1938 Marihuana Conference, Part 3

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1938 Marihuana Conference

Part 3

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COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: In many cases, particularly around Ohio, the officers are called in cases of disturbance and they find a Marihuana user with some stuff on him.

DR. MUNCH: A chap I talked to told me that the use of gin came in very particularly with the use of a reefer. Is that true with opium? Do Marihuana users tend to take gin along with smoking of the reefer?

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: I do not know about that. We have not run into that.

DR. MUNCH: The point I am asking could be that the alcohol there would tend to increase the solubility of any material that has been swallowed, and, therefore, they would get greater effect under such conditions than if they. had not taken the alcohol.

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DR. MATCHETT One of the Internal Revenue officials, formerly in Texas, has told us that down there persons use alcohol and Marihuana together, and where they were very wild it took four or five officers to bring a man in. He attributed that to the combined effect rather than the effect of either one.

MR. SMITH: Still, there is a good deal of fancy on the part of some officers, whose experience with Marihuana is new. I have had some experience with one or two sheriffs. I know of one who recently employed the services of two other sheriffs and four deputy sheriffs to secure the arrest of a farmer on a farm where the material was growing. Any youngster, 18 or 19 years old, could have gone there and done it alone. This was because of the first experience of those officers with it. I think the men were anxious to capitalize on the possible publicity which might attend the arrest. So that sometimes you run up against that problem, where they report that it is necessary for a number of them to subdue an individual. That may be an effort to make it appear a more serious type of crime. So that I think we have to put our tongues in our

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cheeks as to this, also.

DR. MATCHETT: This story came from Deputy Commissioner Berkshire, of the Alcohol Tax Unit.

MR. SMITH: We did have in White Plains this additional situation: The fact appeared there that with children of high school age with good financial and social background, that two of those individuals, who were in difficulties there, stated that the smoking of reefers had become a part of the initiation in certain clubs or school fraternities.

That probably is a little bit unusual, as an incident, but that has been definitely reported in that vicinity.

DR. WRIGHT: Where was that?

MR. SMITH: That was in White Plains, New York.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: Did you not arrest a youngster sixteen years old for selling?

Mr.. SMITH: Yes, sir. There were two youngsters of excellent background, and fine social connections. That was probably a larger factor, as compared to anything else, I think, and that was that they probably had too much financial and social backing. That may be more true in that particular county than in other counties in that State.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: You mentioned a case of a

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young man using Marihuana and heroin.

MR. WITH: Yes, sir. That was in New York City. COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: What had he used first, do you know?

MR. SMITH: I do not know. That, I extracted from the Police Department records last Tuesday, but I did .not have time to go back and get the individual cards, and I doubt very much whether the information which appears in the police cards will show that.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: We have not run into many peddlers of heroin who also handle Marihuana, and we have not run into many users of Marihuana who are also heroin users. However, as Dr. Bouquet points out, in Tunis there is a tendency to switch from Marihuana to heroin. Have you run into any cases like that, Doctor?

DR. BROMBERG: I have seen many drug addicts, who have, once or twice, they say, tried Marihuana, and have dropped it, because it was not strong enough. Most true addicts start with heroin or opium.

MR. SMITH: Do you not think that that might be more the association with individuals than the association with the drug?

DR. BROMBERG: Perhaps. And there is one other fact, and that is that alcohol and Marihuana have a more potent

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effect than alcohol alone. I had a case where a man started smoking Marihuana. The seller introduced heroin, he noticed the effect, and he became a user, but, of course, that was not through any choice.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: As to this question of using alcohol with Marihuana, I recall a case in Indiana where a man was arrested who had an infusion of the drug in alcohol. How do they do that? Drink it and smoke a cigarette?

DR. BROMBERG: No. I think it is a sociological matter. He uses the gin with it, or otherwise, and it depends on the amount of money and the locality, and they smoke, and it represents having some fun, the effect which they look for.

MR. WOLLNER: I wonder how much can be deduced from the present figures in the matter of crime, in view of the fact that these figures represent a static picture whereas the entire Marihuana picture, so far as I know, is on an up-curve. Have you noticed any tendencies that are not static over a period of years Dr. Bromberg?

DR. BROMBERG: That is a very good question, because the alcohol thing depends on the relationship between the two.

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But I have been in contact with the court for about five years, and the number of Marihuana peddlers has not increased, but the number of Marihuana users we do not know about.

MR. WOLLNER: In what order, would you say?

DR. BROMBERG: It is impossible to say. These are only approximations, I admit. It all depends on the police activities. They make a drive, and the figures go up. They forget about it, and there are no figures.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: Are there any questions as to this phase of the problem? I must say that we are still sort of groping as to a lot of those questions.

DR. MUNCH: May I intrude there, just as a matter of difference in mind, as to any sort of figure representing the total number of users of Marihuana? I mean, has anybody said anything as to the number of heroine users being the same as the opium addicts, or less or more, or as to the Marihuana?

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: It is impossible to say. The eradication of 16,000 acres of Marihuana during the past year means nothing as to numbers of users. We are sure it was never meant for the illicit traffic. Probably

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15,000 of the 16,000 acres was wild growth.

DR. BROMBERG: You mean additional acreage than that which had humans on it?

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: We have arrested over 1,000. The Bureau of Prisons is a little concerned about that, because it is causing a definite increase in their jails. Puerto Rico is starting to send a lot of these sellers and users to jail, which they did not do before. There has been a tremendous up-grade in apprehensions. I do not recall just what the arrests have been by states throughout the country. These are Federal arrests. State arrests are probably over that figure. I should say that the 16,000 acres represent only a drop in the bucket, because I know in one State there are 300,000 acres of the wild growth. We have a job here on eradication that is just stupendous. Fortunately, a lot of this acreage that is discovered we hear about through people who do not tell anybody else about it. The illicit trafficker is looking for growth. I cannot understand why the New York trafficker had to go out to Minnesota and strip some of those hemp fields.

MR. SMITH: We had two instances where the material was either reported to be, or actually was, of western

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growth, and they were getting a higher price than was paid apparently for New York grown. Whether that was bona fide, as to the material from New York State, or as to the material from Minnesota, I do not know, or whether it was a question of price boosting as to the New York sales prices, we still do not know.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: I think within a couple of blocks from where Dr. Munch lives you can walk into as much [as] fifty acres that has not been destroyed.

DR. MUNCH: They went over about 300 acres of that this year and ran out of C.C.C. men and then stopped.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: That is a tremendous problem with us. We have used many of the agencies of the Government, the W.P.A. has helped, and other agencies. We have discouraged all of these well-meaning people throughout the country who want to use Boy Scouts in the removal of’ Marihuana.

DR. MUNCH: We have had considerable cooperation through Admiral Foote, and the Automobile Vehicle Department of our State.

DR. WRIGHT: May I ask Dr. Bromberg whether or not his contacts with these patients show whether or not there is any indication of whether these cigarettes used were tobacco which had been adulterated with Marihuana?

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DR. BROMBERG: My source of information is the Police Department, and the cigarettes that they have gathered up are filled definitely with Marihuana, and no other compound.

MR. SMITH: I would like to ask Dr. Bromberg, or anybody else who has had experience as to the likelihood of development of perversion. Has anybody had any experience on that?

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: Dr. Kolb, have you run into anything on that?

DR. KOLB: No, sir.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: How many of these users have you in Lexington?

DR. KOLB: There are about one hundred patients who have used it occasionally, but they are mostly opium and heroin users. About twenty-five have used nothing but Marihuana alone. But, just as Dr. Bromberg has stated they use it occasionally, just to see if it is another drug that they need.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: Are these Marihuana users, as such, a younger group than your opium smokers?

DR. KOLB: Most of the time.

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For instance, we had a man from Puerto Rico, about fifty years old, who had been a judge, and who said it was a political plot that he should get four years. I do not know how politics came into it. He said, “Well, they are trying to get rid of me.”
He never had any criminal record. That seemed to be a rather strong sentence for users.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: We have noticed the tendency in Puerto Rico, even with heroin users, to give them five years for use only.

DR. KOLB: Yes, they give them a very severe sentence. The district attorney wrote me and wanted to take it up with judge Cooper. I told him that, from the stand-point of rehabilitation, it was a rather harmful matter to put a man in prison for four years. He is liable to learn a lot of things in prison and then go out and hate society and use them against society. It is my idea that users should get one year, and especially the fellow who does not have a criminal record.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: I do not think the courts here are being too severe.

DR. KOLB’ No, they are not.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: They are giving the seller

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a great deal more than the user, on the average.

DR. KOLB: Of course.

MR. WOLLNER: What does your investigation represent as to these twenty-five users of Marihuana alone, as compared to those who use other drugs other than Marihuana?

DR. KOLB: Of course, we get them after they have stopped using the drug, and after they have escaped the acute effects of the drugs, There is only one psychiatric case, which we are not quite sure of, that has been due to using the Marihuana drug.

MR. WOLLNER: I am going to ask an awfully unfair question. What percentage of these people would have been in jail if they had not smoked Marihuana?

DR. KOLB: Well, very few of them.

MR. WOLLNER: They would hot have been in jail?

DR. KOLB: That applies to a great many users of drugs. A great many of them have done other things, particularly thievery, or other slippery types of work.

MR. WOLLNER: Are they slightly impaired?

DR. KOLB: They are slightly impaired, partly due to the psychiatric condition, and to the distress of needing the drug.

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There are very few violent types of crime with the opium addict. Our experience with the Marihuana addicts is not enough to give an answer. I rather think that with the alcoholic-Marihuana user, that he would become a type of drug addict that would cause many crimes.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: There was a case in Canada, Mr. Lancaster, there a Marihuana user had withdrawal symptoms similar to those of an opium user.

MR. LANCASTER: Yes, sir. That was the boy who was picked up and had used Marihuana for a long time. He was out of work, had no continual employment. He tried to smoke Marihuana, rather liked it, and after several months of usage, he was jailed, and kept there for about a week. His case was remanded, and he reported feeling tingling pains and needles in the hands and feet, and he was greatly upset and pleaded for a narcotic again. He was suffering with an imparity of that order. I do not think it was tried to see whether giving him Marihuana should relieve that case or not. The general impression is that there is no great suffering, and if they are relieved from it after the first five days, naturally they want it again, but they do

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not break down if they do not get it.

MR. WOLLNER: Dr. Bromberg, have you come across any occasion of drinking Marihuana in the form of tea extract, or something of that sort?

DR. BROMBERG: No.

MR. SMITH: Is there any evidence of it being used in Canada? On any convictions, have you had any evidence of it ?

MR. LANCASTER: Not there, no. No, sir, so far there have been no samples submitted to us as yet.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: None that I know of. But I understand they do mix them, mix it with sweets, in northern Africa.

MR. SMITH: There have been one or two reports that they do mix it in California.

MR. WOLLNER: For your ears, I can tell you, Mr. Smith, that all of the chemists are sitting on the edge of their seats, worrying about that happening

MR. SMITH: And there is a question as to the toxic effects which could be present.

MR. WOLLNER: And there may not be any way in which we can examine it. We are hoping that they do not guess that gasoline will extract it.

DR. MATCHETT: Is it true that that is a common form

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in the Far East?

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: No, not in The Far East, but in the Near East.

DR. MATCHETT: In the Near East, yes.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: We seem to have covered the sociological phases, so far as we are able to and I am going to turn the choir over, at this point, to Dr. Wollner, who will proceed with the chemical phases. This is where most of the spade work has got to be done, anyway.

STATEMENT OF MR.. H. J. WOLLNER, CONSULTING CHEMIST, TREASURY DEPARTMENT

MR. WOLLNER: The problem is not yet resolved. We are not yet in a position to know exactly what it is we are looking for, and, within four walls, I am perfectly frank to admit that al]. the chemists I have met, who are interested in this field, are at a complete loss when asked to prophesy the character of the narcotic principle, which we are going to eventually disclose. The situation is as bad in the chemical literature as it is in all of the other phrases. I should certainly be within the reasonable bounds of correctness when I say that ninety percent of the stuff that has been written on the chemical end of Can-

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nabis is absolutely wrong, and, of the other ten percent, at least two-thirds of it is of no consequence. That ninety per cent has had, however, to be dealt with, and chemists all over the world have been interested in Cannabis, and in the past few years have spent a goodly portion of their time upsetting a lot of this shibboleth and tradition which has been set up, probably a thousand years, so as to clear the ground and to be able to proceed in a more orderly fashion.

In this work the evidence, by force of circumstance, compels us to turn to the pharmacologist for guidance.

As Dr. Loewe ably expressed before, since we have no test in the chemical laboratories for indicating the presence or absence of the narcotic principle, every bit of the exploratory work of consequence that has been engaged upon had to be paralleled with work in the field of bio-assay.

The chemical problem is so obvious that it does not require much delineation.

Chemists, enforcement administrative chemists, are interested in two things. First, and immediately, they want to know how to find and detect the presence of Cannabis sativa, or any of its products that are narcotic in character.

In other words, most enforcement officers will make

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a seizure in some form, solid or liquid, and the question asked is, “Is this Marihuana?” And no satisfactory technique for answering such a question obtains today. That does not say that in most of the cases that come before the chemists they are not in a definite position to make a definite statement, that before them the substance is definitely Cannabis sativa, but they can not do it as definitely as in the case of morphine, opium, and heroin. The second question they would like answered is, “What is the narcotic principle, or what are the narcotic principles present?” That question is not one of enforcement so much as of general administration. The Commissioner of Narcotics has the problem of deciding, at times, what regulations shall be invoked in respect to an industry or an agricultural phase of this problem. The question arises, how long shall we have to wait before the resin is decomposed, during the rotting process, for example, and the only way I would know how to answer that question is to know how long that principle will exist during that rotting exhibition. Of course, we do not know. We can not answer that question. The question arises, can recommendations be made to

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exempt the use of certain portions of the plant and certain industrial directions, as far as governmental regulation is concerned, be given by virtue of the fact that they are harmless. No statement can he made on that score. So, it becomes important, from an administrative point of view, for administrative chemists, associated with the carrying out of the Marihuana Act, to have a more competent picture of the drug, as competent as obtains at the present time in respect to the poppy and its secretion, opium, and its products, morphine, heroin, codeine, and so on. This drug, peculiarly enough, has withstood competent attack for an extensive period of time. Before the laws were passed controlling the opium picture, chemists were able to supply a fairly excellent background, against which such legislation and regulations might have been and were in fact predicated. But, in the case of Marihuana, there is no such background. It is just a fog; without question the psychiatrists and bioassayists and agricultural people know far more about Cannabis than do the chemists. So far as knowing anything about the plant, today, is concerned, all they can tell you is that such and such

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a product is not a narcotic, such and such a product is non-narcotic, and they are trying to shrink the residue further and further, but they have not touched it. Of great assistance in clarifying the issue has been the work undertaken by Dr. Blatt, in reviewing the literature. Dr. Blatt has prepared a paper consisting of a critical review of the literature on narcotics, published in the journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences on the 15th of November. I have a number of copies of the paper here, and also a chart setting forth the general character of the critique, so that a person who is a technical man can get a picture of the thing. I am going to ask that only these people who have a working knowledge of chemical symbology receive them, and we will try to get enough copies to mail them out to you later. I am going to ask Dr. Blatt if he will be so kind as to offer a picture of his survey as to the chemical constituents of Cannabis Sativa.

STATEMENT OF DR. A. H. BLATT, HOWARD UNIVERSITY.

DR. BLATT: That will not take very long, because as Mr. Wollner has said, we are only dealing with two-

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thirds of ten percent of the material. Very briefly, the story is, you can take Cannabis and extract it with one of several solvents, or combinations of solvents and obtain a physiologically active extract. The only successful technique that has been applied to that so far has been a distillation process, and through the distillation you can get out of it three substances, which I will simply name and pass on. One of them is a paraffin hydrocarbon known as nonacosane, that is, physiologically, inactive. If you do a distillation, you get a definite distillate, and all chemists who have worked with Cannabis know it as red oil. Unfortunately, it also was known as Cannabinol, and that has been the cause of much trouble. This red oil looks a good bit like a lubricating oil of a rather poor quality, a semi-solid material at room temperature. That material we will simply call narcotic-active by a physiological test. The real nasty principle about the situation is that that material behaves as if it were a chemical substance, and there have been three different formulas proposed for it. One of the formulas has Cot so far as two individuals having agreed upon it. Then the hitch comes. In about

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forty years, three English workers succeeded in preparing and isolating one pure chemical substance from this red oil. They called that Cannabinol, and the one individual substance derived from it is also called Cannabinol. For thirty years, nobody following them was ever able to get this pure Cannabinol. So, we went ahead and worked with Cannabinol, and assumed that we were working with the pure substance Then, roughly about eight years ago, the pure chemical individual, pure Cannabinol, again was secured for the second time, and apparently it can be repeated. Pure Cannabinol is the fourth chemical substance to be gotten out of Cannabis, and it is the fourth one to be lacking in narcotic activity. It is toxic, however, and it is quite possible that some of the .activity of Canna- binol, some of this complex activity that has been referred to during the morning, is due to pure Cannabinol as a chemical individual. The chemical structure of pure Cannabinol has been fairly well worked out. It is not definitely settled. We do not need to go into that There is one more thing that should be pointed out, and that is the fact that for thirty years perfectly com-

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petent chemists have taken this red oil, distilled, and worked with it as if a pure chemical. It not only gives analytical values of resin, but they are even more complex. You can carry out the chemical reactions with this. So, let us refer to red oil as the crude Cannabinol; and the chemical individual as pure Cannabinol. You can run chemical reactions. You can reduce an acetylate and the products you get out are still analyzable for the proper derivatives of crude Cannabinol. That is, where everybody has gone haywire. There is one ray of hope, and a pretty definite one, as to the confusion of a mixture which was taken to be a definite chemical substance, and that is why progress has been so slow, and that is the fact that we have no way quantitatively of following the definite reaction of the chemical principle.. The one ray of hope I mention is the fact that you can take red oil, crude Cannabinol, remove one-fourth, which is inactive as pure Cannabinol, and the residual three-fourths still retains chemical activity. There is where the work begins. That is as far as has been gotten chemically. There is just one more point here. As far as I have been able to find, and I received corroboration at noon, there not only is no correlation, or no correlation has

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been made, so far as I can find. out, between the various color reactions for Cannabis and the narcotic activity, and I was told at noon that, not only had there been none made, but it was because there definitely is none. So we can not fail to follow the activity as to this color test. I may be getting off in deep water, but that is the apparent final analysis. There is one more thing, and that will finish it up. I hope not many people will be misled by the principle that the active principle of Cannabis is Cannabinol. You will find it even there. The active fraction which you will find, which is more or less of a mixture, is called Cannabinol. You can find a chemical substance which is not active. I think that covers it.

MR. WOLLNER: I think that adds oils to the fire.

DR. MUNCH: Is there an active substance there?

MR. WOLLNER: I will take your word for it, and Bromberg’s on the basis of his research in New York It leads us pretty much to where we started. I think if all the research work done so far were dumped together by a group of chemists, or if they started out today on this investigation, that they would be exactly the same as they are now inside of six months;

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that is, all of the information which we have, which is very little, could be accumulated in six months. Recognizing that situation, the Treasury two years ago undertook to lay the basis for a competent attack on the problem. We did not know what that would consist of, but we knew sound, fundamental, reproducible information and data had to be obtained. The first thing we did was to contact the Department of Agriculture, and with their cooperation, there was planted a plot at Arlington Farms over here, last summer, and the summer before, where the plant was observed in its various stages of growth, and which furnished us all of the criteria the literature offered us in the past. As I mentioned earlier, about ninety percent of all of it was thrown out. The report of the first year’s investigation was published in the journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association. I have a number of copies here, if there are any technical men who have not soon that report. An equivalent report is being prepared at the present time on the basis of this summer’s work. We have obtained several tons of Marihuana. We have extracted or are extracting huge quantities of that mater-

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ial, in an effort to provide a satisfactory amount on the basis of which a broad attack on the problem may be predicated. Dr. Matchett is in charge of the Treasury’s own immediate attack on the problem, and I believe he has some information which he can lay before you this afternoon. Is that correct, Dr. Matchett?

STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN R. MATCHETT, TREASURY DEPARTMENT.

DR. MATCHETT: The problem is clarified a little bit by recognizing that there are two distinct phases involved, the first of which must be pretty well finished before the second can begin. First of all, there is the separation of the active principle from other material, and second, the characterization of it. Before a competent separation can be undertaken, we must be in possession of suitable assay methods. We, of course, are interested in those manifestations of Marihuana that lead to the effects, which have led in turn, to the passage of the Act We are not sure, I take it, whether the substance produces ataxia in the dog, or sleep in the mouse, or corneal(?) anesthesia in the rabbit is the same as the one in which we are interested.

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Nevertheless, something must be adopted, and by common consent, a dog assay, with all its faults, has been the method of choice. It seems obvious that these various principles, if more than one exists, will be each characterized on its own merits. In considering this phase of it, also, it must not be forgotten that any one of the effects may be combinations, and any of the effects that we are able to measure may possibly be combined effects, of which the bad effect of the drug itself may be only one. With that so disposed of, it is possible to recognize that certain characteristics of the so-called resin are fairly well defined already, although I think we must recognize that the resin itself is variable, and to what extent, we are not yet able to say very definitely. As Dr. Blatt said, there have been certain individuals isolated in pure form, of which the most important are Cannabinol and the hydrocarbon nonacosame. There is also present definitely in the resin a substance that responds to the alkaline Beam test. There are still other substances among all those responsible for the psychological and physiological activity; of such there may be one or more.

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And finally, there are those volatile oils, in which there is no tremendous interest other than to dispose of them before being able to isolate the drug. Now, little or nothing is known of the nature of the active substance. All attacks on the problem have, thus far, broadly speaking, produced negative results. The thing, in any event, is not an alkaloid, because we are not able to extract it into acid solutions from solvents, nor does it contain any nitrogen. It is not an acid, since it does not extract into alkaline solution. And it has not been shown to contain any carbonyl groups because it does not form any derivatives with the common reagents for such.

There is evidence on the other hand that it forms esters and that it is an aromatic substance, the latter from the refractive index of the most active fraction. From that it would appear to be a phenolic compound. The substance is thermostable under rather rigorous conditions, but it is quickly destroyed in the presence of oxygen. It is also quite likely that it is unsaturated since reduction by hydrogen is possible. But all those, unfortunately, are properties of the active mixtures that Dr. Blatt referred to, rather than of any chemical individual. They are all of some assis-

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tance though, in considering methods by which the problem may be attacked. Now, only distillation in a rather high vacuum has been of any assistance thus far in fractionating the mixture, known as Cannabis resin. The volatile oils are so separated with relative ease. The substance responsible for the acid Beam test, whatever it may be, is removed, the acid test no longer appearing in the distillate. The hydrocarbon which does appear in the distillate can be removed by crystallization from alcohol or some other solvent, and pure Cannabinol can be removed as a crystalline acetate or paranitry benzoate. As Dr. Blatt pointed out, this point is where the trail ends at present, with the exception of a brief note indicating that it is definitely possible to find physiological effects in the material remaining after Cannabinol has been removed. It is at that point that we purpose ultimately to actually begin. The former distillation has been carried out at pressures anywhere from atmospheric down to a reported pressure of about five-one thousandths of a millimeter. From the character of the work in which this was reported it would appear that the reported pressures must

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be taken with a grain of salt. No essential difference however has appeared in the products of fractionation. The material, as you may be aware, is an exceedingly difficult material to work with, a heavy tar-like oil, and it does not lend itself readily to distillation by any means. We have considered that at this point it might be preferable to resort to molecular distillation in an effort to obtain a more competent separation. If this hope be realized, a number of avenues of attack are opened or re-opened. That is, among other things the action of solvents may be reinvestigated, and of particular interest will be the action of solvents at low temperatures. Then there are possibilities of preferential adsorption, and also it may be possible to prepare crystalline derivatives. They fail to appear from treatment of the present mixtures. Now, the molecular distillation outfit that we have chosen for this work is of the static type, rather than the cyclic still with which you are probably more familiar, because the higher boiling fractions of this material are so viscous that they probably would not cycle with in that still without special precautions to maintain a high temperature.

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The original material has been distilled before passing it into the molecular still in a flash apparatus that operates under a good vacuum. This is necessary since the crude oil is particularly prone to spit in the molecular still and ruin the distillation. More specifically, the process that we are following is extraction from the plant material with cold alcohol, alcohol being chosen as a solvent rather than petroleum ether, on account of fire hazard. This process is followed by a liquid extraction from the alcohol by pentane, which does away with a lot of water soluble material, and tarry material of a nondescript character. We have not yet thoroughly satisfied ourselves that all of the active material is extracted by pentane, but we believe we have every reason to think it is. Then the pentane, which incidentally, extracts quite a little alcohol, is removed, and the alcohol is also removed. The material is then passed through the flash process that I referred to a moment ago, and the distillate from here is placed in the molecular still. That is the point which the investigation has reached at this particular moment. Now, it is expected to divide the oil into about ten

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fractions in the stills, then to remove Cannabinol as the acetate and the hydrocarbon by precipitation from a suitable solvent, and then to refractions, to the remaining material. The work from that point, of course, all depend upon the results of the fractionations, and can not be very definitely foreseen, other than that those processes, to which I referred a moment ago, will be applied. Now, it would have been possible to have attacked certain phases of the problem along a number of other lines, a few of which I will suggest in conclusion. The first would be a characterization of those volatile oils, which have been referred to, and which would be of interest from a purely chemical point of view. They are separated with relative ease, by steam distillation, for example. No one, of course, has been very much interested in them, and that line of attack has not been followed. Again, someone might become interested in the substance which responds to the acid Beam test. It can be removed from a solution in petroleum either by means of alkali, and presumably would be isolated with relatively little difficulty, but experience shows that resins so prepared are not physiologically active, hence little in-

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terest is attached to that substance. A third possible line of attack would have been in connection with the Beam test itself. The development of the color is due to a product resulting from oxidation of some substance which is present In the resin. This substance is soluble in aqueous alkali, and is precipitated by acid. It can be readily extracted from acid solution. It, of course, is not actually the substance which responds to the alkaline Beam test, but it would be of great interest from the purely scientific point of view.

MR. WOLLNER: I would like to make a couple of announcements. Those of you who are not particularly interested in the chemical attack here may find this part of the program a little arduous, and I want you to understand that you are at liberty to leave and interrupt if you want to, as I think this part of the program might be a little obtuse at certain points. Dr. Blatt has just indicated that there are some errors in the material which he distributed on the critical review. Do you want to indicate those?

DR. BLATT: There is one error in the literature, for example on page 469 in the middle of the page are three

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formulas, just one the paragraph beginning in the middle of those formulas. There is a carbon atom, a ‘C’, a single line to an oxygen ‘0’, and that should be a double line to make it conform to the other two. Then, on that flow sheet, on the left-hand half of the page, the second of those errors reads “dihydrogenation with sulphur,” and that should be ‘dehydrogenation’, and not ‘dihydrogenation’.

MR. WOLLNER: As you gathered, Dr. Matchett’s attack there is directed at the heart of the problem; that is to say, the isolation and characterization of the extreme number of active principles. I indicated at the beginning that there is another phase of the problem, and that was identification. We at this time do not know whether the chemical attack is destined to determine the active principle in one year or sixty years. The Treasury has issued a little manual of identification, consisting largely of photographs, and it is being distributed. In this country we are mostly dealing with the drug in its plant form, and in this manual they are showing the separate parts of plants, and so on, and it is helpful in that direction. I am going to ask Mr. Levine to give us a picture

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of the Beam test.

STATEMENT OF MR. LEVINE, CHEMIST, BUREAU OF NARCOTICS.

MR. LEVINE: The Beam test seems to be the most widely used chemical test for the identification of Marihuana, and was first introduced by Dr. W. Beam, of the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratory, of Khartoum. The alkaline test in 1911 and the acid Beam test in 1915 have come to be accepted as specific for Marihuana, although a lot of samples have failed to respond. Workers in Europe and north Africa have used it and tried it on a large number of plant materials. In general it is agreed that no other material responds characteristically to the test. It has been attacked by some chemists, notably Trolle and Rende, who said they obtained the Beam test on a mixture of drugs consisting of ginger, coriander, licorice, nutmeg, and several other things. Other workers, notably Fahamy and Keiy in Egypt, and Papavassiliou and Liberato, in Greece, applied the test to these materials, both individually and in the mixture, and failed to get a positive response to any of them. As I stated before, a large number of authentic samples of Marihuana failed to respond to the Beam test, or

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gave a very slightly dirty purple color, which might be mistaken for just a dirty color. So a number of modifications of the Beam test have been introduced to try to improve the results obtained in the test. One of the steps taken to improve the test was the use of adsorbent charcoal to remove chlorophyll from the solution of the resin. This was reported independently by Fahamy and Keiy, Bouquet, and by the Bureau of Narcotics Laboratory. One of the tests developed in the Bureau of Narcotics Laboratory is the ethyl acetate test. Ethyl acetate is used as a solvent, because it is a good solvent for the resin, it has a low boiling point, hence is easily evaporated and it can be treated with activated charcoal, which removes most of the chlorophyll, and other substances, which would interfere with color development, but takes out very little of the material responsible for the Beam test. In carrying out the test, a sample of Marihuana is extracted with a portion of ethyl acetate. The solvent is treated for a few seconds with darco or norite and filtered. The filtrate is divided between two porcelain dishes and evaporated on a steam bath before a fan. To one of

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the dishes is added several drops of the alkaline Beam reagent, and to the other, several drops of the acid Beam reagent. In a large number of tests, no samples which were negative to this modification were found to be positive by the original Beam test, or any of a number of other modifications. It seems, therefore, that this is the most satisfactory modification of the Beam test. Dr. Bouquet, in Tunis, has developed two amyl alcohol tests, one of which uses charcoal, and the other does not. His test consists of grinding a sample of Marihuana with potassium Hydroxide, and then adding a portion of alcohol, mixing thoroughly, and filtering, whereupon a purple color appears in the filtrate. Then, to a portion of this filtrate he adds about a ten-fold volume of water, and extracts with one cc. of amyl alcohol. The purple color is extracted into the amyl alcohol. In his test involving the use of charcoal, he adds a small amount of animal charcoal to the mixture of the alcohol, KOH, and Marihuana, presumably to remove chlorophyll, and then lets it stand for two hours before filtering.

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The resultant filtrate is free of chlorophyll, and the tests obtained are better. We have found that his test, involving the use of charcoal, works better with activated charcoal, such as norit or Darco than with the animal charcoal prescribed. Also, we find that we get results by filtering immediately after the addition of charcoal, instead of letting the mixture stand for two hours. We have not found any case of failure to respond upon immediate filtration, which would respond after standing. Another modification which we have developed in our laboratory, and which may be considered a modification of the Bouquet test, is probably most convenient of the modifications to run, because it involves the least manipulation. It consists merely of shaking for a few seconds the sample of Marihuana with a two percent alcoholic solution of potassium hydroxide. Add to this is an amount of activated charcoal equal in weight to the Marihuana. The mixture is shaken for a few seconds, and filtered immediately. The filtrate is purple and on dilution with water, the purple colored substance may be extracted by amyl alcohol. Other modifications of the technique have been proposed by Dr. Myttanaere, Viehoever, Placencias and others.

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As I said before, a large number of plants fail to respond to any of these modifications of the Beam tests. We have followed the appearance of the Beam test in plants with regard to age, parts of plant, and variety. In regard to age, some plants three inches tall have been found to respond to the Beam test. Some plants, at all states of growth, up to their decadence, respond. Many male plants, which are all withered, and consist of nothing but a skeleton with a few dried flowers sticking to the top still respond to the alkaline Beam test. As far as an individual plant goes, the order of response is best in the top, both with the male and female plants, followed by the upper leaves, lower leaves, upper twigs, upper stalk, lower twigs, and lower stalk. In other words, as you go up towards the top of the plant you get the best response. Where the top responds very strongly, you generally get a weak response in the skin of the lower stalk. If the tops respond very weakly, the upper leaves will probably be negative, or just give a trace of response. We have never been able to get any response at all from the pith or roots of the plant.

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This last summer we tested six varieties of hemp, as Dr. Robinson indicated this morning. Three of them were Roumanian varieties; one of them was Italian, one, Manchurian; and one of Chinese origin. Of the three Roumanian varieties, about a percent could be positively identified by the alkaline Beam test, as Dr. Natchett pointed out this morning. The other three gave a trace of response to the test. The Italian variety was very close to this, having about 98 percent attainable by the Beam test. Of the Manchurian and Chinese, only about 20 to 50 percent could be positively identified, and of these, practically none of the tests were as strong as the tests obtained from the Roumanian and Italian varieties. The largest number of the plants were absolutely negative, or showed merely faint trances of response, which we would not consider to be suitable for identification if the plants were unknown. We studied the effect of heating the plants towards response to the alkaline Beam test. We found that heating parts of the plant at 100 degrees with air blowing over them for up to five hours did not have any harmful effects on the material response for the alkaline Beam test. In fact, some of the plants showed better response

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after heating than before. Although some workers in Europe say in no case should the extract be heated. over 50 degrees Centigrade. However, heating the plant at 150 degrees under the same conditions did prove to have a deleterious effect. Another treatment we tried was permitting the plant to mold. We subjected the tops of some of the plants, both negative and positive, to molding, in a very moist atmosphere, for a period of about five weeks. After this period, the whole plant was covered with slimy mold. Response to the alkaline Beam test was as good as it was originally. Some negative plants which were molded remained negative after the molding period. Oxidization is an essential part of the Beam test. Beam, in his original article, pointed out that if the tests be applied in the absence of air, a dirty brown color will result instead of the purple color. We have taken up some of the resin in alcohol, and added an equal volume of 2 per cent alcoholic KOH solution. The resultant solution was colorless, but on passing oxygen through it, the characteristic purple color developed. Shaking the solution with charcoal had the same effect. Presumably this is because oxidization is effected

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by the oxygen adsorbed on the charcoal. Oxidation must be done in alkaline solution. Charcoal plays a dual role in the test. In the case of the ethyl acetate test the effect is merely to remove extraneous matter, since no oxidation is effected in this solution. In certain solvents, such as petroleum ether, the activated charcoal will entirely remove from solution the material responsible for the Beam test, while animal charcoal does this to a much smaller extent. In fact, animal charcoal may be used in petroleum ether, although its effect as a cleaning agent is not very large. The second role of charcoal is that of an oxidizing agent. The oxygen adsorbed on activated charcoal is effective in producing the necessary oxidation of the material responsible for the alkaline Beam test. Animal charcoal is effective to a very much smaller extent, and is therefore unsatisfactory for use in this process.

MR. WOLLNER: I think we will have a recess now for about five minutes before we resume.

(A short recess was taken, after which the proceedings were resumed as follows:)

MR. WOLLNER: Now, after that rather exhaustive

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treatise on the Beam test, I would like to have Mr. Benjamin tell us something about this so-called Duquenois test. The reason time is being given on these tests is this: Every so often a new test is obtained, and this is the experience in every phase of chemical activity, and until several months or years have been put in on it, everyone gets highly enthusiastic about it. Efforts are made to introduce it as witness material in court, and the first thing you know you run into a situation where you are yourself out on a peninsula and you can not possibly get back. We have asked the Treasury Department not to employ any tests unless they are absolutely tests on a theory of so-called triangulation, so that when our men go to court to testify on a seizure that their evidence is sound.

Mr. Benjamin, will you tell us briefly about the Duquenois test and what our experience has been with that.

MR. BENJAMIN: I think this was proposed in the early part of 1938. Reagent number 1 is an alcoholic solution with vanillin and acetaldehyde. The second reagent is concentrated hydrochloric acid;

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The technique consists of extracting hemp with petroleum ether and driving off the solvent by heat. One then takes one cc. of the alcoholic reagent, adds it to the residue, and into the solution thus prepared, puts two c.c.’s of concentrated hydrochloric acid. There is a change in color from green to slate blue to violet blue. Now, since we have had this, we have tested approximately 165 substances, including some of the alkaloids, the essential oils, C. D. alcohols, everything I could get my hands on that might show up with this reagent. So far, not one sample of hemp has failed to respond to this test. When I say “hemp” I am referring to solid extracts, fluid extracts, and ether available preparations. They all show positive. Certain essential oils when treated by the test procedure ran through the same changes as the hemp, namely, oil of bay, geranyl acetate, rhodinyl acetate, and one or two others. There was also a compound known as Denol, that gave practically the same reaction as hemp. That is used in C. D. alcohols. I do not know exactly what it is composed of, but I think a mixture of higher alcohols and ketones.

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MR. SCHICKTANZ: Yes, higher alcohols.

MR. BENJAMIN: I must emphasize the fact that not one sample of Cannabis or fluid extract of Cannabis or solid extract has failed so far.

MR. WOLLNER: Would you recommend the test as an eliminative test for hemp; that is to say, hemp would have to give a positive test of the Duquenois agent in order to be considered hemp, and then proceed?

MR. BENJAMIN: Yes.

MR. WOLLNER: To apply another test to see whether it is another substance?

MR. BENJAMIN: I think the fact that ia the Duquenois test for Cannabis fails to respond, then one should hesitate to call the sample Cannabis.

MR. WOLLNER: That is predicated---

MR. BENJAMIN: (Interposing) On the 165.

MR. WOLLNER: Dr. Munch, you have had some experience with some other tests, which we do not think very much of.

DR. MUNCH: That is fine.

MR. WOLLNER: What is your experience with that test?

DR. MUNCH: I started about three or four years ago with the method developed by an official in the British pharmacopoeia for ergot, using paradimethyl amino benzal-

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dehyde. The results I obtained I then dropped, because I got busy on something else, but I have had occasion this last spring to review and finish up that work, which was reported at Madison and the American Pharmaceutical Association. The manuscript is in the hands of the editor of the American Pharmaceutical Association, and ought to be out next month. In it I tried various modifications and found the 2-1/2 per cent solution of paradimethyl amino benzaldehyde in 65 per cent sulphuric acid, or in 65 per cent phosphoric acid, which is my principal reagent. The material to be tested is shaken with 10 parts, or approximately 10 parts, of low boiling petroleum ether, (below 40 degrees Centigrade) which has been redistilled and a half part of Merck’s activated charcoal or norit, or any other U. S. P., activated carbon for five or ten minutes, then filtered. The filtrate is evaporated, and the reagent applied to the residue. The direct application of the reagent causes charring, or does not cause anything, according to how much material has been removed. But on the addition of a drop of water there is an immediate development of a blue color, shifting toward the violet end of the spectrum, and disappearing within

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two seconds or two hours, depending on how much material is present. Ergot gives a blue color similar to that of Cannabis, but the color shift is toward the red. The red is much slower than with that of Cannabis, and it persists for several days. I went to two neighborhood drug stores, and got ten or eleven materials out of their prescription department, and sent them through the same tests. Many of them gave no color. Others gave colors of some sort. But, to make a long story short, none of them gave the same type of color as the blue shift that I obtained with Cannabis. I have tried about 50 samples of Cannabis, so far, and every one of those gave the same reaction. While my eye is not too good, still there is a symmetric trend between the potency on dogs and the degree of color developed here. By degree I mean intensity and duration, considering them together. But a product stronger on the dog has given me a stronger color.

MR. WOLLNER: Dr. Matchett, what is your experience with that Ghamrawy test?

DR. MATCHETT: We found too many other substances, which we regard as giving colors too similar to that

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given to Cannabis, to have any value in the hands [of] anyone not very definitely expert in the use of it. Even in such hands it is our judgment that colors given tobacco and certain other substances were still too near the color given by Cannabis for use in the case of extracts. Of course, where we have a plant to look at, we realize a different situation exists.

DR. MUNCH: Even with tobacco?

DR. MATCHETT: Tobacco was very close.

DR. MUNCH: Is that right?

DR. MATCHETT: This was not used with charcoal.

DR. MUNCH: If I do not use charcoal, I get inconclusive results along that line.

DR. MATCHETT: I am coming ’to that. It was our experience that the U.S.P. activated charcoal would remove either the hemp or tobacco test substance from petroleum ether. The result being that the test in hemp was about the same as it was in tobacco. I will ask Mr. Benjamin if that is a correct statement.

MR. BENJAMIN: That is correct.

MR. WOLLNER: Dr. Lancaster, have you had any experience with these tests in Canada?

MR. LANCASTER: Yes, Dr. [sic] Wollner.

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Some years ago our interest was aroused as to whether or not Canadian Cannabis would be at all active. As some of you know, the plant thrives in all climates. We have it in all altitudes. There are no cultivated plants. But some years ago we wanted to satisfy ourselves about the activity of the Canadian produced Cannabis. Some was grown in western Canada for windbreak purposes, that is the only economic function it had with us. After applying the alkaline Beam test, as put out from Geneva we obtained positive reactions, and the pharmacologists tried it on dogs and we found it responded, so we concluded that some of the Canadian Cannabis was active. From the standpoint of the administration of the Narcotic Act, our interest is entirely limited to the illicit traffic, and it is confined to the reefer or cigarette, where we have the advantage of a physical. diagnosis, rather than chemical. The chemical work on this we intend to follow up as of extreme importance, because it is difficult to predict to what extent the extracts may come into use. There is a possibility of developing a non-reactive type of plant, but it is not of an immediate concern, although there again conditions of world trade and combined

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complications might become such that Canada might be asked to take up that problem again. Who knows? So we can not afford to lose interest in these chemical phases of the testing.

Our experience with the Beam test has been that it is somewhat erratic, and does not always give the equivalent results in the hands of different operators, for some reason. Of course, there again, we have run some of our tests on plants where we know we have had them in storage for some years. It is rather puzzling there is no reaction there.

MR. WOLLNER: No reaction?

MR. LANCASTER: On prolonged storage.

MR. WOLLNER: Under what conditions was that hemp stored?

MR. LANCASTER: In a large glass stopped bottle. However, we have to check that again, because of the results of this vegetation which remained an open field, which is another puzzle.

MR. WOLLNER: That is where we all find ourselves at the moment. What I would like to hear from the group is something in the way of suggestions as to how this problem can be

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most competently attacked. What is to be done? The problem is not a simple one, although there is no indication as to its complexity. I say it is not a simple problem, because if material has not been advanced after several thousand years of experience there must be some barrier there. Is there any technique which should be considered which has not been considered? Dr. Hibben, have you any suggestions along this line?

DR. HIBBEN: That is rather a difficult question. I think we are proceeding correctly. I think the first thing that has to be done is developing an adequate method for determining the content of the active principle, and until such a method is developed, there is not going to be very much room for improvement.

MR. WOLLNER: The only difficulty has been that this problem has been very much the problem of peeling an onion--the more you peel, apparently the more peels you can take off, until you peel away the onion and then there is nothing left.

DR. HIBBEN: That is quite true. But I do not think there has been any comprehensive, systematic work done on the problem, by an adequate chemical staff, under ade-

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quate direction.

MR. WOLLNER: The first thing seems to be to find the active principle. That is a different proposition.

DR. MUNCH: Has any work been done on the chlorophyl of the leaf?

DR. MATCHETT: All the work we know of is what you have done.

DR. MUNCH: The only thought I have is, if the chlorophyll of Marihuana happens to be different from all other chlorophylls in the universe, it can be identified microscopically.

MR. WOLLNER: Dr. Hibben, you have run some microscopic tests on Cannabis direct for the chlorophyll.

DR. HIBBEN: I did not look for chlorophyll. I say that is very desirable, but I say they would be very doubtful on the chlorophyll alone.

DR. MATCHETT: Of course, there are some points about that.

MR. VALAER: The chemistry of opium was very uncertain for a long, long time. We had a crude mass to work with, and gradually they pulled out one hundred pieces or more. I believe, after all, we have not been interested in this more than about two years. I believe the chemical crude resin Marihuana will work out in the same way. We have two stills upstairs. We have a good many people

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working on it in extracts and various ways, even now in this brief time.

MR. WOLLNER: Dr. Couch, do you have anything to offer?

DR. COUCH: I would like to say that this problem is in no more desperate condition than a great many other problems in which a solution has not been reached. They all present this picture before the real work is done in solving it which makes it all seem extremely baffling. It is very curious that by plugging along and keeping infernally at it, that one of these days the problem is solved almost before it is realized, and it seems to me that the lines that have been projected here and the lines that have been followed are exactly those that should be followed, and will, in the course of time, lead to the solution of the problem; I mean the information that you desire to have. There is one thing that occurs to me that has not been mentioned, and that is if any work has been done upon the smoke from Marihuana, as the smoke is physiologically active.

It may be different from the resin taken by mouth or injected into the veins. That is another matter. But it seems to me that there is something there that might

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be developed as a test for identity.

MR. SMITH: I think Dr. Hershfield did something on that chlorophyll work which he did two years ago.

DR. COUCH: Of course, along that line is also the possibility of reaction from the protein. It simply rests on the possibility and probability that that is, of course, the leafy tissue, and the extract probably would not serve. The leafy portion would contain some propein. That with a water extract or salt extract of the plant itself, in a very short time would get positive results, one away or the other. The difficulty there is there may be present some protein that is also present in another plant. That difficulty arises, but the precipitation reactions are amazingly specific and amazingly direct. When one goes from one animal tissue to another he has to wash his hands extremely carefully as he changes over from one to another, so as not to spoil the test in the next tissue. There is that sort of delicacy. I simply offer that as a test. I presume there has already been a lot of thought discounted on that subject.

MR. WOLLNER: I do not know of that test. Dr. Loewe?

DR. LOEWE: If I may bring up the encroachment which

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is in doubt, it has been known thousands and thousands of years that sex cells contain an active principle. However, it has taken up to this century to get hold of those active principles, and the reason was not the difficulty with respect to chemistry, but the difficulty was that there was no test for the active principle only as an active principle, and no chemical tests were given. This is the same situation in Cannabis with one exception, and we know the physiological test for the active principle is given. It is much more easily accessible. This biological test is much more easily accessible, so there is a test, and the thing which has not yet been done, at least not yet systematically enough, is to dovetail the identification of the active principle by its active nature by a biological test. I think this specific picture of the dovetail work gives immediately the solution, unless somebody is inclined to drop the whole thing. But I again remember that same situation in the female hormone and the male hormone, which involves just this one property to give a beautiful color reaction. However, it did not take more than five years after finding the right test and using the right test in the right way from the first isolation of the principle. I think

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this is the way prescribed.

MR. WOLLNER: Do you know of any experiments, Dr. Loewe, that have been performed on the smoke itself?

DR. LOEWE: No.

DR. BLATT: I know of where they took the Marihuana smoke and passed it through solvents.

DR. LOEWE: Through chloroform?

DR. BLATT: No, through water.

DR. LOEWE Water, rather than chloroform?

DR. BLATT: Yes.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: There is a great deal of work being done at the present time with respect to the use of opium smoke. A paper has just been prepared by someone in a laboratory in London, which has just been issued. Are you familiar with Dr. Nicholls?

MR. LANCASTER: Yes, Dr. Nicholls was mentioned in connection with the research today.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: Is that the same Nicholls who is on the Opium Assay Committee?

DR. BLATT: I was going to say very much the same thing as Dr. Loewe said; that is, that I can not see any reason for being discouraged as far as chemistry is concerned. Now, you have got a perfectly good point of attack.

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The amazing thing about this whole problem is that nothing has been done with the exception of this one matter in 1932, when it was established that crude Cannabinol behaves like a pure substance, and the customary high vacuum distillation technique fails to separate it into its constituents. The work has been apparently dropped from that time on. The surprising thing is that someone has not jumped into that.

MR. WOLLNER: Of course, there has been no commercial demand in that respect, .and that is one of the reasons for that.

DR. BLATT: It is difficult to get hold of the material.

DR. HIBBEN: If you want to get something on spectroscopic methods, when these chemists leave the point where there are spectroscopic methods for determination and for determining the structure, they would aid greatly in facilitating this problem.

MR. WOLLNER: It would aid greatly.

DR. MATCHETT: We would like to ask Dr. Hlbben if there are not some such methods which may be correlated to the bioassay?

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The essential or volatile oils come out of this material very readily. It can be narrowed down to relatively few compounds. If we knew, separately, the spectra of these various materials, would it not help to follow the separations at that stage of operations?

DR. HIBBEN: Yes, I think it would. You can start in by that procedure on hormones.

DR. MATCHETT: And I believe also carotenoids.

DR. HIBBEN: Yes.

DR. MATCHETT: As the fractionation goes further and further, the number of bioassays increases almost without limit, and that is one reason we were particularly interested in it. Also, the quantitative phase has to be considered.

DR. LOEWE: But, as an economic matter, and the rational method is to proceed in an economical way, which can be done by carefully choosing fractions to test.

DR. MATCHETT: I do not believe we could quarrel about that.

DR. MUNCH: Doctor, there is the other thought, and that is that we have not been picking on any of the prisoners lately.

COMMISSIONER ANSLINGER: Doctor, we are not dealing

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with the same problem as opium, where we can take the addict to a hospital at Lexington and go through all of the experiments. There is a little danger that this drug might affect a man permanently. He might do something which we may be sorry for later. I think that must be given serious thought.

DR. WRIGHT: Dr. Wollner, I will not be very long now, but I just want to clarify a point, and it would seem from reports and other information that the tests are rather indicative of hemp rather than of the active principle.

I am saying that for this reason: We would like to be in a position to approach the development of strains that were free from the active principle, Now, until we have a test it seems to be that we can not do anything.

MR. WOLLNER: Yes, and no.

DR. WRIGHT: I will say it is possible that one of these tests may be useful from a breeding standpoint, but it seems to me it is working entirely on a guess, It would seem to me that any approach would be resolving the strains in pure breeding alone. In other words, approach the inbreeding situation in a hybrid manner;

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that is the approach we want, but it would seem to me that all we could do at this state would be to develop those lines at random.

In other words, set up as many facilities as we could for pure breeding lines. Any individual plant that would be tested would be very indefinite as to what its progeny would be, and it would seem to me that that is more or less a blind approach; shall I say a lick in the dark; and we would have to develop as many as we could. We can do that, develop as many lines as possible, like in Prussic acid in Sudan grass. My point is, and I am mentioning it to you chemists, that we can get nowhere without a test of consequence. We might be lucky. About ten thousand chances to one, we might be lucky until we have a test.

MR. WOLLNER: In the last analysis, you are unquestionably correct about that. Really, before significant progress can be made by the agricultural people, we will have to provide you with a formula. Before we adjourn, I would like to invite any of the visiting friends present to come upstairs for a few minutes and see our laboratory set-up for tackling this job, the molecular stills, and extraction equipment, and I am quite sure you will enjoy it.

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And I want to really express my appreciation and thanks for your kind cooperation in helping to clarify these issues.

(Whereupon, at 5:10 o’clock p.m., the Conference was adjourned sine die.)

END