Marihuana

Arrest of a man in Janesville for manufacturing and selling marihuana in tobacco and cigarets now confessed by the person arrested, may be the first step in cleaning the city of this deadly and deathly menace. In the old stories of Capt. Mayne Reid and the Mexican border raids and pioneer settlements, frequent mention was made of the loco weed. When cattle ate it they went crazy. This is the marihuana of the present day, the use of which has become disturbing to the social life of the United States. Why men and women should want to put themselves into a state of half-insanity is unanswerable.

Any person dealing in this narcotic should be given the limit of the law and it is to be hoped that the United States agents of the narcotic division of the department of justice will start in seriously to make a clean-up of Janesville and vicinity. A man who sells or prepares this narcotic should be given no mercy. It is not our purpose nor has it been our policy to pre-judge persons arrested for crimes, but there is no punishment sufficient for a man who will sell this loco weed to balance the destruction of human beings which its use brings about.

It is known that most of the business of selling narcotics in the United States is in the hands of aliens. We have two remedies. One is to give them long terms in prison and feed them well, probably better than they were before they came to the United States, or deport them. Our sob sister phalanx objects to deportation. We have about 12 million aliens in the United States, many of whom are on relief and most of whom should be sent back where they came from. An effort has been made for some time to deport some of the worst of our alien agitators, but has been stopped by the secretary of labor, who reminds us of that old sentence of John J. Ingalls: "He loves every country but his own."