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In Southern Arizona the jail and prison officials have their hands full in trying to prevent the smuggling into their institution of the seductive mariguana. This is a kind of loco weed more powerful than opium. It is a dangerous thing for the uninitiated to handle, but those who know its users say it produces more raising dreams than opium. The Mexicans mix it with tobacco and smoke it with cigarettes, inhaling the smoke. When used in this way it produces a hilarious sprit in the smoker that cannot be equaled by any other form of dissipation…

Shortly afterwards, "mariguana" was said to be growing in Southern Arizona, prompting the San Diego Tribune to remark, "San Diego ranchers now raise excellent tobacco, but it is to be hoped that they will not experiment in the culture of mariguana."52

From its earliest origins in Mexico, marihuana had an alarming reputation for provoking madness and violence, as documented by Isaac Campos in his history of marijuana in Mexico.53 This popular view is reflected in the following story from the Pacific Drug Review (1906):54

Mariahuana [sic] is one of the most dangerous drugs found in Mexico. The weed grows wild in many localities of the southern part of that country. Its wonderful powers as a[n] intoxicant have long been known to the natives and many are the wild orgies it has produced. So dangerous is mariahuana, writes a correspondent to the Sun, that in the City of Mexico and other Mexican cities the Government keeps special inspectors employed to see that the weed is not sold in the markets.

A few years ago, it was found that many prisoners in the Belem prison in the City of Mexico were losing their minds. An investigation was started and the discovery was made that they were all addicted to the use of mariahuana, which was smuggled in to them by the guards, who had

53 Isaac Campos, Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico's War on Drugs (University of N. Carolina Press, 2012).

54 The article was printed in the Pacific Drug Review 18(4):6 (April 1906) as a reprint from The Spatula. The same article was attributed to the Alumni Report of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, Nov. 1905, in a letter from the Manufacturing and Biological Chemists of Philadelphia to G. E. Hesner, Superintendent of the Corozal Hospital, Panama City, reprinted in the Panama Canal Zone report, "Report of Committee Appointed by the Governor April 1, 1925 for the Purpose of Investigating the Use of Marihuana and Making Recommendations Regarding Same and Related Papers," 1925 (photocopy from U. of Virginia Law Library). A humorous poem entitled "Marihuma" [sic]was published in the British magazine Punch, April 5, 1905. It begins: "Flower of the West with the soft, sweet, name, / Marihuma/Follow, oh follow thy new-won fame, /Marihuma." Another early account, “Terrors of Marihuana,” in the Washington Post, Mar 21, 1905 p. 6, links marihuana to “super-human, soul-bursting” feats of valor by Latin American revolutionaries. Earlier still, the New York Times mentions Mexican folk healers who “baffle the Government by bringing in the Marihuana, which sends its victims running amuck”: “Doctors of Ancient Mexico,” New York Times, Jan 6, 1901 p. 18; datelined “City of Mexico, Dec. 27, 1900.” A dubious reference to a spell-casting herb called “mariguan” in Scribner's from May 1894, is said to be the earliest English-language reference to marijuana, according to the Dictionary of American English (Ed. Craigie & Hulbert, 1942).