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Department of Agriculture
Washington
January 25, 1935
Honorable L.W. Robert, Jr.,
Assistant Secretary, Treasury Department.

Dear Mr. Robert:
Receipt is acknowledged of your letter of January 10 with reference to the reported practice in this Department of furnishing bulletins to the public dealing with and encouraging the growing of the opium poppy and Cannabis sativa, and requesting that the Department, in case the report is correct, discontinue the practice in the interest of securing adequate control of the drugs derived from these plants.

The Bureau of Plant Industry reports that the situation is substantially as follows:  The division of Cotton and Other Fiber Crops and Diseases issued a mimeograph dealing with the growing of Cannabis sativa as a fiber crop.   When grown for this purpose, the crop is harvested before it reaches the stage when the drug can be obtained from it.   Inasmuch as its culture as a fiber crop is well established in some sections, and is a legitimate enterprise, it does not seem advisable to discontinue or restrict the furnishing of information on the growing of the plant for that purpose even though the plant could be diverted to the production of the drug by persons acquainted with the methods of accomplishing this.

In the Bureau’s Division of Drug and Related Plants no information on the growing of Cannabis sativa for drug purposes has been given out for a number of years in reply to specific questions, the correspondents’ attention being called to the prohibitory legislation passed in many States and to the prevailing public opinion against the introduction of the plant.   However, information on the subject is included in Farmers’ Bulletin 663 – Drug Plants Under cultivation – which contains cultural information on many of the important drug plants.

This bulletin is in considerable demand and is exceedingly useful for answering inquiries on medicinal plant culture in general.   The supply of the present edition of the bulletin is expected to be exhausted toward the end of the present year at which time it will be revised and the item in question eliminated.

The bureau has no publications on the growing of the opium poppy.  It receives numerous requests for information on the growing of poppies but the great majority of these have reference to the production of poppy seed for the bakery trade.   These are replied to by means of a brief typed statement which consists of no more than is usually given on the package in which the seed is furnished by commercial seed houses.   Here again the bureau makes the suggestion that it would be inadvisable to deny information on growing poppies as a seed crop on the ground that informed persons could divert the crop to the production of opium.   When correspondents ask specifically to be furnished information on how to grow poppies for opium production they are informed that control of the production, sale distribution, etc., of opium is vested in the Narcotic Bureau.

We trust that the Department’s procedure as followed at present, and as it will be when modified later with respect to the revision of the Farmers’ Bulletin referred to is satisfactory to the officials of your Narcotic Bureau, and that it will in no way interfere with their control of the drugs in question.
Very truly yours,
(signed) HA Wallace
Secretary
Enclosure:
F.B. 663.