Marijuana Propaganda of the Time

REEFER MADNESS

Jekyll & Hyde effect when smoke

[Marihuana’s] bodily reactions usually include muscular-trembling, increased heartbeat, accelerated pulse and a ringing in the ears. Often the user feels hot in the head, becomes dizzy and has sensations of cold in the hands and feet. Later he experiences muscular contractions, constrictions in the chest and dilation of the eye pupils. These effects lead to either vomiting or stupefaction, followed by restless sleep filled with bizarre kaleidoscopic visions.

THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY - June 29, 1938

Reefer Madness Teaching Museum—Original propaganda comics, original radio shows

http://www.reefermadnessteachingmuseum.org/ReeferMadness/page1.htm

Articles from the time

http://www.reefermadnessteachingmuseum.org/ReeferMadness/sexcraze1937.htm

http://www.reefermadnessteachingmuseum.org/ReeferMadness/religiousdigest1937.htm

http://www.reefermadnessteachingmuseum.org/ReeferMadness/newsweek1937.htm

http://www.reefermadnessteachingmuseum.org/ReeferMadness/readersdigest1938.htm

Original Radio Show—character voices

http://www.onlinepot.org/ReeferMadness/radioshows/wisperer.mp3

Original Radio Show (1930s)—character voices; sound design; curtain speech (sponsored by rio grande oil)

http://www.onlinepot.org/ReeferMadness/radioshows/Calling%20All%20Cars%2036-06-25%20Reefers%20by%20the%20Acre.mp3

QUOTES

Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.

n Attributed to Abraham Lincoln: Dec 18, 1840.

"The American Medical Association, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs have all stated that marijuana has no medical uses and should be considered a social menace. We don't need any more research to show that. I challenge you to name one doctor who has reported a beneficial medical effect of marijuana, outside of the backward areas of the world and that 19th Century folk medicine you were mentioning." --- Harry Anslinger Playboy Feb 1970 pg 58

Colonel Garland H. Williams, head of the New York office of the U.S. Narcotics Bureau, says that "even sex does not satisfy the abnormal urges induced by marijuana. There is still the necessity for further excitement, more emotional release. That is when the guns are grabbed, the knives waved, and the razors swung. And all that is a marijuana user’s idea of what is normal!” --- COLLIER’S - June 1949

The list of holdups, sex crimes, murders and suicides by marijuana addicts could be multiplied indefinitely. In some districts, inhabited by Latin Americans, Filipinos, Spaniards and Negroes, half the violent crimes are attributed to marijuana craze. Dr. Lee Rice of San Antonio reports that eighty per cent of all the murders committed by Mexicans are done while the killers are drugged by marijuana. ---The CHRISTIAN CENTURY - June 29, 1938

It is impossible to say just what the action of the drug will be on a given individual, of the amount. . . . but all the experts agree that the continued use leads to insanity. There are many cases of insanity. --- Mr. Anslinger 1937 Congressional Testimony

Hearst newspapers nationwide, 1935

"Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice."

Federal Bureau of Narcotics Chief Harry J. Anslinger, 1948

"Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing"

Ronald Reagan 1974

"Permanent brain damage is one of the inevitable results of the use of marijuana."

White House Drug Czar Carlton Turner 1986

"Marijuana leads to homosexuality ... and therefore to AIDS."

Presidential candidate Bill Clinton 1992

"Marijuana is ten times more dangerous than twenty years ago."

"Marijuana, perhaps now the most insidious of our narcotics, is a direct by-product of unrestricted Mexican immigration. Easily grown, it has been asserted that it has recently been planted between rows in a California penitentiary garden. Mexican peddlers have been caught distributing sample marihuana cigarets to school children. Bills for our quota against Mexico have been blocked mysteriously in every Congress since the 1924 Quota Act. Our nation has more than enough laborers". --- C. M. Goethe, a prominent member of the American Coalition