When Mayor LaGuardia needed the straight dope on dope, he commissioned a report from the New York Academy of Medicine. PHOTO: Mark Valenta

n 1938 New York's Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia gathered a team of scientists from the New York Academy of Medicine to study the medical, social and psychological aspects of marijuana use in the city. The committee contained 2 interns, 3 psychiatrists, 2 pharmacologists, 1 public health expert and the Commissioners of Correction, Health and Hospitals. The report was titled, "The Marijuana Problem in the City of New York."

The study was prompted by the "alarming" rise in marijuana use. In 1939 there were a total of 167 arrests.

The four-year study followed a group of 77 prisoners who were long-term marijuana users. The conclusions noted that marijuana use was mainly used by "negroes and latin americans" in Harlem. It also noted that there was no connection between marijuana and crime. "The publicity concering the catastrophic effects of marihuana smoking in New York City is unfounded," the authors wrote.

Another attempt at evaluating the effect of marihuana in less formal situations was made in the following manner. The examiner, one of the police officers and the subjects listened to Jack Benny on the Jello Program at 7 o'clock Sunday evening. The police officer noted the number of times the audience laughed, and the length of time the laughter lasted. The examiner checked these items for the subjects. The first time this was done without marihuana; the following week the subjects were given several "reefers" about fifteen minutes before the radio program started.

The results were as follows: Without drug, the subjects laughed 42 times as against 72 laughs in the radio audience. The total time for all laughs was 63 seconds as compared with 139 seconds for the radio audience. With cigarettes the subjects laughed 43 times as compared with 47 laughs in the audience, the total laugh time being 129 seconds as compared with 173 seconds of laughter in the audience. Without drug, the subjects laughed, roughly speaking, only half as often and as long as the audience- while under the drug they laughed almost as often and the laugh time was about 75 per cent that of the audience. It is obvious that under marihuana the subject laughs more readily and for longer time intervals.

This is probably due both to the fact that things seem funnier to him and because when under the influence of the drug he is less inhibited.

If left undisturbed some remained quietly sitting or lying, showing little interest in their surroundings. Others were restless and talkative. Marihuana effects which give rise to pleasurable sensations or experiences...[include] a sense of well-being and contentment cheerfulness and gaiety, talkativeness, bursts of singing and dancing, daydreaming, a pleasant drowsiness, joking, and performing amusing antics.

Marihuana is used extensively in the Borough of Manhattan, but the problem is not as acute as it is reported to be in other sections of the United States. The consensus among marihuana smokers is that the use of the drug creates a definite feeling of adequacy.

The practice of smoking marihuana does not lead to addiction in the medical sense of the word...The use of marihuana does not lead to morphine or heroin or cocaine addiction and no effort is made to create a market for these narcotics by stimulating the practice of marihuana smoking.

Marihuana is not the determining factor in the commission of major crimes. Marihuana smoking is not widespread among school children. Juvenile delinquency is not associated with the practice of smoking marihuana.

The publicity concerning the catastrophic effects of marihuana smoking in New York City is unfounded.