the belief that marijuana paves the way to a future of addiction. ‘I have never seen a ‘dope’ who began his narcotics consumption by smoking marijuana.’ Says State Police Lt. Wilmer P. Tanner, who for 12 years held the top narcotics post in this state. ‘They stick to their own brands – type of drug, that is,’ Tanner said ‘but many narcotics peddlers sell marijuana as a sideline. I have known of very few cases of narcotics addicts smoking marijuana.’ (Marijuana is not a narcotic.) Most marijuana peddlers raise their own ‘weed.’ The plant grows wild throughout the country, and the average person does not recognize it on sight. Growing wild, it reaches a height of three to four feet, Tanner said, and it smells somewhat like burnt alfalfa. However, when cultivated, the weed grows to 10 feet or higher. Growers plant it, and prune it when it is about two months old. When the sap rises in the plant, the leaves are tied off from the larger limbs to retain all the sap’s strength in the leaves. The leaves are gathered and hung in long rows in rooms to dry in the shade. Then they are ground and processed for making into cigarets. Processing the weed varies from grinding to carefully sifting it, and occasionally a few drops of cannabis indica is added to the plant to strengthen its effect. Marijuana cigarettes are known commonly as ‘sticks’ or ‘reefers.’ Their average cost is about $1.25 each.” (41)

Image #68: “Smoking Marijuana Rarely Cause Of Narcotic Addiction, Expert Says,” The Shreveport Times, Shreveport, Louisiana, April 6th, 1952, p. 42

Police officers are usually the source of the reefer myths – seldom the source of the debunking.

Image #69: “DOPE HAUL,” Austin American-Statesman, Austin, Texas, July 30th, 1952, p. 15

Image #70: “5 Musicians Nabbed By Shore Dope Raiders,” The Times, Trenton, New Jersey, August 20th, 1952, p. 1

Unexpected opponents of reefer myths were not as plentiful, unfortunately, as the unexpected proponents of reefer myths during this time period. The next appearance of the myth that the assassins were acting “under the influence” of cannabis during assassinations rather than as part of the recruitment process was in a 1952 newspaper’s advertisement for Webster’s Dictionary, similar to an ad back in 1930 in chapter 6:

“IN eleventh century Persia, a secret order was founded by Hassan ben Sabbah, indulging in the use of the Oriental drug hashish, and, when under its influence, in the practice of secret murder. The murderous partakers of hashish came to be called hashshashin in the Arabic and from that origin comes our English word assassin!” (42)

Image #71: “ASSASSIN – A Drinker of Hashish!” Advertisement, WEBSTER’S NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY, Second Edition, Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, September 14^th, 1952, p. 244

Image #72: “ARREST 7 IN MARIHUANA HAULS,” El Paso Herald-Post, El Paso, Texas, September 22nd, 1952, p. 1

Image #73: “Youths Face Marijuana, Deadly Weapons Charges,” The Register, Santa Ana, California, October 6th, 1952, p. 13

Image #74: “BAILED OUT,” Daily News, Los Angeles, California, October 16th, 1952, p. 1

Image #75: “POLICE MAKE BIG HAUL OF MARIJUANA PLANTS,” The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tennessee, October 28th, 1952, p. 17

Image #76: “BOMBERS,” The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, November 13th, 1952, p. 42

Image #77: “7 ARRESTED IN MARIHUANA RING ROUNDUP,” The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, November 13th, 1952, p. 42

Image #78: “Tells of Undercover Work By Agents in Dope Case,” The Des Moines Register, Des Moines, Iowa, December 5th, 1952, p. 4

In 1952, the 1951 novel Cure It With Honey was released in paperback. It was re-titled I’ll Get Mine and the subtitle was She Loved Men, Money and Marijuana. Marijuana – or “tea” or “yesca” as they also called it – was not stigmatized in the story – instead, it served as an effective aphrodisiac and experience-focuser. The author – Thurston Scott – was actually two people: A gay man named George Thurston Leite and a lesbian named Jody Scott. They had a “beard marriage” (a marriage-like relationship between gay people of different sexes to hide their sexuality) and ran a bookstore in Berkeley, California. (43) The paperback was released again in 1958 with another cover sporting women with slightly more cleavage.

Image #79: I’LL GET MINE (CURE IT WITH HONEY), Thurston Scott (George Thurston and Jody Scott), POPULAR LIBRARY 452, 1952, cover by A. Leslie Ross.                    https://hashmuseum.com/en/collection/reefer-madness/ill-get-mine/

The US government re-issued a pamphlet on growing hemp – lightly revised from their “Hemp For Victory” 1943 pamphlet – for the left-over hemp farmers still growing in April of 1952. In it, they explain how important it was to obtain a license:

“THE HEMP PLANT contains the drug marihuana. Any farmer planning to grow hemp must comply with certain regulations of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. This involves registration with the farmer’s nearest Internal Revenue Collector and the payment of a fee of $1. Although the fee is small, the registration is mandatory and should not be neglected, as the penalty provisions for not complying with the regulations are very severe. The registration must be renewed each year beginning July 1. This so-called ‘license’ permits a farmer to obtain viable hempseed from a registered firm dealing in hemp, to plant and grow the crop, and to deliver mature, retted hemp stalks to a hemp mill.” (44)

Image #80: United States Department Of Agriculture, Farmers Bulletin No. 1935, Hemp, U.S. Government Printing Office: 1943                                                                                                                  https://overgrow.com/t/let-s-see-those-old-grow-guides-and-collectibles/81870/71

Image #81: United States Department Of Agriculture, Farmers Bulletin No. 1935, Hemp, U.S. Government Printing Office: 1943                                                                                      https://gutenberg.org/files/59625/59625-h/59625-h.htm

Image #82: United States Department Of Agriculture, Farmers Bulletin No. 1935, Hemp, U.S. Government Printing Office: 1943                                                                                      https://gutenberg.org/files/59625/59625-h/59625-h.htm

Image #83: United States Department Of Agriculture, Farmers Bulletin No. 1935, Hemp, U.S. Government Printing Office: 1943                                                                                      https://gutenberg.org/files/59625/59625-h/59625-h.htm

Image #84: United States Department Of Agriculture, Farmers Bulletin No. 1935, Hemp, U.S. Government Printing Office: 1943                                                                                      https://gutenberg.org/files/59625/59625-h/59625-h.htm

In 1952 another work was re-titled, replacing a red scare with a green scare. The film Big Jim McLain starred John Wayne as an investigator for the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) – headed by the infamous Senator Joe McCarthy. When the film was released in Europe the next year, the “un-American” bad guys were switched for marijuana smugglers in the dialogue-dubbing process. The film was retitled Marihuana or Marijuana for the new movie posters, depending on where in Europe it was released. (45)

Image #85: Movie poster for the 1953 film Marijuana                                          www.montanaroue.com/2014_02_01_archive.html

Image #86: Movie poster for the 1953 film Marijuana                                                                     https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044418/mediaviewer/rm273166336/

Image #87: Lobby card for the 1953 film Marijuana

The paperback edition of The Marijuana Mob, written by the famous UK crime/thriller writer James Hadley Chase, was published in 1952. Formerly named Figure It Out For Yourself, it became yet another work of this era re-named with a pot title. The characters in the novel treated pot as if it was a hard drug – which is a good indication that the author hadn’t every tried using it himself;

“There’s one man who’s tailor-made for the job. A nasty little rat named Jeff Barratt. He’s a reefer addict and a thorough louse.” (46)

“‘She’s dead all right. I’ve just been in there. She’s hanging on the back of the bathroom door.’

She gave a little shudder, grimaced, gave another little shudder, and reached for the whisky bottle.

‘She was a stupid little fool, but I didn’t think she’s be that stupid. The trouble with her was she couldn’t leave reefers alone.’

‘I guessed that. I could smell the stuff in the room.’” (47)

The protagonist ends up stumbling across a massive international reefer smuggling racket, and then heroically shuts it down. (48)

Image #88: The MARIJUANA MOB (FIGURE IT OUT FOR YOURSELF), JAMES HADLEY CHASE (Rene Raymond), ETON 116, 1952, cover by Victor Olson.

A similar story was published the next year – Kiss The Killer, with the tagline “WHEN MARIJUANA MEANS MURDER!” on the paperback edition cover. It would be reprinted in 1957 as Juvenile Hoods. The title Kiss The Killer actually refers to the idea that those who sell marijuana to teens deserve to be executed, and the executioner deserves to be rewarded with a kiss;

“Okay! You see what I mean. Here’s the one murder anybody could commit. A creep who’d peddle marihuana to kids. You catch him at it, you instinctively want to slaughter him. Like stepping on a roach. Can you get sore at somebody who’d do it—somebody who’d take the trouble to do the community a favor like that? Redmond, you don’t want to arrest this killer. What you want to do is kiss him.” (49)

Image #89: Joseph Shallit, Kiss The Killer, 1953, Avon, ebay.com

Image #90: Joseph Shallit, Kiss The Killer, 1953, Avon, ebay.com

Unfortunately, that genocidal rhetoric – that the scapegoat (in this case those who give teens access to the safest, cheapest and most effective relaxant and antidepressant on planet earth) deserves death – will not be seen for the last time.

Many cannabis stories began to appear in comic books in the 1940s and 1950s. The July, 1951 edition of Wanted Comics, issue number 39, contained a story titled “The HORROR Weed … WHERE THERE’S SMOKE, THERE’S DEATH!” (50) The “pot leads to harder stuff” myth appears in this story and many others during this era.

Image #91: Wanted Comics #39, July, 1951, p. 17                                                                                        https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=32689

Image #92: Wanted Comics #39, July, 1951, p. 18                                                                                       https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=32689

Image #93: Wanted Comics #39, July, 1951, p. 19                                                                                        https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=32689

Image #94: Wanted Comics #39, July, 1951, p. 21                                                                                        https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=32689

Image #95: Wanted Comics #39, July, 1951, p. 25                                                                                        https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=32689

In issue #6 of Romantic Love comics, cover-dated July-August 1951, the “reefers are the road to insanity” theme also made an appearance. (51)

Yet another non-marijuana story rebranded as a marijuana story came out in Oct. of 1952, when Weird Horrors #3, published by St. Johns comics, contained a story called “The Return of the Phantom Fakir” appeared, utilizing a “narcotic, not unlike the smoke from the hemp weed” as a mind-control drug. The story was originally published in Punch Comics #2 in 1942, but in that version it was chloroform, not hemp-weed-like smoke, emanating from the urn. (52)

Image #96: “The Return Of The Phantom Fakir,” Weird Horrors #3, October 1952, p. 16 https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=19028

Image #97: “The Return Of The Phantom Fakir,” Weird Horrors #3, October 1952, p. 19 https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=19028

The July, 1953 issue of Danger comics, published by Comic Media publishers, (53) contained a story about the Mexicans smuggling marijuana across the border, and the black-market violence was contextualized as an inevitable result of the effects of the drug rather than an inevitable result of the effects of the policy of prohibition. Former US president Donald Trump used similar tactics in 2015 to get elected and fight for funding for his border wall with Mexico. (54)

Image #98: Danger #4, July 1953 https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=22860

Image #99: Danger #4, July 1953, p. 3 https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=22860

Image #100: Danger #4, July 1953, p. 7 https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=22860

Image #101: “Young Negro Sentenced In Narcotics Case, The Shreveport Journal, Shreveport, Louisiana, April 28th, 1953, p. 1

In the April 30^th, 1953 edition of the Florida newspaper The Orlando Sentinel, within a story about a drug expert who came to teach other law enforcement officials about drugs, the “pot addiction” myth was questioned (sort of) but the “pot-related violence” and “brain deterioration” myths persisted;

“Contrary to popular opinion, one does not become addicted to marihuana. It is habit forming to approximately the same degree as cigarets. What its effects is on the body depends on the individual. An individual may react in somewhat the same way as he does to alcohol, but more violently. Marihuana makes some people happy and friendly, others cruel and murderous. . . . Possibly the most widely used and therefor the most insidious drug is marijuana because of its cheapness (reefers are about $1, or one can grow the weed himself and make his own). Some believe it causes a deterioration of the brain in about the same way alcohol does. It definitely leads to murders, rapes, and other crimes of violence.” (55)

In truth, pot is far less addictive than tobacco (by any definition of addiction), and is recognized as being so by most drug experts today. (56)

Image #102: “MARIJUANA SEIZED,” The Shreveport Journal, Shreveport, Louisiana, June 6th, 1953, p. 1

Image #103: “Officers Nab Group Carrying Marijuana,” The Vinita Daily Journal, Vinita, Oklahoma, July 9th, 1953, p. 1

Image #104: “Dope Possession Brings 2 Years In Penitentiary,” The Lawton Constitution And Morning Press, Lawton, Oklahoma, July 12th, 1953, p. 23

Reporting on the goings-on of “drug experts” was one way stigma was introduced in this era. In a story in the July 30^th, 1953 edition of the Indiana paper the Anderson Daily Bulletin, a local detective grew some example pot plants to help people identify them properly – ostensibly to figure out which plants on their property they would have to go about destroying – definitely not to figure out which of the plants on their property they could enjoy smoking. Under the “effects” of the drug, the reporter stated that;

“Extended use of the drug will destroy the brain cells and drive its victim insane.” (57)

The 1953 pulp fiction romance novel Reefer Girl – re-released three years later as Young Sinners – made the stepping-stone theory the main plot point, judging by the back cover blurb. Apparently, the protagonist “chose the wrong way. She took the way of dope . . . and disaster . . .” (58)

Image #105: Reefer Girl, Jane Manning (Ruth Manoff), CAMEO 330, 1953, cover by Rudolph Nappi.   https://grapefruitmoongallery.com/20854

1953 also saw the appearance of the novel Reefer Club, which would be reprinted in 1959 with a different cover and title: Basement Gang. The protagonist uses cannabis, experiences a bit of time distortion, but mixes it with alcohol and then passes out as a result of using too much of both. (59)

Image #106: Reefer Club, Luke Roberts (Robert Ehrenzweig), UNI BOOKS 49, 1953, Cover by Warren King. https://www.justimages.co.uk/product/reefer-club/

The 1953 book DOPE, INC. pretends to be non-fiction, but its hemp section is purely the stuff of a racist imagination;

“Countless crimes and unspeakable atrocities have been, and are still being, perpetrated by hashish-crazed Orientals. For this drug, which destroys inhibitions and scruples more thoroughly than any of the opiates, is particularly conducive to violence and in the end invariably leads to epilepsy and insanity.” (60)

Image #107: Joachim Joesten, Dope, INC., 1953, Avon, New York

The January, 1953 issue of Dare magazine contains the typical mythology, accompanied by a photo of a model pretending to be reefer-crazed, smoking a pretend joint;

“Scientists say they do have ravaging physical effect. Dr. Herbert J. Kirchner studied 5,000 reefer smokers in Los Angeles, states: ‘There is no question but that marijuana eventually breaks the user down mentally.’ Greatest danger of smoking reefers: smoker gradually becomes immune to reefer’s kick, seeks thrills from other drugs: Result: he becomes hopelessly addicted, must steal, rob, turn prostitute or dope peddler to get money for more expensive drugs. Dr. Victor H. Vogel, Director of Federal Narcotics Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, warns that without exception all teen-age drug addicts there first smoked marijuana before starting on heroin. Conclusion: Marijuana is not an innocent, mild narcotic but a vicious, dangerous drug.” (61)

Image #108: “DARE SMOKES A REEFER,” DARE, Vol. 1, No. 2, Fiction Publications, Inc., Stamford, Connecticut, January 1953, p. 11

Image #109: “DARE SMOKES A REEFER,” DARE, Vol. 1, No. 2, Fiction Publications, Inc., Stamford, Connecticut, January 1953, pp. 12, 13

Image #110: “DARE SMOKES A REEFER,” DARE, Vol. 1, No. 2, Fiction Publications, Inc., Stamford, Connecticut, January 1953, p. 15                                                                                         https://www.druglibrary.org/mags/dare_smokes_a_reefer4.htm

The “marijuana eventually breaks the user down mentally” quote from Dr. Kischner was also used within a larger article titled “Reefer Party Craze” in Uncensored magazine, also from 1953. (62)

Image #111: Marijuana, Who Runs the Web of Dolls and Dope, Uncensored, 1953                                                       https://www.druglibrary.org/mags/uncensored532.htm

Image #112: Marijuana, Who Runs the Web of Dolls and Dope, Uncensored, 1953                                                       https://www.druglibrary.org/mags/uncensored532.htm

Image #113: “Negro Arrested On Drug Charge,” Tyler Morning Telegraph, Tyler, Texas, August 13th, 1953, p. 1

Image #114: “MARIJUANA FARM RAIDED,” The Herald-Palladium, Benton Harbour, Michigan, August 22nd, 1953, p. 1

Image #115: “MARIJUANA FARM RAIDED,” The Herald-Palladium, Benton Harbour, Michigan, August 22nd, 1953, p. 1

Image #116: “MARIJUANA FARM RAIDED,” The Herald-Palladium, Benton Harbour, Michigan, August 22nd, 1953, p. 1

Image #117: “DRUG CHARGE FILED ON MAN – Marijuana Found in Alsuma Negro’s Car,” Tulsa World, Tulsa, Oklahoma, October 3rd, 1953, p. 2

Image #118: “NEGRO ARRESTED ON MARIJUANA CHARGES HERE,” The Vicksburg Post, Vicksburg, Mississippi, October 7th, 1953, p. 1

Image #119: “$10,000 Worth of Bulk Marijuana Seized by Sheriff Deputies,” Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, Arizona, October 27th, 1953, p. 11

Image #120: “$10,000 Worth of Bulk Marijuana Seized by Sheriff Deputies,” Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, Arizona, October 27th, 1953, p. 11

Image #121: “$10,000 Worth of Bulk Marijuana Seized by Sheriff Deputies,” Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, Arizona, October 27th, 1953, p. 11

Image #122: “Negro May Face Marijuana Charge,” The Town Talk, Alexandria, Louisiana, November 25th, 1953, p. 15

Image #123: “Mrs. ‘Satchmo’ in Trouble,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Honolulu, Hawaii, December 31st, 1953, p. 1

The genocidal war against the herbally autonomous reached a whole new level of intensity as in early 1954 the country of Turkey enacted the death penalty for a series of hashish-related crimes, as reported by an American doctor/journalist;

“At least 10 years of hard labour and from three to five years of exile under police supervision plus at least 1,000 Turkish pounds fine for illicit producing, importing, or exporting of narcotics or trying to do so. If the drugs involved are heroin, morphine, cocaine or hashish, the sentence is hard labor for life. If an organization (two or more people working together) is involved, the sentence is death. It’s a death sentence in Turkey for selling heroin, morphine, cocaine, or hashish to a minor or to persons not responsible for their actions. All property of convicted persons is confiscated. . . . If punishment and the threat of punishment can curb crime, Turkey’s drug addiction problem ought to start declining. It will be interesting to see what happens.” (63)

Image #124: “Turkey Enacts Stiff Penalties To Stop Drug Traffic,” The Des Moines Register, Des Moines, Iowa, February 23rd, 1954, p. 11

Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, the death penalty didn’t result in any sort of decline in any sort of drug problem. Turkey remained “one of the main opium-producing countries” for decades (64) and abandoned the death penalty for drugs in 1990, (65) having been totally ineffective in curbing crime. Entrepreneurs are now openly contemplating creating a pharmaceutical monopoly for medical and recreational cannabis in Turkey, similar to the one that exists for opiates;

“Though there are few reasons to replicate the opioid industry, Turkey has demonstrated an ability to develop a highly regulated bio-pharmaceutical market before and there is no reason they could not profit from a similar move with cannabis.” (66)

Today’s lesson for prohibitionists, globally, seems to be that the goal of the destruction of the cannabis economy through brutality should be abandoned and the goal of the cartelization of the cannabis economy through slightly less brutality should be pursued. But that lesson wouldn’t be learned for another 50 years – and some countries still utilize maximum brutality. At least six countries have executed people for cannabis offences. (67) With hindsight, it should be apparent to every drug peace activist that our twin goals should be to eliminate every drug prohibition and every botanical drug cartel, and make the economy of medicine accessible to all.

The February, 1954 edition of the skin magazine Man To Man contained the story “REVEALING HOLLYWOOD’S SECRET VICE,” which turned out to be two vices: homosexuality and marijuana use. (68) The November, 1955 edition of the same magazine contained the story “WEIRD EFFECTS OF MARIJUANA SMOKING,” which again attempted to link pot smoking with homosexuality:

“It seems to me from the offhand study I have made of the weed and its effects that few mature personalities take to the practice of smoking marijuana. Of the scores of smokers I know there is not one I would term an emotionally developed person. All of them, in one way or another, seem to be a bit on what is referred to in certain circles as ‘the queer side.’ None of the men seem fully masculine. Col. Garland Williams of the United States Bureau of Narcotics may have had this quality in mind when he declared recently that ‘all sexual perverts may not be marijuana smokers but practically all marijuana users are perverted.’” (69)

Image #125: “REVEALING HOLLYWOOD’S SECRET VICE,” FRED ALEXANDER,  MAN TO MAN, February 1954, p. 22                                                                                                                              https://www.flickr.com/photos/subtropicbob/36439470732

Image #126: “REVEALING HOLLYWOOD’S SECRET VICE,” FRED ALEXANDER,  MAN TO MAN, February 1954, p. 23                                                                                                                              https://www.flickr.com/photos/subtropicbob/36439470732

In 1954 the readers of the Tucson, Arizona Daily Citizen were assured that “no hashish addict ever goes communist” so they need not worry about the scruffy occupants of a Lebanese hashish-smoker’s den. The latest iteration of the assassin’s story also appeared – this time hashish was a “drug to steady the nerves and consciences of picked murderers.” (70)

Another attempt at resisting the narrative came from the recently-created, first listener-supported non-commercial radio station in the United States – KPFA in Berkeley, California. Apparently, the radio station aired a segment on the 22^nd of April, 1954, in which four pot smokers defended their use and attacked the law as being unfair. The Attorney General investigated, and then later impounded the recording of the show. (71) The local newspaper transcribed the arguments of the pot law critics, but gave the last word to the authorities;

“Astonished listeners, after a prelude of guitar music, heard the four carry on a discussion on the ‘benefits’ of marijuana as the program developed into an informal seminar. The voice of Red blandly announced: ‘I’ve been smoking marijuana since I was 17. I’m 34. I’ve become convinced that there is no problem in smoking marijuana. They make criminals out of us, just for smoking marijuana.’ . . . Another voice came in: ‘Our problem is that we’re suffering because we can’t get the police off our backs. Nobody has any trouble with marijuana. It doesn’t hurt you. Yet we’re outside the law.’ . . . The voice of Red returned: ‘Marijuana has no harmful after-effects. It’s the same as social drinking of alcohol. Yet we’re forced to conspire with criminals to gratify this whim. It’s not fair. We’re surrounded by laws that are unnecessary because they can’t keep marijuana out of this country.’ . . . Another voice interjected: ‘The trouble is there hasn’t been enough voices raised. I guess we’re not a very well organized group.’ . . . (State law condemns marijuana as a harmful narcotic which damages the nervous system and leads to crime.) . . . Attorney General Brown, incensed with the broadcast, released a statement terming marijuana “the first false step to the point of no return in drug addiction,’ and added: ‘A great disservice is done to the fight against narcotics traffic in California by those who seek to minimize the effects of marijuana. The majority of heroin addicts get their start from adventures in using marijuana.’” (72)

Image #127: “EXTOLLING OF MARIJUANA ON RADIO PROBED,” The San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, California, April 24th, 1954, p. 1

Image #128: “EXTOLLING OF MARIJUANA ON RADIO PROBED,” The San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, California, April 24th, 1954, p. 4

Image #129: “H’WOOD DOPE RAIDERS JAIL DANCER,” Pasadena Star-News, Pasadena, California, April 26th, 1954, p. 1

Image #130: “Hormel To Fight Dope ‘Weed’ Rap,” The Shreveport Journal, Shreveport, Louisiana, September 20th, 1954, p. 1

Image #131: “HORMEL HEIR ARRESTED ON DOPE CHARGE – 13 Marijuana ‘Sticks’ Found In Car’s Visor,” The San Bernardino County Sun, San Bernardino, California, September 20th, 1954, p. 1

Image #132: “RITA HOLDS A CONFERENCE,” The Shreveport Journal, Shreveport, Louisiana, September 20th, 1954, p. 1

Image #133: “HORMEL DENIES DOPE CHARGE,” Oroville Mercury Register, Oroville, California, September 22nd, 1954, p. 2

The October, 1954 comic book CRIME AND PUNISHMENT #69 promises a story of “DOPE CRAZY KIDS AND SOUPED UP HOT RODS MEANS DEATH ON WHEELS!” The message was basically “using pot results in faulty decision-making which will lead to death.” (73)

Image #134: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT #69, Integrity Comics, October 1954

Image #135: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT #69, Integrity Comics, October 1954, p. 7                                   https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=71703

The August, 1955 edition of UNCENSORED magazine contained an article entitled “THE STORY BEHIND CAB CALLOWAY’S SECRET FIGHT AGAINST THE DOPE MENACE.” Prohibitionists would use celebrity endorsements of pot prohibition in the future – for example Sonny Bono in the 1960s. Unlike Bono, Calloway didn’t really say anything bad about pot or pot smokers – just that the best musicians happened to puff – but his quote was placed in the context of a bunch of scare stories about cannabis, and was made to seem like he was denigrating it;

“Four years ago he said: ‘If all the gifted musicians who have been arrested . . . for being found with dope were assembled in one place, the greatest all-star orchestra in the history of the band business could be organized.’ . . . what do the narcotics authorities say? They say that marihuana is extremely dangerous, that its effects are unpredictable and have led to murder and sex crimes, that is a stepping stone to the hellish horrors of even more insidious drugs like opium, morphine and heroin. The terrible fact about drug addiction in America is not only the number of people it hooks but also their youthfulness. The great majority with a monkey on their back are under 25 and, of these, many are teenagers.” (74)

Image #136: “THE STORY BEHIND CAB CALLOWAY’S SECRET FIGHT AGAINST THE DOPE MENACE,” Uncensored, Vol. 3 No. 3, August, 1955, p. 22

Image #137: “THE STORY BEHIND CAB CALLOWAY’S SECRET FIGHT AGAINST THE DOPE MENACE,” Uncensored, Vol. 3 No. 3, August, 1955, p. 23

That was the only Cab Calloway quote in the entire article! Spun a different way, that quote could also mean Calloway thought that marijuana helped musicians become the best musicians in the country. It certainly would explain why he recorded so many pro-pot songs throughout his career, including “Zaz Zuh Zaz,” “Reefer Man,” and “Smoking Reefers.” (75)

Image #138: “HEMP,” THE UNIVERSAL STANDARD ENCYCLOPEDIA, VOLUME 12, HANUKKAH – IDAHO, UNICORN PULISHERS, INC., NEW YORK, 1955, p. 4263

Image #139: “Frances Faye Held,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, Cincinnati, Ohio, January 20th, 1955, p. 20

Image #140: “MOTHER HELD IN MARIJUANA DRIVE HERE,” The San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, California, January 28th, 1955, p 3

Image #141: “MARIHUANA SEIZED,” El Paso Times, El Paso, Texas, February 27th, 1955, p. 9

Image #142: “8 Held In Dope Raids,” The Evening Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, July 16th, 1955, p. 1

Image #143: “Negro Charged With Possession Of Marijuana,” The Shreveport Journal, Shreveport, Louisiana, September 13th, 1955, p. 10

Image #144: “Weird Effects of Marihuana Smoking,” Man to Man Magazine, November 1955 https://www.druglibrary.org/mags/mantoman55.htm

Image #145: “Marijuana Spot Found On Plot,” Tyler Morning Telegraph, Tyler, Texas, November 5th, 1955, p. 14

1956 saw the printing of the book Viper by Raymond Thorp.  The description of the effects of cannabis ended up being more or less accurate, but began with the effects of what seemed like an excessive oral dose rather than to a smoked dose;

“I could see colours where before I had seen nothing. I stared fascinated, like a blind man given eyes, at white faces resting on brown shoulders. The reds and yellows and blues of the girls’ dresses swam like a rainbow before me. And with it all I felt BIG. I felt big physically. I felt big mentally. Raymond Thorp the clerk had been liquidated. I’d tossed the last clod of earth on his grave with the striking of a match. Now I was just ‘Ray.’ One of the cats. . . . I floated back to the club and started to think about the drug, and about my physical state. Here was none of the signs that came from forgetfulness on alcohol. There was no banging of glasses on the table. No slowing of reflexes and slurred, hesitant speech. I joined in the heated conversation that Rickey was having with his friends about jazz techniques. I found I could think sharply and analytically. I argued more convincingly than ever before.” (76)

Image #146: Viper: Confessions of a Drug Addict, Raymond Thorp, Published by Robert Hale, London, 1956      https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Viper-Confessions-Drug-Addict-Thorp-Raymond/3002359293/bd

Image #147: Raymond Thorp, September 10, 2016                                                                             https://bearalley.blogspot.com/2016/09/raymond-thorp.html

The book ended up being another argument for the steppingstone theory;

“The author, a young clerk from suburbia, haunts the jazz clubs of Soho and finally begins to smoke Indian hemp – or marijuana. It is the first step on the road to prison and to a living death. Soon he is a ‘pusher’ – an agent for a drug ring selling hemp and heroin.” (77)

The book was re-released under the title Hooked in 1963.

One of the key documents to understand the core components of the mythology of Reefer Madness was the book Teen-Age Vice! Originally titled Designs in Scarlet when it first came out in 1939, it was written by Courtney Ryley Cooper and re-introduced in a new form to emphasize the teen part and the reefer aspects when it was released in various hardcover and paperback edition between 1957 and 1959, including a quote on the back cover: “Smoke one of these and you’ll be in heaven.”

Image #148: Teen-age Vice! Pyramid Giant Books, 1957

Image #149: Back cover, Teen-age Vice! Pyramid Giant Books, 1957

The book had everything. Parental Hysteria, of course, given the subject matter, but also the “madness” part and jaw-dropping racism;

“In several cases where marihuana has apparently played a heavy role in murders or holdups, investigation has shown the statement to be a mechanism of defense attorneys, or newspaper invention. For instance, in the killing of a bus driver by Ethel Sohl and Genevieve Owens, two female bandits in Newark, New Jersey, last year, one of the girls insisted that marihuana had so distorted her sense of right and wrong that she had no true knowledge of what she was doing. A nearer approach to the truth, according to officers, was that Krafft-Ebing elements were involved and that Ethel Sohl, masculine of manner and appearance, dominated her feminine partner, and led the way into crime like a gangster with his moll. . . . Marihuana certainly is sold around high schools by conscienceless peddlers; often they work on the ‘give-away’ principle, donating a cigarette and detailing instructions as to how it should be smoked, depending upon later demand for profits. There is hardly a large city in America where such peddling has not occurred; however, for every cigarette sold in the vicinity of a school, there are a score passed out by the peddlers who make the rounds of cheap drinking places, especially those which cater to the young. . . . Thousands of negroes, who once had earned their living in the cotton fields, had succumbed to their idea of heaven – called Relief. To this end they had become afflicted with everything in the world which would prevent them from doing anything but reaching for a Government check, while cotton rotted for want of pickers. To alleviate this situation, Southern planters imported equal thousands of Mexican workers, and the Mexicans brought marihuana with them, often planting the seeds between rows of cotton. A new source of supply was opened up, with men, women and even children peddling the weed for whatever they could get. Thus marihuana cannot even reach up to the low levels of illicit morphine and heroin; its peddlers, with rare exceptions, are of the vilest ranks of negroes and Mexicans, plus, of course, that human skunk, the obscenity peddler, who also often carries a sideline of the weed.” (78)

Image #150: Teen-age Vice, UK edition, 1957, Digit Books

The first interesting fact about this particular masterpiece of scapegoating is that the author – Courtney Ryley Cooper – was, essentially, the ghost writer for J. Edgar Hoover, and also worked closely with Harry Anslinger:

“Cooper’s work was much admired by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who once said he is ‘the best informed man on crime in the U. S.’— even allowing Cooper access to FBI case files. Cooper is widely believed to have ghostwritten the book Persons in Hiding (1938) as well as a number of magazine articles for Hoover. A 1936 newspaper article in the Chicago Daily Tribune identified Cooper as one of Hoover’s few close personal friends, along with Clyde Tolson and a man named Frank Baughman. The article goes on to state that after Ten Thousand Public Enemies came out in 1935, Cooper ‘was rewarded with a propaganda post in the department of justice, with the express function of publicizing the division of investigation.’ . . . Cooper wrote extensively on the danger of illicit drugs, particularly marijuana. He collaborated with Federal Bureau of Narcotics Director Harry Anslinger on the article ‘Marijuana, Assassin of Youth,’ which originally appeared in The American Magazine in July 1937.” (79)

This is solid proof that the most racist, vile, extreme and fraudulent claims about cannabis came from the government sources themselves.

The second interesting thing about Teen-Age Vice! has to do with the example provided of a high-profile case of Reefer Madness – the case of Ethel Sohl and Genevieve Owens (see the section on 1938 in Chapter 6). This was a case where the reefer madness mythology began to result in an insanity defense in legal cases involving violent crime. It has now been revealed by Reefer Madness historians that the government intervened to prevent violent criminals from exploiting the fraudulent science – the fraudulent science behind Reefer Madness was only to exploited by the government themselves:

“In his own eagerness to make the case for marijuana and madness, Munch testified at the trial of Ethel Sohl that her reefer smoking led her to ‘form the intent’ of holding up and murdering a bus driver. Sohl herself testified that the marijuana cigarettes ‘made wrong things seem right.’ Ironically, it fell to the prosecutor in the case to argue that marijuana had nothing to do with the crime: ‘If you men open the door to a fantastic defense of this kind, it will be all right for anyone to commit a murder if only he first smokes marijuana.’ Indeed, cannabis was a looming factor in the case and emphasized by the media: ‘Mrs. Sohl Constantly Smoked Marijuana, Murder Jury Hears,’ read one headline. Sohl’s defense attorney argued that pot use had diminished her capacity to tell right from wrong. ‘Although counsel said that his defense was not insanity, it amounted substantially to that,’ observed the judge. Instead of being sentenced to death, Ethel Sohl got life in prison. Munch’s reefer-madness testimony was having the unintended effect of resulting in lesser sentences for these alleged marijuana-crazed killers. Harry Anslinger put a stop to this, threatening Munch with the loss of his position at the FBN. As a result, Munch stopped testifying and went on to have a long career advising the federal government on the dangers of reefer.” (80)

Basically, the government believed its own Reefer Madness BS just enough to take away people’s innate, intuitive herbal autonomy, but not so much that individuals could avoid culpability with Reefer Madness-based insanity pleas.

Image #151: “Negro Arrested Here On Narcotics Charge,” The Reidsville Review, Reidsville, North Carolina, June 4th, 1956, p. 1

Image #152: “UNEXPECTED HARVEST,” The San Bernardino County Sun, San Bernardino, California, July 13th, 1956, p. 13

Image #153: “Mexican Arrested While Harvesting Marijuana,” The Tulsa Tribune, Tulsa, Oklahoma, August 17th, 1956, p. 1

Image #154: “BIG MARIHUANA HAUL,” Valley Morning Star, Harlingen, Texas, September 16th, 1956, p. 1

Image #155: “Student, Wife Accused Of Growing Marijuana,” Daily Independent Journal, San Rafael, California, January 3^rd, 1957, p. 1

Image #156: “Student, Wife Accused Of Growing Marijuana,” Daily Independent Journal, San Rafael, California, January 3^rd, 1957, p. 1

Image #157: “Marijuana Sales To Kids Uncovered By Man’s Arrest,” El Paso Times, El Paso, Texas, March 21st, 1957, p. 1

Image #158: “Marijuana Sales To Kids Uncovered By Man’s Arrest,” El Paso Times, El Paso, Texas, March 21st, 1957, p. 1

Image #159: “Officers Find Marijuana on Theft Suspect,” The Tulsa Tribune, Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 15th, 1957, p. 22

Image #160: “Man held here in marijuana case,” The Birmingham News, Birmingham, Alabama, July 6th, 1957, p. 24

Image #161: “Police Nab Suspect in Narcotics Case,” Lewistown Daily News, Lewistown, Montana, October 16th, 1957, p. 1

Image #162: “Police Probe Narcotics Case,” The Billings Gazette, Billings, Montana, October 17th, 1957, p. 6

Image #163: “Tucsonan Held As Repeater,” The Arizona Republic, Phoenix, Arizona, October 26th, 1957, p. 8

Image #164: “TRICK OR TREAT?” Traverse City Record-Eagle, Traverse City, Michigan, October 26, 1957, p. 3

Image #165: “MARIJUANA IS FOUND HIDDEN,” The Times Standard, Eureka, California, October 26th, 1957, p. 1

Image #166: “MARIJUANA POSSESSION SUSPECTS,” The Times Standard, Eureka, California, October 26th, 1957, p. 3

Image #167: “Three Arrested For Possession Of Marijuana,” The Times Standard, Eureka, California, October 26th, 1957, p. 3

Image #168: “EUREKA OFFICER THURMAN FOGARTY,” The Times Standard, Eureka, California, October 26th, 1957, p. 3

Image #169: “POLICE WEREN’T FOOLED,” The Times Standard, Eureka, California, October 26th, 1957, p. 3

Image #170: “CAR CACHE,” The San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, California, October 26th, 1957, p. 3

Image #171: “BIG NARCOTICS HAUL – Egypt Intercepts Smugglers’ Boatloads of Hashish and Opium,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, Missouri, November 17^th, 1957, p. 217

Image #172: 3740 pounds of “narcotics.” “BIG NARCOTICS HAUL – Egypt Intercepts Smugglers’ Boatloads of Hashish and Opium,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, Missouri, November 17^th, 1957, p. 217

Image #173: Opium bag and hashish bag. “BIG NARCOTICS HAUL – Egypt Intercepts Smugglers’ Boatloads of Hashish and Opium,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, Missouri, November 17^th, 1957, p. 217

Image #174: Three hashish bags. “BIG NARCOTICS HAUL – Egypt Intercepts Smugglers’ Boatloads of Hashish and Opium,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, Missouri, November 17^th, 1957, p. 217

On April 9^th, 1958, Neal Cassady – who, along with Allen Ginsberg was a member of both the Beatniks and the Hippies – was arrested for marijuana trafficking. It’s interesting to think that the hero of both the 1957 Beatnik bible – Jack Kerouac’s On The Road – and the 1968 Hippie bible – Tom Wolf’s Electric Kool Aid Acid Test – was set up by the police, demonstrating once again that the most inspirational people in American history 1) used cannabis and 2) were mistreated by the authorities because they used cannabis, and 3) continued to use cannabis and be inspirational, regardless of the abuse. His wife, Caroline Cassidy, relates the details of Neal’s arrest in her biography:

“In 1958 Neal was arrested by narcotic agents to whom he had given three marijuana cigarettes. He was tried, however, as a dealer because the agents knew he could ‘blow their cover’. They said ‘get that kid off the streets.’ And rigged the trial to accomplish that. There was nothing whatsoever to do with his reputation as the hero of Kerouac’s book as Dean Moriarity. Those cops only read the comics; no one had heard of Kerouac then. Neal served two years in San Quentin prison . . .” (81)

Image #175: Neal Cassady Mugshot, San Francisco, April 9th, 1958     

Image #176: HERB CAEN’s column (he invented the word “Beatnik” on April 2nd, 1958). San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, May 1st, 1958, p. 25

Image #177: “Marijuana ‘Farmer’ Nabbed After Police Uncover Crop in Park,” Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, September 14th, 1958, p. 29

Image #178: “Mexican Alien Arrested With Marijuana In His Possession,” Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, Arizona, December 3rd, 1958, p. 3

Image #179: The Cool and the Crazy, 1958                                                                                              https://tubitv.com/movies/513073/the-cool-and-the-crazy

Image #180: “Marihuana Raids Nab 17 Upper-Valley Residents,” The Brownsville Herald, Brownsville, Texas, January 2^nd, 1959, p. 1

Image #181: “YOUTH DOPE RING BROKEN BY ‘BEATNIK’,” The San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, California, January 7th, 1959, p. 7

Image #182: “MARGARET ZACKER,” “YOUTH DOPE RING BROKEN BY ‘BEATNIK’,” The San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, California, January 7th, 1959, p. 7

Image #183: “DOPE CACHE,” “YOUTH DOPE RING BROKEN BY ‘BEATNIK’,” The San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, California, January 7th, 1959, p. 7

Image #184: “‘Beatnik Cop’ Smashes Peninsula Dope Ring,” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, January 7th, 1959, p. 3

Image #185: “New Marijuana Arrests,” Redwood City Tribune, Redwood City, California, January 14th, 1959, p. 1

Image #186: “How ‘Beatnik’ Cop Broke Up Drug Ring,” The San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, California, January 16th, 1959, p. 7

Image #187: “Drug Counts Jail Poet, Engineer – Big Haul Made By Vice Squad,” Daily Independent Journal, San Rafael, California, February 12^th, 1959, p. 1

Image #188: “Dope Raid Nets Girl, 4 Youths – Marijuana Plants Found,” The San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, California, April 6^th, 1959, p. 3

Image #189: “$5,000 Dope Seized, 6 Arrested,” Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, April 10^th, 1959, p. 11

Cassady’s arrest wasn’t very high-profile. That’s not to say the Beats were never linked to marijuana in the press. An arrest of an ex-boxer who liked jazz music and reading philosophy was enough “evidence” of Beatnik-ness to write “TC ‘Beat’ Group Cooled by Marijuana Arrests, Says DA.” The article begins;

“Authorities today said the arrest of three persons dealt a blow to a Triple Cities ‘beat generation’ group of literary-minded young men and women addicted to marijuana and modern jazz.” (82)

Image #190: “TC ‘Beat’ Group Cooled by Marijuana Arrests, Says DA,” Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, New York, April 13^th, 1959, p. 17

The next day’s paper mentioned that the beat generation trio didn’t make bail, mentioned that they were all “addicted to marijuana and modern jazz” again, and displayed a photograph of an investigator in the case holding up some of the perpetrator’s two-inch-high pot seedlings, held “for analysis.” (83)

Image #191: “3 Fail to Make Bail In Marijuana Case,” Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, New York, April 14^th, 1959, p. 3

Image #192: “PORTRAIT OF A BEATNIK,” The Toronto Star, Toronto, Ontario, July 11th, 1959, p. 28

Image #193: “Down In Cumberland, A Marijuana Wrapup,” The Herald-Sun, Durham, North Carolina, September 27th, 1959, p. 48

Image #194: Mexican Marijuana Peddler Arrested,” The Winona Daily News, Winona, Minnesota, October 2nd, 1959, p. 5

Our tour of 1950s anti-pot propaganda ends with another attempt at helping citizens identify the plant by publishing more leaf photos, along with yet another made-up story about the effects of the drug on teenagers – this one from the El Paso Herald-Post;

“Marihuana is dangerous for teenagers, although many parents fail to become concerned. It represses the normal morals of the individual. It is responsible for many brutal crimes of violence.” (84)

Image #195: “Police Pose As Beatniks In Marijuana Crackdown,” The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, November 9th, 1959, p. 5

Image #196: “Candy Barr Gets Ready For 15-Year Jail Term,” Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, Arizona, December 4th, 1959, p. 44

Image #197: “Ex-Stripper Is In Prison Choir,” The Morning Call, Allentown, Pennsylvania, March 16th, 1963, p. 12

Image #198: “Ex-Stripper Is In Prison Choir,” The Morning Call, Allentown, Pennsylvania, March 16th, 1963, p. 12

Image #199: “Affection for Candy,” The Columbia Record, Columbia, South Carolina, April 3rd, 1963, p. 5

Image #200: “Mexican Marijuana Held Factor In Teen Violence, The Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis, Indiana, December 6th, 1959, p. 13

Image #201: “ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, Cincinnati, Ohio, December 27th, 1959, p. 48

Image #202: “ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, Cincinnati, Ohio, December 27th, 1959, p. 48

Image #203: SEE HOW THEY BURN, EDWIN GILBERT, Popular Library, G340, 1959

Image #204: BASEMENT GANG, David Williams (Arnold Stroog), Beacon, 260, 1959

In the 1950s, the tiny army of beat writers and poets and jazz musicians were no match for the pot prohibitionists. For every positive or accurate story about marijuana, there were hundreds that were negative and inaccurate. But that would all change in the decade to follow. The massive army of hippies – their numbers boosted by a postwar baby boom and their cultural impact amplified by a new type of music even more inclusive, pervasive and popular than jazz – would change the game in the 1960s, putting the prohibitionists on the defensive for the first time ever.

Citations:

1) Harry J. Anslinger and William F. Tompkins, The Traffic in Narcotics, Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York, 1953, pp. 20-22

https://www.druglibrary.drugsense.org/schaffer/people/anslinger/traffic/traffic.htm

https://archive.org/details/trafficinnarcoti0000unse/mode/2up?view=theater

2) “Big Roundup of Marijuana Suspects – ‘Beatnik Cop’ Smashes Peninsula Dope Ring,” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, January 7th, 1959, p. 3

3) 1950’s Slang https://fiftiesweb.com/pop/1950s-slang/

4) “The Mighty Mezz, Marijuana, and the Beat Generation,” Loren Glass, May 7, 2015

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-mighty-mezz-marijuana-and-the-beat-generation

5) Allen Ginsberg, “A Definition of the Beat Generation,” from Friction, 1 (Winter 1982), revised for Lisa Phillips, Beat Culture and the New America: 1950–1965, 1995, also found in Allen Ginsberg, The Best Minds of My Generation – A Literary History of the Beats, 2017

https://lithub.com/allen-ginsbergs-definition-of-the-beat-generation/ https://groveatlantic.com/book/the-best-minds-of-my-generation/

Allen Ginsberg, “A Definition of the Beat Generation,” from Friction, 1 (Winter 1982), revised for Lisa Phillips, Beat Culture and the New America: 1950–1965, 1995, also found in Allen Ginsberg, The Best Minds of My Generation – A Literary History of the Beats, 2017

https://lithub.com/allen-ginsbergs-definition-of-the-beat-generation/ https://groveatlantic.com/book/the-best-minds-of-my-generation/

6) William S. Burroughs, Junky, Grove Press, New York, 1953, pp. 23-24

https://archive.org/details/junkydefinitivet0000burr/page/n243/mode/2up

7) Ted Morgan, Literary Outlaw – The Life And Times of William S. Burroughs, 1988, Henry Holt and Company, New York, pp. 135-147, See also: Junky, p. 22

8) William S. Burroughs, “Points of Distinction Between Sedative and Consciousness-Expanding Drugs,” The Marijuana Papers, David Solomon, Ed., 1966, Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., NY, p. 393

9) Jack Kerouac, On The Road, Viking Press, Inc., 1957 (Penguin edition: 2006,) Chapter 10, p. 33  http://p.iplsc.com/-/00070IPJY9D5LK3Q.pdf

10) Martin Lee, Smoke Signals, 2012, Scribner, New York, p. 67

11) Carol Sherman, Andrew Smith, Erik Tanner, Highlights, 10 Speed Press, Berkeley, California, 1999, p. 81

12) Jack Kerouac, “My Views on Religion,” Poems All Sizes, 1992, City Lights Books, San Francisco, p. 101, written between 1954 and 1965

http://www.kerouac.com/Beatquoteoftheweek/apriltwentififth.htm https://archive.org/details/pomesallsizes0000kero/page/n5

13) Allen Ginsberg, Howl, 1956, City Lights Books, San Francisco, California https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl

14) The Marihuana Story (1950) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0127017/releaseinfo

15) http://www.reefermadnessmuseum.org/film/Film_IndexP4.htm

16) “Hashish Competition Hot,” Lincoln Journal Star, Lincoln, Nebraska, February 15, 1950, p. 28

17) “BAY BRIDGE NARCOTICS TRAP SPRUNG – Traffic Tag Trips Up Two Oakland Suspects,” Oakland Tribune, March 7, 1950, p. 10                     

“Narcotic Ring Smashed Here – City Served As National Pickup Point,” Victoria Advocate, Victoria, Texas, September 13^th, 1950, p. 1

“MARIHUANA – Austin Officers Discover Lee County ‘Dope Farm’,” Austin American-Statesman, July 30^th, 1952, p. 15

“ARREST 7 IN MARIHUANA HAULS,” El Paso Herald-Post, Sept. 22, 1952, p. 1

“7 ARRESTED IN MARIJUANA RING ROUNDUP – 2 Of Accused Are Night Club Floor Managers, Carroll Says,” The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, November 13^th, 1952, p. 42

“Tells of Undercover Work By Agents in Dope Case,” The Des Moines Register, Des Moines, Iowa, December 5^th, 1952, p. 4

“Juarez Police Continue Drive Against Marihuana Traffic,” El Paso Times, April 22^nd, 1953, p. 2

“Pinched With Bag Full of Dreams,” NY Daily News, September 2^nd, 1953, p. 331

“$10,000 Worth of Bulk Marijuana Seized by Sheriff Deputies,” Arizona Daily Star, October 27^th, 1953, p. 1

“Police Nab 10 Pounds Of Dope In Theft Check,” El Paso Times, February 27^th, 1955, p. 9

“Police Rip Out Well-Tended, Hidden Patch of Marijuana,” San Bernadino County Sun, July 13^th, 1956, p. 13

“$8 Million of Marihuana Seized,” Valley Morning Star, Harlingen, Texas, September 16^th, 1956, p. 1

“Student, Wife Accused Of Growing Marijuana,” Daily Independent Journal, San Rafael, California, January 3^rd, 1957, p. 1

“BIG NARCOTICS HAUL – Egypt Intercepts Smugglers’ Boatload of Hashish and Opium,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 17^th, 1957, p. 217

“Marijuana ‘Farmer’ Nabbed After Police Uncover Crop in Park,” Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, September 14^th, 1958, p. 29

“Marijuana Raids Nab 17 Upper-Valley Residents,” The Brownsville Herald, January 2^nd, 1959, p. 1

“Drug Counts Jail Poet, Engineer – Big Haul Made By Vice Squad,” Daily Independent Journal, San Rafael, California, February 12^th, 1959, p. 1

“$500 Dope Seized, 6 Arrested,” Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, April 10^th, 1959, p. 11

18) “Student Education Urged To Defeat Marihuana,” The Evening Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, May 4^th, 1951, p. 31

19) “Five Marihuana Plants Seized In Backyard,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, May 19^th, 1951, p. 12

20) “Teen-Age Dope Racket Exposed Here,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, February 11^th, 1952, p. 1

21) “Smash The Dope Racket Now! Experts Today Say Marihuana Does Lead To Serious Disorders, Crime,” Asheville Citizen-Times, Asheville, North Carolina, July 12^th, 1951, p. 9

22) “MARIJUANA IS NO INNOCENT WEED – Harmless Appearing Plant Hits Nerve System,” The South Bend Tribute, South Bend, Indiana, June 27^th, 1951, p. 9

23) ‘MILLION DOLLAR MARIHUANA FIELD FOUND IN ST. MARY,” Mary and Franklin Banner-Tribune, Franklin, Louisiana, July 19^th, 1951, p. 1

24) “E. Chicago Fights Marijuana Weed,” The Times, Munster, Indiana, August 12^th, 1951, p. 58

25) “Campaign for Eradication of Marijuana From Scott County Is Opened by Sheriff Wildman,” Quad-City Times, Davenport, Iowa, July 31^st, 1951, p. 11

26) “MOTHER HELD IN MARIJUANA DRIVE HERE,” San Francisco Examiner, January 28^th, 1955, p. 3

27) “Marihuana Sales To Kids Uncovered By Man’s Arrest,” El Paso Times, March 21^st, 1957, p. 1, 8

28) “Three Arrested For Possession Of Marijuana,” The Times Standard, Eureka, California, October 26^th, 1957, p. 3

29) “Dope Raid Nets Girl, 4 Youths – Marijuana Plants Found,” The San Francisco Examiner, April 6^th, 1959, p. 3

30) N. R. De Mexico, Marijuana Girl, 1951, Universal Publishing, New York, p. 51

31) Ibid, p. 119

32) Hector France, Musk, Hashish and Blood, 1951, Avon Publishing, New York, p. 73

33) “I PEDDLED DRUGS TO YOUR KIDS,” Detective World, Vol. 9, #8, December 1951, pp. 32-35, 79-81

34) “The Hashish Trail,” Battle! #7, no publisher listed, appears to be from Australia, 1951, p. 24

35) Ibid, p. 32

36) “In Sweden, the Sexton Blake magazine was published 1951–1957 with two successors until 1965. Judging by the titles, narcotics appear only in The Case of the Dope Dealers by a well-known English detective writer, Martin Frazer, in Swedish in 1952 as Narkotikasmugglarna. The plot approaches the quality of a traditional detective novel. It is not the smuggling stage of the distribution, but the cultivation of marijuana that is described in detail, relatively initiated. The drug smugglers is one of the few newsstand texts that consistently builds the plot around drugs and lets it be decisive in how the tension is heightened. The depiction of drug addiction can be seen as an in-depth depiction of cannabis, how it is distributed and its effects on the individual. The physical manifestations and mental effects of marijuana use are depicted but without a trace of psychology. The image of a »drug slave« still applies. In Frazer’s portrayal, the increase in tolerance (need for increased doses) in marijuana use is exaggerated in a way that was common, including in American films that propagated against. The translation tends to make the language more dramatic (and more archaic) than the original: dope addict becomes drug slave. Sometimes the translation is rather mitigating: the deadly weed loses its mortality and becomes »the horrible destructive poison«. But the end is good, Sexton Blake and Tinker catch the thugs who survived the hunt, the drug slave goes through his rehab and the young two find each other.”

“Giftdrottningar och privatdetektiver (Poison queens and private detectives),” May 1st, 2022

Giftdrottningar och privatdetektiver

37) Martin Frazer (Percy A. Clarke), THE CASE OF THE DOPE DEALERS, THE SEXTON BLAKE LIBRARY · 3rd series · Issue 270 · Aug. 1952, p. 21

http://www.mark-hodder.com/blakiana/blakebibliography_1952.html

38) “Marijuana,” Robert Lucas, Illustrated, February 9^th, 1952, United Kingdom, p. 28

39) Ibid, p. 33

40) “8 Held In Dope Raids Here; Ring Broken,” The Evening Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, July 16^th, 1955, p. 1

41) “Smoking Marijuana Rarely Cause Of Narcotic Addition, Expert Says,” The Sheveport Times, April 6^th, 1952, p. 42

42) “Assassin – A Drinker of Hashish!” Chicago Tribune, September 14^th, 1952, p. 244

43) “Novel about Pachucos in San Quentin, with gay and drug themes. Scott and Leite were in a ‘beard marriage’ (she was a lesbian, he was a closeted gay) and ran a bookshop in Berkeley called daliel’s. She is also known for her horror novel ‘I, Vampire’” “Cure it with honey: Scott, Thurston [pseudonym of George Thurston Leite and Jody Scott]”            https://www.bolerium.com/pages/books/200560/george-thurston-leite-jody-scott/cure-it-with-honey

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=a%20beard

44) United States Department Of Agriculture, Farmers Bulletin No. 1935, Hemp, U.S. Government Printing Office: 1943                                                                                                          https://gutenberg.org/files/59625/59625-h/59625-h.htm

45)  “John Wayne and McCarthyism: Out Macho-ing Marijuana,” Ellen Komp, Cannabis Culture, October 29, 2014 https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2014/10/29/john-wayne-and-mccarthyism-out-macho-ing-marijuana/

46) James Hadley Chase, The Marijuana Mob, 1952, p. 67

47) Ibid, p. 81

48) Ibid, pp. 95, 159, 163

49) Joseph Shallit, Kiss The Killer, 1953, Avon, http://www.ramblehouse.com/kisskillerchapter.htm

50) “The HORROR Weed … WHERE THERE’S SMOKE, THERE’S DEATH!”

Wanted Comics, #39, July, 1951, Orbit, pp. 17-25 https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=32689

51) “My Scandalous Affair,” Romantic Love, #6, July-August 1951, Avon Periodicals, pp. 17-25

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=60141

52) “The Return of the Phantom Fakir,” Weird Horrors #3, October 1952, St. Johns comics, pp. 13-19

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=19028

Art originally found in “Hale The Magician,” Punch Comics #2, February, 1942, Chesler/Dynamic, pp. 29-35

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=27297

53) “Marijuana,” Danger #4, July, 1953, Comic Media p. 3-9

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=22860

54) “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” “‘They’re rapists.’ President Trump’s campaign launch speech two years later, annotated,” June 16, 2017                           https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/06/16/theyre-rapists-presidents-trump-campaign-launch-speech-two-years-later-annotated/

55) Ormund Powers, “One Man’s Lake County,” The Orlando Sentinel, April 30^th, 1953, p. 1

56) https://drugwarfacts.org/chapter/addictive_properties

“What is the Most Addictive Drug in the World?” Addictions.com, 09/16/2021

https://www.addictions.com/blog/what-is-the-most-addictive-drug-in-the-world

57) “Detective Grows Plant To Identify Marijuana,” Anderson Daily Bulletin, July 30^th, 1953, p. 9

58) Jane Manning, pseudonym of Ruth Manoff, Reefer Girl, 1953, Cameo Book / Detective House

59) Luke Roberts, Reefer Club, 1953, Stallion #213, pp. 48-50

60) Joachim Joesten, Dope, INC., 1953, Avon, New York, p. 59

61) “DARE SMOKES A REEFER,” Dare, Jan. 1953, Fiction Publications Inc., Gurley Bldg., Stamford Conn., pp. 14-16

62) “Reefer Party Craze,” Uncensored, Vol. 1, No. 1, June 1953, pp. 68-72

63) “Doctor’s Notebook: Turkey Enacts Stiff Penalties To Stop Drug Traffic,” Glen R. Shepherd, M. D., The Des Moines Register, February 23^rd, 1954, p. 11

64) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade_in_Turkey#Opium_production

65) “THE DEATH PENALTY No solution to illicit drugs,” Amnesty International October 1995 AI Index: ACT 51/02/95, p. 5 https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/172000/act510021995en.pdf

66) “Turkey cannabis cultivation aims to combat international drug trafficking,” February 9, 2018 https://prohibitionpartners.com/2018/02/09/cannabis-cultivation-in-turkey-aims-to-combat-international-drug-trafficking/

67) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_for_cannabis_trafficking

68) “REVEALING HOLLYWOOD’S SECRET VICE,” Man To Man, February, 1954, pp. 22-23, 55

69) “WEIRD EFFECTS OF MARIJUANA SMOKING,” Man To Man, November, 1955, pp. 8, 38-39

70) “About Wickedest Thing In Hashish Den Is Esquire Girl,” Tucson Daily Citizen, April 12^th, 1954, p. 38

71) https://kpfa.org/about/history/

72) “EXTOLLING OF MARIJUANA ON RADIO PROBED,” The San Francisco Examiner, April 24^th, 1954, pp. 1, 4

73) “The Hot Rod Gang,” Crime and Punishment #69, Oct. 1954, Lev Gleason / Comic House, pp. 3-12

74) “THE STORY BEHIND CAB CALLOWAY’S SECRET FIGHT AGAINST THE DOPE MENACE,” Uncensored, Vol. 3 No. 3, August, 1955, pp. 22-23, 60, 62

75) “Cab Calloway-“Smoking Reefers” unreleased (banned) ?”                            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GtZ_DVBQ78                                                                                              “Reefer Tunes – Music about Cannabis, back when it wasn’t such an issue,” Monday, May 16, 2011

https://jzmurdock.blogspot.com/2011/05/reefer-tunes-music-about-cannabis-back.html                                                                                                                                                                                                                             “Cab Calloway – Zaz Zuh Zaz 1934 Smoky Smokey Joe Version”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAySogOO-Mk                                                                                                  “Cab Calloway Reefer Man,” 1933                                                                                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdW7EtCk1xs

76) Raymond Thorp, Viper: The Confessions Of A Drug Addict, 1956, Robert Hale Limited, London, p. 20

77) Viper, by Raymond Thorpe (accessed June 2018)

https://juvenilejungle.blogspot.com/2017/03/viper-raymond-thorp.html?m=0

78) Courtney Ryley Cooper, Teenage Vice, Pyramid Books G43, First Printing 1952, NY, NY, originally published by Little, Brown & Co., March 1939 as Designs In Scarlet.

http://reefermadnessmuseum.org/book/Bk_PulpFiction2.htm

79) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtney_Ryley_Cooper

80) https://hightimes.com/culture/crimes-reefer-madness/

81) http://www.nealcassadyestate.com/carolyn.html

82) “TC ‘Beat’ Group Cooled by Marijuana Arrests, Says DA – Ex-Boxer, 2 Dance Instructors Jailed, Linked to Jazz Fans,” Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, New York, April 13^th, 1959, p. 17

83) “3 Fail to Make Bail In Marijuana Case,” Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, New York, April 14^th, 1959, p. 3

84) “Teenagers Increase Use of Marihuana; It’s Cheaper Here Than in New York,” El Paso Herald-Post, October 14^th, 1959, p. 13