Drug Store in Late 1800's With Marijuana Leaf Symbol: Fact Check

Story:

Drug Store Late 1800’s Having Marijuana Leaf Symbol

Other Versions

Men stand outside a Drug Store in the late 1800s.

Fact Check:

A popular photograph in circulation online alleges to show a Drug Store from late 1800’s Having Marijuana Leaf Symbol as Logo. The black and white, old photograph appears to show a group of men standing outside the store, along with one child. No, the claims are not true – the photograph is in fact a manipulated piece of art.

Not Photograph of a Drug Store Carrying Marijuana Symbol

The photograph is doing rounds on social media and image sharing websites for a while now. It gained significance because of benefits of medical Marijuana and the criticism against its use due to its intoxicating properties.

Although there’s a legal history of Cannabis (legal term marijuana) use in the United States, we did not find the drug store carrying the logo of Marijuana leaf symbol. Despite the popularity of the story, there’s no information about the location of the drug store. Moreover, a close observation reveals some flaws in the photograph – questioning its authenticity. Just above the sitting bench outside the drugstore is a board printed with something like ‘Drugs & Books’. In the board appearing on top of the store the alphabet ‘R’ in Drug appears like a mirror image unlike other alphabets on the board, again not similar to the ‘R’ written on the board below. Moreover, there is some unusual lighting on the bottom left area of the photograph. Additionally, the photograph and the story appear on some funny meme websites.

Image of The photograph on a meme website

Montage Photoshop Art

The photograph in question appears on a Deviant Art page with the title ‘Drug Store’ published back in February 2009. More importantly, it carried the description tags – Mash-ups, Pop culture and Memes. Same day, it also appeared with same title on Flickr page of Emmanuel Laflamme – in an album of Montages.

To conclude, the photograph is in fact a clever Photoshop art using montage of different images. It often appears on internet space in funny meme sections.