From: clough@texas.net   
      
   Bass Guitar God wrote:   
   > Did they smoke marijuana in the old west? Thanks. I know they drank beer,   
   but I   
   > never heard nothing about pot.   
      
   You don't hear much of it, and there would have been no reason to avoid   
   the issue. Hashish smoking was legit enough to feature in such events as   
     public international expositions, and hashish was discussed as   
   something the temperance ladies might want to recommend as a substitute   
   for liquor that, hopefully, wouldn't result in the wife beating   
   associated with drunks.   
      
   Cannibis extracts were used in many, many of the patent medicines in   
   those days and was a reconized treatment for a wide range of maladies.   
   (Often in massive doses. Even the mainstream drug makers had no idea of   
   the active chemical and were unable give it any kind of reliable   
   shelf-life.) It was never a major item in western folk medicine. I   
   suspect that the plant, picked wild, just wasn't smoked much. It   
   certainly wouldn't have been anything like as potent as cultivated and   
   sexed 20th century marijuana.   
      
   If one wanted a high, other than alcohol, a number of opiates were   
   readily available over-the-counter. And opiate adiction was a problem   
   (large or small depends on who you believe) after the Civil War where   
   they were relatively new discoveries and freely used in military medicine.   
      
   --   
                          Gerald Clough   
                         clough@texas.net   
   "Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)