This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Charles Whitebread, a professor at the University of Southern California's law school, spoke to a 1995 meeting of the California Judges Association about the history of anti-marijuana laws. He argued that such laws were based in racism and religious bigotry, and therefore should be repealed.

His claim of anti-marijuana religious bigotry centered on a bizarre version of Utah history:

"In 1910," he said, "the Mormon Church in synod in Salt Lake City decreed polygamy to be a religious mistake and it was banned as a matter of the Mormon religion. … So, just after 1910, a fairly large number of Mormons left the state of Utah … and moved into northwest Mexico.

"Most of the Mormons … wanted to go back to Utah where their friends were and after 1914 [they] did. The Indians had given them marijuana. … Now once you get somebody back in Utah with the marijuana it all becomes very easy, doesn't it?

"So, somebody saw them with the marijuana, and in August of 1915 the church, meeting again in synod in Salt Lake City decreed the use of marijuana contrary to the Mormon religion and then … in October of 1915, the state Legislature met and enacted every religious prohibition as a criminal law and we had the first criminal law in this country's history against the use of marijuana."

Whitebread's research, he said, was provided by people at "the Mormon National Tabernacle in Washington."

Whitebread's history is something like those children's puzzles challenging you to identify the errors in a picture. In this case, errors include:

• Misdating of the 1890 Manifesto ending official LDS support for polygamy.

• Rather than moving to Mexico after 1910, Mormons, who had been in Mexico since the 1870s, left from Mexico during the 1912 Revolution.

• Mormon conferences are held in April and October, and there was no conference or synod in August 1915.

And, if the Legislature "enacted every religious prohibition as a criminal law," it is remarkable that Utah escaped 1915 prohibitions against alcohol, tobacco, coffee and tea. And who can guess what Whitebread meant by "the Mormon National Tabernacle in Washington"?

Utah's first law regulating — but not prohibiting — the use and sale of marijuana, as well as morphine, cocaine, chloroform, chloral hydrate and other narcotics, was passed in 1913. Utah was actually late to the game: By 1913, dozens of states had already passed such laws, nearly all of them identical to the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.

The evidence does not support Whitebread's assertion that Mormon — or any other Utahns' — use of marijuana warranted church attention. A careful search of Utah's newspaper database for "marijuana," "marihuana," "cannabis," "loco weed," "hemp," etc., finds a single 19th-century mention (an 1881 recipe for a corn medication, copied from an out-of-state newspaper, lists cannabis among its ingredients), and several 1907 advertisements for an Indiana patent medicine company guaranteeing that its potions were free of substances, including marijuana, banned by the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.

That's all. While Utah papers frequently condemned "demon rum" and opium dens, there was no editorial attention to marijuana. In short, there is no evidence in our newspapers that Utahns had even heard of this drug.

There are no references to marijuana, under any of its names or euphemisms, in LDS magazines or conference reports in the 19-teens. The earliest criminal prosecution of marijuana possession in Utah dates only to 1927. While public debates concerning the wisdom of outlawing alcohol and tobacco occurred in Utah in that generation, I have been unable to find any discussion of harder drugs.

In short, if marijuana use had anything to do with the 1915 legislation, there is a remarkable lack of documentation.

Whitebread's unsupported assertions appear today on thousands of pro-pot websites. But a lie repeated does not become truth; legitimate history marks his claims as false.

Ardis E. Parshall is a Utah historian. Parshall welcomes feedback from readers and may be reached at AEParshall@aol.com.