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The Origins of Cannabis Prohibition in California
by Dale H. Gieringer
Originally published as "The Forgotten Origins of Cannabis Prohibition in
California," Contemporary Drug Problems, Vol 26 #2, Summer 1999
© Contemporary Drug Problems, Federal Legal Publications, New York 1999
Revised by the author Feb 2000, Dec. 2002, Mar. 2005
Substantially revised Jun. 2006
Table of Contents
Introduction........................................................................................... 2
Early History of Cannabis in California ........................................................ 2
The First Stirrings Of Cannabis Prohibition..................................................15
The Advent of Marijuana..........................................................................25
Conclusion: Prohibition a Bureaucratic Initiative............................................32
State & Local Marijuana Laws, Pre-1933 ......................................................35
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Introduction
Although marijuana prohibition is commonly supposed to have begun
with the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, cannabis had already been outlawed in
many states before World War I during the first, Progressive Era wave of anti-
narcotics legislation. California, a national leader in the war on narcotics, was
among the first states to act, in 1913. The tale of this long-forgotten law,
predating the modern marijuana scene, casts light on the origins of twentieth-
century drug prohibition.
The 1913 law received no attention from the press or the public. Instead,
it was promulgated as an obscure amendment to the state Poison Law by the
California Board of Pharmacy, which was then pioneering one of the nation's
earliest, most aggressive anti-narcotics campaigns. 1 Inspired by anti-Chinese
sentiment, California was a nationally recognized leader in the war on drugs. In
1875, San Francisco instituted the first known anti-narcotics law in the nation, an
ordinance to suppress opium dens, which was adopted by the state legislature in
1881. In 1891, the State Board of Pharmacy was created to oversee the practice
of pharmacy, including the sale of poisonous drugs. In 1907, seven years before
the U.S. Congress restricted sale of narcotics by enacting the Harrison Act, the
Board quietly engineered an amendment to California's poison laws so as to
prohibit the sale of opium, morphine and cocaine except by a doctor's
prescription. The Board followed up with an aggressive enforcement campaign,
in which it pioneered many of the modern techniques of drug enforcement,
employing undercover agents and informants posing as addicts, promoting anti-
paraphernalia laws and the criminalization of users, and flaunting its powers to
the public with a series of well-publicized raids on dope-peddling pharmacists
and Chinese opium dens.
Early History of Cannabis in California
Throughout this era, “marijuana” was unknown in California. As a fiber
crop, it was familiar as hemp or cannabis sativa. As a drug, it was known to
pharmacists by its alternative botanical name, cannabis indica (originally
regarded as a different species). As an intoxicant, it was barely heard of, going
by the name of hashish or Indian hemp, indulgence in which was an exotic vice
of Asiatic foreigners and a handful of bohemians. "Marijuana," the Mexican name
for the drug, was unknown in the state until the twentieth century. Prior to this
the evidence for the use of hemp intoxicants in California is exceedingly slim.2
1 The story of California’s early war on narcotics and the State Board of Pharmacy has been
largely neglected. Partial accounts may be found in: Jim Baumohl, "The 'Dope Fiend's
Paradise' Revisited: Notes from Research in Progress on Drug Law Enforcement in San
Francisco, 1875-1915," The Driving and Drug Practices Surveyor 24: 3-12, June 1992; Patricia
Morgan, The Political Uses of Moral Reform: California and Federal Drug Policy, 1910-1960
(Ph.D. Dissertation, Univ. Cal. Santa Barbara, 1978); and Jerry Mandel, "Opening Shots in the
War on Drugs," in Jefferson Fish, ed., How to Legalize Drugs (Jason Aronson Inc., Northvale,
N.J., 1998), pp. 212-58.
2 With the exception of a single story in the San Francisco Call (1895), the words “hashish,”
“cannabis” and “Indian hemp” do not appear in any California newspaper or periodical index
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Cannabis had initially been introduced to California in the form of hemp
by the Spanish, who cultivated it as a fiber crop at the missions.3 Small scale
experiments with hemp cultivation continued sporadically into the twentieth
century in the Sacramento Valley and later Imperial County.4 There is no
reason to suspect that either the Spanish or native peoples knew of its
psychoactive or medical properties.5 American-grown cannabis sativa was
prior to 1914. The first know reference to Mexican "mariguana" [not indexed] appears in the
Call in 1897; the LA Times published four more articles about marihuana from 1898 to 1911;
followed by a flock more when the Board began its anti-marihuana campaign in 1914.
"Marihuana” does not appear in Northern California until the 1920s. Andrew Garrett's online
library of early marijuana literature, www.reefermadnessmuseum.org, includes valuable
references to early newspaper articles which are not indexed elsewhere, notably from the LA
Times. The following indices were searched for this article: the San Francisco Newspapers
Index (Call 1904-13; Examiner 1913-28; Chronicle 1913-28); San Francisco Call index 1894-
1904; Sacramento Bee and Union index 1900-37; Los Angeles Times index 1912-27; Marysville
Appeal index 1854-1967; San Francisco Bulletin index 1855-72; the Oakland Library
Newspaper Index 1870s-1930s; the Stockton Library Newspaper Index 1870s-1920s; and the
California Information File of the California State Library, which indexes several 19th-
century periodicals and newspapers. The indices of the San Diego Herald and Union, and
Fresno Bee turned out to be useless. The author also consulted the California newspaper drug
index of the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner for 1910-60 compiled by Pat Morgan for her
Ph.D. dissertation, op. cit., and the newspaper clipping collection of Jerry Mandel compiled
from research and systematic samplings. Also searched were the New York Times Index, the
El Paso Library newspaper index, the New Orleans Library newspaper index, and Poole’s
Index to Periodical Literature, 1802 - 1906. Finally, an invaluable reference was Ernest Abel’s
bibliography, A Comprehensive Guide to the Cannabis Literature (Greenwood Press, Westport,
CT, 1979).
3 Hemp culture was introduced to California at Mission San Jose in 1795 with the encouragement
of Gov. de Borica. It prospered thanks to Spanish subsidies, but collapsed with their end in
1810. Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, Vol. 1, p 717 and Vol. 2, pp. 178-81, (The
History Co., San Francisco 1886); reprinted as Volumes XVIII and XIX of tbe Works of Hubert
Howe Bancroft (Wallace Herberd, Santa Barbara CA, 1963). Hemp was also cultivated by the
Russians at Ft. Ross during the early nineteenth century: R.A. Thompson, The Russian
Settlement in California. Fort Ross. Founded 1812, Abandoned 1841. Why the Russians came
and why they left. (Oakland, Biobooks, 1951) pp. i-iv from Foreword (cited in personal
communication by Michael Aldrich). A comprehensive report on hemp at the California
missions may be found in U.C. Berkeley's Bancroft Library: J.N. Bowman, "Notes on Hemp
Culture in Provincial California," (Berkeley, 1943).
4 Hemp cultivation experiments were proposed by Gov. Bigler in 1850 and Gov. Stanford in
1863, but foundered: Theodore H. Hittell, History of California, Vol. 4 (N.J. Stone & Co., San
Francisco 1897), pp. 171, 369. Nevertheless, hemp continued to have boosters into the
twentieth century ("California Should be Big Grower of Hemp," San Francisco Call, Apr. 1,
1907, p. 8). As of 1909, some 300 acres of hemp were under cultivation in Butte County,
according to the Statistical Report of the California State Board of Agriculture for 1916
(Appendix to Journals of the Assembly and Senate, 1917, p.66). The Imperial Valley became a
center for experimentation with new hemp decortication equipment developed by George W.
Schlichten in 1917: Don Wirtshafter, “The Schlichten Papers,” in Hemp Today, ed. Ed
Rosenthal (Quick American Archives, Oakland, CA 1994), pp. 47-62.
5 Cannabis is absent from Andrew Garriga’s Compilation of Herbs and Remedies Used by the
Indians and Spanish Californians together with some Remedies of his own Experience, ed.
Msgr. Francis J Weber (Archdiocese of Los Angeles, 1978). Father Garriga (1843-1915), who
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thought to have negligible psychoactivity, being thereby distinguished from
medical grade cannabis indica, which was imported from India via England.
Cannabis indica became available in American pharmacies in the 1850’s
following its introduction to western medicine by William O'Shaughnessy
(1839).6 In its original pharmaceutical usage, it was regularly consumed orally,
not smoked. The first popular American account of cannabis intoxication was
published in 1854 by Bayard Taylor, writer, world traveler and diplomat.7
Though an easterner, Taylor had California connections, having ventured to the
state in 1849 to write a popular Gold Rush travelogue, El Dorado. After returning
home to New York he departed for Egypt and Syria, where he encountered
hashish. Having indulged his curiosity, he recounted his experiences in the
manner of his French contemporaries of the Club des Haschischins in an article for
Putnam's magazine and two books, A Journal to Central Africa and The Land of the
Saracens.8
Taylor’s work was soon eclipsed by that of Fitz Hugh Ludlow, who
created a sensation with what has been aptly described as the first psychedelic
book, The Hasheesh Eater (1857).9 Ludlow had become infatuated with the drug
as a student at Union College in New York after trying a sample of Tilden's
medicinal extract obtained from a pharmacist. Adopting the voice of a self-styled
"Pythagorean" philosopher enthralled with the sublime harmonies of the
universe, he expounded upon his hallucinogenic visions, alternating between
ecstatic dreams of heaven and guilt-ridden nightmares of hell. After
considerable trial and torment, he concluded with the successful resolve to
"break away from the hasheesh thralldom." Having attained a degree of literary
success that he would never again equal in his short career, Ludlow proceeded
in 1863 to visit San Francisco, where he became an influential figure in literary
served at various missions in the Central Valley, compiled his collection around 1900-5 based
on a manuscript by Fr. Doroteo Ambris, who died in 1883.
6 O’Shaughnessy announced his discovery working in India in 1839. His discovery was
reviewed in the New York Journal of Medicine 1 (3):390-398 in November 1843, but supplies of
the drug were still scarce even in England at that time: “Remarks on Indian Hemp," (Unsigned)
New York Journal of Medicine 2:273 (March 1844). In 1850, cannabis was listed as a ”substance
introduced into the materia medica” by the National Medical Convention in Washington D.C.,
in the Pharmacopoeia of the United States of America (Lippincott, Grambo & Co.,
Philadelphia, 1851) Around the same time, Frederick Hollick, a popular medical lecturer from
Philadelphia, experimented with and successfully grew cannabis for himself, recommending it
as an aphrodisiac in his Marriage Guide (N.Y., 1850): Michael Aldrich, "A Brief Legal
History of Marihuana," (Do It Now Foundation, Phoenix, AZ c. 1970).
7 Another early American account of cannabis intoxication is that of Kirtley Ryland, M.D.,
“Experiments with Indian hemp - hashish,” Iowa Medical Journal, Vol.2 #2 (Keokuk, Iowa
Dec 1854- Jan 1855), pp. 103-7.
8 The Vision of Hasheesh," Putnam's Magazine, Vol. 3, April 1854, pp. 402-8; A Journey to
Central Africa and (G.P. Putnam & Sons, N.Y., 1854) and The Land of the Saracens (G.P.
Putnam & Sons, N.Y., 1855). On Taylor's life, see Ernest Abel, Marihuana: The First Twelve
Thousand Years (Plenum Press, N.Y., 1980), pp. 172-4; and Arthur Quinn, The Rivals (Crown
Publishers, N.Y., 1994), pp. 71-76, 104.
9 Fitz Hugh Ludlow, The Hasheesh Eater (Harper & Bros., New York, 1857); reprinted in the
Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library Edition, ed. Michael Horowitz (Level Press, San
Francisco, 1975). Ludlow published an earlier, abbreviated account of his experiences in an
article, “The Apocalypse of Hasheesh,” Putnam’s Magazine, Vol. 8, Dec. 1856, pp. 625-40.
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circles, writing for the Golden Era and consorting with Mark Twain and Bret
Harte. After a few weeks he returned east, never to come back to California,
dying of tuberculosis in 1870 at the age of 34.
While it is tempting to credit Ludlow with introducing hashish to
California, there is no record that he ever used the drug after finishing his
book.10 Still, the writings of the “Hasheesh Infant” were well known and
admired in the state.11 Evidence of his influence may be detected in a feature
published in the Virginia City Territorial-Enterprise, entitled “Hashish: A Story
for 1876,” in which the author poetically describes rapturous visions he
experienced under a dose of medically prescribed cannabis indica.12 While
Virginia City lay a few miles outside California in the mining country of Nevada,
the article is proof of an interest in hashish not otherwise apparent in the
literature of the state’s Golden Age.
Hashish would have been readily available to Californians intrigued by
Ludlow's book in pharmacies or via mail order.13 The catalog of the San
Francisco drug wholesale firm Redington & Co. listed “Fluid extracts of Indian
hemp, (foreign) cannabis indica,” a “powerful narcotic,” for $3 per pound c.
10 Some biographers concluded that Ludlow relapsed and died from the hashish habit, but such
a death is medically impossible. Ludlow wrote nothing more on hashish, but did write about
the dangers of opium addiction: “What Shall They Do To Be Saved?” Harper’s Magazine, Vol.
35 (Aug. 1867) pp. 377-87. For biographies of Ludlow, see the Fitz Hugh Library Memorial
Edition of The Hasheesh Eater, pp. 85-103 and Donald Dulchinos, Pioneer of Inner Space: The
Life of Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Hasheesh Eater (Autonomedia, Brooklyn, 1998).
11 Ludlow’s book was sufficiently influential that copies of it were said to be “jealously
guarded” by the University of California after two students took to hashish having read it.
Franklin Walker, “The Hasheesh Infant Among the Argonauts,” Westways 35: 18-20 (August
1935).
12 Unlike other contemporary accounts of hashish, including Ludlow’s, the article reports no
negative feelings of terror or guilt, but, in a prophetic voice anticipating the counterculture of
a century later, admonishes against the materialistic excesses of the age: "Great corporations
are gathering up your wealth ... a love of wealth, of show, and a contempt for honest labor is
growing up....men's ambitions have become both boundless and reckless.” Virginia City
Territorial-Enterprise, Jan. 9, 1876, p.1. The article is unsigned, but its style bears a strong
resemblance to that of the paper’s editor-in-chief, Rollin Mallory Daggett, co-founder of the
Golden Era, friend of Mark Twain, and later a Congressman and U.S. minister to Hawaii.
13 According to Harry Hubbell Kane, a contemporary authority on drug use, "the English
extract” of cannabis, imported from India, was regularly used both for intoxication and
medical purposes (this is what Ludlow used): H H. Kane, Drugs That Enslave: the Opium,
Morphine, Chloral and Hashisch Habits (Presley Blakiston, Philadelphia, 1881), pp. 207-8.
Less commonly, non-pharmaceutical concoctions were used. During the 1860’s hashish candy
was advertised in newspapers, and was said to be used “much more generally than is commonly
supposed,” according to the anonymous author of "Haschisch Candy," Boston Medical and
Surgical Journal 75:348-350 (Nov. 22, 1866). An advertisement for hasheesh candy imported by
the Gunjah Wallah Co. of New York, said to be from Harper's Weekly, October, 16, 1858, is
reproduced in the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library edition of The Hasheesh Eater, p. 201.
Young Americans were also said to chew on a “mixture of bruised hemp tops and the powder of
betel, rolled up like a quid of tobacco,” according to Mordecai Cooke in The Seven Sisters of
Sleep (James Blackwood, London, 1860; reprinted by Quarterman Publications, Lincoln, MA,
1989) pp. 255-6.
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1880.14 It thus seems clear that Californians were not entirely innocent of Indian
hemp, even though concrete evidence of its use is remarkably slim.
The last quarter of the nineteenth century marked the high tide of
popular drug use in America, the epoch remembered as the "dope fiend's
paradise." However, it was smoking opium, not cannabis, that originally
emerged as the drug of interest to pleasure seekers in California. Introduced by
the Chinese during the Gold Rush, the habit gave little offense at first. The
situation deteriorated along with the economy in the 1870s, when anti-Chinese
sentiment rose and the habit began to spread to whites. This impelled San
Francisco to enact the nation's first anti-narcotic statute, an ordinance outlawing
public opium dens (1875). Other towns and states soon followed suit, including
the California legislature (1881), as the nuisance spread across the country with
the Chinese. Nonetheless, repeated legislative efforts failed to eradicate the habit
but merely suppressed it from public view, leaving it to flourish in the back-
alleys of Chinatown and elsewhere for decades to come.
Meanwhile, on the East Coast, oriental-style hashish houses were said to
be flourishing. An article in Harper’s Magazine (1883), attributed to Harry
Hubbell Kane, describes a hashish-house in New York frequented by a large
clientele, including males and females of "the better classes. "15 It goes on to say
that parlors also existed in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and especially New
Orleans - but fails to mention cities further west. Kane had previously written
about the San Francisco opium scene in his book, Opium Smoking in America and
China,16 and might reasonably have been expected to know about hashish-
houses there. Yet despite the profusion of opium dens, bars, brothels and
gambling houses in San Francisco, there are no known contemporary accounts
of hashish dens in California.17
Despite this lack of eyewitness testimony, an intriguing clue lies buried in
the archives of the state law library in Sacramento among the musty volumes of
bygone bills submitted to the California legislature. During the 1880s and 1890s
numerous anti-narcotics bills were introduced, most of which never reached a
vote. Although they were mainly aimed at opium, three remarkably included
hemp drugs as well. The first, introduced in 1880, entitled "an act to regulate the
sale of opium and other narcotic poisons," would have made it unlawful to keep,
sell, furnish, or give away any "preparations or mixtures made or prepared
from opium, hemp, or other narcotic drugs" except on a written prescription at a
licensed drug store. 18 It was introduced by Assemblyman A.M. Walker of
Nevada County, yet further evidence of interest in hemp drugs in the mining
14 Redington & Co., “Revised Price List of Pharmaceutical Preparations,” prob. early 1880s:
Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
15 "A Hashish-House in New York," Harper's Monthly, Vol. 67: 944-9 (1883). Cf. the picture
showing "Secret Dissipation of New York Belles: Interior of a Hasheesh Hell on Fifth
Avenue," from the Illustrated Police News, Dec. 2, 1876, reproduced in Solomon Snyder, "What
We Have Forgotten About Pot," New York Times Sunday Magazine, Dec. 13, 1970, p.26.
16 H.H. Kane, Opium Smoking in America and China (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, N.Y., 1882).
17 In a well researched book without footnotes or bibliography, Larry Sloman provides no
reference for his unsubstantiated claim that clandestine hashish clubs were operating in "every
major American city from New York to San Francisco" by 1885: Reefer Madness: The History of
Marijuana in America (Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis 1979), p.26.
18 A.B 153, introduced Jan 17, 1880.
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country.19 Although the Walker bill was withdrawn from committee in favor of
a competing anti-opium bill,20 it may well rank as the first anti-cannabis bill in the
United States.21 An identical bill was re-introduced in 1885 by Assemblyman
Peter Deveny of San Francisco,22 and hemp drugs were included in another,
comprehensive anti-narcotics measure by Senator W.W. Bowers of San Diego in
1889, which also included cocaine.23 Unfortunately, no record remains of any
discussion of hemp drugs in connection with any of these bills. Indeed, although
we have innumerable contemporary newspaper accounts of opium use in
California, not a single story about hemp drugs from the 1880s is known.
Likewise, while numerous towns passed anti-opium ordinances,24 there are no
known instances of local ordinances against hemp. Although the three stillborn
bills in Sacramento clearly indicate some awareness and use of hashish in
California, hemp drugs were unquestionably a negligible concern compared to
opium smoking. Most likely they were included for the sake of logical
completeness, rather than out of any public concern.
The only known direct evidence of recreational hashish use in nineteenth-
century California comes from a single, remarkable article in the San Francisco
Call, dated June 24, 1895. There it is reported that hashish was being cultivated
by Middle Eastern immigrants near Stockton:
There are but few people in this State who know that "hashish," the
opium of Arabs, is raised, prepared, smoked and eaten in California the
same as along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean and Red seas. This
astonishing information was made public yesterday by S.A. Nahon at the
Board of Trade rooms...
...Mr. Nahon learned that the Arabs and Armenians or Turks are
growing twenty acres of hemp near Stockton. They tell the farmers that it
19 Michael Aldrich reports obtaining an 1860 edition of Fitz Hugh Ludlow’s book from a
Placerville gold camp, “purchased by a miner for his (married) sweetheart because, the
inscription says, he couldn’t find anything more interesting.” M. Aldrich, “Hemp industry in
California - Summary” (undated typed manuscript).
20 Sacramento Record Union, March 3, 1880 p. 1.
21 The first known anti-hemp bill actually passed in the U.S. was an 1889 Missouri statute
providing that every person who shall maintain any house, room or place for the purpose of
smoking opium, hasheesh or any other deadly drug, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor (Section
3874, Revised Statutes, 1889): British Medical Journal, I Jun. 5, 1897, p. 1092. In another,
abortive attempt at anti-narcotics legislation, Indian hemp was included along with opium,
cocaine and chloral in two 1899 Tennessee bills to restrict the sale of narcotics to prescription
only. Jeffrey Clayton Foster, “The Rocky Road To a Drug-Free Tennessee, A History of the
Early Regulation of Cocaine and The Opiates, 1897-1913,” Journal of Social History, Spring
1997, pp. 547-563.
22 A.B. 223, introduced Jan 21, 1885. The bill was rejected by the Crimes and Penalties
Committee on Feb. 17. Another opium prohibition bill passed the legislature that year, but
was vetoed by Gov. Stoneman.
23 S.B. 370, introduced Jan. 25, 1889. The bill was reported favorably by the Committee on Public
Morals on Feb. 7 but never came to a vote. The bill is similar to an anti-narcotics ordinance
enacted in San Francisco the same year, except that the latter mentioned only opium, morphine
and cocaine, not hemp drugs.
24 In addition to San Francisco, opium dens were banned in Sacramento (1877), Stockton (1878),
Oakland (1879), and Marysville (1879).
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is for bird seed, but that is not all. They make and smoke kiff and send
large quantities of hashish to this City for the use of the Turks and Arabs
here, and large quantities are also sent to other parts of the United States
where Arab and Turk hashish-eaters reside. The Stockton hemp farmers
are making money fast by raising the drug and are keeping the secret
away from their neighbors. Mr. Nahon proposes to enter the same field as
soon as he can secure the land and make not only hashish for the Oriental
consumers, but the extract for the medicinal trade.
“Turks,” “Arabs” and “Armenians” were terms interchangeably used to
designate a group of Middle Eastern immigrants later known as the Syrians,2 5
who had recently begun to immigrate to the U.S. from the region around
Lebanon, although their numbers in California were exceedingly small.26 In
addition to running tobacco factories and smoking parlors, the Syrians were
reputed to be partial to hashish.27 Whether the Stockton hemp farmers were
truly Lebanese “Syrians,” or came from some other, nearby part of the Ottoman
Empire, they were certainly familiar with the indigenous hashish culture of the
Middle East. Their 20-acre plot near Stockton could have produced a sizable
yield: similar-sized pharmaceutical farms produced 10,000 to 30,000 pounds of
medicinal cannabis.28 Assuming an average extraction ratio of 25 to 1, this would
have yielded some 500 to 1000 pounds of hashish, or some 250,000 to 500,000
doses!29 Even if it supplied the entire U.S., it is hard to believe that the hash
farm's clientele was entirely limited to the Syrian community.
25 The category "Syrian" was introduced by U.S. Immigration in 1899, prior to which these
immigrants were referred to as Arabs, Turks, or sometimes Armenians or Greeks. Only 5,000 to
10,000 had reached the U.S. as of 1895, almost entirely in the East. (Samir Khalef, "The
Background and Causes of Lebanese/Syrian Immigration to the U.S. Before World War I," in
Eric Hooglund, ed., Crossing the Waters: Arab-Speaking Immigrants to the United States
Before 1940, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC 1987, pp. 17-35).
26 According to one reference, only 13 Syrians were living in California as of 1901! (Phillip M
Kayal and J.M. Kayal, The Syrian-Lebanese in America, G.K. Hale & Co., Boston, 1975, pp. 81-
3). A separate, more substantial Armenian immigration began to arrive in the state around
1896: James H. Tashjian, The Armenians of the United States and Canada (Armenian Youth
Federation, Boston, 1947) pp. 18-21.
27 The manager of the the New York hashish house visited by Kane was said to be Greek, a
name often used for Syrians. A so-called "Turkish Smoking Parlor," operated by "Turks or
Armenians" - i.e., Syrians - is pictured in the New York Herald, April 28, 1895, and reproduced
in the underground hemp classic by Jack Herer, The Emperor Wears No Clothes (HEMP
Publishing, Van Nuys, CA 1993), p. 65. Despite the implication that the patrons were smoking
hashish, the article actually says they were smoking tobacco. It is unclear whether hashish
might have been clandestinely offered at this establishment, or whether perhaps hashish
and tobacco were smoked together. The Syrians’ interest in cannabis is attested by Hamilton
Wright, among others (see below). On Syrian involvement in the tobacco business, see Louise
Seymour Houghton, "Syrians in the United States II: Business Activities," The Survey, August
5, 1911, pp. 654-5.
28 WW Stockberger, "Commercial Drug Growing in the United States in 1918," Journal of the
American Pharmaceutical Association 8:809 (1919).
29 In 1984, Lebanese hash production was estimated at 700 metric tons for 20,000 hectares, or
about 30 pounds per acre, which would work out to 600 pounds for the Stockton farm. Although
extraction ratios nowadays can range upwards of several hundred to one for the finest, most
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Nonetheless, the Stockton hash farm disappeared from history without
further trace. No more mentions of hashish are to be found in California
newspaper indices until after its prohibition in 1913. As for literary references,
unlike their British counterparts, California’s turn-of the century bohemian
literati evinced little interest in drugs other than alcohol. One exception was Jack
London, who confessed to “two memorable journeys” into “Hasheesh Land,”
“the land of enormous extensions of time and space,” in John Barleycorn, his
“alcoholic memoir” dedicated to the prohibition campaign (1913).30 London was
turned on to hasheesh by his poet friend George Sterling,31 who led a bohemian
artist colony in Carmel. Sterling was familiar with other drugs and drink, but left
no account of his hasheesh experiences.32 Altogether, California’s cannabis
literature amounts to no more than a few sentences, hardly enough to impart a
meaningful impression.33
The best scientific source of information on cannabis in California is West
Coast pharmacy and medical journals such as the Pacific Pharmacist and Pacific
Drug Review.34 Most of the references are minor notes or reprints of articles
potent hashish, it seems realistic to assume a lower average for commercial grades of the 19th
century. Robert Connell Clark, Hashish! (Red Eye Press, Los Angeles, 1998) pp. 223, 233.
30 Jack London, John Barleycorn , ed. John Sutherland (Oxford Press, NY, 1989) p. 185. The book
was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post, where the passage about hashish first appeared
on April 26, 1913. By this time, the Board of Pharmacy's anti-cannabis legislation had
already been drafted.
31 A boyhood friend, Frank Atherton, recalled London’s account of a hashish trip with Sterling
in 1903: "'To one who has never entered the land of hashish,' he said, 'an explanation would
mean nothing. But to me, last night was like a thousand years. I was obsessed with
indescribable sensations, alternative visions of excessive happiness and oppressive moods of
extreme sorrow. I wandered for aeons through countless worlds, mingling with all types of
humanity, from the most saintly persons down to the lowest type of abysmal brute.'” Russ
Kingman, Pictorial Life of Jack London (Crown Publishers, NY 1979), p. 124. London tried
hashish again on Guadalcanal during his famed yacht voyage on the Snark (1907). “He went
clear out of his head and acted so wild that Charmian [his wife] was frightened. That was the
end of the hashish experiment. Nobody else would touch it." Ibid. p. 202. See D. Gieringer,
"Jack London, California Cannabis Pioneer," Oaksterdam News, March 2005, posted at
http://www.canorml.org/history/London-CannabisPioneer.pdf
32 A solitary passing reference to cannabis may be found in Sterling’s Carmel diary: “Jan. 16
[1906]. Stormy. Gene & Toddy took hashisch.” Further details of their experience are lost to
history. Franklin Walker, The Seacoast of Bohemia (Peregrine Smith, Inc., Santa Barbara,
CA 1973), p. 28. On Sterling’s drug use and alcoholism, see Joseph Noel, Footloose in Arcadia
(Carrick & Evans, NY 1940), pp. 162-5.
33 One other California bohemian, Charles Warren Stoddard, coyly mentioned a possible
encounter with hasheesh on a visit to Egypt. "The April heat was increasing in Grand Cairo.
Under its enervating influence, I subsided into a hasheesh frame of mind, and passed my time
between the bath and the nargileh, the victim of brief and fitful moods." C.W. Stoddard,
Mashallah! A Flight Into Egypt (Appleton, NY 1881), p. 217; also pp. 141-2, 184-5.
34 Unfortunately, many of the pharmacy trade publications from the turn of the century are lost.
Following are the survivors to be found in the University of California’s MELVYL library
system, which were surveyed for this article: The Pacific Pharmacist (San Francisco, 1907-
1918); Pacific Drug Review. (Portland & San Francisco 1905-1915); San Francisco and Pacific
Druggist (Coffin & Redington Co., S.F. 1910-4); The Drug Clerk’s Review (San Francisco,
incomplete, misc. issues 1911-4, 1918); Pacific Druggist (S.F., incomplete, misc. issues 1892,
1894); and, from the Smithsonian Annex Library, California Druggist (L.A., 1896-1901). The
- 10 -
concerning medical use. Unlike the East, where numerous physicians
investigated and wrote about cannabis, California was not a center of medical
cannabis research.35 By the turn of the century medical interest in cannabis was
declining, largely due to uncertainty over its potency, activity, and effects.36 By
1910-14, it was no longer advertised in the Coffin & Redington house organ, San
Francisco and Pacific Druggist. A survey of medicinal plants in California by Prof.
Albert Schneider of the California College of Pharmacy noted that, while
cannabis hemp could be found growing wild in Butte county, the "exact
medicinal value of the California-grown plants requires further careful study."37
However, Prof. Schneider was not interested enough to mention cannabis indica
in a list of 26 varieties of drug plants being considered for cultivation in
California.38
In fact, cannabis was never commercially grown for medicine in
California. Up to World War I, pharmaceutical supplies of cannabis indica were
entirely imported from India (and occasionally Madagascar), in accordance with
the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, which specified that it come from flowering tops of the
Indian variety. The principal active agent of cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol,
being still undiscovered, there was great uncertainty about the medical activity
of the American variety, which was generally regarded to be of inferior
quality.39 Finally, in 1913, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bureau of Plant
Industry announced it had succeeded in growing domestic cannabis of equal
quality to the Indian.40 When foreign supplies were interrupted by World War
I, the United States became self-sufficient in cannabis. By 1918, some 60,000
pounds were being produced annually, all from pharmaceutical farms east of
following medical journals were surveyed: Pacific Medical & Surgical Journal (San Francisco,
1858-1915); Occidental Medical Times (Sacramento, 1887-1904), Pacific Record of Medicine and
Surgery (San Francisco, 1886-1899), California State Journal of Medicine (San Francisco, 1904-
1913), California Medical Journal (Oakland, 1880-1888).
35 Californians are absent from the compilation of biographies of prominent 19th-century
cannabis researchers in Tod Mikuriya, Marihuana: Medical Papers 1839-1972 (Medicomp Press,
Oakland, CA, 1973), pp. 446-9. The dozen articles about cannabis published in 19th-century
California medical journals are reprints or reports from Europe, with the exception of an
account, “Poisoning by Strychnia, Successfully Treated by Cannabis,” by Stacy Hemenway,
M.D. of Eugene City, Oregon, in the Pacific Medical and Surgical Review 10: 113 (Aug. 1867).
36 "Cannabis Indica has fallen greatly into disuse in this country, and it matters little to us
whether the drug is produced in Asia, Africa, or America. Quite possibly this lack of interest
has been brought about by our failure to ensure that our preparations are always active." Chem.
and Druggist, cited in The Pacific Pharmacist 6:177 ( Nov. 1912).
37 The Pacific Pharmacist 1:467 ( Jan 1908).
38 “Drug Plant Culture in California,” Pacific Pharmacist. 3: 184-94 (Oct. 1909). Although
apparently uninterested in medical cannabis, Prof. Schneider later created a stir at the
University of California by experimenting upon himself with hashish, “explod[ing] the theory
that the drug has a fatal effect upon any but Orientals.” “Professor Takes Hashish; Goes on
Scientific Toot: Walks About Town Acting Perfectly Natural, But Is ‘Extremely Happy,’”
Daily Californian, July 8, 1921, p. 1.
39 R. H. True and G.F. Klugh, "American-Grown Cannabis Indica," Proceedings of the American
Pharmaceutical Association 57:843-7 (1909); E.M. Houghton and H.C. Hamilton, "A
Pharmacological Study of Cannabis Americana (Cannabis Sativa),” ibid., 55: 445-8 (1907).
40 Pacific Drug Review 25(8):40 (August 1913).
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the Mississippi.41 Not until the 1990s and the rise of the medical marijuana
movement in San Francisco would California become a major center for
medicinal cannabis.
On rare occasions, articles in pharmacy and medical journals discussed
cannabis as an intoxicant, typically in foreign contexts. In the waxing
prohibitionist climate of the Progressive Era, interest in hashish was definitely
démodé. Dr. Victor Robinson created a minor stir with his "Essay on Hasheesh,"
published in the Medical Review of Reviews (1912), in which he approached the
subject with the same open-minded curiosity as O'Shaughnessy and Bayard
Taylor.42 In a brief review, the Pacific Pharmacist commented that hasheesh
"seemed to appeal to the oriental mind" - not exactly a ringing endorsement in a
state rife with anti-Asian prejudice.43
In the meantime, a new drug menace had begun to infiltrate from Mexico:
"marihuana." The term refers specifically to cannabis leaf smoked in cigarettes, at
that time a novel form of delivering the drug. The origins of marihuana use in
Mexico are obscure. Perhaps the first American newspaper reference to Mexican
"mariguana" appears in a Southwest travelogue published by the San Francisco
Call (1897):44
In Southern Arizona the jail and prison officials have their hands full
in trying to prevent the smuggling into their institution of the seductive
mariguana. This is a kind of loco weed more powerful than opium. It is a
dangerous thing for the uninitiated to handle, but those who know its users
say it produces more raising dreams than opium. The Mexicans mix it with
tobacco and smoke it with cigarettes, inhaling the smoke. When used in
this way it produces a hilarious sprit in the smoker that cannot be equaled
by any other form of dissipation…
Shortly afterwards, "mariguana" was said to be growing in Southern
Arizona, prompting the San Diego Tribune to remark, "San Diego ranchers now
raise excellent tobacco, but it is to be hoped that they will not experiment in the
culture of mariguana."45
41 W.W. Stockberger, "Commercial Drug Growing in the U.S. in 1918," Journal of the American
Pharmaceutical Association. 8:809 (1919).
42 V. Robinson, "An Essay on Hasheesh," Medical Review of Reviews 18:159-69 (1912).
43 Review of "An Essay on Hasheesh,” Pacific Pharmacist 6:127 (Sept. 1912).
44 "It Brings Ravishing Dreams of Bliss," San Francisco Call, October 24, 1897, p. 17. The
article was reprinted by various other newspapers. ReeferMadnessMuseum.org lists the
following other early newspaper references to marihuana: New York Times , "Doctors of
Ancient Mexico," Jan. 6, 1901, p. 18; the Washington Post, "Terrors of Marihuana" (referring to
it as the hasheesh of Venezuela), March 21, 1905, p. 18; and the Los Angeles Times, "Delirium
or Death," (reprinted from the Mexican Herald), March 12, 1905, p. V 20; and Los Angeles
Times, "Hasheesh" (likening Mexican "mariguana" to the hasheesh of India), Nov. 17, 1908, p.
13.
45 San Diego Tribune report reprinted in untitled article in Los Angeles Times, Jan 8, 1898, p. 6.
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From its earliest origins in Mexico, marihuana had an alarming reputation
for provoking madness, as seen in the following story from the Pacific Drug
Review (1906):46
Mariahuana [sic] is one of the most dangerous drugs found in
Mexico. The weed grows wild in many localities of the southern part of
that country. Its wonderful powers as a[n] intoxicant have long been
known to the natives and many are the wild orgies it has produced. So
dangerous is mariahuana, writes a correspondent to the Sun, that in the
City of Mexico and other Mexican cities the Government keeps special
inspectors employed to see that the weed is not sold in the markets.
A few years ago, it was found that many prisoners in the Belem
prison in the City of Mexico were losing their minds. An investigation was
started and the discovery was made that they were all addicted to the use
of mariahuana, which was smuggled in to them by the guards, who had
been bribed for that purpose. Since then strict orders prohibiting the use of
mariahuana by prisoners have been enforced.
The poisonous weed always finds favor among the soldiers, who
mix it with tobacco and smoke it. The sale of the weed to the soldiers is
strictly prohibited, and severe punishment is provided for anyone guilty of
the offense.
The habitual user of mariahuana finally loses his mind and becomes
a raving maniac. There are scores and scores of such instances in Mexico. It
is said that those who smoke mariahuana frequently die suddenly.
The smoking of mariahuana is a seductive habit. It grows upon a
person more quickly and securely than the use of opium or cocaine....
Ironically, in light of the present-day controversy over medical marijuana,
one of the very first stories about marijuana in the U.S. concerned its cultivation
for medical purposes, as reported in the Pacific Drug Review (1909):47
46 The article was printed in the Pacific Drug Review 18(4):6 (April 1906) as a reprint from The
Spatula. The same article was attributed to the Alumni Report of the Philadelphia College
of Pharmacy, Nov. 1905, in a letter from the Manufacturing and Biological Chemists of
Philadelphia to G. E. Hesner, Superintendent of the Corozal Hospital, Panama City, reprinted
in the Panama Canal Zone report, "Report of Committee Appointed by the Governor April 1,
1925 for the Purpose of Investigating the Use of Marihuana and Making Recommendations
Regarding Same and Related Papers," 1925 (photocopy from U. of Virginia Law Library). A
humorous poem entitled "Marihuma" [sic]was published in the British magazine Punch, April
5, 1905. It begins: "Flower of the West with the soft, sweet, name, / Marihuma/Follow, oh
follow thy new-won fame, /Marihuma." Another early account, “Terrors of Marihuana,” in
the Washington Post, Mar 21, 1905 p. 6, links marihuana to “super-human, soul-bursting” feats
of valor by Latin American revolutionaries. Earlier still, the New York Times mentions
Mexican folk healers who “baffle the Government by bringing in the Marihuana, which sends
its victims running amuck”: “Doctors of Ancient Mexico,” New York Times, Jan 6, 1901 p. 18;
datelined “City of Mexico, Dec. 27, 1900.” Next to a dubious reference to a spell-casting herb
called “mariguan” in Scribner's from May 1894, listed in the Dictionary of American English
(Ed. Craigie & Hulbert, 1942), this ranks as one of the earliest references to marijuana in
English.
47 "Marihuana to be Grown in Texas," Pacific Drug Review 21(5):68 ( May 1909).
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James Love, who conducts an agricultural experimental station near
Cuero, Texas, has been granted special permission by the State Agricultural
Department to introduce the deadly Marihuana plant from Mexico into
Texas. He has therefore obtained several pounds of seed, and believes that
the plant can be put to good commercial use as a drug, to be used in the
cure of asthma, tuberculosis, etc. The marihuana weed is known as the
most harmful of narcotic influences, however, and its leaves, when smoked
in the form of cigarettes, produce a species of insanity which frequently
ends in a horrible death. It is said that Empress Carlotta, the wife of
Emperor Maximilian, had her mind dethroned by drinking coffee in which
marihuana leaves had been placed. She left Mexico an incurable lunatic at
the time of the overthrow of the French in that country, and has never
regained her faculties.48 When used in a legitimate way it is possible to
force this deadly thing to prolong life rather than to sap it, and Mr. Love is
working to this end.
Remarkably, neither of the preceding articles explain that the deadly
marihuana is precisely identical to cannabis indica! This fact might well have
surprised readers, given cannabis' reputation for pharmaceutical safety.
Although overdoses of cannabis were known to induce temporary quasi-
psychoses and non-fatal poisonings, cannabis was never regarded as a deadly
drug. "Who ever heard of anybody being killed with cannabis indicas...?" scoffed
the Pacific Pharmacist, criticizing a proposed anti-narcotics bill that would have
required a death's head to be marked on a sweeping list of purported poisons.4 9
However, hashish was reputed by medical journals to be a common cause of
insanity in the Middle East, where it was sometimes linked to homicide and
death.50
Still, nothing could compare with the frightful, though scientifically
unjustified, reputation of Mexican “marihuana” for producing madness, violence
and death. The explanation lies in the fact that marijuana was widely considered
to be a lower-class drug in Mexico. By the turn of the century, it had come to be
associated chiefly with delinquents and freelance soldiers, which naturally
enhanced its reputation for promoting violence. 51 According to a report from
the Mexican Herald published in the LA Times:52
48 Carlotta’s madness did not appear until after her return to Europe, and thus cannot be credibly
attributed to marijuana (this myth may have its origins in the fact that she fantasized about
being poisoned). Egon Corti, Maximilian and Charlotte of Mexico , Vol. 2, Chap X (Knopf:
New York and London, 1928). The Carlotta legend appears in a different form in another
article, “Plants Cause Madness: Startling Effect of Mexico’s Substitute for Tobacco,” printed in
the Washington Post, March 9, 1913 p. MT-3. There it is stated that she was poisoned by a tea
made from seeds of “totrache,” a relative of “loco” weed.
49 "Do We Want the Mann Bill?," Pacific Pharmacist 2:305 (December 1908).
50 Dr. A.W. Hoisholt, of the State Asylum for the Insane in Stockton, noted a British report on
“Insanity from the Abuse of Indian Hemp,” in Occidental Medical Times 8:197 (1894).
Hasheesh was said to be the “most frequent cause of lunacy in Egypt”: F.W. Sandwith,
“Insanity from the Abuse of Indian Hemp,” Occidental Medical Times 3:142 (1889).
51 Ricardo Pérez Montfort, “Fragmentos de historia de las ‘drogas’ en México 1870-1920,” in
Montfort, ed. Hábitos, normas y escándalo (CIESAS-Plaza y Valdés, Mexico, 1997), pp. 187 ff.
52 "Delirium or Death: Terrible Effects Produced by Certain Plants and Weeds Grown in
Mexico", Los Angeles Times, Mar. 12, 1905, p. V20.
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Marihuana is a weed used only by people of the lower class and
sometimes by soldiers, but those who make larger use of it are prisoners
sentenced in long terms…
The drug leaves of marihuana, alone or mixed with tobacco, make
the smoker wilder than a wild beast…Everything, the smokers say, takes
the shape of a monster, and men look like devils. They begin to fight, and
of course, everything smashed is a "monster" killed…
People who smoke marihuana finally lose their mind and never
recover it, but their brains dry up and they die, most of the time suddenly.
Marihuana was used by troops in the Mexican revolution of 1910-20,
whence it is said to have infected American troops along the border. 53 Popular
legend would have it that it was especially popular with the notorious raiders of
Pancho Villa, whose anthem, La Cucaracha, contained a celebrated verse about
marihuana.54 Villa himself did not drink, smoke, or use drugs, and was praised
for closing down liquor stores, but his views on marihuana have not been
recorded. 55 No doubt, marihuana was used by Mexican soldiers of all stripes,
although contemporary journalistic evidence is scanty.56
Not until the anti-dope campaigns of the 1920s and 30s did marihuana
become familiar to the general public. By this time, pharmaceutical cannabis had
fallen into disuse, and the myth of reefer madness gained ascendancy thanks to
such able propagandists as William Randolph Hearst, Colonel Richmond
Hobson, and Harry Anslinger. Nonetheless, it was never fully accepted by the
medical profession, which would repeatedly voice skepticism over the vaunted
53 "One of the things to be avoided by American soldiers in Mexico is the seductive marihuana
weed, which grows around Vera Cruz": "Weeds Cause Insanity," Los Angeles Times, July 1,
1914, p.18. Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marihuana Conviction, pp. 32-8; Robert P Walton,
Marihuana, America's New Drug Problem (J.B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1938), p. 25.
54 “La cucaracha/ ya no puede caminar/ porque no tiene/ marihuana que fumar.” The identity of
the enigmatic “cockroach” who can’t go on without marihuana is unclear. For the Villista
marijuana legend, see Walton, op. cit. p. 25; Ernest Abel, op. cit., p. 201; Daniel Skye, “Riding
High With Pancho Villa,” High Times, April 1998, pp. 52ff.
55 Friedrich Katz, The Life and Times of Pancho Villa (Stanford University Press, CA, 1998),
pp.76, 477; Ernest Otto Schuster, Pancho Villa’s Shadow (Exposition Press, NY, 1947),
introduction; Louis Stevens, Here Comes Pancho Villa (Fred Stokes Co. NY, 1930), pp. 109, 111-
112. Evidence of Villa's views on marihuana is absent from documents of the revolutionary
period, according to Prof. Friedrich Katz (personal communication). Lurid tales of marijuana-
crazed Villistas were published later, after the “reefer madness” era had commenced, e.g.,
Haldeen Braddy, Cock of the Walk: Qui-Qui-Ri-Quí ! The Legend of Pancho Villa (Kennikut
Press, Port Washington NY 1970; orig. ed 1955) pp. 113, 119-20, 148-9, and Pablo Osvaldo
Wolff, Marihuana in Latin America (Linacre Press, Wash. D.C. 1949), pp. 22-3.
56 Marihuana use was reported among the rowdy and drunken troops of Villa's crony Gen. Che-
Che Campos, whereas order was said to reigh among Villa's own troops, where liquor was
banned: "Rapine in Wake of Rebel Army," Indianapolis Star, April 28th, 1914. p. 4. According to
the Los Angeles Times , "A large proportion of Mexican officers as well as men are dope fiends.
They smoke marihuana" ("Government of Carranza on Last Legs," Sep. 1, 1919, p. 12). President
Huerta banned marihuana smoking in the army: "Edict Against Seductive Weed," Los Angeles
Times, Nov. 28, 1920, p.IV 1.
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dangers of marijuana in the Panama Canal Zone report (1925), the Marihuana
Tax Act hearings (1937), the LaGuardia report (1945), and elsewhere.57
As of 1910, however, "marihuana" was still so obscure that it played no
role in the original debate over federal drug legislation. Instead, the initial
debate was focused on its more familiar manifestations as cannabis indica, alias
Indian hemp or hashish.
The First Stirrings Of Cannabis Prohibition
The first laws against cannabis were byproducts of the broader national
anti-narcotics movement. Fueled by Progressive Era faith in government-
supervised moral reform and growing prohibitionist sentiment, the movement
reached critical mass in 1906, when the U.S., British, and Chinese governments
came to a consensus on the need to control the opium traffic. This would
culminate in international conferences in Shanghai (1909) and the Hague (1912),
where the groundwork for international drug prohibition would be laid.
The year 1906 also saw the passage of the first federal drug legislation, the
Pure Food and Drugs Act. Essentially a truth-in-labeling law, the Pure Food and
Drugs Act was the first federal law to mention cannabis indica, including it with
alcohol, opiates, cocaine, and chloral hydrate on a list of intoxicating ingredients
whose presence was required to be noted on the label.
In response to the federal lead, California's new Governor, James Gillett,
proposed in his inaugural address that the state adopt drug legislation of its own.
The legislature duly responded by enacting not only a pure food and drugs law,
but also a little-publicized amendment to the state poison law, drafted by the
Board of Pharmacy, prohibiting the sale of opium, morphine, and cocaine except
by a physician's prescription (1907). This laid the basis for California’s
subsequent war on drugs. Immediately thereafter, the Board began dispatching
agents from city to city, cajoling dope from unwitting pharmacists and arresting
them. As the war heated up, the narcotic laws were expanded to prohibit
possession as well as sales (1909), forbid refills and prescriptions to addicts
(1909), and outlaw opium paraphernalia (1911). In a dramatic display of its
powers, the Board made the front page of the San Francisco Examiner with a
massive public bonfire of opium paraphernalia in the middle of Chinatown.58
Meanwhile, federal anti-narcotics efforts had been put in the hands of the
brash and energetic Hamilton Wright, who was appointed by President
Roosevelt to direct narcotic affairs from the State Department.59 In preparation
for his task, Wright took it upon himself to conduct a nationwide survey of
police, universities, pharmacies, boards of health, and other institutions
57 The Canal Zone Report was not published, but may be found in the University of Virginia
Law Library; the Marihuana Tax Act hearings may be found in Taxation of Marihuana, House
Committee on Ways and Means, 75th Cong., 1st Sess. (April 27-30 and May 4, 1937); the La
Guardia Report, by the Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, was published as The Marihuana
Problem in the City of New York (Jacques Cattell Press, Lancaster, PA, 1944).
58 “Sad Chinatown Sees $20,000 Opium Bonfire: Mourners Gaze on Hissing Funeral Pyre,” San
Francisco Examiner, May 10, 1912, p.1.
59 David F. Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control (Yale Univ. Press, New
Haven, 1973), pp. 31-3.
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concerning narcotics use.60 Among other things, Wright asked about cannabis.
One of the surviving responses preserved in the National Archives is from the
police department of San Francisco, which reported: "there has been only one
case of the use of Indian hemp or hasheesh treated in the Emergency Hospitals
in six years, and that was accidental"61 (presumably an overdose).
Although Wright found no public interest in cannabis in his survey, he
nonetheless saw good reasons to have it included in the first draft of his
proposed anti-narcotics bill, which would evolve into the Harrison Act.
In passing a Federal law that will prevent undesirable drugs, it will
be necessary to look well into the future. I would not be at all surprised if,
when we get rid of the opium danger, the chloral peril and the other now
known drug evils, we shall encounter new ones. The habitués will feel that
they must adopt something to take the place of the 'dope' they have lost
through legal enactment. Hasheesh, of which we know very little in this
country, will doubtless be adopted by many of the unfortunates if they can
get it.62
With this in mind, Wright pressed to have cannabis included in the initial
draft of national narcotics legislation along with cocaine and opiates. This
proposal was ill received by the pharmaceutical manufacturers, who objected to
the inclusion of a seemingly harmless ingredient of proprietary medicines.63
Cannabis was ultimately dropped from the Harrison Act in May, 1913; federal
legislation would wait until the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act.64
Meanwhile, the issue was left to the states. Thence it was snatched up by a
singular figure on the California State Board of Pharmacy, Henry J. Finger,65
60 Peter D. Lowes, The Origins of International Narcotics Control (Librairie Droze, Geneva
1966), p. 100.
61 Letter from Sgt. Arthur Layne to Capt. Thomas S. Duke, June 26, 1909, sent by the S.F. Chief of
Police to Hamilton Wright in response to a letter of inquiry from the U.S. Opium Commission,
in the National Archives, Record Group 43, Records of US Delegation to the International
Opium Commission and Conferences of 1909-13 and Records of Hamilton Wright.
62 "Nations Uniting to Stamp Out the Use of Opium and Many Other Drugs," New York Times
Magazine, July 25, 1909.
63 David Musto, "The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937," Archives of General Psychiatry 26: 101-8
(Feb. 1972).
64 David Courtwright, Dark Paradise: Opiate Addiction in America Before 1940 (Harvard
Univ. Press, Cambridge MA 1982) , p.105.
65 Henry James Finger (1853-1930) was born of German parents in San Francisco. After clerking
in a Redwood City drugstore, he entered the first class of the California College of Pharmacy
at the age of 17, but was unable to complete his studies due to lack of funds. In 1872 he repaired
to Santa Barbara, where he established his own pharmacy business, catering to a large and
growing clientele from 1875 to 1890. He was forced to discontinue the practice of pharmacy
because of a “stubborn siege” of an unspecified chronic illness. Active in Republican politics, he
served for three years as county coroner and public administrator. In 1891, he was appointed by
Gov. Markham to the first State Board of Pharmacy; six years later, he lost his seat when
Gov. Budd, a Democrat, replaced the Board, but he was re-appointed under the Republican
administration of Gov. Gage in 1901. Finger’s retirement from active professional practice and
support for aggressive enforcement made him unpopular among pharmacists. He showed a keen
interest in having his expenses compensated, and was accused but exonerated of padding his
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known as "the author of California's pharmacy law regulating sale of poisons."6 6
An active figure in state Republican politics, Finger was one of the original
appointees to the state’s first board of pharmacy in 1891. He served until 1922,
taking a special interest in enforcement issues. Though a pharmacist by training,
Finger became known as the “lawyer” of the board for his work in drafting
legislation, such as the Itinerant Vendor Law against patent medicine peddlers
(1903).67 He lost his seat for one term due to a scandal, in which he and other
board members were accused by Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner of
irregularities and favoritism in licensing pharmacists.68 Thanks to excellent
political connections, he was reappointed by Gov. Gillett in 1909. He became
active on the board’s Legal and Complaint Committee in charge of narcotics,
where he championed vigorous and aggressive enforcement techniques.69
Although highly unpopular with fellow pharmacists, Finger’s efforts won
favorable attention in higher circles. With a recommendation from Sen. Perkins
and the brother of Secretary of State Philander Knox, he was appointed as one of
three U.S. delegates to the International Conference on Opium at the Hague in
1911, along with Bishop Brent, the chief U.S. delegate to the Shanghai
Commission, and Hamilton Wright, who very much resented the appointment
of the diplomatically inexperienced California pharmacist.70
An admitted greenhorn in international affairs, Finger consulted with
Wright in preparation for the conference. Their correspondence, preserved in
the National Archives, makes for interesting reading.71 Aside from importuning
Wright about arranging his itinerary to witness the coronation of George V in
London, Finger offered to send Wright an opium outfit, seized in one of the
Board's Chinatown forays, for display at the conference. This Wright accepted
despite misgivings that any opium residue received therein would constitute a
expense account in a 1904 Board scandal. He was attentive to the ladies but opposed women’s
suffrage. He was a member of the Progressive Republicans, the Odd Fellows, and the Unitarian
church. He retired from the Board in 1922. According to Who’s Who in California, 1928 -29, he
authored “numerous papers and published addresses” on narcotics policy; unfortunately, he left
no collected papers, and some of his writings appear to have been lost. Facts about Finger’s
early life are from James M. Guinn, Historical and Biographical Record of Southern California
(Chapman Co., Chicago 1902).
66 This epithet appears in Who’s Who in California, 1928-9; similarly the Pacific Drug
Review 27(12):26 (December 1915). However, it should be noted that Finger was absent from
the board when the crucial 1907 poison amendments regarding narcotics were adopted.
67 F.T. Herrick, “The Inebriate Law in Operation,” California Bulletin of Charities and
Corrections 1:11 (Nov. 1911).
68 An official investigation eventually exonerated the Board, but Gov. Pardee declined to re-
appoint the tainted members, specifically resisting repeated appeals to re-appoint Finger.
Private communications in Finger’s appointment file accuse him of dishonesty, favoritism and
accepting money for pharmacy licenses: Gov. George Pardee Papers, Appointment application
letters, Box 3, Bancroft Library, U. California, Berkeley. The story of the scandal is told in the
San Francisco Examiner Aug. 17-24, 1904 and the Call Aug. 17-24 and Dec. 30, 1904.
69 “Hon. H.J. Finger Addresses V.C.P. Students on Harrison Act and State Poison Laws, February
13th,” The Drug Clerk’s Journal 7(6):20 (March 1918).
70 Lowes, op. cit., pp. 170-4.
71 Records of US Delegation to the International Opium Commission and Conferences of 1909-13,
Record Group 43, Entry #40, Correspondence between Hamilton Wright and Henry J. Finger
(National Archives).
- 18 -
“highly punishable offense.” On a similar note, Finger offered the conference a
“very liberal supply” of “our very finest California wines" courtesy of Westmore
and Co., who would be delighted at this fine opportunity to advertise their
wares. This was too much for Wright, who called it “quite unbecoming an
official delegate to have any understanding with any sort of producer” of the
kind.
More important, Finger also had policy issues to discuss. Among these
was the matter of Indian hemp, which Finger brought up in a curious letter to
Wright dated July 2, 1911:
Within the last year we in California have been getting a large
influx of Hindoos and they have in turn started quite a demand for
cannabis indica; they are a very undesirable lot and the habit is growing in
California very fast; the fear is now that it is not being confined to the
Hindoos alone but that they are initiating our whites into this habit.
We were not aware of the extent of this vice at the time our
legislature was in session and did not have our laws amended to cover this
matter, and now we have no legislative session for two years (January
1913).
This matter has been brought to my attention a great number of
time[s] in the last two months and from the statements made to me by
men of reliability it seems to be a real question that now confronts us; can
we do anything in the Hague that might assist in curbing this matter?72
Finger's letter is the only known evidence of a “Hindoo” cannabis
problem in California. The Hindus, actually East Indian immigrants of
predominantly Sikh religion and Punjabi origin, had become a popular target of
anti-immigrant sentiment after several boatloads arrived in San Francisco in
1910.73 Their arrival sparked an uproar of protest from Asian exclusionists, who
pronounced them to be even more unfit for American civilization than the
Chinese. Their influx was promptly stanched by immigration authorities,
leaving only about 2,600 in the state, mostly in agricultural areas of the Central
Valley.74 The “Hindus” were widely denounced for their outlandish customs,
dirty clothes, strange food, suspect morals, and especially their propensity to
work for low wages.
72 Contrary to Prof. David Musto's account in The American Disease (p. 218), there is nothing
in Finger's letter to suggest that San Franciscans in particular were concerned by the threat.
The overwhelming number of East Indians did not settle in the city, but in agricultural areas of
the Central Valley: "California and the Oriental," Cal. State Board of Control, Report to
Gov. William Stephens, June 19, 1920; revised Jan. 1, 1922: p. 122.
73 On the East Indian immigration to California, see Jogesh C. Misrow, East Indian Immigration
on the Pacific Coast (M.A. thesis, Stanford University, 1915); H.A. Millis, "East Indian
Immigration to the Pacific Coast," The Survey 28:379-86 (June 1, 1912); Rajani Kanta Das,
Hindustani Workers on the Pacific Coast ((W. de Gruyter & Co., Berlin, 1923); and H. Brett
Melendy, Asians in America (Twayne Publishing, Boston, 1977).
74 Cal. State Board of Control, "California and the Oriental" (1922) p.122.
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Aside from Finger's letter, however, there are no known reports that they
ever used cannabis in California.75 Some 90% of the “Hindus” were Sikhs, who
had initially come from British military service in China. The Sikhs were by
religion opposed to smoking and the consumption of alcoholic beverages. On
the other hand, Sikh soldiers were said by the British Indian Hemp Drugs
Commission to be "extremely partial to bhang," a beverage concocted from hemp
leaves.76 On the West Coast, the “Hindu” immigrants were praised by
employers as "temperate" and "the most sober of races.”77 "The taking of drugs
as a habit scarcely exists among them," stated one sympathetic observer, a
surprising fact given that many had resided in China and West Coast
Chinatowns where opium use was rampant.78 A few critics charged that the
Hindus did drink, but did not mention cannabis or other drugs.79
At the insistence of California exclusionists, the Congress held hearings on
Hindu immigration. There the question of drug use was raised briefly once and
dismissed:80
Rep. Manahan: Are they addicted to any kind of intoxication or
drugs?
Mrs. R.F. Patterson: I know that they do not drink. They do not
indulge in drink. I don't know anything about their habits; no morphine,
for instance; not to my knowledge. 81
The committee did not pursue the drug issue further. The conclusion
seems inescapable that Hindu cannabis use was of no concern to anyone except
Henry Finger and his colleagues on the Board of Pharmacy.
Nonetheless, Finger’s concerns were sympathetically received by Wright,
who replied:
I anticipated some time ago that in event of our securing Federal
control of the sale and distribution of morphine and cocaine, the fiends
would turn to Indian hemp, and for that reason incorporated that drug in
75 According to Patricia Morgan , "the author systematically reviewed all indices related to
the Hindu or East Indian population in California from 1910 to 1920 for information on this
matter. None was found in the San Francisco Chronicle or Examiner. In addition the author
reviewed the Senate and Assembly journals for those years and found no mention of the drug
under any name except in the California statutes" (op. cit., p.89 n5). Similar negative results
were obtained by this author in a review of West Coast newspaper indices and pharmacy
journals up through 1915.
76 Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893-94, Ch. VIII, Section 410, p152.
77 Jogesh Misrow, op. cit., p. 14.
78 Rajani Kanta Das, op. cit., p. 82.
79 Millis, op. cit., p. 385; Hindu Immigration, hearings of the House Committee on Immigration
relative to restrictions of immigration of Hindu laborers, 63rd Congress, 2nd Sess, Pt. II, Feb. 19,
1914, p. 75 and Pt V, Apr. 30, 1914, p. 170.
80 Hindu Immigration, hearings of the House Committee on Immigration relative to restrictions
of immigration of Hindu laborers, 63rd Congress, 2nd Sess, Pt I: Feb. 13, 1914, p. 22.
81 Mrs. Patterson had resided ten years in Calcutta, a center of Indian ganja culture, but had
apparently not been impressed by a problem. Calcutta had the highest rate of ganja usage in
India, amounting to 5.4% of the population, according to the Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs
Commission: Ch. VIII, pp. 128-131.
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the proposed act for the control of the interstate traffic in narcotics. In
addition to this use by Hindus in this country, I have learned on good
authority that it is commonly used by the Syrian element in our population.
You certainly should have your legislature do something in regard to the
control of Indian hemp. The Conference will deal with it, for the Italian
Government has informed us that it will bring the matter up in the
Conference.82
It came to pass that the Italians dropped out of the conference, so the
discussion of cannabis was deferred to a later date. However, the wheels were
set in motion for legislation in California. At the next legislative session (1913),
two companion bills to ban "narcotic preparations of hemp" were introduced by
Assemblyman W.A. Sutherland of Fresno and Sen. Edward K. Strobridge of
Hayward. 83
By this time, another threat had appeared on the horizon: Mexican
“marihuana” had begun to penetrate into California. Marijuana (as it is now
usually spelled84) was brought by Mexican immigrants, who arrived in mounting
numbers during the revolutionary disorders of 1910- 20. 85 An alert inspector of
the state board of pharmacy took note and sounded the alarm in the LA Times
shortly after Finger and Wright had begun planning to legislate against Indian
hemp.86
In view of the increasing use of marihuano [sic] or loco weed as an
intoxicant among a large class of Mexican laborers, F.C. Boden, inspector of
the State Board of Pharmacy, yesterday formulated an appeal to the State
authorities asking that the drug be included in the list of prohibited
narcotics.
For some undefined reason, the inspector asserts, the traffic in
marihuano was not placed under the ban at the time the State law was
passed forbidding the sale and possession of opiates and other drug
intoxicants and if the present plans of the authorities are carried into effect,
a determined campaign against the use of the deadly weed will at once be
inaugurated.
To this end the law now in force in Mexico will be copied and the
possession, sale or use of the drug will be made a penal offense in
California, if Boden's recommendations go through…
82 Letter from Wright to Finger, July 11, 1911: National Archives, loc. cit.
83 The bills were A.B. 907 and S.B. 630, respectively. They also included some technical
revisions increasing penalties and clarifying the Board’s enforcement powers. S.B. 630 was
dropped and A.B. 907 passed into law.
84 The spelling "marijuana" is not found in the earliest sources, but begins to appear in the
1920s: e.g. "Marijuana Seller Jailed," Los Angeles Times, Nov. 15, 1923, p. 17.
85 Marihuana is said to have arrived not only across the border from Mexico but also from the
Caribbean into New Orleans around 1910. Frank B. Gomila, "Present Status of the Marihuana
Vice in the U.S. " in Robert P Walton, op. cit.
86 "Would Prohibit Sale of Weed: State inspector would make it a penal offense," Los Angeles
Times, Oct. 10, 1911 p. II-5.
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If placed under the ban on equal terms with opiates it is believed the
traffic in the drug can be much diminished, although it is considered an
impossibility that it can be stamped out.
The Board's campaign was publicized nationally in a fanciful report that
appeared in the Washington Post, American Practitioner, and Pacific Medical
Journal:87
The Loco Weed
It is reported that the Mexican Marihuano or loco weed (astragalus
hornu [sic]) is being feared and fought by the California Board of Pharmacy
as an enemy no less dreadful than opium or cocaine. This pernicious
growth is of the hemp family, and grows up to six feet or more. The leaves
yield under high pressure a kind of oil containing the narcotic principle;
those of the male plant are preferred because they appear to contain a
higher percentage of the narcotic than the leaves of the female plant.
Several years ago this plant became so great a public menace in Mexico that
drastic laws were passed to govern the production, sale and use of the
narcotic; whilst these laws have had some good effect, more than one-third
of the people of Mexico are believed to be more or less addicted to the use
of the drug. Much of it is brought into California by the Mexican laborers,
who are greatly addicted to it... [T]he loco narcotic destroys body, soul and
mind. Its immediate effects are said to be a highly exhausted mental state
of much longer continuance than that produced by morphine, and followed
by sudden collapse. The hasheesh of India (Cannabis Indica) is almost like
the Mexican drug plant. The