MOTHER SACRIFICES CHILDREN, HOME, REPUTATION FOR DOPE By Annie Laurie -- S.F. Examiner - Feb 27, 1930 pg.4

So it's the old story over again, a woman of position and reputation, sinking into the mire of Dope Slavery. A good home, a good husband, two lovely children, a fine circle of devoted friends, all thrown aside like so much rubbish just for the sake of "Dope." This time the scene of the tragedy is Oakland, California. A year or so the very same thing happened in New England, and everybody in Chicago of any consequence knew the two highly educated club women who went through the same hideous torment, and died in disgrace. Both of these women happened to be physicians, and each of them was president of one of the greatest clubs in America. One of the best known actresses in the world, one of the most popular story writers in America, the young wife of a very popular and successful musician, one of the most brilliant lawyers in California, a lawyer close to the top of the profession in Chicago--Oh, it doesn't stay down in the slums, this Dope we're beginning to hear so much about. "Silly Smoke." What do you know, about "Silly Smoke"? You and your nice kindly lighthearted friends, you and your good, comfortable, respectable neighbors? Nothing at all! I wouldn't be too sure about that. How about that 17-year-old boy that was so good natured and easy going and full of boyish tricks and fun a year ago. What's turning him so sullen and so irritable, and so ill-natured all of a sudden? How about that girl, the pretty little girl you are all so fond of? How bright her eyes were, six months ago, how, she loved to dance, and she was always singing, and practicing new, dance steps, and laughing and talking over the phone, and making what she persisted in calling "dates," with girls and boys she had known and you had known ever since she began to talk? The color is going from her checks, her eyes look strange, sometimes, they are too bright, and sometimes they seem to look out through a kind of haze. She forgets things, she's too tired" to go dancing, and she's always smoking. The boy is always smoking, too--cigarettes!

Murder Smoke

Yes, but what kind of cigarettes? They make marihuana into cigarettes nowadays, did'nt you know that? Oh, yes, plenty of marihuana cigarettes on the market, they call them "Silly Smokes," when they sell them. Marihuana is really hasheesh, an American hasheesh. "In India and in the Malay Peninsula they call haiheesh the murder drug, and we are beginning to hear the American hasheesh, marihuana, called murder smoke here in police circles. The police know all about murder smoke. Whenever a particularly cruel and revolting crime is committed and the criminal gets away, the police start hunting for the murder smoke users. That baby that was found in a woodshed the other day tortured almost beyond human belief. Who tortured that poor helpless infant? Nobody knows, yet but they are looking for someone who smokes "murder smoke."

3 Women Slain

The whole hideous affair bears all the earmarks of the work of Murder Smoker. Those women, three different ones in three different parts of the country, who were saturated with gasoline and set on fire, are these "Murder 'Smoke" murders? Ten chanaces to one they were. How about the two young men who tortured a poor girl in the stone quarry near San Francisco the other night, disfigured her for life--a good girl with a good reputation--were these two young fiends "Murder Smokers"? Ask the police, they'll tell you a tale about "Murder Smoke" crimes, a tale that will freeze the warmest blood in the calmest veins.

Raised Right Here

They raise marihuana up on some. of the delta farms right here in California. Marihuana is sometimes brewed into a tea, sometimes it is snuffed -from the crown of the thumb like cocaine, but more often these days it is rolled into a cigarette. The first "Murder Smoke" cigarette, brings, strange and weirdly beautiful dreams, but after the first few cigarettes it takes more and more smoking to produce the dream, and suddenly the tortured nerves give way and the "Murder Smoker' must cut and stab, and beat and shoot, to satisfy the tortured hunger created by the drug. Silly Smoke"--how much do you know about it? And how do you know when it is going to turn into "Murder Smoke'? S.F. Examiner - Feb 27, 1930 pg.4