GROWING DOPE MENACE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 28 March 1938, Page 9

GROWING DOPE MENACE

DRUG TRODUCED IN ENGLAND SOLD IN CIGARETTES AT 10s A DOZEN (By Air Mail—From a Special Correspondent) LONDON, sth March. A growing traffic in doped cigarettes is giving concern to Scotland Yard. Specially picked detectives are waging war on the traffickers in a campaign to '•clean up” London’s underworld. The drug they are fighting. Marijuana, is being grown from the hemp seed in England. It is known in the United States as the “drug of madIn the depths of Soho, cigarettes j • sweetened with the dried, chopped ; leaf of the marijuana plant can be j bought by the handful from pedlars. Police believe that recent outbreaks of violence, “gang" fights with razors and broken bottles, which have been troubling Soho and other districts in London have been due to addicts of the “reefer" as marijuana cigarettes arc called. In Soho dens they can be bought at prices varying from 5s to 10s a dozen—and in some places the pedlars even charge per puff. Marijuana, like its close cousin hashisht, is a drug which induces strange hallucinations and impulses. Men under its influence can perform acts of endurance or violence completely at variance with their normal physique.