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attachment or attachments thereto, or extracts, tinctures, or other narcotic preparations of hemp, or loco-weed, their preparations or compounds (except corn remedies containing not more than fifteen grains of the extract or fluid extract of hemp to the ounce, mixed with not less than five times its weight of salicylic acid combined with collodion) , is hereby made a misdemeanor...”
While the law was intended to restrict recreational use of hemp drugs, its language had unfortunate implications for pharmaceutical uses as well. The exemption for corn remedies protected what was then the most familiar (if medically dubious101) therapeutic use of cannabis by proprietary drug manufacturers.102 However, cannabis was also used in proprietary remedies for cough, colic, and asthma and in other prescription applications,103 possession of which was outlawed under the law. Taken literally, therefore, the law prohibited not only hashish, but almost all pharmaceutical hemp drugs.
In practice, there is no evidence that the law was ever used or intended to restrict pharmaceutical hemp drugs. Rather, it appears to have been misworded in a legislative blunder. Its language regarding hemp drugs would have made perfect sense had it been inserted in Section 8 restricting the sale and possession of other narcotics, as would have seemed logical in the first place. The effect of this would have been to outlaw the sale or possession of hemp drugs without a prescription, except for corn remedies, which had negligible potency. Such an exemption would have paralleled similar provisions in Section 8 exempting lowpotency opiate and cocaine formulations from the prescription requirement. Unfortunately, this language made poor sense when inserted into the paraphernalia law, Section 8 (a), since the latter did not allow for prescription distribution, but rather banned possession absolutely.
It seems likely that the cannabis law was originally conceived as an amendment to Section 8, then carelessly moved to Section 8(a). This theory is supported by the fact that pharmacy journals erroneously reported that the law treated hemp drugs like other narcotics, as if they were actually in Section 8. The
101 Question: “In a corn cure composed of salicylic acid, extract of Indian hemp and collodion, what is the use of hemp?” Answer: “If we were facetiously inclined we might answer, ‘to make a rope to hang the corn.’ Seriously, the object of adding extract of cannabis indica is something of a mystery. The person who originally devised the formula may have fancied that the extract would exert a sedative action and deaden the pain caused by the salicylic acid, but it is just as likely that it was a nice color he was after.” American Druggist 45:8 (1904).
102 Cannabis "is used almost altogether for the manufacture of corn cures and in veterinary practice," testified Albert Plaut, representing the pharmaceutical firm of Lehn & Fink, concerning Wright's proposed inclusion of cannabis in federal anti-narcotics legislation: Importation and Use of Opium, hearings before the House Committee on Ways and Means, 61st Cong., 3rd Session, Jan 11, 1911, p.75.
103 A survey of 1108 patent medicines found cannabis in just 2 corn remedies and 1 cough remedy: "Report of the Commission on Proprietary Medicines of the American Pharmaceutical Association", Journal of the APhA 4: 1163 (1915). Other cannabis-containing medicines not mentioned in the APhA report included International Colic Remedy, Pratts Colic Remedy, and Chinatrocin Asthma Spray ("New Remedies of 1910-11," San Francisco and Pacific Druggist 16(5):11, Jan. 1912).
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