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experts from the USDA Bureau of Plant Industry, who testified that there was no serious risk of narcotic production from hemp since it contained negligible quantities of the narcotic element in marijuana.146 The license was granted on the unprecedented conditions that the company (1) notify the sheriff of each county where it intended to grow hemp and (2) co-operate at its own expense with law enforcement in policing the crop.147 Later, after passage of the Marihuana Tax Act, hemp agriculture in California was finally quashed by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.148

Despite heightened enforcement, marijuana use spread inexorably. The first official statistics on marijuana arrests date from 1925-6, when they accounted for one-quarter of drug arrests in Los Angeles and 4% of those in San Francisco.149 According to the State Narcotic Committee, “In the northern part of the state, fully 85 per cent of our arrests involve morphine, but in and around Los Angeles marihuana is so generally used by the Mexican addicts that only about 50 per cent of the arrests there involve morphine.” By 1930, marijuana had reached nearly 60% of arrests in Los Angeles and 26% statewide, in a year when there were 878 total narcotics arrests.

Press interest in marijuana peaked in the early 30s. Marijuana briefly made lurid headlines in the Los Angeles Examiner, which proclaimed, "Marihuana Menaces Los Angeles School Children: Pupils Find Deadly Dope Easy to Get."150 Simultaneously, in Sacramento, police declared a drive on marijuana, saying that scarcity of other narcotics had increased its use.151 However, these scares were not long-lived.

The State Narcotic Committee took a calmer view of cannabis in its 1931 report, observing, "Fortunately, it will never be as serious a problem as the narcotic drugs, because it is not cumulative in its effect and the sudden discontinuance of its use produces no withdrawal symptoms.” Two years later, when the Depression was causing pressure for budget cutbacks, state Narcotics Division chief William Walker warned that the state was “wide opened to the ravages of ‘loco weed’ with nothing to stop its use by 5 million persons.” “The marihuana situation is more serious than anyone but the State knows,” he went on. “Requests are pouring in from sheriffs, chiefs of police and peace officers of all kinds, asking aid in running down growers and peddlers.... Unless State aid is forthcoming the situation will be wide open by the end of the year.”152 Later,

147 “Crazy Weed Precaution,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 7, 1928, p.7.

148 In 1940, federal agents seized a shipment of hemp stalks sent by the Amhempco Corp. of Illinois to Mr. Leland O. Walker, who had a hemp decorticating fibre machine in Chula Vista. FBN Commissioner Anslinger threatened to file charges and warned that future shipments would not be allowed. Three years later, FBN officials discouraged an application by Mr. John Laidlaw of Chicago to cultivate hemp in California, claiming that California law prohibited cultivation of cannabis. Thanks to John Lupien for documentation from his unpublished manuscript, “Hemp and History’s Future,” including communications from Harry Anslinger, FBN District Supervisor Joseph Manning, FBN Deputy Commissioner Will S. Wood, John S. Laidlaw, et al.

149 State Narcotic Committee, "Report on Drug Addiction in California," Sacramento, 1926, p. 14.

150 Los Angeles Examiner, Feb. 18, 1930, p.1.

151 “Drive on Marajuana [sic] in City is Planned,” Sacramento Bee, Feb. 21, 1930, p.9.

152 San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 4, 1933 p.4; quoted in Morgan, op. cit., p. 145.