To Farm Insanity Plant
Deadliest Vegetable Known to be introduced into Texas.
“The deadly marihuana plant is to be introduced into Texas from Mexico by special permission of the state agricultural department. Ernest Love, who conducts an agricultural experimental station near Cuera, has returned from a trip to the marihuana producing region of Mexico, bringing with him ten pounds of the seed of the plant.”
“Love believes that the plant can be put to good commercial use as a drug. He says it is a cure of asthma and is also thought to be valuable in the treatment of tuberculosis.”
“Love believes” the Mexican marihuana “is far more powerful than India hemp”
The Winchester news., March 16, 1909
To Farm Insanity Plant
Deadliest Vegetable Known to be introduced into Texas.
The deadly marihuana plant is to be introduced into Texas from Mexico by special permission of the state agricultural department. Ernest Love, who conducts an agricultural experimental station near Cuera, has returned from a trip to the marihuana producing region of Mexico, bringing with him ten pounds of the seed of the plant, says a dispatch from Austin to the New York Herald. The weed is known as the most harmful of narcotic drugs. Its leaves, when smoked in the form of cigarettes, produce a species of insanity which frequently ends in horrible death. The story is told in Mexico that Empress Carlotta, the ill-fated wife of Maximillian, had her mind dethroned by drinking coffee in which marihuana leaves had been placed. She left Mexico an incurable lunatic at the time of the overthrow of the French in that country and has never regained her faculties.
So terrible are the effects of marihuana that a law was passed by the Mexican congress making it a penitentiary offense for a person to use the plant in any form. It is said that it is so seductive in its effects that to smoke one cigarette made of it will addict one to its use. Notwithstanding the stringent Mexican law, it is a common practice for cigarettes made of it to be smuggled to the soldiers in the barracks, producing more than one dangerous riot.
Love believes that the plant can be put to good commercial use as a drug. He says it is a cure of asthma and is also thought to be valuable in the treatment of tuberculosis. It is far more powerful than India hemp, of which it is a species, he says, India hemp is recognized in the materia medica as a valuable drug.
– The Winchester news., March 16, 1909