In order to understand the current landscape of the legal cannabis industry, it is important to acknowledge the history surrounding America’s illegalization of the plant.
The assault on cannabis in America started in 1906 with the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act (the predecessor to the Federal Pure Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act), which required that certain special drugs, including cannabis, be accurately labeled to include their contents.
Following the passage of the Act, many felt that requiring accurate labeling did not go far enough to curb the perceived societal ills of narcotics. These sentiments led to the passage of poison control and other laws across the country that sought to limit the sale of narcotics to pharmacies under a doctor’s prescription.
The first of these such laws was passed in the District of Columbia in 1906. Similar laws were passed in Massachusetts (1911), New York (1914), and Maine (1914).
California was the first state to pass a law labeling cannabis as a “poison”.
The Poison Act, that would be amended several times between 1909 and 1913, made possession of “extracts, tinctures, or other narcotic preparations of hemp, or loco-weed, their preparations and compounds” a misdemeanor. Although the Poison Act has largely been deemed a legislative mistake, its reference to “loco-weed”, a racially charged term for cannabis, proves how racism and xenophobia were beginning to pervade the conversation over cannabis in America.
Following the 1910 Mexican Revolution, America experienced an influx of Mexican immigrants. Cannabis use was prevalent among the Mexican community, who used the substance as a way to relax after working in the fields and as a cheaper alternative to alcohol.
The tensions over cannabis use by Mexican immigrants would continue to play a role in the illegalization of cannabis in the United States. In fact, one of the first cannabis raids in American history occurred in Sonoratown in Los Angeles in 1914.
Like California, other states, including Utah (1915), passed laws aimed at banning cannabis.
Utah’s law, like the Poison Control Act referenced above, outlawed a number of substances, including “loco-weed”, without “the written order or prescription of a physician.”
A headline from The Ogden Standard in September 1915, read: “Is The Mexican Nation ‘Locoed’ By A Peculiar Weed?” Beyond the foregoing headline, the story that followed referred to cannabis as “[d]eadly”, using terms like “‘Greaser’ Bandits” and describing Mexico’s queen at the time as insane. These kinds of headlines appeared in newspapers across the country throughout the nineteen teens and twenties.
By 1927, a number of other states passed laws outlawing cannabis, including Wyoming (1913), Indiana (1913), Vermont (1915), Colorado (1917), Nevada (1917 and 1923), Texas (1919), Iowa (1923), Oregon (1923), Washington (1923), Arkansas (1923), and Nebraska (1927).
As states were passing their own prohibitions on cannabis, the United States government was busy passing its own drug laws (Harrison Narcotics Tax Act), supporting the regulation of Indian hemp as part of the International Opium Convention, and ushering in the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act.
Harry J. Anslinger, then-head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, campaigned in support of the Uniform Act. Anslinger enlisted the help of William Randolph Hearst and his newspaper empire’s use of “yellow journalism” to garner support for the Act.
Anslinger’s media blitz declared that cannabis caused temporary insanity and featured stories of young people who smoked cannabis and then acted recklessly and criminally. These stories were oftentimes aimed at communities of color, and were sensationalized to build a fervor in favor of cannabis prohibition.
For example, one column in a Hearst publication stated: “Was it marijuana, the new Mexican drug, that nerved the murderous arm of Clara Phillips when she hammered out her victim’s life in Los Angeles?… Three-fourths of the crimes of violence in this country today are committed by dope slaves—that is a matter of cold record.”
Anslinger and Hearst’s anti-cannabis and other narcotic campaign was so successful that eventually all states signed onto the Act.
On the heels of the adoption of the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act, Anslinger took his cannabis prohibition show on the road. This time, he set his sights on the 1936 Geneva Trafficking Conventions.
Led by Anslinger, the United States sought to include in the treaty the criminalization of all activities related to the use of narcotics, including cannabis, for non-medical and non-scientific uses. Ultimately, the United States refused to sign onto the treaty, considering the final version too weak, especially in relation to extradition, extraterritoriality, and the confiscation of trafficking profits.
The following year, Anslinger would finally get his chance to effectively ban cannabis in America. Propaganda pieces like the 1936 film “Reefer Madness”, which fed into the disinformation campaign over cannabis use, aided Anslinger in his cause.
In 1937, Congress passed the Marihuana Tax Act, which imposed an excise tax (and other regulations) on all sales of hemp.
Anslinger, who was the driving force behind the Tax Act, pulled no punches when talking about his feelings regarding cannabis: “[M]ost [marijuana consumers in the US] are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. … [M]arijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes. … Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.”
Anslinger’s scientifically unsupported ideas that linked cannabis use and violence to communities of color would pervade the American lexicon for decades to come. Anslinger, prompted by his racist and xenophobic beliefs, popularized the use of the terms “marijuana” and “marihuana” as a way of connecting cannabis use to Mexican immigrants.
He also publicized the idea that jazz music was evil and was created by people under the influence of cannabis. The racist rhetoric and policies espoused by Anslinger played out in the arrest numbers following the passage of the Tax Act.
For instance, in the year after the Act was passed, black people were almost three times more likely to be arrested for violating narcotic drug laws than whites. A fact that still holds true to the present day. Mexicans were arrested at a rate nearly nine times that.
In 1952 (Boggs Act), and again in 1956 (Narcotics Control Act), Congress introduced mandatory sentencing for narcotics convictions. A first-time cannabis possession offense was made punishable by two to ten years in prison and a fine of up to $20,000.
Thankfully, mandatory sentences for cannabis offenses would be repealed by Congress in 1970. However, any joy over defeating mandatory sentencing would be short lived as Congress, as part of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, enacted the Controlled Substances Act.
The CSA as it is commonly referred to, was the product of then-president Richard Nixon, and classified cannabis as a Schedule I substance (meaning it has a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use).
Nixon, who in 1971 declared a “war on drugs” in America, had the following to say about cannabis legalization efforts: “You know it’s a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob, what is the matter with them? I suppose it’s because most of them are psychiatrists, you know, there’s so many, all the greatest psychiatrists are Jewish.”
One of Nixon’s advisors, John Ehrlichman, would later be quoted as saying:
“You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
While some have disputed Ehrlichman’s statements, arguing that Nixon’s stance on narcotics was mostly motivated by his overall disdain for narcotics and public health, there is little doubt that Nixon’s drug policies were undoubtedly motivated, at least in part, by racism and the need to divide the anti-Vietnam movement that had brought together white and black communities.
As observed by Ehrlichman, the government could not make it illegal to protest the Vietnam War or to be black. Instead, the government could pass laws against substances like cannabis that would allow the government to dismantle the antiwar left and black communities.
In 1973, Nixon would create the Drug Enforcement Agency. In 1984 (Comprehensive Crime Control Act) and 1986 (Anti-Drug Abuse Act), the Reagan administration ushered in mandatory sentencing guidelines for federal crimes. Under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, stiff penalties were instituted for large scale cannabis distribution.
A later amendment to the Act would create a three-strikes law that created a mandatory 25-year prison sentence for repeated serious crimes and allowed the death penalty to be used against “drug kingpins”.
Stay tuned Green Scene! Another War on Drugs segment from The Leafy Lawyer releasing tomorrow. . .
