When pot was so rare a gangster could call himself Marijuana

Marijuana Plant

It’s hard to imagine a time when marijuana was so rare that a gangster could use it for their name. But in 1917 in Arizona, that’s exactly what one small time drug dealer did.

By 1917, some marijuana laws had already crept into place, starting with the 1906 Pure Food And Drug Act regulation of drugs. Statewide pot bans were also passed, many of them in the Southwest, due to the states’ proximity to Mexico. Early marijuana flowed up from Central and South America, and that made Southwestern states more aware of the drug.

In 1917, a Mexican gangster who called himself Marijuana was part of that broader trend. The exciting story featured below fit in with conventional wisdom about the drug: one of the early rumors was that it increased ferocity and aggressiveness, which Sheriff Jack Lane encountered firsthand. Since Westerners believed marijuana made people go “on the warpath”, it was a doubly effective name for a dealer.

Marijuana the Gangster

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Is any drug as infamous now as marijuana once was?