enters the home , it spills out into the community and into our cities and states and reaches the country at large , where propaganda hits its zenith .
Between the 1880s and early 1900s , the American medical community began to implement cannabis as a therapeutic and medicinal treatment and eventually offered it as an over-the-counter form of cough medicine . “ Piso ’ s Cure for Consumption ” was a popular medicine with listed ingredients such as opium , morphine , hashish , marijuana , chloroform , and alcohol .
Missouri ), focused on the prohibition of cannabis sales , possession , and transportation , which paved the way for substantial prohibition measures . The anti-marijuana propaganda campaigns were about to hit America with full force .
Enter the Reefer Madness era . America was on the brink of World War II , and the pro-war propaganda affected a total sense of duty to the country . Top-hatted Uncle Sam posters were plastered everywhere with the quote , “ I want YOU for the U . S . Army .” Duty and obedience became ingrained in American consciousness . Pot smoking ? A vile , godless act .
Reefer Madness era began when a church group funded the exploitive and melodramatic film Reefer Madness under the original cautionary title “ Tell Your Children .” Their aim was to terrify parents about the evils of marijuana . The film showed high school students committing acts like manslaughter , hit and runs , and suicide , all from simply being high on weed .
On the coattails of Reefer Madness , Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry Anslinger pushed to implement the Marijuana Tax Act on the Federal level . This tax regulated the importation , cultivation , possession , and / or distribution of cannabis and was the first national regulation against marijuana in the United States . Anslinger declared that marijuana was a more dangerous drug than heroin or cocaine . He claimed that “ the drug is adhering to its old-world traditions of murder , assault , rape , physical demoralization , and mental breakdowns . It is closely associated with insanity and crime .”
By 1914 , the American government adopted the same attitude toward marijuana as the local news journalists and passed the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act , which was , in essence , a massive money-making ploy for them that did little to nothing to curtail the drug trade it was supposedly fighting against . This act required any narcotics peddlers ( including manufacturers , importers , distributors , and even physicians and pharmacists ) to register with the government and pay taxes on their sales . This was the first law to regulate a whole class of drugs . It is said that if any single event launched our modern drug war , this was “ it .”
In 1934 , the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act aimed to build on the Harrison Act , which many thought took a lackadaisical approach to the “ menace weed .” This act , coupled with the Anti-Marijuana Bill presented to Congress in 1935 by Representative Hennings ( Dem . of
Anslinger created a perfect storm of racial biases around marijuana . Couple that with a pro-war patriotic mentality and an influx of other inflammatory remarks that surfaced on a mass public scale . Henry Finger , who served on the Board of Pharmacy , also expressed extremist views . Finger first proposed the ban of marijuana to punish “ Hindoo ” immigrants , referring to a group of Sikhs who were commonly and wrongfully associated with drug use . Shortly after this proposal , the board began staging raids that also focused on the Mexican communities around Los Angeles . “ Reefer makes darkies think they ’ re as good as white men ,” said Anslinger . “ The primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races .”
Shortly after the Marijuana Tax Act passed , cannabis was dropped from the United States Pharmacopoeia in 1942 , with legal penalties for possession increasing in 1951 and 1956 with the enactment of the Boggs and Narcotic Control Acts , respectively , and prohibition under federal law occurring with the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 . The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 organized narcotics into five categories , or “ schedules ,” which categorized marijuana as a Schedule I drug , claiming it has no currently accepted medical use and a high
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