The Louvre of Pot
October 6th, 2008 | Published by BRAHA Editor in Drug Culture
By Dan Reed
He inhales, he samples, and while he’s at it, he collects artifacts from the long history of cannabis, a museum collection that now runs to about 1,500 pieces. About the only thing missing from his Cannabis Museum is cannabis. There were, however, some ashes in a nearby ashtray. Perhaps that part of the exhibit accidentally caught fire. The collection contains an amazing mixture of artifacts — original doctors’ prescriptions for cannabis from the 1920s to treat pain or corns on the feet, pop fiction demonizing the weed, old medicinal containers from when it was used for such maladies as “sexual exhaustion.”
Much of it has been hard to come by, such as the medicinal containers. “They’re really scarce,” said Krawitz, 39, whose enthusiasm shows in his high energy and often manic gesturing. “Not because they didn’t make a lot of them, but because no one wants to part with them.”
Krawitz began his love affair with pot after he was in a motorcycle accident in Guam in 1984, when he was in the Air Force.“No,” he said, “I wasn’t stoned.”
Sent to Hawaii for rehabilitation, another patient offered him a smoke. “I got a roach from a Samoan guy,” he said. “It was really good stuff.” It also, he said, eased his pain and helped his recovery. He’s been an avid fan ever since.
”That led me to seeking information about the medical use of cannabis,” he said. Given that he used to work with his father, an auctioneer and antiques expert, he naturally fell into collecting artifacts from the history of marijuana.
Chris Porter got high in 1925, according to an original prescription written for the Easton Pharmacy in Easton, Kan. In 1922, a doctor wrote a prescription ordering his patient to apply a cannabis compound to his corn each night.
It’s possible the patient used “Seabury’s Corn Plaster,” an empty container of which is in Krawitz’s collection.
Another bottle boasts its contents as a tonic and recommends, “One tablet three or four times daily for melancholia, sexual exhaustion, hysteria and nervous disorders.”Then there are the wild books and posters from a bygone era, suggesting that a puff on a marijuana cigarette will turn the puffer into a maniac. One Dell paperback called “It Ain’t Hay” claims that “marijuana and murder make a thrilling story.”
Other items include buttons and posters from campaigns to legalize pot, or at least its medicinal use; arm patches from uniforms for police marijuana eradication forces; detailed botanical drawings; and an employee badge labeled “War Hemp Industries Inc.,” from when the ropy weed was used for such things as a ship’s rigging.
For now, the museum has only a single image on its Web site: http://www.cannabismuseum.org/ But within the next six months to a year, Krawitz said, he hopes to have many of the collectibles photographed and posted on the Web. He’s been gathering his artifacts for about seven years.“
The Internet is going to be the major source of the displays,” he said.
The next stop for the peripatetic display will be a medical cannabis conference in Portland, Ore., on May 3 and 4.IF YOU’RE INTERESTED
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