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 (a.k.a. Dime Store Novels) |
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(a.k.a. Dime Store Novels)
1952 HOOKED (Narcotics: America's Peril)
By Will Oursler and Laurence Dwight Smith.
"The Brutal Truth about Dope and Crime" - Not actually a pulp, but you could fool me by the cover. Also note that after C. R. Cooper committed suicide (or was murdered) Will Oursler became one of Harry Anslinger's ghost writers for a while.
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1939 TEEN-AGE VICE By Courtney Ryley Cooper
This is a paper back addition of Mr. Cooper's book (originally titled) "DESIGNS IN SCARLET". It is a Reefer Madness Must Read. Elsewhere within our Hard Cover section, parts of the chapter on Marihuana are reproduced.
The following excepts are taken from the book.
In several cases where marihuana has apparently played a heavy role in murders or holdups, investigation has shown the statement to be a mechanism of defense attorneys, or newspaper invention. For instance, in the killing of a bus driver by Ethel Sohl and Genevieve Owens, two female bandits in Newark, New Jersey, last year, one of the girls insisted that marihuana had so distorted her sense of right and wrong that she had no true knowledge of what she was doing. A nearer approach to the truth, according to officers, was that Krafft-Ebing elements were involved and that Ethel Sohl, masculine of manner and appearance, dominated her feminine partner, and led the way into crime like a gangster with his moll.
In a case at St. Joseph, Missouri, where a man was convicted of a murderous rape attack upon a young girl, a newspaper made the statement that he was a marihuana fiend and that he had committed his crime while under the influence of the drug. Federal sources reported that as far as could be learned, the whole story originated in the mind of a cub reporter who asked the sex-murderer after he had been sentenced:
"Why didn't you tell the court that you smoked marihuana cigarettes?"
There are numerous other cases in which marihuana, evil as it is, is being made a smoke screen. Therefore, when wayward youth reports, after questionable conduct, that "somebody gave them a cigarette and they didn't know anything for a long time afterward," Federal officers usually ask the following questions: "What was the cigarette like? How was it rolled? How thick was it? What kind of paper was it rolled in? How did it taste? How did it smell? How much of it was smoked? How was it smoked, by puffing or inhaling, and if the latter, how deep were the inhalations? How long was it before an effect was noticed? What happened? Did the cigarette burn fast or slow? Was the ash long or short? Was it in a regular cigarette package and machine-rolled just like any other cigarette?"
if the youth says that he was unable to distinguish any difference between the marihuana cigarette and an ordinary one, he is not telling the truth. If he says it tasted like other cigarettes, that it burned in the same manner, that it smelled like tobacco, that it had the average ash, that it came in a regular package, and that he smoked even half the cigarette before he noticed an effect, then something is terribly wrong. The one saving grace of marihuana is that it cannot be foisted upon innocent victims as an ordinary cigarette. Moreover, the many youngsters, who, through curiosity, have picked their own marihuana from growing fields and have rolled it and smoked it, have been greatly disappointed by the lack of a distinct kick --- because they didn't know the trick of smoking. Thus, if a youth can give all the true details about the smoking of a marihuana cigarette, it must stand to reason that he has not been a wholly innocent victim.
None of these statements detracts from marihuana as a menace of the worst type, and they are made solely to place blame where it belongs, either upon the weed itself or upon something else which is being shielded by a melodramatic story. Marihuana certainly is sold around high schools by conscienceless peddlers; often they work on the "give-away" principle, donating a cigarette and detailing instructions as to how it should be smoked, depending upon later demand for profits. There is hardly a large city in America where such peddling has not occurred; however, for every cigarette sold in the vicinity of a school, there are a score passed out by the peddlers who make the rounds of cheap drinking places, especially those which cater to the young.
Likewise, there are certain centers in which marihuana offers more of a menace than in other cities. The peddling of the weed is dependent upon persons who are content with small profits; the average narcotic vender, selling adulterated morphine or heroin at a dollar a bindle, scorns to handle the hasheesh cigarette for two good reasons. In the first place, although it is habit forming, dangerous and deadly, it does not create the continuous craving peculiar to narcotic addiction, especially in the earlier stages. Second, the highest price on record for marihuana cigarettes was during a recent drive in New Orleans, when they rose to forty cents apiece. As a general rule, the price is two for a quarter, and since one cigarette can be utilized to produce an ordinary "bang" for several persons, the margin of profit is exceedingly close.
While the scarcity price of forty cents prevailed in New Orleans, the cigarettes could be purchased a comparatively short distance away for ten cents apiece. New Orleans imports its marihuana, smuggling it from Colorado by the kilogram, a packet of thirty-seven and a half ounces. Farther up the Mississippi River, however, there exists the strange Phenomenon of one Federal agency working to eradicate marihuana evils which another governmental agency has made possible. Thousands of negroes, who once had earned their living in the cotton fields, had succumbed to their idea of heaven - called Relief. To this end they had become afflicted with everything in the world which would prevent them from doing anything but reaching for a Government check, while cotton rotted for want of pickers. To alleviate this situation, Southern planters imported equal thousands of Mexican workers, and the Mexicans brought marihuana with them, often planting the seeds between rows of cotton. A new source of supply was opened up, with men, women and even children peddling the weed for whatever they could get.
Thus marihuana cannot even reach up to the low levels of illicit morphine and heroin; its peddlers, with rare exceptions, are of the vilest ranks of negroes and Mexicans, plus, of course, that human skunk, the obscenity peddler, who also often carries a sideline of the weed. He often makes his headquarters in the toilets of cheap taverns.
One of the places where marihuana is prevalent is Los Angeles, with its huge Mexican population, where there are numerous of robbery, holdup, suicide and murder directly traceable to the weed; one woman recently slashed another to death with a pocketknife merely because the victim had expressed disapproval of her friend's interest in marihuana. Another center is Denver, Colorado, where Mexican beet workers from adjacent fields bring the drug into the city to be sold for whatever price can be obtained, or ship it, bound in white cloth, then rolled in rubberized covering and again covered with gunnysacks, to dealers in other parts of America. A third place is Kansas City, where newspapers have produced evidence that the cigarettes have been smoked by high-school students and those of the University of Kansas. Police complaints were recently made there against a hot-tamale seller who worked the vicinity of schools in the daytime and the lower-grade drinking places at night.
The true danger of marihuana is that, unlike morphine or heroin, it mixes with alcohol. It is rare to find a narcotic addict who is also habituated to whisky; the opposite is true of marihuana.
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By Luke Roberts
Stallion Books Cover reads, the story your children WONT DARE tell you! A Glimpse Into The Lives Of Our Lost Generation / REEFER CLUB by Luke Roberts. "The girl was the slave of marijuana - yet was she wholly bad?"
Here note the number of different cover art's, as well as authors names and titles, that were used to sell the book.
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1953 DOPE, INC.
By Joesten, Joachim,
A look at the dirty world of the dope trade; "..most newspapers merely report an isolated incident. What is the overall picture like? Why do people become dope addicts? How does the dope trade operate? What are the international aspects of the narcotics racket? What is the cure? In this book, without sugar-coating, you will find many of the answers. This book names names -- tells you how and where the narcotics trade operates, who the big shots behind the racket are -- and how people's lives are debased when they fall under the influence of narcotic addiction."; cover photograph shows a frightened young woman recoiling in horror from a hand offering her one of those deadly reefer cigarettes ("reefers" that's right, isn't it?, isn't that what the kids call them?).
Museum Note: From what we've seen of the book, it really isn't a Reefer Madness Book at all, just another trick used to sell a book etc.
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back cover reads: "Educated in the streets - Fifteen years old and she was learning fast. She knew how to fight with her knees, her elbows, her teeth, how to hold a blackjack, how to spot a cop, how to roll marijuana, how to lure a man into a dark hallway. etc.
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