REEFER MADNESS CALIFORNIA

“Abolishment of Narcotics Bureau Urged”
State Division in Chaos, Faces Attack in Legislature -- By Royce Brier
A move to abolish the State narcotic division was in sight yesterday on the eve of the opening of the California Legislature.
The abandonment of narcotic enforcement by an organized State bureau was seen as feasible following revelations in the Chronicle that for the past three months the bureau has been virtually inoperative in blocking the more important phases of the narcotic traffic.
Definite support for the move was seen in official circles
    DUPLICATES POLICE WORK
It was pointed out that the State bureau in large measure duplicates the work of police departments throughout the State, most of the large cities maintaining police squads which operate exclusively against the narcotic traffic.
The State organization, it was also explained by legislators, likewise duplicates the work of the strong and effective Federal division, which has “convicted” such huge narcotic operators as “Black Tony” Parmagine.
It was understood that Rolland A. Vandergrift, State Director of Finance, would give his support to a move to abolish the bureau as an economy measure.
    MEMBERS SEE ACTION
Many Assemblymen and Senators, looking askance at the recent record of the bureau, would also favor such action.
The least that the bureau can expect, it was reported yesterday, was a bitter legislative investigation of the entire anti-narcotic regime in California.
The Chronicle disclosed yesterday that the bureau for the past three months has been drifting without the personal direction of George K. Home, chief of the division.
    CHIEF OUT OF REACH
Home has spent but a few weeks of his incumbency in the San Francisco head office of the bureau and the greater part of the time it is impossible to reach him.
Friends of Home explained yesterday that some of his absences about a month ago were accounted for by illness. During the illness, however, no one was assigned to take charge of the bureau, and as a result ten inspectors have been operating without a directing head and the bureau has not made an important narcotic seizure of arrest since last summer. The bureau’s activities are almost exclusively devoted to arresting minor peddlers or Chinese opium violators.
    OFFICE DATA REFUSED Efforts to discover the exact number of arrests and the total of seizures for the last quarter of the year were unavailing yesterday.
Mr. E.K. Johns, office secretary of the bureau here told the Chronicle that the records could not be disclosed without the sanction of Home. Edward Powers, Chief of the division from June 1931 to February 1932, came forward yesterday to deny that the records of the bureau were in deplorable shape when he resigned.

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THE L.A. COP KILLER
NAME: -- [NONE] - DATE: - Pre-July 1937 - LOCATION: - Los Angeles Ca.
What the Narc's were claiming
”A boy seventeen years of age shot and killed a policeman in Los Angeles, California.   Inasmuch as the officer had been his best friend, the boy's action was difficult to understand until it was discovered he was "high" on "reefers" when he committed the crime.” -- “Assassin of Youth” (Book) 1954 By Robert Devine

“A boy seventeen years of age shot and killed a policeman in Los Angeles, California.   Inasmuch as the officer had been his best friend, the boy's action was difficult to understand until it was discovered that he was "high" on "reefers" when he committed the crime.” -- Moloch Of Marihuana (1945) Robert James Devine

“I am reminded of a Los Angeles case in which a boy of seventeen killed a policeman.   They had been great friends.   Patrolling his beat, the officer often stopped to talk to the young fellow, to advise him.   But one day the boy surged toward the patrolman yellowish flame, and the officer fell dead.   “Why did you kill him?” the youth was asked.   “I don’t know,” he sobbed.   “He was good to me.   I was high on reefers.   Suddenly I decided to shoot him.” -- American Magazine “Marijuana, Assassin of Youth” By H.J Anslinger - July 1937

WHY WE BELIEVE IT'S A FAKE:
After extensive research on the subject, which included going through numerous back issues of Los Angeles Times, literally searching over each and every LAPD officer (including Sheriffs deputies etc) killed in the line of duty, we have been unable to locate any such incident.

Below are the facts as we see them:

1- We have examined each and every L.A.P.D. death on record (starting in 1900) up until July 1937, via websites and newspaper back issues, with no matches.

2- We have examined numerous other police slayings, that occurred near the city of LA, as well as other law enforcement groups (example, Sheriffs Deputies), and again, no matches.

3- We have contacted various governmental groups [LAPD, city of Los Angeles etc.], historical groups, including police memorial groups -- again nothing, no matches.

Thus, I feel safe in saying, that: As there were ONLY so many police officers Killed in the line of duty, and as NONE of them match the given conditions (stated by the head of the Bureau of Narcotics), that NO such case actually occurred.

SMOKING GUN:
While we have no smoking gun, due to the shear fact that there were only so many LAPD Officers that were killed [on or off duty] and as we have checked over every last one of them, we feel that the onus of proof now falls on the narc’s to prove that the Gore Case in Question is real and not a figment of “anti-Medical Marihuana Propaganda.

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THE L.A. BOOTBLACK KILLER:
In Los Angeles, a boy shot and killed a harmless bootblack. -- On the Trail of Marihuana the Weed of Madness (1939) By Earle Rowell

A boy walked down a business street in Los Angeles, saw a bootblack, and hurried -back to his home.   One hour later, he returned with a revolver and shot the bootblack dead.   He had never seen the man before but his warped brain told him that he "had to kill him." -- True Story (Magazine) - Dec. 1948

In Los Angeles, Calif., a youth was walking along a downtown street after inhaling a marijuana cigarette.   For many addicts, merely a portion of a "reefer" is enough to induce intoxication.   Suddenly, for no reason, he decided that someone had threatened to kill him and that his life at that very moment was in danger.   Wildly he looked about him.   The only person in sight was an aged bootblack.   Drug-crazed nerve centers conjured the innocent old shoe-shiner into a destroying monster.   Mad with fright, the addict hurried to his room and got a gun.   He killed the old man, and then, later, babbled his grief over what had been wanton, uncontrolled murder.   “I thought someone was after me,” he said.   “That’s the only reason I did it.   I had never seen the old fellow before.   Something just told me to kill him!” That’s marijuana! -- American Magazine “Marijuana, Assassin of Youth” By H.J Anslinger - July 1937

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THE TEHAMA COUNTY MEXICAN
A big railroad official in San Francisco was astounded a short while ago when I told him he had eighty acres of Marihuana planted on his country estate in Telama (Tehama ) county.   A Mexican caretaker and confederates planted the “hempseed,” ostensible to supply food for wild ducks on the official’s hunting preserve. “The owner himself had no inkling of the true purpose, I am certain.   It took fourteen men three days to uproot and burn the stuff, and cost the official $1,400 to get it out.
“More chance gave us the tip.   The Mexicans had boldly hoisted a white flag on the lodge, a signal that the Marihuana was ripe for harvest and sale to the weed addicts, and this caught the eye of one of my agents traveling along the river.   – S.F. Examiner (Newspaper) Nov 14, 1933 -- William Walker:

S. F. Examiner
[S]-   Nov. 3, 1933 p1 -- U.S. Agents Bare Dope Trade Link to Traffic in Girls”
U.S. AGENTS BARE DOPE TRADE LINK TO TRAFFIC IN GIRLS
Appropriations Cut Balks Efforts to Halt Ring
MADE ADDICTS
Young Women Sold into Shame by Combine
This is the first of a series of articles showing the deplorable state into which narcotic enforcement has fallen by reason of the “penny wise and pound foolish” policies of the Federal and State governments.
Federal agents have been “hamstrung” in their efforts to stamp out the growing dope evil by a slash of 48 percent, the national appropriation, reducing the amount available for the entire United States from $1,700,000,000 to 982,000. State department forces have been cut down to a mere skeleton by reason of a slash from $101,800 to $15,000 in the annual appropriation.
Today’s article deals with the State situation.
Young girls, between the ages of 16 and 20, are being sold out of San Francisco to a ring of Sacramento dope peddlers at the standard rate of $100 each.
They are picked up at local employment agencies by women agents of the ring, who -take advantage of the fact that the girls are hungry and desperate.   The agent is allowed just one week to addict a girl to the use of morphine.
On delivery at Sacramento, the girl is placed in a house of prostitution, and the evolution of another steady customer for the dope peddlers is complete.
REVEALED BY WALKER.
This almost incredible situation was revealed yesterday by William G. Walker, Chief of the State division of narcotic enforcement. “My hands are tied so far as interfering seriously with this terrible traffic in young girls,” Walker said, “At present we have only two inspectors working in this entire northern district, and an equal number at Los Angeles.   My desk is piled with complaints and ‘tips’ of every sort, imposable of investigation.
“Our appropriation has been cut from $101,200 a year to $15,000 giving us a mere $1,250 a month to cover all expenses for the entire district.   And the Federals can’t help us.   The Govern- [Continued on Page 19, col. 2] [Dope Gangsters Linked to White Slave Traffic] ment has cut their appropriation nearly in half.
SERIOUS OUTLOOK
The State enforcement chief said the outlook was never more serious, what with the sudden influx of narcotics from Japan the curtailment of Federal activity and the approaching repeal of prohibition, which will turn hundreds of underworld characters from bootlegging and liquor rackets to dope smuggling and peddling.
“This enslavement of young girls, while we stand helpless, is only one phase of the whole vicious penny-wise and pound foolish policy,” Wallker asserted.   “In one day I received twenty-three outside calls which I was unable to follow up, through shortage of men;
DOPE TO BE CHEAP.
“Narcotics will become so cheap that our State Hospital at Spadra for the cure of addicts will be virtually empty within a few months.   Users, with few exceptions, only turn toward a cure when the price of the drug is so high they can’t procure it.   The craving and suffering drives them to seek relief at Sparda.
“A mother--a woman of high position in this city, came to me this morning begging that I do something to save her two daughters.   the older became a user, and now the younger one is showing unmistakable signs of being an opium smoker.   it sounds unbelievable to outsiders, but it’s true, and I haven’t a man that I can assign to trace the source of the drugs.
FEELS HOPELESS.
“As for Marihuana, the Mexican smoke-weed that drives addicts to the most atrocious killings, it’s flooding the State, and here I am---“
The Chief spread his palms helplessly.
“That white slave ring alone,” he said, “ought to have two or three men on it.   Decent young girls, seeking work, transformed within a week into drug-saturated, cringing slaves to something that takes possession of them body and soul.   “I got the original tip from an underworld woman herself, a young woman who operates a ‘house’ here.   The Sacramento crowd approached her to act as one of their agents, with the usual offer of $100 a girl.   She said the racket was too tough for her---that she had no scruples against taking girls into her own ‘profession,’ but that the idea of taking a normal healthy girl and making a drug user out of her just to create more business for the peddlers was too much.
STORY TRUE.
“I opened an investigation and satisfied myself that what she told me was no myth, that girls are being picked up regularly at the employment bureaus, taken to apartments by these women, and converted into addicts within the prescribed seven days’ limit.
“They must be young and reasonably pretty, and they must not have any relatives here who would be concerned about their disappearance.   That is the sole requirements.
“On winning a girls’s friendship, the woman takes her to her own well-furnished apartment, gives her a good dinner and other long-wanted comforts, and that night administers the first dose of morphine as a sedative or sleeping powder.   She says something like this:
“Go ahead dearles--I’ve been taking it for a long time.   It’s perfectly harmless, and will give you a good mights sleep.   You, need it after all you’ve been through.’
FATAL BEGINNING.
“And that,” added the chief, “Is the beginning of a hell on earth.   At the end of the week the dazed, helpless thing is ripe for the Sacramento dope market, and the woman collects the $100 on delivery.   Then she returns here to go to work on the next victim.”
“And I can’t follow through on this thing.” Walker concluded, “because I lack a few dollars to employ operatives to do the detective work and gather the evidence.”
Determined not to allow this and other situations to continue unchecked, the State narcotic chief is bringing action in the State Supreme Court to compel State Controller Riley to approve an emergency appropriation of $38,570 for the year.   State Director of Finance Vandergrift is joining him in the action.

[S]-   Nov 7, 1933 p4 “Slashed Budgets Halt narcotic enforcement Officers’ Drive on Evil”
Slashed Budgets Halt narcotic enforcement Officers’ Drive on Evil
Dope Officials Helpless to Curb Marihuana Use.
Federal and State Chiefs Admit Drug That Leads to Murderous Frenzy Is Grown almost Unchecked; Lack of funds cited”
(This is the third in a series of articles showing the dreaded consequences of the government’s economy slash” in narcotic enforcement.

The Federal appropriation has been cut 48 per cent, and to make matters worse, State forces are similarly crippled by a reduction from $102,000 to a mere $15,000 for the entire department during the year.
While both departments are virtually helpless, peddlers of hug shipments of smuggled dope from the Orient, now that the European output has been curtailed.
Moreover, a new menace has grown up in California---the marihuana weed, that incites smokers to the most hideous crimes. By Wooster Taylor

Two men sat in their San Francisco offices yesterday.   On each face was registered concern, worry, almost utter hopelessness.
On their desks were piled heaps of paper---reports, penciled notations letters.
To the casual eye, they appeared as any other competent business men---clean shaven, determined types, thoroughly conversant with the business in hand.

FATE OF THOUSANDS.
But actually in their keeping is the welfare of hundreds of thousands of persons---the decency of young girls, the future of boys just entering manhood, the happiness in innumerable homes, and the safety of every businessman and merchant who takes in a few dollars over the counter.
As their activity depends whether you are knocked over the head tonight on your way home by some drug hungry fiend--- whether our cash till is rified by a scare-crow gunman with an insane gleam in his pin-point eyes -- whether your daughter takes a sniff of cocaine from the point of a nail file “just for fun,” or your boy takes a “shot in the arm” for a thrill.

THEIR HANDS TIED.
One is Harry D. Smith, chief of the Federal narcotic division, the other William G. Walker, head of the State bureau. And the hands of both of them are tied---tied by the red tape of bureaucratic “economy” just as securely as thought some public enemy sneaked in there with a rope and bound them to their chairs.
“Look here,” says Walker, “Marihuana weed is being grown secretly all over the State.   It has a worse effect than heroin.   Men commit the most horrible crimes under its influence.   It gives them the lust to kill, [un-normom-ably], without motive--for the sheer sake of murder in itself.

FRIEND BEHEADED.
Here is a case of a man who actually decapitated his friend with an axe recently up in Eureka, and then coming out of the effects of the drug, was as horrified as anyone else over what he had done.
A big railroad official in San Francisco was astounded a short while ago when I told him he had eighty acres of Marihuana planted on his country estate in Telama county.   A Mexican caretaker and confederates planted the “hempseed,” ostensible to supply food for wild ducks on the official’s hunting preserve.
“The owner himself had no inkling of the true purpose, I am certain.   It took fourteen men three days to uproot and burn the stuff, and cost the official $1,400 to get it out.
“Mere chance gave us the tip.   The Mexicans had boldly hoisted a white flag on the lodge, a signal that the Marihuana was ripe for harvest and sale to the weed addicts, and this caught the eye of one of my agents traveling along the river.

“Growth and use of Marihuana is steadily increasing.   This plant grows profusely wherever planted in the warm climate of the State.   We have complaints from all sections, north and south asking our assistance.   Girls are smoking it in cigarettes--underworld characters are passing it along.   It is a very powerful drug---easily obtained, easily used--horrible in its effects. . . [more]

	Wm. G. Walker MORE

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