Weeds

A History of Marijuana - Why Marijuana Should be Legal

In the South and West
Before the 19th century, marijuana presented no problems and failed to incapacitate development on a scale that would warrant prohibition. In the early 1900s, things changed. After the Mexican Revolution, American farmers developed a deep dislike of Mexican farmers because of their cheaper prices and labor - followed by a depression, which exacerbated these feelings. As jobs became scarce, White Americans seized upon racial differences to stigmatize and crowd out their Mexican competition. One of the "differences" seized upon during this time was the fact that Mexicans smoked marijuana instead of tobacco.

Through this cultural odium California, Texas, Arkansas, Nevada, and several other Mexican-populated states passed laws prohibiting and demonizing marijuana with a strong racial stigma specifically targeting Mexican-Americans. A quote from a Texas senator justifying the passed law - "All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff [marijuana] is what makes them crazy."

On the East Coast
In Eastern states, the purportedly psychotic effects of marijuana were also curiously 'discovered' in the early 1920s followed by a Great Depression in the 1930s which exacerbated racial tensions between governing whites and dark-skinned Latin American immigrants who also smoked marijuana rather than tobacco.

From New Orleans to Harlem, the music scene and explosion in jazz talent coincided with an influx of black and Latin American musicians whom smoked marijuana fairly regularly. Again, racism was part of the charge against marijuana. Before a pivotal vote to outlaw marijuana, an influential and main-stream East Coast newspaper editorialized, "Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice."

Fears began to spread due to yellow-journalism and the influence of the Hearst newspaper empire, that Mexicans, Blacks, and other foreigners were snaring white children with marijuana. The predominantly White scientific community at the time joined in: Dr. A. E. Fossier of the New Orleans Science Journal wrote in 1931: "Under the influence of hashish (these) fanatics would madly rush at their perceived enemies, and ruthlessly massacre every one within their grasp." Within a very short time, marijuana and foreigners had been effectively demonized - a convenient scapegoat to distract a jobless public from the policy failures of American politicians, central bankers, and economists during the Great Depression.

More State Control
By this time Prohibition was in full swing - and unsurprisingly, the outlawing of alcohol, just like the outlaw of nearly all recreational drugs today, enabled criminal enterprises such as the Mafia, which had not existed in any threatening capacity prior to Prohibition, to form and created significantly higher levels of violent crime. Feeding on the scapegoating of foreigners and all recreational substances during the Depression to both distract voters and expand their own mandate to govern, a powerful contingent of U.S. politicians created the Bureau of Narcotics and appointed an ambitious policymaker named Henry Anslinger to lead. Anslinger realized an opportunity. Drawing upon themes of racism and violence to draw national attention to the problem he and his allies in government and yellow-journalists built their careers on, Anslinger promoted a compendium of files dubbed "the Gore Files" to spread tales of wild tales of sex, Negroes, and ax-murderers on marijuana committing crimes. Quotes from the man responsible for the outlawing of marijuana today:

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, mulattos, 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."

"...the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races."

"Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death."

"Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."

"Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing"

"You smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother."

"Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind."

Hearst's Pivotal Role
During this time, William Randolph Hearst influenced American public opinion using these Files from Anslinger through his vast chain of newspapers - in total, during the 1920s, Hearst owned 22 newspapers and claimed the largest circulation in the United States at around 300,000. Hearst had 4 motives.
1) An intense dislike of Hispanics (after all, Hearst single-handedly spurred the Spanish-American war - see here, at PBS).
2) Hearst's main revenue came not from newspapers, but from huge investments in U.S. Timber - and the development of hemp paper, a cheaper alternative, posed a tremendous threat to his assets.
3) Third, Hearst had lost nearly 1,000,000 acres of timberland to Pancho Villa during wars in Mexico, amplifying his racist dislike of Mexicans in particular.
4) Fourth, spreading lurid, sensationalist descriptions and stories linking foreigners to violence using marijuana as the main vehicle sold newspapers, making him even more rich.

Here, some samples from Hearst's most prized newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner:

"Marihuana makes fiends of young boys -- hashish goads men to bloodlust."

"By the tons it is coming into this country -- the deadly, dreadful poison that racks and tears not only the body, but the very heart and soul of every human being who once becomes a slave to it in any of its cruel and devastating forms. Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum - smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was your brain will become nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters. Hasheesh makes a murderer of who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man who ever laughed at the idea that any habit could ever get to him."

And here, other newspapers' nationwide columns...

"Users of marihuana become STIMULATED as they inhale the drug and are LIKELY TO DO ANYTHING. Most crimes of violence in this section, especially in country districts, are users of that drug."

"Was it marihuana, 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."

Big Business Joins Growing State Intervention
Hearst soon was joined by allies in Big Business threatened by the competition posed by production of non-narcotic marijuana-plant related commodities from hemp used as a textile to hemp paper, as well as use of marijuana as a low-cost affordable alternative to more expensive pain products manufactured by large pharmaceutical companies. Chief among those in Big Business angling to demonize marijuana and legislatively ban its use was the DuPont Corporation, a mammoth chemical and pharmaceutical company.

In 1935, DuPont had patented nylon. When word reached DuPont that hemp, a non-narcotic industrial textile developed from marijuana plants, could compete with nylon as a cheaper alternative, and potentially undermine DuPont's windfall profits, the company went bananas and threw its resources in with Hearst to vilify and outlaw marijuana.

As a result of the combined forces and lobbying power of yellow-journalism underwritten by large corporations aiming to snuff out potential competition, the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was passed, which ultimately led to the full outlawing of marijuana.

Here, some citations used by the Committee Chairman at the time to justify passage of heavy taxation of marijuana:

The Chairman: I would like to read a quotation from a recent editorial in the Washington Times:

The marihuana cigarette is one of the most insidious of all forms of dope, largely because of the failure of the public to understand its fatal qualities.

The Nation is almost defenseless against it, having no Federal laws to cope with it and virtually no organized campaign for combating it.

The result is tragic.

School children are the prey of peddlers who infest school neighborhoods.

High school boys and girls buy the destructive weed without knowledge of its capacity of harm, and conscienceless dealers sell it with impunity.

This is a national problem, and it must have national attention.

The fatal marihuana cigarette must be recognized as a deadly drug, and American children must be protected against it.

That is a pretty severe indictment. They say it is a national question and that it requires effective legislation. Of course, in a general way, you have responded to all of these statements; but that indicates very clearly that it is an evil of such magnitude that it is recognized by the press of the country as such.

And on the basis of these lies lined with racist sensationalism, principally guided by anti-competitive corporate interests, marijuana was outlawed and the poisoning of its reputation in the public mind began.

Citations and Further References:
University of Virginia Law Review: Legal History of American Marijuana Prohibition
Schaffer Library on Drug Policy: Reefer Racism
Drug Policy Alliance Network: A Racial History of U.S. Drug Prohibition
A History of the Non-Medical Uses of Drugs
A Concise History of the Marijuana Act of 1937

Why Marijuana Should be Legal
Arguments for legalization of marijuana proceed on six fronts: Hypocrisy, Utilitarian, Individual-Rights, Crime-Reduction, Race, and Economics.

Hypocrisy
Perhaps the most convincing argument, a comparison of the annual death tolls of more dangerous but legal narcotics such as tobacco and alcohol to fatalities associated with marijuana reveals that quantifiable tobacco-related deaths in the year 2000 numbered 435,000, alcohol-related deaths in the same year numbered 85,000, and marijuana deaths amounted to 0.

It requires little deductive reasoning to figure out that the principal reason drugs such as alcohol and tobacco have legal status while marijuana remains illegal is attributable to the lobbying might of large, entrenched tobacco and alcohol companies bent on crowding out competition from their notoriously lucrative industries.

Additionally, the Gateway Theory, advanced in the 1980s War on Drugs period (you might remember the tail-end of it like me, spending days in D.A.R.E. class as a kid), not only fails to correctly apply to marijuana, but even if it was applied to marijuana, marijuana cannot be said to act as a gateway drug - instead, it is a mere conduit among many different recreational drugs, as opposed to an entryway to abuse of progressively more potent drugs. Preceding marijuana as initiating recreational drugs of choice is first-time-use of alcohol and tobacco - nearly 100% of individuals whom end up as eventual substance abusers of hard drugs began using alcohol and/or tobacco products eons before ever using marijuana, if ever.

Moreover, the magnitude of addiction for tobacco products has been measured to be extremely high, as well as for alcohol, while for marijuana, addiction has been proven only in rare psychological instances, while chemical and physical addiction to marijuana are impossible and have never been documented.

The logical conclusions are: If we are going to ban recreational drugs under the policy auspices of enhancing public safety and reducing drug-related fatalities, alcohol and tobacco must necessarily be outlawed. Alternatively, if we are going to ban marijuana under the policy auspices of preventing substance abuse, alcohol and tobacco necessarily must also fall under this rubric lest a large degree of hypocrisy pervade our drug laws.

Utilitarian
The number of deaths from marijuana: 0. The deaths from alcohol and tobacco per year: Approximately over 500,000. There is a high loss of societal utility derived from the legal status of tobacco and alcohol products, while there is relatively almost no societal utility we can derive from prohibiting a drug that cannot cause overdose like alcohol or release into humans comparably lethal toxins like tobacco.

Individual-Rights
There is a question of constitutionality and respect for individuals to act as their own agents so long as their choices do not interfere with the liberty of others. If individuals can opt to use marijuana without abusing it, like so many do in moderation with an even more magnitudinally potent and addictive recreational drug such as alcohol, there is no justification for prohibition of marijuana. Similarly, individuals can opt to use marijuana without abusing or interfering with the freedom of others to live and prosper. Prohibiting individuals from the ability to choose to use marijuana, while permitting individuals' use of quantitatively and quantifiably more dangerous recreational drugs such as tobacco and alcohol, is both capricious and highly arbitrary.

The idea of a victimless crime such as the choice to use marijuana without abusing it and/or interfering with the freedom of others to live and prosper, runs counter to a basic respect for the sovereignty of individuals. Indistinguishable from permitting the sale of much more dangerous drugs such as hard alcohol to individuals on the basis of a certain level of respect for them to use a potentially risky recreational drug in moderation without acting irresponsibly, the sale of marijuana should logically follow - if the government allows individuals to use more potentially harmful recreational drugs because individuals may make choices that can risk negative consequences, yet are able to act responsibly in the face of such potential risks, then there is no rational reason to prohibit marijuana.

Crime-Reduction
Prohibiting a commodity sought by consumers creates black-markets that automatically give rise to organized crime. In the 1920s, Prohibition virtually created organized crime, increased rates of violent crime, and increased the number of first-time criminal offenders whom had never participated in criminal activity before. Similarly, prohibition of marijuana enables organized groups to rob from, extort, and commit acts of violence against each other and small-time dealers to corner markets for the sale of marijuana. Prohibition of marijuana also invites more persons with no prior criminal involvement to become first-time criminal offenders by criminalizing the overwhelming percentage of marijuana users whom use without abusing and don't commit acts of violence. Similarly, prohibition of marijuana also invites more persons with no prior criminal involvement to become first-time users by romanticizing the use of marijuana to adolescents.

By pushing the use and sale of marijuana outside of the law, prohibition gives groups and individuals greater incentive to use violence against one another as a means to settle disputes. The illegal status of recreational drugs such as marijuana has increased the ease for criminal groups to use violent tactics to intimidate, extort, or attack everyone on the distribution chain from growers to producers and sellers - therefore, marijuana prohibition increases criminal-on-criminal violence. Because there are no legal alternatives available to resolve conflicts in the sale and production of marijuana, there is a greater reward to use violence to make quick gains in cornering markets instead of peaceful conflict resolution monitored by the law.

By pushing the use of marijuana outside of the law, prohibition also penalizes non-violent marijuana-using individuals as first-time criminal offenders. The total number of individuals arrested for marijuana exceeds the number of those arrested for murder, forcible rape, robbery, manslaughter, and aggravated assault combined, and over 94% of those arrested for marijuana charges are non-violent marijuana users - this also begs the question, what is the purpose of the law to send non-violent individuals to jail? This raises a serious question about the efficacy of the law in this regard: How does penalizing non-violent individuals decrease crime rates? Marijuana use continues unabated in the U.S., therefore there is no real argument for marijuana prohibition based on deterrence. The rational conclusion is that prohibition of marijuana actually encourages non-violent non-criminals to learn criminal behavior by forcing them to interact with more criminally-prone individuals - therefore prohibition produces more criminals than it discourages.

Moreover, by marginalizing the use of marijuana by pushing it outside of the law, prohibition creates a romantic fiction around the use of marijuana as "cool". Never has someone used marijuana because of intimidation or coercion as depicted in the hilariously wretched and ineffective anti-drug commercials frequently aired and constantly re-modified by the government - here are some great examples. In almost all cases, adolescent attraction to marijuana usage is triggered by the romantic image it has acquired by virtue of its illegal status - it's exhibitionistic rebellion, where teenagers can become cool by doing something that is relatively harmless to their own physical well-being, but is still illegal and something their parents and stodgy school principals are against.

In effect, the illegal status of marijuana, actually invites adolescents to use. A counter-argument might be made that legalizing marijuana would cause adolescents to use more dangerous illegal substances such as cocaine to acquire "cool" social statuses, but this misses the point. There is no end-game to halting adolescents' pursuit of "cool" social statuses via illegal substances and activities, but it is highly unlikely that, in terms of criminal activity linked to increased popularity among youths, adolescents would simply continue 'up' to more stigmatized and life-threatening recreational drugs such as cocaine and crack, rather than seek safer criminal alternatives such as graffiti and 'acting out' to acquire popularity.

The legalization of marijuana would undermine organized crime by forcing groups and individuals to operate their businesses in the open subject to constant, rigorous monitoring by the law. For example, forcing alcohol vendors to operate in the open with rigorously obtained government-issued licenses contributed to safer alcoholic products, increased oversight, decreased organized crime, and decreased alcohol-related criminal violence. Marijuana legalization would similarly lessen interaction between non-violent non-criminal users of marijuana and violent criminals, decreasing levels of learned criminal behavior caused by such interactions between non-criminals and criminals. Additionally, the legalization of marijuana would deflate the romantic fiction linking marijuana and its illegal status to adolescent popularity.

Race
Enforcement of U.S. drug laws raises a serious issue of racial fairness because they are generally applied in a highly race-conscious manner. While 13% of U.S. drug users are black, 8% are Hispanic, and 76% are white - blacks represent 38% of all drug arrests, 59% of drug convictions, and 74% of those sentenced for a drug-related offense - and 28% of those in jail for first-time marijuana crimes are black. And while whites and blacks use marijuana at the same rate, blacks are 2.5 time as likely as whites to be arrested and charged for a marijuana-based offense. Such glaring statistical asymmetries indicate that enforcement of a prohibition on marijuana is noticeably race-conscious, and sometimes explicitly racist, in application.

Economics
There are three components to this argument. First, the potential revenue windfall offered by the legalization, licensing of, and taxation of marijuana to the federal government is sorely needed at this point when the government is vastly overextended and deeply indebted. Second, sales of non-narcotic materials such as hemp textiles would heighten U.S. economic competitiveness. Third, the U.S. government would be able to divest approximately $7 billion in ineffective yearly expenditures in maintaining marijuana prohibition, divertible to more beneficial policy uses. In total, the legalization of marijuana would save the federal government upwards of approximately $10 to $14 billion.