The Racist Origins of Marijuana Prohibition
By Alyssa Pagano – Business Insider – 33rd March 2018
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/racist-origins-marijuana-prohibition-legalization-2018-2?r=US&IR=T
A New York Times article from 1876 even
cites the positive use of cannabis to cure a
patient’s dropsy. Basically swelling from an
accumulation of fluid.
In the early 1900s an influx of Mexican
immigrants came to the US fleeing political
unrest in their home country.
With them, they brought the practice of
smoking cannabis recreationally. And it took
off. The Spanish word for the plant started to
be used more often too. Marijuana.
Or as it was spelled at that time, marihuana,
with an “H. This is when the more sensational
headlines about the drug began to appear.
The legal status of cannabis has been in
question in the U.S. since people starting
regularly smoking it in the early 1900s.
The debate continues today, with Attorney
General Jeff Sessions taking a firm stance
against legalisation and insisting that federal
prohibition laws be enforced, even where
states have made it legal.
But how did it become illegal in the first
place? As it turns out, it has some roots in
racist rhetoric pushed by politicians and the
media in the 1930s, when it first became
illegal.
Weird orgies. Wild parties. Roots in Hell.
How did marijuana get such a bad rap?
The answer is simple. Racism.
As early as the 1800s, there were no federal
restrictions on the sale or possession of
cannabis in the US.
Hemp fibre from the plant was used to make
clothes, paper, and rope. Sometimes it was
used medicinally, but as a recreational drug, it
wasn’t that widespread.
In 1936, a propaganda film called Reefer
Madness was released.
In the movie, teenagers smoke weed for the
first time and this leads to a series of horrific
events involving hallucination, attempted
rape, and murder. Much of the media
portrayed it as a gateway drug.
(as reported then) Marijuana, a powerful
excitant, produces unpredictable emotional
results.
But its greatest danger lies in the fact that it
is a stepping stone to the harder drugs such
as morphine and heroin.
The following year in 1937, the Marihuana
Tax Act was passed.
Cannabis sales were now taxed.
Part of the reason this act was passed was
because of all the fear mongering going on at
the time. And a huge instigator of that fear
mongering was the man behind the
Marihuana Tax Act, Harry Anslinger.
Anslinger was named the Commissioner of
the Federal Bureau of Narcotics during the
prohibition era. But once national prohibition
ended in 1933, Anslinger turned his focus to
marijuana. This is when racism and
xenophobia really kicked in.