A recent Playboy cartoon by Donald Reilly depicts a conventional-looking couple standing expectantly before their college age son. The husband, portly and respectable, holds a newspaper loosely by his side while his matronly wife, her hands clasped demurely, shyly addresses the young man: "Dear, your father and I would like some pot." So would millions of other Americans who are beginning to hear and learn that marihuana is both pleasurable and harmless.

Playboy presumably ran the cartoon described above precisely because marihuana is becoming increasingly popular today, a phenomenon reflected by the current ground swell of news reports, magazine articles, television programs, and sociological studies dealing with the herb and its growing legion of devotees.

Marihuana comes from the flowering tops and leaves of the hemp plant, Cannabis sativa, which was cultivated—as a source of rope and cloth fibers, bird seed, certain essential oils, and medicinal products—in the United States and Central and South America for centuries, and in Europe, Asia, and Africa for thousands of years. Before the Civil War, hemp rope rigged the world's sailing ships and hemp fabric covered our pioneers' wagons. Until 1937 it was available for prescription as a legitimate therapeutic device and was listed in the official U.S. Pharmacopoeia as tincture of cannabis. Several large drug companies, including Parke-Davis, manufactured this liquid extract of marihuana, but the product was withdrawn from the market largely because of the harassing restrictions of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

With its origins in botanical antiquity, marihuana—or hemp, as it is called when grown as a source of fibers and seeds—is one of the oldest domesticated plants known to man. Before the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act and the development of synthetic fibers, it had long been a major crop in Kentucky, Virginia, Wisconsin, Indiana, and other corn-kelt states. Early English settlers were even offered special incentives by the Crown for growing hemp. It has been said that George Washington raised it at Mount Vernon: Once, during one of his many extended absences, Washington was reported to have expressed the wistful hope that he would be able to return to his plantation in time for the September hemp harvest.

George Washington was not alone. Hemp was a cash crop for most Colonial and post-Revolutionary planters, and after cotton, the South's most important agricultural product. Before the Civil War, indignant Southern hemp growers lobbied for and got a full congressional investigation when it was learned that the United States Navy dared award a large contract to suppliers of Russian-grown hemp on the grounds that it possessed greater tensile strength than the domestic variety.

During World War II, the cultivation of hemp was briefly encouraged by the federal government because sources for sisal rope had been cut off by the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. After the war, with foreign fiber sources augmented by the emergence of such synthetics as nylon, the market for domestic hemp largely disappeared.

Officialdom evinced little or no concern over marihuana until the 1930s, when its use began to spread to more dominant social groups, especially those elements that had become economically déclassé by the depression. Many people now began to discover that it was far cheaper to smoke the dried leaves of the hemp plant than to drink liquor—which, unlike marihuana, was both socially acceptable and federally taxed. Alcohol, interestingly enough, had only been officially rehabilitated in 1933 by the repeal of the unworkable Volstead Act of 1919. More people were finding out by direct experience, moreover, that marihuana, far from possessing any of the notoriously toxic properties of alcohol, was a mildly stimulating and relaxing herb that was completely nonaddictive and could be used for social purposes without appreciably reducing the efficiency of one's physical and mental faculties.

Before the Marihuana Tax Act, poor, segregated minority groups, especially Mexican-Americans and urban Negroes, used marihuana's consciousness-expanding properties as an economical euphoriant: its preparation does not entail fermentation or distillation; hence it is far cheaper to produce than alcoholic beverages. And because the plant thrives, requires practically no cultivation, and needs only drying to prepare it for use, it was often home-grown in rural areas.

Obviously, the popular discovery of marihuana as a safe euphoric was imminent. Why the public emergence of that fact represented such a problem to authorities is a tantalizing question. It is hard not to speculate (as some prominent sociologists have done privately) that the upsurge of the use of marihuana in the thirties was opposed primarily by pressure groups in both the federal government and the newly revived liquor industry. The suggestion that the ban on marihuana might have been in part a result of a powerful liquor lobby does not seem improbable when one considers that a substantial public shift to marihuana might have created considerable competition to the sale of alcoholic beverages.

Despite its increasing popularity in the thirties, however, most middle-class Americans still had no contact with marihuana and knew little, if anything, about it. But the anxiety-producing stresses of the depression had made the country panic-prone. Deprived of the facts and primed on hysteria-provoking, apocryphal horror stories given to the press by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Americans were sold a mythological bill of goods. They were told that marihuana was a "killer drug" that triggered crimes of violence and acts of sexual excess; a toxic agent capable of driving normal persons into fits of madness and depraved behavior; a destroyer of the will; a satanically destructive drug which, employing lures of euphoria and heightened sensuality, visited physical degeneration and chronic psychosis upon the habitual user.

The most unprincipled aspect of this yellow journalism played upon the public's concern for the health and safety of their children: front-page headlines and feature articles in popular magazines such as the now defunct Literary Digest depicted insidious pushers selling marihuana everywhere, including in high schools throughout the nation, thus precipitating wild orgies and outbursts of crime and violence.

The outcome was predictable: the federal legislation that was passed at the end of the 1937 congressional session was virtually scare-enacted. Accepting uncritically the testimony and recommendations of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Congress equipped the Marihuana Tax Act with sharp teeth: five years' imprisonment, a $2,000 fine, or both, were the penalties provided for possession of even a minute quantity of the herb.

In 1930—the year the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was established—only sixteen states had laws prohibiting the use of marihuana, and those statutes were generally mild and rarely enforced. By 1937, largely as a result of almost eight years of persistent efforts by the Bureau, almost every state legislature had been pressured into adopting a standard bill making marihuana illegal. With the passage of the 1937 federal legislation, then, the plant's legal fate was effectively sealed. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics had created a villainous bete noir out of whole cloth, which it then heroically proceeded to slay in a campaign that today seems more noteworthy for its zeal than for its principles.

With the mass media inciting the public and demanding that the authorities take action under the new laws, the expected national crackdown exploded early in 1938. Thousands of persons, mostly members of ethnic minorities, were arrested and jailed; tons of marihuana were theatrically confiscated and destroyed by glory-seeking law-enforcement officials, more often than not to the pre-arranged pop of photographers' flash bulbs.       

In New York City, however, the marihuana hysteria ran into trouble from an exceptional political figure. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, whose political integrity was something of a rarity, declined to hunt herbal witches. Refusing to accept uncritically the charges brought against marihuana, he demanded facts, not legends. In his Foreword to The Marihuana Problem in the City of New York, commonly referred to as the Mayor's Report, he declared:      

As Mayor of the City of New York, it is my duty to foresee and take steps to prevent the development of ha7ards to the health, safety, and welfare of our citizens. When rumors were recently circulated concerning the smoking of marihuana by large segments of our population and even by school children, I sought advice from The New York Academy of Medicine, as is my custom when confronted with problems of medical import. On the Academy's recommendation I appointed a special committee to make a thorough sociological and scientific investigation, and secured funds from three Foundations with which to finance these studies.

My own interest in marihuana goes back many years, to the time when I was a member of the House of Representatives and, in that capacity, heard of the use of marihuana by soldiers stationed in Panama. I was impressed at that time with a report of an Army Board of Inquiry which emphasized the relative harmlessness of the drug and the fact that it played a very little role, if any, in problems of delinquency and crime in the Canal Zone.

I am glad that the sociological, psychological, and medical ills commonly attributed to marihuana have been found to be exaggerated insofar as the City of New York is concerned.

In 1938, the internationally renowned New York Academy of Medicine provided Mayor LaGuardia with a committee of impartial scientists, pledged to make a comprehensive series of sociological, medical, and psychological studies of the alleged marihuana problem in the City of New York. Although the subsequent report, which appears in shortened version in this anthology, is frequently alluded to by researchers, the general public has rarely heard of it. This hidden classic (most medical libraries do not have copies) contains the findings of a team of twenty-eight leading physicians, psychiatrists, research chemists, pharmacologists, and sociologists. Published in a limited printing in 1944, their conclusions were based on exhaustive studies over a period of years, studies that included intensive community research as well as controlled hospital and laboratory experiments.

When the Report was issued, it flatly contradicted the mythology then officially being disseminated as fact. Summing up 212 pages of comprehensive documentation, George B. Wallace, MD, chairman of the Mayor's Committee on Marihuana, cited the study's conclusions:

In most instances, the behavior of the [marihuana] smoker is of a friendly, sociable character. Aggressiveness and belligerency are not commonly seen . . .

The marihuana user does not come from the hardened criminal class and there was found no direct relationship between the commission of crimes of violence and marihuana. "Tea-pads" have no direct association with houses of prostitution, and marihuana itself has no specific stimulant effect in regard to sexual desires.

There is no organized traffic . . . among New York City school children, and any smoking that occurs in this group is limited to isolated instances.

Smoking marihuana can be stopped abruptly with no resulting mental or physical distress comparable to that of morphine withdrawal in morphine addicts.

Marihuana does not change the basic personality structure of the individual. It lessens inhibition and this brings out what is latent in his thoughts and emotions but it does not evoke responses which would otherwise be totally alien to him.

No evidence was found of an acquired tolerance for the drug.

From the study as a whole, it is concluded that marihuana is not a drug of addiction, comparable to morphine, and that if tolerance is acquired, this is of a very limited degree. Furthermore, those who have been smoking marihuana for a period of years showed no mental or physical deterioration which may be attributed to the drug.

The lessening of inhibitions and repression, the euphoric state, the feeling of adequacy, the freer expression of thoughts and ideas, and the increase in appetite for food brought about by marihuana suggest therapeutic possibilities. . . .

The comprehensive and detailed evidence contained in the Mayor's Report was bitterly assailed by both the American Medical Association and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Nevertheless, it has come to be regarded by scientists as the most detailed and accurate study yet conducted.

Another contributor to this anthology has written extensively regarding the therapeutic possibilities of marihuana, which Dr. Wallace referred to in his summary of the Mayor's Report. In the chapter "Therapeutic Application," by Dr. Robert Walton, the medical uses of marihuana are soberly assessed:

The therapeutic application of cannabis is more a matter of history than of present-day practice. Synthetic analgesics and hypnotics have almost entirely displaced these preparations from their original field of application. The newer synthetics are more effective and reliable and, in addition, have been more intensively exploited by commercial interests. Cannabis preparations have come to occupy so minor a place among modern medicinals that it has been suggested that they be abandoned altogether, this latter point of view being based on the assumption that they represent a menace from the standpoint of the hashish habit. Such an action would certainly be too drastic in view of the circumstances. For one thing, the therapeutic use of cannabis and the hashish habit are almost entirely unrelated. The drug has been readily available in this country for almost a century without developing more than a very occasional, isolated instance of hashish abuse. The marihuana habit came into this country by other channels, although it is true that once established as a practice, some few individuals have made use of the "drug store" preparations. The 1937 Federal legislative acts should be wholly effective in making these preparations completely unavailable for any further abuse of this sort. More stringent regulations making the drug unavailable for medical and scientific purposes would be unwise, since other uses may be developed for the drug which will completely overshadow its disadvantages. The drug has certain remarkable properties and if its chemical structure were determined and synthetic variations developed, some of these might prove to be particularly valuable, both as therapeutic agents and as experimental tools.

Although hemp preparations may have been used by the ancients to produce anesthesia, these drugs were not introduced generally into medicine until about 1840. At this time, O'Shaughnessy, Aubert-Roche, and Moreau de Tours observed its use in India and Egypt and proceeded to experiment with its therapeutic possibilities. After using it in different sorts of conditions, they were each enthusiastic in representing it as a valuable therapeutic agent. Their activities resulted in a very widespread and general use of the drug in both Europe and America. During the period 1840-1900 there were something over 100 articles published which recommended cannabis for one disorder or another.

Among the miscellaneous conditions for which it has been used and recommended may be mentioned cough, fatigue, rheumatism, rheumatic neuralgia, asthma, and delirium tremens.

In combating pain of various causes, cannabis preparations might be expected to be reasonably effective. See declared that it "gives relief from pain and increases the appetite in all cases, no matter on what causes the pain and loss of appetite may depend."

Hare says [that] "during the time that this remarkable drug is relieving pain, a very curious psychical condition sometimes manifests itself; namely, that a diminution of pain seems to be due to its fading away in the distance, so that the pain becomes less and less." Mercer says that it does not arrest pain but has a "special power over spasmodic pain." Wood says that "as an analgesic it is very much inferior to opium but may be tried when the latter is for any reason contra-indicated. In full doses, in neuralgic pains, it certainly often gives relief." Acide says that "as a remedy for the relief of supraorbital neuralgia no article affords better prospects than cannabis." . . . Oster and McCrae have said that for migraine, Cannabis indica is probably the most satisfactory remedy.

Concerning the use of marihuana in mental conditions, Dr. Walton writes:

Moreau de Tours was the first to advocate using the hashish euphoria as a means of combating mental conditions of a depressive character. He reported a number of case histories of maniacs and melancholics which were improved after such therapy.... There have been a few other observations agreeing in general with Moreau de Tours and there have been some who reported adversely on such treatment. Straub recently suggested that small doses of a properly standardized preparation may possibly prove useful in depressive melancholias. Edes found it benefited patients who complained of unpleasant, tiring dreams, and Birch used it in the treatment of chronic chloral and chronic opium poisoning.

Other medicinal uses mentioned by Dr. Walton for marihuana include the drug's value in uterine dysfunction, specifically painful and excessive menstruation as well as impaired menstruation. Moreover, as a therapeutic device used in labor and childbirth, Dr. Walton cites several sources, including the following, which appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association:

The sensation of pain is distinctly lessened or entirely absent and the sense of touch is less acute than normally. Hence a woman in labor may have a more or less painless labor. If a - sufficient amount of the drug is taken, the patient may fall into a tranquil sleep from which she will awaken refreshed. . . . As far as is known, a baby born of a mother intoxicated with cannabis will not be abnormal in any way.

Dr. Walton's research into the therapeutic history of marihuana is confirmed by another contributor to this anthology, Victor Robinson, MD. Dr. Robinson, both a physician and a chemist, was one of this country's leading experts on marihuana. In 1946 Ciba Symposia devoted an entire issue to articles on cannabis written by him. The following material is taken from one of those essays, "Concerning Cannabis Indica."

In the most ancient of all medical works, the Susruta Samhita, hemp is recommended for catarrh. A sanskrit work on materia medica, Rajbulubha, alludes to the use of hemp in gonorrhea. In the first century, Dioscorides—the most renowned of the ancient writers on materia medica—recommended the seeds in the form of a cataplasm to soothe inflammation. Galen wrote that it is customary to give hemp to guests at banquets to promote hilarity and happiness. At the beginning of the third century, the Chinese physician Hoa-Thoa used hemp as an anesthetic in surgical operations.

In medicinal doses cannabis has been used as an aphrodisiac, for neuralgia, to quiet maniacs, for the cure of chronic alcoholism and morphine and chloral addiction, for mental depression, hysteria, softening of the brain, nervous vomiting, for distressing cough, for St. Vitus' dance and for epileptic fits of a most appalling kind. It is used in spasm of the bladder, in migraine and tetanus. It is a uterine tonic, and a remedy for the headaches and hemorrhage occurring in the final cessation of the menses. According to Osier, cannabis is sometimes useful in locomotor ataxia. Christison reports a case in which cannabis entirely cured the intense itching of eczema, while the patient was enjoying the pleasant slumber which the hemp induced. It is sometimes employed as a hypnotic in those cases where opium, because of long continued use, has lost its efficiency. As a specific in hydrophobia it was once claimed to be marvelous, for Dr. J. W. Palmer wrote that he himself had seen a sepoy, an hour before furiously hydrophobic, under the influence of cannabis drinking water freely and pleasantly washing his hands and face. . . .

Marihuana has, of course, been employed for millennia as a folk euphoriant and medicinal agent by peoples of diverse cultures. Although many governments have attempted to eradicate its use by declaring it illegal, in those areas where it has become part of the cultural pattern' (as in Africa, India, Asia, and Latin America) no authority has been able to suppress it for long. According to United Nations statistics, in 1951 there were 200,000,000 marihuana users throughout the world. That figure is undoubtedly higher today.

Almost twenty-five years ago, the Mayor's Report noted that the use of marihuana was largely limited to working-class Negroes and other minority groups. Today, marihuana smoking in large United States urban centers, despite its illegality, has become a moderately common phenomenon among such disparate groups as bond salesmen, advertising copywriters, financial analysts, doctors, chemists, TV producers, actors, film technicians, civil service employees, welfare workers, writers, editors, secretaries, newspapermen, publishing executives, teachers, suburban housewives, classical and jazz musicians, and even members of the police department.

The important point is that in contemporary America the employment of marihuana has ceased to be a subcultural affair limited to the underprivileged and the undereducated. It has become a custom that is rapidly expanding through the byways of the middle and upper classes. Today it is evident that the use of marihuana is rapidly spreading among the privileged and the literate, college student and professor alike, and finding warm and broadening acceptance by creative people of all ages in the arts, sciences, and professions who no longer wish to limit themselves to the psychologically numbing effects of alcoholic beverages. Moreover, the increasing popularity of marihuana smoking, especially among younger adults, indicates a growing awareness that in a world beset by such spectres as exploding bombs and populations, mass hunger, race hatred, contaminated waters, droughts, floods, polluted air and paranoid politicians, so benevolent an herb as marihuana hardly deserves exclusion from one's internal fallout shelter.

The editor of this book takes the point of view that the use of marihuana should be legalized. Science has demonstrated that the plant possesses a wide variety of therapeutic applications, and investigation has proved that its popular use is harmless to the individual and to society.

Legalization should be two-fold. First, marihuana should be accorded the medical status it once had in this country as a legitimate prescription item. After 1937, with the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act and subsequent federal and state legislation, it became virtually impossible for physicians to obtain or prescribe marihuana preparations for their patients. Thus the medical profession was denied access to a versatile pharmaceutical tool with a history of therapeutic utility going back thousands of years.

Second, since it is in no demonstrable way poisonous and harmful, as are nicotine and alcohol, marihuana should be granted at least the same public availability and legal status as tobacco and liquor.

Ultimately, prohibitive legislation will not determine the fate of marihuana. Notwithstanding its illegality, more and more Americans are becoming aware that not only is it superior to alcohol as a euphoriant, but it has none of alcohol's notoriously destructive physiological and social properties. That knowledge will exercise greater authority in the future than any current restrictive laws.

The Marihuana Papers, then, have been compiled with the express purpose of supplying the accurate and authoritative information needed to perform the belated rites for the marihuana myths. In addition to changing people's minds about marihuana, it is further hoped that this anthology will serve as a basic factual manual for that growing number of concerned, courageous Americans who, in recognition of the plant's many virtues, risk official disapproval by openly arguing and campaigning for its legality.

DAVID SOLOMON
New York City, 1966

N.B. Since both marihuana and marijuana' are acceptable• spellings of the word, the editor has chosen to retain the original orthographic preferences of the authors represented in this collection.

It should be noted, as well, that the term hashish refers to the resinous substance exuded by the flowering tops of th.e hemp (cannabis sativa) or marihuana plant. Since it derivim from the same herb, hashish is equivalent to marihuana in its chemical composition and psychological effects.