OCR Text |
Show Marihuana Makes Mild People Wild Neiv York City Found to Be Center of Traffic. j WASHINGTON. Does smoking marihuana cause crime? Does the weed sometimes cause mild appearing appear-ing people to become murderous maniacs? The treasury department gave un emphatic "yes" in reporting that 'traffic in marihuana became an in- j creasingly serious enforcement j problem in 1944. with well financed gangs going into the business as never nev-er before. The treasury also pointed point-ed to New York City as Ihe center of the traffic and said four major i gangs were broken up there last year. Three weeks ago Mayor Fiorello La Guardia of New York made public pub-lic a report which declared that smoking marihuana has had no appreciable ap-preciable influence on the crime rate : in New York. The "mayor's committee com-mittee on marihuana," after a four year study, also said marihuana is not habit forming and that there was no evidence of any organized traffic among New York school children. chil-dren. The treasury did not mention the New York City report. But Commissioner Com-missioner of Narcotics H. J. Ansling-er Ansling-er cautioned against what he called "complacency" of the public toward the marihauana problem. "While not all persons always display dis-play violent reactions to marihuana, there are many instances of persons who . . . appear of mild and harmless harm-less temperament displaying maniacal mani-acal characteristics after using the weed," he said. Marihuana seizures in 1944 totaled 12,117 ounces, compared with 11,-961 11,-961 ounces in 1943. The number of arrests decreased from 900 to 767. A treasury spokesman said this was because the traffic shifted considerably consid-erably from individual violators to well-financed conspiracies. |