What Were Tea Pads? The History Behind Our Name
Tea pads were rooms and apartments where people gathered to smoke cannabis (marijuana), listen to music, and talk freely. They are most closely associated with 1920s and '30s Harlem. New York City's 1944 LaGuardia Committee estimated there were about 500 tea pads in Harlem alone.
The Tea Pad Foundation takes its name from these spaces. Here is their story and why it still matters for the cannabis industry today.
"Tea" was period slang for cannabis, and a "pad" was a place to stay. Investigators for the LaGuardia Committee described a tea pad as "a room or an apartment in which people gather to smoke marihuana." They found comfortable furniture, a radio, a Victrola, or a rented nickelodeon, and dim lighting with blue predominating.
What struck the investigators most was the atmosphere. They compared a tea pad to "a very congenial social club," where guests talked easily and shared with one another. A cigarette cost roughly 25 cents, and the finest grades ran about one dollar.
This was the convivial spirit of the tea pad: a gathering place where community came first.
Vipers, "Muggles," and the Soundtrack of the Jazz Age
Jazz was born in New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century. It came of age in the clubs, ballrooms, and after-hours spaces of cities like New York, and tea pads were part of that world.
Cannabis runs through the music of the era:
- "Muggles" (1928). Louis Armstrong recorded it with pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines; "muggles" was slang for marijuana.
- "If You're a Viper" (1936). Stuff Smith and his Onyx Club Boys recorded it. A "viper" was Harlem slang for a cannabis smoker, named for the hiss of an inhale.
- "When I Get Low I Get High" (1936). Chick Webb and His Orchestra recorded it, with a young Ella Fitzgerald on vocals.
- Really the Blues (1946). Clarinetist Mezz Mezzrow's memoir recounts Harlem's viper scene. Mezzrow was so well known for selling cannabis that "mezz" itself became slang for it.
For musicians and fans of every background, tea pads offered what much of segregated America did not: a place to gather as equals, after hours, around the music.
