Summary of Benjamin T. Smith's The Dope

By IRB Media

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#1 The first drug panic in Mexico was in 1908, when the police raided the warehouse of José Del Moral, a marijuana wholesaler, and found thousands of marijuana cigarettes. The newspapers reacted with full-blown hysteria, calling marijuana the poison of the lower classes.

#2 The first Mexican drug panic was in 1838, when newspapers reported that students were using marijuana to get high. Mexicans had been using the drug’s healing properties for well over a hundred years, but in the towns and cities, wholesalers like Del Moral usually sold the narcotic to herbolarias or traditional healers.

#3 The roots of the Mexican marijuana panic lay in the type of people who used it. By the 1890s, the ruling dictator Porfirio Díaz was trying to modernize Mexico, but there was no room for an embarrassing lumpen proletariat of Indian healers, drunken soldiers, and stoned criminals.

#4 Doctors argued that marijuana caused hallucinations, temporary insanity, and, if smoked for long enough, full-blown dementia. They also attacked the principal vendors of the drug: the herbolarias.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jul 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822543898

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Insights on Benjamin T. Smith's The Dope

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The first drug panic in Mexico was in 1908, when the police raided the warehouse of José Del Moral, a marijuana wholesaler, and found thousands of marijuana cigarettes. The newspapers reacted with full-blown hysteria, calling marijuana the poison of the lower classes.

#2

The first Mexican drug panic was in 1838, when newspapers reported that students were using marijuana to get high. Mexicans had been using the drug’s healing properties for well over a hundred years, but in the towns and cities, wholesalers like Del Moral usually sold the narcotic to herbolarias or traditional healers.

#3

The roots of the Mexican marijuana panic lay in the type of people who used it. By the 1890s, the ruling dictator Porfirio Díaz was trying to modernize Mexico, but there was no room for an embarrassing lumpen proletariat of Indian healers, drunken soldiers, and stoned criminals.

#4

Doctors argued that marijuana caused hallucinations, temporary insanity, and, if smoked for long enough, full-blown dementia. They also attacked the principal vendors of the drug: the herbolarias.

#5

The Mexican Revolution, which took place from 1910 to 1920, was the result of masses of Mexicans rising up against their dictator. It was a boon for the booze business, as visitors to camp hide firewater in their sausages and mezcal in their underskirts.

#6

The Mexican Revolution, which took place in 1910, was a transformative event that changed Mexico forever. It was a struggle between the old ruling class and the new revolutionary class. The new Constitution of 1917 introduced a bill of workers’ rights that was even more radical than the Russian Bolsheviks.

#7

The marijuana market in Mexico City grew quickly, and with it came new vendors. Market healers now competed with street dealers, newspaper vendors, and sandwich sellers. They bought the weed wholesale, then rolled cigarettes for sale at around 10–20 centavos each.

#8

The language surrounding marijuana was ostentatiously jokey and imaginative. It was this wordplay that moved marijuana culture into music hall theater, which was as much a part of the Revolution as campfire songs or Diego Rivera murals.

#9

The meaning of marijuana changed as it was used by the Mexican Revolution’s artists and writers. It became a symbol of laughing at the solemn, mocking the pompous, and ridiculing the pious.

#10

While the capital’s residents enjoyed smoking and partying, the Mexican authorities introduced a series of punitive laws against marijuana. In 1920, the government banned the cultivation and commerce of all products that degenerate the race.

#11

The Mexican government began to crack down on marijuana in the 1920s. In 1925, they seized over 4 tons of marijuana in the capital alone. Two years later, they confiscated 27 tons.

#12

Mexico’s first drug-trafficking ring was investigated by secret