Marijuana

Cannabis Time Capsule, 1920: “Cannabis Smokers Nearly Always Become an Imbecile”

Here's yet another marijuana-bashing piece we unearthed, this one from a February 20, 1920 edition of the Routt County Sentinel. It follows the somewhat nonsensical ravings of a Dr. T.S. Blair of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania -- an apparent medical shill for Big Industry in the 1920s. See also: "Colorado Cannabis Time...
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Here’s yet another marijuana-bashing piece we unearthed, this one from a February 20, 1920 edition of the Routt County Sentinel.

It follows the somewhat nonsensical ravings of a Dr. T.S. Blair of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania — an apparent medical shill for Big Industry in the 1920s.

See also: “Colorado Cannabis Time Capsule, 1937: “A growing social menace”

Quoted from an article in the Journal of Industrial Hygiene titled “Relation of Drug Addiction to Industry,” Dr. Blair talks about the cannabis smoking menace happening in Brazil at the time. According to him, “cannabis smokers nearly always become an imbecile in time.” Ouch.

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The political mouthpiece then talks, ironically, about the need to weed out the “jokers” in his profession. He says that a “few debased physicians” “infest almost every community and…deliberately keep up addiction through ignorance or cupidity.”

Kind of like today in America, where pill addiction to opiates is as bad as it’s ever been thanks to shady doctors and big, industrial pharmaceutical companies.

You know, the kind who — to this day — hire people like Dr. Blair to attack marijuana.

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