PA Local History: Region's first marijuana arrests followed tougher laws in 1930s

States across the nation — including Pennsylvania — are experimenting with relaxing marijuana laws, with some bringing to an end the long fight to outlaw its use.

That fight gained momentum in the 1930s. An article published in The Scranton Times on June 21, 1934, had the headline “State starts drive on Mexican narcotic weed.” Marijuana, which the article called a narcotic that “incites its users to crimes of perversion and violence and is an important factor in promoting industrial unrest,” had become “the target of an intensive enforcement drive by the state Department of Health.”

Using a law enacted the previous September, the Health Department had made 39 arrests in May and June for marijuana trafficking, according to Harold V. Smith, chief of the department’s narcotics division.

At the time, Mr. Smith told reporters that “peddling of the narcotic weed centered in the Western Pennsylvania industrial sector but occasionally...

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