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3. Hop
- The University of Tennessee Press
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3. Hop Although today narcotic addiction and heroin addiction are virtually synonymous , this was not always the case. The smoking ofopium, or "hop,"1 was an important source ofaddiction well into the twentieth century. Hop was triply seductive : it was pleasurable; it was risque; and it was high-toned. Hop was to the 1920s what cocaine was to the 1970s: a rich man's drug, afavorite ofhustlers andpartygoersflush with cash and searchingfor thrills. Hop was not originally a society drug. In the mid-nineteenth century it was associated with an unholy mix of Chinese coolies and the dregs of the white underworld. Its reputation was so bad that BathhouseJohn Coughlin, a Chicago alderman not known for his aversion to vice, declared himselfagainst it. ''/know their methods, " he said, "and opium-smoking don't go in the First J#.lrd. "2 It went elsewhere, though, and remained apopular biracialvice, especially in cities and towns with Chinese communities. Beginning in 1909, however, Congress passed a series oflaws designed to curtail the importation and manufacture ofprepared opium. Hop could still be purchased, but the price was higher and the danger greater. Faced with these problems, the hoi polloi among the regular smokers began switching to heroin and morphine, both ofwhich were cheap and legal prior to March 1915, when the Harrison Act took effect. The two groups that remained loyal to hop were the Chinese and the more successful whites. That was the situation when our interviewees entered the picture. A sense ofdisappointment runs through these narratives. It was not so much 1. Drug jargon, like language generally, changes with time. For many years "hop" has been used to refer to any narcotic. As early as 1940, in Farewell, My Lovely, when Philip Marlowe wakes from a stupor in a locked room and finds needle tracks in his arm, he grits his teeth and says, "Okey, Marlowe, ... You've been shot full of hop and kept under it until you're as crazy as two waltzing mice." For Marlowe, hop equals dope. But not for our antediluvian interviewees. They always used the term "hop" in the narrower sense of opium prepared for smoking. We follow their usage. 2. Dick Griffin, "Opium Addiction in Chicago: 'The Noblest and the Best Brought Low,''' Chicago History 6 (1977), 113. 78 ADDICTS WHO SURVIVED that they blamed the pipefor leading them into addiaion as they resented thefaa that it became harderandharderto obtain hop during the 1930s and 1940s. This scarcity was often blamed on the growing influence ofa new and predominantly Italian generation ofsuppliers then gaining greater control ofthe narcotic trf!,ffic. These supplierspreferred to import and distribute heroin, which was morepotent, compaa, and easier to adulterate than hop. Thus even die-hard smokers, white as well as Chinese, had to switch to heroin. It was that, or do without. LOTTY I was a coal miner's daughter. I was born February 9,1910, in Charleston, West Virginia. There was nothing there but a company store, not even a roller skating rink. No movies. We had a house that belonged to the company-we paid so much rent. And they had what they called scrip; you'd go to the store and you'd draw scrip to buy your groceries, your food, your furniture. There were six of us in all, but my oldest sister died very young, seventeen. She got married and had a child eleven months later. She and the baby both died, because these coal mining doctors are all drunks and quacks, you know. My mother was a Sunday school teacher, and we were Baptists. She was part Indian and had a very bad temper. I thought at one time that I hated her, but I can understand now that she had all those little kids hanging on her coattail. My father was a foreman in a coal mine. He was a wonderful man, but he liked to show off. They carried those big guns, and he'd have two every time he went out of the house. One night he got in a quarrel. They shot him in the back when he turned around. That left me the oldest; I was thirteen, so I had to get a job. I got a job in a grocery store first, and then my cousins taught me the switchboard, so I got a job as a telephone operator. I was the night operator; I went to school half days. I had one and a halfyears of...