Legality: Why would you say Marijuana is illegal?

[JohnIce2]

I believe it is a wondrous plant that has the potential to revolutionize many many industries in the world. Actually I was curious about this. I have heard from sources that it can be made into clothing, it may also possess the potential to put a lot of medications out of use due to the variety of beneficial effects it can produce for ailments (I would much rather take a pot pill for pain then opiates due to it not really having any potential to make one addicted). I have also heard that in a refined form it may even serve as a fuel alternative for gasoline. Per word of my sources (we were trying to figure out why exactly its illegal in the US, and still is as far as the Feds are concerned even with states passing legalization laws) it was made illegal because of its versatility in these and many more fields.

What do you guys think?

Why is this plant that grows from the Earth and has potential to save lives and allow those with pain and sadness within them forbidden by the Government?

 

[TreehouseChemist]

There are many theories about the legality of marijuana in the USA but most of them come off as conspiracy theories blaming social, economic, and racial motives for the laws around marijuana. I find many of these theories hard to swallow.

My personal belief is that when it first came around, it became popular with the younger generation and their parents freaked out about it. There was little to no public information about safety or usage of the plant at the time, so parents only knew what they saw. They saw their beloved children smoking an unknown drug and becoming goofy, hysterical, or lazy (I didn't try it for a long time because I saw my friends use it and they acted like complete morons after smoking).

So we had an older generation completely ignorant of the effects seeing their children or friends smoking this plant, laughing hysterically at things that unaffected people did not find funny, losing the motivation to work at their job, and maybe hanging out with a "bad crowd" (I've read various stories about marijuana first becoming popular in black and latino culture, and this was in an era of open racism. No idea how much that contributed though).

The older generation, fueled by what they were seeing happen to their children and not having any idea if they were going insane or potentially damaging their bodies, began demanding that something be done to fix this "social disease" (keep in mind that around this same time there was a movement to ban alcohol and opiates in the country. This was led largely by evangelicals, but had a lot of public support).

I believe this led to the initial bans, but beyond that it's hard to say really. I can say that the most vocal supporters of the ban are people who profit from the enforcement of drug laws (the current head of the DEA is STILL saying that marijuana has health/abuse problems and no medical value, so draw your own conclusions). That's my current theory on the laws, but there are other theories like the CIA wants to keep drugs illegal because they make tons of money trafficking them with legal immunity and cotton producers don't want to compete with hemp and such. That sounds believable, but I don't have any personal experience with secret agencies or industrial farming communities so I can't vouch for that.

On the bright side, I can say that Leary's prediction that the 60s generation would replace the older generation in positions of power and law and that the bans would eventually be reversed seem to be coming true (albeit slowly), so just hang in there and soon marijuana prohibition will be a thing of the past.

-Treehouse

 

[Chan]

Treehouse, can I ask why you appear so quick to dismiss verified social, economic and racial inequality and prejudice as 'conspiracy theories'? CT should strictly be reserved for implausible theories where evidence is absent, which is definitely not the case here.

Undoubtedly CT's were used, but chiefly by the proponents of prohibition in the absence of supporting evidence, and not usually the opponents, who tended to lack direct access to friendly media barons...

There's a good summary of the situation here.

 

[Ufostrahlen]

The history of US cannabis criminalization starts in 1906, Anslinger was 14 at that time.

As early as 1853, recreational cannabis was listed as a "fashionable narcotic".[9] By the 1880s, oriental-style hashish parlors were flourishing alongside opium dens, to the point that one could be found in every major city on the east coast. It was estimated there were around 500 such establishments in New York City alone.[10] An article in Harper’s Magazine (1883), attributed to Harry Hubbell Kane, describes a hashish-house in New York frequented by a large clientele, including males and females of "the better classes," and further talks about parlors in Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago.[4]

The Pure Food and Drug Act was then passed by the United States Congress in 1906 and required that certain special drugs, including cannabis, be accurately labeled with contents.

Further regulation of cannabis followed in Massachusetts (1911), New York (1914), and Maine (1914). In New York, reform legislation began under the Towns-Boylan Act, which targeted all "habit-forming drugs", restricted their sale, prohibited refills in order to prevent habituation, prohibited sale to people with a habit, and prohibited doctors who were themselves habituated from selling them.[14] Shortly after, several amendments were passed by the New York Board of Health, including adding cannabis to the list of habit-forming drugs.[15]

Legal history of cannabis in the United States - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In: The History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States by Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law, USC Law School, he makes the claim that prohibition always serves the upper class as a separation factor from the lower class:

And a prohibition is absolutely done for when it does what? Comes back and bothers US. If, at any time, in any way, that prohibition comes back and bothers us, we will get rid of it for sure, every doggone time. Look at the alcohol prohibition if you want a quick example. As long as it is only THEM --- you know, them criminals, them crazy people, them young people, them minority group members --- we are fine. But any prohibition that comes back and bothers US is done for.

Let's just try the marijuana prohibition as a quick one. Who do you think was arrested 650,000 strong two years ago for violation of the marijuana laws? Do you think it was all minority group members? Nope. It was not. It was some very identifiable children of US -- children of the middle class. You don't have to answer my opinion. No prohibition will stand -- ever-- when it comes back and penalizes our children -- the children of US who enacted it. And in fact, do you have any real doubt about that? Do you know what a fabulous sociological study we will be if we become the first society in the history of the world to penalize the sons and daughters of the wealthy class? Unheard of.

 

[Cognitive Heart]

Most governments would rather capitalize on other goods and services. A lot of which is already mass produced, and some of which is completely unsustainable. The opposite of what sustainable cannabis practices can really do for the species and planet. Governments were keen on propaganda during the beginning of cannabis prohibition. Much of which is still presently and heavily influenced within education, politics, and common normality.

Old paradigms are slowly shifting, however. Anyone who argues that cannabis is more dangerous than tobacco, alcohol or heroin needs a swift cannabis lecture and one edible.

 

[TreehouseChemist]

Treehouse, can I ask why you appear so quick to dismiss verified social, economic and racial inequality and prejudice as 'conspiracy theories'? CT should strictly be reserved for implausible theories where evidence is absent, which is definitely not the case here.

I didn't dismiss racial, social, or economic inequalities. It was the first thing I acknowledged. I just meant that I don't have any way to verify that it led to prohibition. My theory was based on personal experience with marijuana prejudices and drug ban movements in present day because unless there are records from state legislatures or the US congress that blatantly say "we think marijuana should be illegal because colored people use it," then it is just legend and hearsay as far as we are concerned (you weren't there and neither was I and neither was the guy who made that site).

It is typically the older generation that makes the laws (because they grew up with the people who are currently lawmakers, and they also vote more often than the younger generation), and I have met adults of voting/lawmaking ages that do not think marijuana should be legal, and even some that have used marijuana and don't like the current drug laws that are strongly opposed to their children having access to it (even if their children are adults). So I can see how a public movement could have started based purely on a desire to limit access to this as a recreational drug.

There was little public safety information about marijuana for the lay person to casually read through, and it was even classified as a poison in many states before becoming illegal. Lack of safety information, young people seeming to lose their minds after smoking, inexperienced users freaking out and ending up in medical care, etc. was probably enough to get some public support for the ban.

The problem was likely exaggerated by media outlets (they still do this today. Everyone now thinks bath salts turn you in to a flesh eating zombie thanks to the news, even though the guy in the story turned out to not be on bath salts AT ALL). So that may have drummed up additional support, but I do not think they started it, and the idea that prohibition was purely racially or economically motivated seems less likely than people just trying to keep kids (or other adults) from getting high.

Look what happened to K2/JWH, look what happened to the entire 2C-X series, look what various states have tried to do with kratom and salvia. I don't think those were racially motivated either. People saw their kids getting high on a drug they didn't understand and possibly needing medical attention, they went public with it, the media blew up the story bigger than it was, and lawmakers had to take action or risk looking like they were ignoring pleas from concerned parents/voters. People haven't changed that much in the last ~100 years.

-Treehouse

 

[Chan]

Treehouse, can I ask why you appear so quick to dismiss verified social, economic and racial inequality and prejudice as 'conspiracy theories'? CT should strictly be reserved for implausible theories where evidence is absent, which is definitely not the case here.

I didn't dismiss racial, social, or economic inequalities. It was the first thing I acknowledged. I just meant that I don't have any way to verify that it led to prohibition. My theory was based on personal experience with marijuana prejudices and drug ban movements in present day because unless there are records from state legislatures or the US congress that blatantly say "we think marijuana should be illegal because colored people use it," then it is just legend and hearsay as far as we are concerned (you weren't there and neither was I and neither was the guy who made that site).

-Treehouse

OK, the Founding Fathers planted hemp yet most early legislation was directed at marihuana. Why? Because that simple little linguistic shift was considered useful in associating the plant with Mexican immigrants.

While I admire your decision to come at the whole, hoary mess de novo so to speak, simply rejecting contemporaneous historical accounts outright is an odd approach to 'social history', which is what you appear to be attempting.

Neither of us were at Nuremberg either, but hey, shit clearly got real and some people we can never know wrote about it. Similarly, there are countless books on both subjects, which contain citations.

 

[TreehouseChemist]

I was under the impression that hemp is common name for the low-thc/higher-cbd variant used in industry while marijuana/marihuana are the common names for the high-thc variant that is used as a recreational drug (which is the one they were concerned about). That makes more sense to me than "marihuana is a mexican term and everyone back then was racist."

And I am not a historian by any means, I was just offering my personal theory. Unless there are official records that state racism as a reason for the law being proposed/passed, I see no reason to blame the situation on racism and government/media conspiracies when there was clearly public support in multiple areas of the country to limit or remove access to marihuana.

And there are official government records that give some validity to the accounts of Nuremberg. If you have any government records that cite racial motives for the marihuana ban I would love to see them.

Again, I'm not saying racism and media perversion don't exist. It's just that I don't think they are solely responsible for the bans because there was a lot of public support for the movement across the country (evidenced by the restrictions/bans by multiple states before the federal laws).

-Treehouse

 

[Ufostrahlen]

No gov record, but quotes from a MA thesis. Racism was probably not the main factor, but certainly a driving one.

AMERICA’S WAR ON DRUGS (AND DRUG ADDICTS): A FOUCAULDIAN HISTORY
by Ian Andrew Heft

Marijuana at this time was strongly associated with the rise in popularity of jazz music in
the early 1920s. Milton ‘Mezz’ Mezzrow moved from Chicago to New York and attained a great
deal of popularity as “Pops’s Boy” for his close association with Louis Armstrong and for his
role as Armstrong’s marijuana provider (Lee 44). Early jazz artists sang songs such as “Gimme a
Reefer” by Bessie Smith and “When I Get Low, I Get High” by Ella Fitzgerald. New Orleans
became an epicenter for jazz and its status as a port city made marijuana readily available (loc
2723). Soon, marijuana became associated with jazz, and jazz itself was associated with African-
American musicians. By transitive properties, marijuana was associated with the African
Americans.

Marijuana was also heavily linked with migrant workers from Mexico. Booth writes that
“as the migrant workers made deeper inroads into the USA, they took their customs and habits
with them. Soon, cities well inside Texas such as Corpus Christi, San Antonio and the state
capital, Austin, had substantial Mexican populations all using marijuana” (loc 2573). The
association between these largely impoverished workers led to a general association of cannabis
with a socioeconomic problem: “those of a more affluent standing tended to blame the problems
of the less fortunate on the consumption of cannabis. Its initial association with the dregs of
society – landless peasants, bandits, bootleggers, prisoners and so on – made marijuana a
scapegoat for deep-rooted social inequalities” (Lee 39).

El Paso, Texas was the first municipality to outlaw marijuana in 1914 (Lee 41) and the
rest of Texas followed suit in 1919. Around the same time, one state senator said: “all Mexicans
are crazy, and this stuff [marijuana] makes them crazy” (qtd in Lee 42). Booth quotes a Montana
politician who said: “give one of those Mexican beet field workers a couple of puffs on a
marijuana cigarette and he thinks he is in the bullring at Barcelona” (loc. 2659). Even the New
York Times ran an article in 1927 about a Mexican family “driven insane” by marijuana, it read
that according to doctors, “there is no hope of saving the children’s lives and that the mother will
be insane for the rest of her life” (Booth loc. 2656).

During this time, Anslinger’s vigorous rhetoric continued to associate drugs with individuals of
other races. In 1936 Anslinger contended that “50 percent of violent crimes committed in
districts occupied by ‘Mexicans, Greeks, Turks, Filipinos, Spaniards, Latin Americans, and
Negroes may be traced to the use of marijuana” (Lee 51). He declared that “marijuana causes
white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes”. He proclaimed that “pot-maddened jazz
bands performed what Hearst papers proclaimed ‘voodoo-satanic music’ …[and] never tired of
telling new versions of the same morality tale, which featured a vulnerable young white woman
whose tragic downfall is triggered by smoking marijuana with dark-skinned rogues” (52).

Quotes attributable to Anslinger include (and there are certainly more than
these): "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men." "You
smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother." and… "There are
100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes,
Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing
result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek
sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others (Schmidlin).

 

[Nathanial.Dread]

At this point?

Cultural inertia, mostly.

Blessings
~ND

 

[null24]

I'm pretty psyched to be alive and witness to the fundamental shift in attitude going on around this subject.

Since we repealed prohibition in Oregon, it's amazing how quickly pot and pot lifestyle became normal

 

[Chan]

I was under the impression that hemp is common name for the low-thc/higher-cbd variant used in industry while marijuana/marihuana are the common names for the high-thc variant that is used as a recreational drug (which is the one they were concerned about). That makes more sense to me than "marihuana is a mexican term and everyone back then was racist."

And I am not a historian by any means, I was just offering my personal theory. Unless there are official records that state racism as a reason for the law being proposed/passed, I see no reason to blame the situation on racism and government/media conspiracies when there was clearly public support in multiple areas of the country to limit or remove access to marihuana.

And there are official government records that give some validity to the accounts of Nuremberg. If you have any government records that cite racial motives for the marihuana ban I would love to see them.

Again, I'm not saying racism and media perversion don't exist. It's just that I don't think they are solely responsible for the bans because there was a lot of public support for the movement across the country (evidenced by the restrictions/bans by multiple states before the federal laws).

-Treehouse

As the saying goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and I am not aware of any successful, valid theories which proceed from such absence.

As the very concept of racism was still barely acknowledged back then, few people could even have self-described as racist, or admitted to it either. But back then, lots of very smart people were also convinced eugenics was bona fide science, and government policy took aspects of that inhumanity into account too, so...I think you might have a lot more work to do in developing your theory any further than idle speculation.

 

[JohnIce2]

Thank You for all the replies guys!!! Haha honestly I think (in my oppinion) that if the DEA stopped their regulations on Ganja and started putting the effort they go into controlling that into some of the more harmful drugs like meth and heroin (and I only say dangerous due to seeing mis-use of them by extreme adicts who don't know how to space and dose their use correctly in order to prevent serious damage and possibly death with the way they did mis use them. Like hell they used to and probobly still do give straight up Methamphetamine and or more commonly prescribed Amphetamine to little kids with Hyperactive disorders. But thats another story entirely haha)
This has really cleared up my timeline on pot and the history that goes with it. I do beleive that if enough states legalize that they may be able to outvote the ones that didn't in order to make it legal nationwide. But same with alcohol, I mean its legal (at least where I live) and yes some dis-approve and others don't have a oppinion while the ones who do use it even sometimes dis-approve of their use and the use of those in their family and freind circle.

I recently had a girlfreind of a close freind of mine who like hates me off of a assumption that I smoke (she used a steriotypical judgement on the way I appear and act, and yes... I do smoke but haha I guess its just one of those "What can u really do about it?" situations).