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Meanwhile, on the East Coast, oriental-style hashish houses were said to be flourishing. An article in Harper’s Magazine (1883), attributed to Harry Hubbell Kane, describes a hashish-house in New York frequented by a large clientele, including males and females of "the better classes. "19 It goes on to say that parlors also existed in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and especially New Orleans - but fails to mention cities further west. Kane had previously written about the San Francisco opium scene in his book, Opium Smoking in America and China,20 and might reasonably have been expected to know about hashish-houses there. Yet despite the profusion of opium dens, bars, brothels and gambling houses in San Francisco, there are no known contemporary accounts of hashish dens in California.21

Despite this lack of eyewitness testimony, an intriguing clue lies buried in the archives of the state law library in Sacramento among the musty volumes of bygone bills submitted to the California legislature. During the 1880s and 1890s numerous anti-narcotics bills were introduced, most of which never reached a vote. Although they were mainly aimed at opium, three remarkably included hemp drugs as well. The first, introduced in 1880, entitled "an act to regulate the sale of opium and other narcotic poisons," would have made it unlawful to keep, sell, furnish, or give away any "preparations or mixtures made or prepared from opium, hemp, or other narcotic drugs" except on a written prescription at a licensed drug store. 22 It was introduced by Assemblyman A.M. Walker of Nevada County, yet further evidence of interest in hemp drugs in the mining country.23 Although the Walker bill was withdrawn from committee in favor of a competing anti-opium bill,24 it may well rank as the first anti-cannabis bill in the United States.25 An identical bill was re-introduced in 1885 by Assemblyman Peter Deveny of San Francisco,26 and hemp drugs were included in another,

20 H.H. Kane, Opium Smoking in America and China (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, N.Y., 1882).

21 In a well researched book without footnotes or bibliography, Larry Sloman provides no reference for his unsubstantiated claim that clandestine hashish clubs were operating in "every major American city from New York to San Francisco" by 1885: Reefer Madness: The History of Marijuana in America (Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis 1979), p.26.

22 A.B 153, introduced Jan 17, 1880.

23 Michael Aldrich reports obtaining an 1860 edition of Fitz Hugh Ludlow’s book from a Placerville gold camp, “purchased by a miner for his (married) sweetheart because, the inscription says, he couldn’t find anything more interesting.” M. Aldrich, “Hemp industry in California - Summary” (undated typed manuscript).

24 Sacramento Record Union, March 3, 1880 p. 1.

25 The first known anti-hemp bill actually passed in the U.S. was an 1889 Missouri statute providing that every person who shall maintain any house, room or place for the purpose of smoking opium, hasheesh or any other deadly drug, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor (Section 3874, Revised Statutes, 1889): British Medical Journal, I Jun. 5, 1897, p. 1092. In another, abortive attempt at anti-narcotics legislation, Indian hemp was included along with opium, cocaine and chloral in two 1899 Tennessee bills to restrict the sale of narcotics to prescription only. Jeffrey Clayton Foster, “The Rocky Road To a Drug-Free Tennessee, A History of the Early Regulation of Cocaine and The Opiates, 1897-1913,” Journal of Social History, Spring 1997, pp. 547-563.

26 A.B. 223, introduced Jan 21, 1885. The bill was rejected by the Crimes and Penalties Committee on Feb. 17. Another opium prohibition bill passed the legislature that year, but was vetoed by Gov. Stoneman.