MR. HARNEY. That also depends too on the cost of the drug and the amount of his income. Addicts can get along--during the war we had lots of them who had needle habits. Their intake was probably one-fourth grain or half a grain a day of actual narcotic. The addict might develop until he gets as high as 20, 30, or 40 grains a day, considered a lethal dose for a non-initiated person. They build up resistance power. They get hoggish.
CONGRESSMAN DAVIS. What is that term?
MR. HARNEY. Use a lot of the drug. In days when drugs were freely available that was one reason for institution of cocaine. A man would stupefy himself with narcotics and with cocaine he would get an extra thrill and get out of it and brighten up and keep from going to sleep. The addict may spend $5 or $10 a day in addition to other expenses, and not being able, or disposed to work, usually becomes a thief. He can be a prowler or he might be a pickpocket. Some addicts are very good burglars. He might be a stick-up-man, not often.
A woman will be a prostitute or shoplifter. A man might be a panderer. Many addicts buy in decks, 8 ounces or 2 or 3 ounces. The preaddict would use a few grains. It differs in different localities.
MR. DAVIS. Does the price differ?
MR. HARNEY. Expressed in terms of actual narcotic content for the preaddict it may be $2 or $3 a grain.
MR. FISCHBACH. Mr. Harney, is it your point that an individual otherwise law abiding necessarily turns to petty crime in order to support the addiction?
MR. HARNEY. I would not say necessarily, but it is often apparent. I want to emphasize that addiction, particularly in the past, has been much among the criminal element. A man was down in a dangerous environment before he became addicted; he had to get in that sort of association in contrast to the casual person who might become an addict from medical reasons, but the ordinary addict becomes so by association.
MR. FISCHBACH. Then your point is there is an epidemic effect to it?
MR. HARNEY. We have a rather unusual and alarming situation which developed since the war. It does not quite follow the pattern I set out. My theory used to be that most addicts were old enough to be associated with criminals and get into the underworld with addicts before they themselves became addicts. Today, in certain localities, we have young people, some minors, and the pattern seems to be experimentation in marijuana first. That loses its thrill and those persons become addicts to heroin. Sometimes cocaine comes into the picture.
MR. DAVIS. Is marijuana used as a starter and later other narcotics are used?
MR. HARNEY. I would not say always, but frequently. Young people get into the marijuana atmosphere and you have a field for the cocaine and heroin addicts.
MR. DAVIS. Are they induced to begin with marijuana by purveyors of heroin, cocaine, morphine, and other drugs, to lead them into addiction?
MR. HARNEY. That pattern follows. Later dealers sell all three commodities. Youngsters come into the marijuana smoking atmosphere and soon there is no kick in it, and someone will tell them, “Try this.”
MR. FISCHBACH. Now who is that person?
MR. HARNEY. The peddler, or a cocaine addict, or a heroin addict.
MR. FISCHBACH. I would like to direct the attention of the committee to the case of Charles M. Roberts, alias Jim Yellow, and ask if that case presents some problems which your Bureau experienced in the District with regard to the enforcement of the narcotics law. Present the facts in the case of Jim Roberts, what kind of a person he was, how he lived, what quantity of drugs he had when taken into custody.
MR. HARNEY. Jim Roberts had two convictions for violation of the Federal narcotics laws. He had convictions for other crimes, including charges of assault. We used an agent in an undercover capacity. Roberts lived in a luxuriously furnished apartment. Some of these figures I cite are on his own statement and probably you will allow for bragging, but he had a beautifully carved television set which he claimed cost him a couple thousand dollars, and he drove a new Cadillac. While the officers were in his presence money was handed to him in a paper grocery bag. Roberts referred to a hatchet and said he was waiting to christen it in blood. When the car was seized the hatchet was under the seat of the car. Roberts’ style of living represents big-shot narcotic dealers. It makes a tremendous impression on others who might think of entering the racket.
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In addition to users of standard narcotics, many in Washington go in for esoteric kicks. A growing fad in the Negro district is to inhale incense with marijuana added.
Barbiturates are sold without prescription, because the D.C. law has no teeth in it. Some become habituated to these drugs and, instead of being put to sleep by them, get all the wallop out of them that others get from opium. Many drug stores sell nembutals over the counter for 25 cents each. Nembutals are the prostitutes’ favorite. Among initiates they are known as goof balls, or nemies. They grew popular during World War II, when there was a scarcity of narcotics. Most who prefer goof balls to marijuana usually end up on morphine, heroin or cocaine.
Evelyn Walsh McLean’s daughter, who was married to Senator Reynolds, died from an overdose of goof balls.
As elsewhere, reefers are the real menace. This product of the hemp plant is easily available, can be grown anywhere, is cheap, and in some circles is in good repute. There is no such thing as an innocent reefer smoker. Sooner or later, anyone on “muggles” must become a law-breaker to some degree. Peddlers put their heads together, know how badly any customer is hooked. Then they jack up prices to beyond what most people can pay honestly.
All weed-heads are cop-haters. Even in reasonably normal condition they carry a fierce resentment against conventional forces of society.
Reefer smoking is not habitual in the sense that the addict suffers “withdrawal” symptoms, as when he is taken off other stuff. But neither is cocaine habit-forming in that sense. Both work on the emotions. Their use causes a physiological change in the brain. The reefer smoker who gives the stuff up does not turn violently ill. But he doesn’t give it up. He likes its effect and needs its lift to give him courage.
Sooner or later, all reefer smokers go on to cocaine, because the effect is the same as from reefers, a hundredfold. When the bang of the hemp wears off, cocaine is the only thing that can take its place. And because cocaine is so expensive, one must become a criminal to afford its use. And the cocaine gives one the courage to be a criminal.
The subject of tea-hounds brings us quite naturally to our next chapter, juvenile delinquency, in which stimulants are a large factor.
18. THE YOUNG IN HEART
Juvenile delinquency as a topic has become a bromide. You’d think there was little left to add. But here we found not only more of it, but conditions behind it were frequently the exact opposite of those obtaining in other populous cities.
It is generally accepted as beyond dispute that youngsters go wrong because of poverty, congestion, lack of play-space, exposure to the tenement atmosphere, the saloon and miserable home life. But Washington, with its top average of prosperity, nothing that could rightfully be called slums, no tenements and no out-and-out saloons, has a more alarming per capita of teen-age law-breakers than New York, Chicago, Detroit or Kansas City.
Remarkable, moreover, is the discovery that white youth is more delinquent proportionately to the total of all criminals of their race than Negro youth. Over all, however, more colored children break laws than whites. A study of records, talks with social workers and personal prying into many cases make it evident that more young people go wrong because of overprivilege than underprivilege.
Most kids who get into trouble are well fed, over the height and weight scientifically charted for their age, are well dressed, and have superior intelligence quotients. We checked on one, 15 years old, five feet nine inches tall, weighing 140 pounds, the son of a government official who earns $12,000 a year. He confessed to more than 100 larcenies, burglaries and purse-snatches, and he had escaped from two postal inspectors who arrested him for looting mail-boxes, searching for government checks on which he intended to forge endorsements. He and a 12-year-old accomplice had broken into 37 houses in the NW area in 20 months and had robbed scores of cars. He said:
“Everybody here is on the make. We want money, too.”
Of 2,412 arrests of white males for Part 1 offenses, serious crimes including homicide, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny, auto-theft and aggravated assault, 564, almost 25 per cent, were committed by boys 15 and under; 1,897 of the 2,412, or 75 per cent, were committed by boys 20 or under.
The figures for Negroes are the reverse. There adults are in the preponderant majority. During the time when white males of all ages committed the 2,412 specific offenses for which they were arrested, 7,729 Negroes were apprehended. Of this large number, only 1,702 of the crimes were committed by Negro boys 15 and under; of these the number charged to males 20 years and under was 3,477, considerably less than half, whereas white juveniles rolled up 75 per cent of the total for their race.