The Messy, Groundless, and Racist Campaign Against Cannabis in the United States: Part II

If you haven’t read part one of this essay series, no worries, there is no comprehensive story to lay out for you in this next installment. It’s already been done and Wikipedia really needs your support . Still, there are so many strange moments in the plant’s history that are contrary to popular expectations and absolutely worth knowing - that pharmacologists were the first pro-cannabis lobbyists, that cannabis was imported more from England than from Mexico at this time, and that the perceived popularity of the plant with Hispanic people was entirely manufactured by scared, hypocritical, and just plain hateful Caucasian Americans. Sentiments which eventually manifested at the top of American federal bureaucracy.   

From the El Paso episode, I should immediately launch into a full on attack of Howard Anslinger and all he did to make cannabis illegal on a global scale. Unfortunately, the events at the border in 1915 were a perfect set up for this portly, swormy man of the worst variety, with such intense racial prejudice it's not worth describing. He fabricated hundreds of gruesome and unholy lies in which he sourced cannabis as the root cause the of violent crimes and murder. He perjured himself on multiple occasions.  He is infamous for his hatred of jazz music, the dancing it inspired, and the musicians who produced it. He’s even on the record stating his fear that black men might woo women with their improvised ditties and marijuana cigarettes. Having been on the giving and receiving end of this seductive stratagem, I have to pity Anslinger. He must have felt horribly left out, demonstrably un-cool, or perhaps, he just never really loved anything or anyone in his entire scornful little existence. 

But that story you can get on Hulu in stunning detail - if you haven’t seen The U.S. vs Billie Holiday, I recommend starting it now and returning back to this afterwards for a little eye bleach to wash out the putrescent filth and bigotry that is Howard Anslinger. Like the topic we are about to broach, I hope this essay can be a small sanctuary of respite. Unfussy, yet replete; an oasis where you can fill up on faith in humanity. Something like that, because this bit is gonna be the good stuff. Ya know, the real good stuff - so good ya gotta be in the know a little bit to even get near it. So good it's a bit sinful, or maybe, rather, evidence that god actually loves us. I guess it’s even a little like Billie Holiday - just so good it doesn't even fucking matter. 

Everyone on the planet must know about what must have been, without contest, the best nightlife establishments ever to do business in the United States - tea pads. Essentially cannabis speakeasies, they were mostly couches and low lighting accompanied by some form of entertainment - a Victrola, a band, maybe even a rented nickelodeon where customers could land to comfortably buy and smoke “tea”. Some were elegant, some likely not as much, but in every major city from New Orleans to New York, apartment dens were clouding with smoke and incense every night.

With cannabis effectively outlawed in 1937, people who preferred flower to booze had to quietly invent a way to circumvent the overreaching arm of the government. The remarkably American response of these connoisseurs was to set up their own private businesses. Ok, very private businesses. The clubs were indeed hidden, isolated from cops, authorities, and all other square-like persons, while everyone else from the janitor to the landlord were in on the verboten vending afoot on premise.  Allegedly, there were over 500 of these hideouts in just Harlem alone, indicating the popularity and demand for a location to consume cannabis with some company and style. Much like in the engagement of having actual tea, people come together to consume, but it's more for social well-being and not just survival in the corporeal sense. 

Unfortunately, we don’t know a great deal about tea pads. Like the industry itself, its history is disguised amongst the mundane, deleted for fear of the law, or just flat out unmentioned. Much of what we do know about tea pads comes from only a few sources - club busts that made the papers, officiated findings from The LaGuardia Committee, and an almost enthusiastic article from a 1938 edition of The New Yorker. The busts, usually for serving something more illegal than cannabis, have to be interpreted with the ongoing rise of yellow-journalism and the intense fear of anything foreign or intoxicating at that time. Associating cannabis with crime is helpful to prohibitionists’ purposes like Anslinger’s, but even at the time, such reports were hard to believe and contrary to the already firmly established medical benefits of the plant. So the New York Academy of Medicine decided to investigate.

They established The LaGuardia Committee, meant to settle the score between contradicting conclusions of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission and claims made by the U.S. Treasury department along with our villain, Harry Anslinger. In the end, The LaGuardia results supported the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission more than ol’ Howey’s fictional assertions. As to be expected, cannabis was discovered to have medical potential and posed no obvious threat to society . It was found not to be non-addictive and less destructive than alcohol and opium. There weren’t massive crime syndicates to chase down who were funded by the illegal sale of cannabis as there had been with alcohol. Kids were not affected, it was not found in schools or a problem among the youth. Cannabis was more-less a non-issue. 

We also know that cannabis was sold as cigarettes called stix, gages, muggles, or tea available in three different qualities. Sass-Frass was the lowest quality, generally a small homegrow from the window sill of a big city. Then there was "Gungeon" from Africa, which held up the other end of the spectrum as the most potent and highest quality flower available. A top drawer imported pre-roll would cost about 1 dollar retail in 1938. The most common smoke, however, was distributed as “mezzrole”, after the great pro-cannabis and anti-racism jazz musician, Mezz Mezzrow, someone definitely worth reading about. The average cost of a mid shelf like this in the 30’s was about 25 cents a j.

Of course, cannabis and jazz go way back -  Armstrong, Calloway, Fats Waller, and more were all part of the “Vipers”, as they were called for the hissing sound they made when smoking. But these musicians were truly brilliant. Beyond inventing some of the most important music in history, they also realized that alcohol was not a sustainable way to perform all night every night. Cannabis was. It dismissed fatigue, invited inspiration, yielded no hangover, provided better thoughts, and was about half the cost of alcohol during that time. I would assume jazz clubs were tea pads as much as tea pads were jazz clubs.

Cab Calloway doin’ it right

Luckily enough, we do have a first hand report from the March 12th edition of the New Yorker in an article titled “Tea for a Viper”, where W.E. Farbstein delivers his full account of a night at a Harlem tea pad. In all, Farbstein sounds almost impressed and nearly intrigued at his experience but never quite topples over into full on unfettered amusement like the other guests that night. This particular pad was owned and operated by someone they call “Chappy”, where customers could come to recline or dance while being served weed and wine until the sun came up. Reefers, or stix, were sold as double wrapped, hand-made cannabis cigarettes that were typically shorter and slimmer than tobacco cigarettes of the time. 10 cents if purchased to go and 15 cents to use the space and be served wine and whatever else. 

The reporter mentions that Chappy’s spot is one of four in the building, and even alleges that there were more tea pads in 1938 than there were ever speakeasies in town. If 500 tea pads were in operation in 1.4 square miles, these businesses were on almost every block, probably more that just never got found out. However popular, these pads were still exclusive. It took Farbstein nearly two weeks of “dickering” to get access himself. 

Thankfully he did get in and this article exists for us today because Farbstein’s evening at Chappy’s is full of alluring detail, not only about how the club looked, but who the patrons were and how the business was operated. It's a nearly century old glimpse into the nuts and bolts of a thriving underground cannabis culture no one was ever supposed to know about. Since so much of our lineage is underground and hidden from view, it's nice to feel like there is a tradition to lean back on, some familiar string between what we feel and what those behind us felt. It's comforting to at least have some concept of who’s shoulders we’re smoking on. 

Chappy’s main parlor held about 20 customers and there were more private group rooms also available. There is a lot of giggling and dancing mentioned, but Farbstein makes special note that none of it is as loud as a typical nightlife spot, and no one gets too out of hand before the other guests quell them back from the ledge. Chappy’s establishment doesn’t serve hard liquor as it doesn’t mix as well as wine does and he doesn’t “pour no trouble” like other pads do. Farbstein comments on the varying tolerances of different customers, some needing three or four joints to get where they want to be, as well as Chappy’s mentioning of a blues singer who smokes 15 stix in just four hours, but “she’s unusual”. I’d like to meet her. 

When a customer is ready to leave, Chappy serves them milk to help clear their head. A strange touch, but I kind of get it. As a rule, no one leaves until they are on their feet enough to cross the street safely. Farbstein stays through the night until the sun rises as people talk, laugh, and dance in everchanging groups and pairs. Around 5 am he likens the atmosphere of Chappy’s tea pad to a Turkish bath and takes his leave to write the only thing from 1938 to color a modern reader green with envy. 

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of things I like about now and I’ll never say I want to travel back in time - too problematic. But flat out, we’ll never get to experience a night exactly like this one at Chappy’s. Ya know, when ya had to get out there and get your culture organically the old-fashion way, analog style, before the never ending digital conveyor force fed us the one size fits none homogeneity, mass reduction religion, big-screen b.s. of today. Even now it seems more real to me than a contemporary night out anywhere. Swing dancing in some New York City apartment all night. Hanging out with different jazz musicians and other cannabis aficionados. People using the word “gyve” in earnest. Someone offering me a glass of milk and wishing me well before I leave. It just seems so much better than any other night and town and yet, strikingly similar to the best night’s I’ve already had. 

So. Indulge me. 

NYC, 1938

It’s 1938, firmly New Deal era, months from the Munich Agreement - the mafia, gypsy jazz, and infant polio are big topics. You’re working class, and have a job in construction or maybe a factory somewhere. Alcohol is back on the menu. Women have been released out of the home and into the workforce by dire necessity alone - The First World War, The Dust Bowl, and The Great Depression, along with greater international tensions looming. Children under 16 are finally discouraged from starting employment and to stay in school instead. Hitler’s marching into Austria and you’ve got 9 more hours on the clock mounting tires for Henry Ford. 

Now, how’s a joint sound? You punch the time clock and catch the first bit of moving air you’ve had since the morning. Stumble off the streets and into your flat to change clothes and eat if there is food. Then a hike at dusk through a much younger urban America all the way to the address you memorized from a friend on the line. You give the predetermined code, knock, or signal and gain entry to a very average dwelling. Two large men stand beside heavy sliding oak doors while an older woman is counting money and making notes. You can hear music and laughing and something smells intoxicating. 

You pass the bouncers inspection and walk into the plumes. Landing in a comfortably funky daybed you look around and see people of every variety, all under one roof for one reason: enjoying themselves. Everyone seems to be very well and it's starting to rub off on you already. Someone takes your order and returns with a cup of tea and two stix. One for now and one for bed - at least, that's what you tell yourself. Before your own j is even lit, someone is passing you theirs. You’re not rude, so you partake politely and join their conversation about the music, the machines, and the life that is changing so much around you every day. 

The joint finishes and so you light the one you meant to light half an hour ago. It passes around the circle, which changes in size and variety and sound as much the music does. You meet a traveler from Europe who speaks of places you’d have never known otherwise and how much they miss their mother’s cooking. You dance with someone, then another, and then a whole group until you collapse into a couch. An art student explains the science of the photograph and how realism is about to give way to something much less concrete. You meet a neighbor you didn’t know you had. An older gentleman has the best worst jokes you’ve ever heard and you’re just praying to remember one. You laugh so long you forget why exactly you’re laughing, hilariously summoning another fit.  

Finally, as the sun begins to show, you exit the venue with new friends, new ideas, and maybe even a bit of a new spirit. Your face and stomach are sore from laughing so much, but you’re still smiling. Your feet are light despite, and without weariness you sleep like a rock. The morning comes without any ill after-effects and you laugh at one of the old man’s jokes while you’re getting dressed. Entirely vile, no? 

We can find explanations why it has been useful to certain hateful purposes that cannabis be illegal and kept from us. But what cannot be discerned is why anyone should be denied this simple and very human indulgence - company, camaraderie, community - however one can describe the distinct closeness engendered by cannabis. This sentiment is built into the ritual as much as it is the effects and the culture. All rolled smokables in group settings require the traditional “puff, puff, pass”. When using another vessel, like a bowl or bong, the vessel is also shared. This delivery method makes for an entirely individual yet simultaneously communal ingestion experience. We’re breaking bread, not so dissimilar from a Last Supper or even last Thanksgiving. There is the individual in action undergoing their own rites in their own way, but there is also a unification in partaking, signaled by the neighborly gesture of sharing; consuming your share and then passing on the rest. What a concept. 

Beyond just the choreography are the not-so-subtle effects. Like waves spilling onto a beach, just-not-quite overwhelming sensations of ease flow through the body, cancelling out the static and helping us send and receive amongst ourselves with better connection. There’s a type of seductive relaxation into our vulnerabilities and eccentricities which make us more distinct from, but also more magnetic towards one another. There’s a lightness in the mind that yields some mental elasticity and agility, or depending on the person or the day, the repose of looking out over a mountain top for the first time, imbued with the electrifying awe of fresh perspective. It's a fullness and a freedom, like being lit up internally by the expanse itself. 

People don’t fight in the circle, and it's my best guess they weren’t fighting in the tea pads much, either. Lies, lovers, and liquor can start a fight any day of the week, but tea, weed, pot - it's much more like a good dinner. Something we get around together and share for our own good. Something to be as common or as complicated as you like, inclusive to whoever wants to join. Something to look forward to, to indulge in, to be a part of, to remember, to give, to make special, to provide, to enrich - all for the sake of being well in our bodies, our minds, and the rest of our lives. 

80 some odd years after the fact, I’m writing this as people are expeditiously returning to bars and restaurants with overflowing merriment in a post-pandemic world. It’s been nice to see some friends finally and have “tea”, but I’m hopeful to see tea pads re-invented for the future. This is already happening to some degree with smoke lounges and dab bars popping up but it’s only the beginning. Cannabis gaining brick and mortar presence with dispensaries is a giant leap for normalization, but forcing customers consume only in the privacy of their own home perpetuates a stigma and keeps cannabis inaccessible to some still. I think after a dinner and drinks on a rooftop bar, I should be able to order a joint, or at least provide my own to smoke while the sun sets. 

We still live in a world where cannabis is something you can get, even go buy legally at a store, and it can still get you into trouble. In fact, it’s gotten a lot of people in trouble. A lot of people, disproportionately not white people, who get in trouble for accessing this type of wellness. For starting these types of businesses. For having a universal human appetite for goodness. For procuring or producing a staple of our mental, physical, and spiritual nutrition. For just letting their soul get a little sunlight while they got a minute.  

This is what we mean when we say “no one belongs in jail for weed”. This is what you’re witnessing when you see people smoking together, breaking bread like people have since the nomads. This is what countless lives and government resources have tried to either withhold from or used to criminalize good hard working people in this country for too long. It must end now. Every human deserves to be as well as they can be. 

I hope this felt more like being inside of the circle than out of it. Stoners past and present know what I’m getting at all to well - cannabis is community. I hope the next time you’re offered a bit of higher hospitality, it doesn’t feel new or strange - just human. No judgment, just pass it along (to the left) if you’re not down, and remember - you’re always invited, we’re glad to have you, and please stay as long as you like.