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T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
May, 1939
A Typical Group of Healthy, Unspoiled American Youth.
By ROBERT JAMES DEVINE* Lansing, Michigan fertile soil among our youth. Why are we not presenting the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work on Calvary—the only basis of salvation? It is this that boys and girls need! The Menace of Marihuana Every time a lower-than-skunk peddler sells a marihuana cigarette to a boy or girl, he or she is selling irresponsibility, immo
A A * W HILE we Christians boast of our orthodoxy and fight to protect our fundamental positions (and right ly so!) boys and girls under our very noses are being inveigled into the most damnable soul-and-body-destroying habit known to law enforcement officers and agencies to day. Called by G-Men “The Killer Drug,” marihuana is the drug known of old as "hashish," from which name we get
rality, degeneracy, and insanity. Every time a boy or girl purchases a "reefer," he or she is buying physical, mental, and spirit ual ruin, with madness—at least temporary madness—thrown in for extra measure. Marihuana strikes quickly. For the drunk ard, the possibility of delirium tremens is cunningly camouflaged by the knowledge that it will come in the far future, if at all. Not so with the smoker of “muggles,"
our modern word “assassin." As though driven by Satanic fury, this comparatively new and terrible scourge is sweeping across the country with swiftly increasing speed and force. The latest figures obtainable from the office of Harry Anslinger, Commissioner of Nar cotics, Washington, D.C., show an increase of almost 97 per cent in the seizures of plants, dried bulk marihuana, and cigarettes during 1936 as against 1935. For 1935 and 1936, the increase from 195 to 386 tons in one year is at once a th re a t and a ch a llen g e. We are facing a problem—a serious problem. W e may rant and rave about the dangers of communism, of ap o sta sy , of atheism . And again I say: rightly so. But all of these evils are finding their most *President, Central Michigan Bible Conference Association.
"reefers," “loco weed,” "hay,” or whichever one of its fifty names marihuana may happen to carry in a given community. Abnormal thoughts, words, and actions be come commonplaces; every moral barricade is broken down, and the smoker is launched, within a matter of minutes, into a veritable mael strom of debauchery in which sex ual passions dominate and drive the individual, regardless of age, color, sex, into unspeakable per versions such as could not properly be listed in these pages. Nerves are "stepped up” to “high” almost instantly when reef ers are smoked. Nor is it necessary to consume a whole “stick” in or der to secure this effect. One cigarette may be used by ten or twelve youngsters in a marihuana “party.” It probably would be a cheap grade of reefer, purchased
O n e G i r l ’s T e s t im o n y “Thèse preachers— standing around and tell ing us how fine and splendid we young people are! They either do not know, or else do not care what we do. Some day I’m going to kidnap one and take him on one of our parties. I’ll bet his next sermon would be about SIN. And that’s what we need.” Thus wrote a young girl in high school, six teen years of age, in a letter that contained cer tain frank and appalling confessions. Only the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ can deal effectively with the SIN question. Not the preaching of so-called social service, but the acceptance of the all-powerful Saviour, will bring deliverance. This article reveals an unlimited field for the operation of that blessed gospel.
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