HASHISH IM.AN'l'. iBi 



I his was a revelation to the writer. Had a cobra raised 

 his spectacled hood the surprise could not have been more 

 startling. Here was the Oriental dream making, murder 

 inspiring bhang of Indian song, story and thuggism, taking 

 root in the far west; a household plant grown at every cottage 

 door in the vale of Kashmir found thriving before the door 

 of a mud hovel on the desert begirt banks of the Santa Cruz. 

 The same question that agitated the wondering sire of 

 "Little Breeches," "How did he get thar? angels," was 

 answered by my convict friend who assured me that it was 

 of comon growth in central and southern Mexico, where 

 however, "taboo" had been placed upon it by the Mexican 

 Government. Under flaring head-lines a recently published 

 newspaper article recites the seizure of "eight large boxes 

 of marijuana, the largest collection of the national dope weed 

 of the Mexican peon ever captured in a single haul by the 

 police, and perhaps the greatest quantity of this weed ever 

 seen at one time out of the Held." * * * "Enough of this 

 brain-wrecking weed was seized to have causeti any number 

 of murders had it reached the poor persons for whom it 

 was intended." * * * "The effects of marijuana are like, but 

 worse than those of opium. It has the tendency to craze the 

 brain of the smoker. The weed has a pleasant aromatic 

 odor and its immediate effect when smoked is considered 

 more seductive than opium, but in the end it prociuces a 

 murderous mania. To fight its use among soldiers is one 

 of the hardest tasks before the army authorities.'' 



If sold in the tedejons of Mexico, and detected, the 

 tendero is arrested, his store closed, his goods confiscated 

 and he is either sent to the army or the penitentiary. In 

 Tucson it is grown to supply the trade which amounts to, 

 so my convict friend informed me, an average of $2.50 per 

 day. The Mexican railroad laborers, he said, use all that 

 is grown here outside of what they are able to purchase 

 at the drug stores. There are several small gardens border- 



