THE LAGUARDIA REPORT : THE MARIHUANA PROBLEM IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK: SOCIOLOGICAL, MEDICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PHARMACOLOGICAL STUDIES

San Francisco, CA: Reprint by LeMar, Undated [196?]. Staplebound Pamphlet. Very Good. Small Quarto, 10 in. x 8 in., pp. xii, 148. Beige cardstock covers wth title and marijuana leaf design to front. Stapled spine, with green cloth tape wrapped around spine and over staples. Light rubbing and soiling to covers. Thumbing to corners. Clean interior. Foreward by F.H. LaGuardia, Mayor of New York City (1934-46); originally published in Lancaster PA: Jaques Cattell Press (1944). This reprint of 196? lacks pages 149-220 of the original report. (OLCC Identifier: 17929500)

This reprint is by "LeMar", the earliest marijuana legalization advocacy organization. It was founded in 1964 and called LeMar (for Legalize Marijuana). LeMar was started by beat poet Allen Ginsberg who with Jack Kerouac and William Burrows formed the core of what became known as the "beat generation", and later Fugs member Ed Sanders (frequently credited with providing a bridge between the beat and hippie generations).  LeMar was based in New York City's Lower East Side and its members began to protest marijuana prohibition. (from NORML)

The LaGuardia Committee, appointed in 1939 by New York's mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, produced the first credible study of cannabis use in the USA. The committee had a report prepared by the New York Academy of Medicine, whose findings were made public in 1944, and which were immediately condemned by Harry J Anslinger for being "unscientific". LaGuardia had been a Congressman at the time of a 1933 report done by the US Army in the Panama Canal Zone, which had concluded that cannabis was relatively harmless and "played very little part, if any, in problems of delinquency and crime". In the foreword to his committee's report, The Marihuana Problem in the City of New York, LaGuardia stated that "the sociological, psychological, and medical ills commonly attributed to marihuana have been found to be exaggerated insofar as the City of New York is concerned". The investigative studies were carried out by doctors and psychologists, with the police assisting in the sociological study. (from Richard Gregory)

Abstract for this published study:
Specialists, appointed in 1938 by the mayor of New York City, here report the results obtained from socioecological, general medical, neuropsychiatric, pharmacological (especially organic chemistry and bio-assay phases), and psychological studies of marihuana. The last-named section employed clinical methods as applied (before-, during-, and after-drug periods) under hospital conditions to 77 volunteer penitentiary inmates, 48 of whom had earlier been habitual users. Drug administration was either by smoking or in extract form by mouth. Selected and illustrative findings follow: (1) ataxia, tremors, and slowed complex reaction times are present during period of drug's effect; (2) marihuana is not a specific sex stimulant; (3) no direct relationship exists between drug ingestion and crimes of violence; (4) a slight, temporary, deleterious effect upon accuracy and speed of mental work and learning is revealed with the greatest decrement in problems involving number concepts; (5) basic personality structures remain unchanged, although the subject, while drugged, is euphoric, more talkative, ideationally self-confident, disinhibited, less aggressive in action; (6) neither true addiction nor tolerance is apparent; (7) sex differences are negligible. Possible therapeutic value of marihuana is considered.