International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 2019/2020 | Page 131

International Journal on Criminology
This power was a consequence of the war of invasion that the United States
undertook against Mexico, a country weakened by its recent independence and
lacking in international support, between 1847 and 1852. The outcome of the war
was the appropriation/annexation of the present-day states of California, Nevada,
Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Texas—roughly half of
Mexico’s previous territory—by the United States.
The first part of Porfirio Díaz’s speech to the Mexican Congress in 1899 was
devoted to the new phase in the relationship between the two countries. 11
The creation of the Food and Drug Administration in 1906 had a peripheral
link to the issue of cannabis, but above all, it was connected to the use of
morphine, which thousands of Americans had unwittingly become dependent on
through their use of drugs with colorful names such as: “The People’s Healing Liniment
for Man or Beast” and “Dr. Fenner’s Golden Relief.” 12
On October 16, 1908, the Florida Star reported on the permission given to
a certain James Love by Florida’s agricultural department to plant 10 pounds of
cannabis seeds from Mexico and to sell the crop commercially as a drug. 13
As a result of the Mexican Revolution—this conflict broke out on November
20, 1910, and its objective was the removal of the government of Porfirio Díaz,
who by this time had been in power for 30 years—thousands of Mexicans moved
northward, attempting to find a more peaceful life and, in particular, work. 14 They
smoked cannabis after their hard days spent laboring. This was not to the taste of
the inhabitants of the southern United States, who had negative preconceptions of
the substance derived from certain press articles that had begun to circulate from
1897. 15 These articles indicated that smoking cannabis could give people superhuman
strength and that those who consumed it inevitably became murderers, the
worst type of criminal.
On December 17, 1914, in view of the growing number of individuals who
had developed an addiction to opium and its derivatives, Congress approved The
Harrison Narcotics Tax Act in order to put an end to trafficking of the poppy
plant and thus to prevent a decline in morals and the destructive consequences
that consumption of the drug entailed. 16 This was another way of saying that the
11 http://lanic.utexas.edu/larrp/pm/sample2/mexican/history/2/6601416.html.
12 http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1931247,00.html.
13 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0016549201063005002.
14 Grass, directed by Ron Mann, Canada, 1999, documentary film.
15 Until 1846, Mexico included the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado,
Wyoming, New Mexico, and Texas, and therefore, the Mexicans who sought a safe haven from the
war in 1910 were probably looking for their ancestral lands. It is also important to recall that in
years when this expansion was taking place in the United States, the First Opium War was raging
between China and the UK (1839–1842).
16 https://archive.org/stream/jstor-1063174/1063174#page/n1/mode/2up.
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