Cannabis has always been an integral aspect of our political and cultural landscape.
In the 1600s, colonial farmers were encouraged to grow hemp, a kind of cannabis that contains low levels of THC. Hemp was lauded for its quick growth and durable nature, making it the prime choice for constructing ropes, paper, clothing and sails.
As the hemp market flourished in the United States, marijuana made its way to medicinal products sold in pharmacies — openly. In fact, many large U.S. pharmaceutical companies had been importing cannabis from India.
The national conversation surrounding cannabis began to shift in the early 1900s, due in part to a number of political changes. The narrative that set the foundation of the stigma against cannabis was bolstered by the Mexican Revolution and the increase of immigrants.
The Spanish introduced cannabis to Mexico in the colonial era, but its recreational popularity resulted in an eventual ban in 1920. Historian Isaac Campos, author of “Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs,” agrees this was notable with its imminent legacy within American culture.
“I’ve actually found evidence that Mexicans were crossing the border into the U.S., buying cannabis in pharmacies, and taking it back to Mexico probably to sell there,” Campos said in Time Magazine. “So the smuggling was going in the other direction at that time because many states in Mexico had already prohibited it.”
Nationalism and prohibition were mixed to create a bigoted cocktail of sensationalism; with prohibitionists dead set on the idea that drugs and alcohol were an invention of immigrants.
In 1911, a member of California’s State Board of Pharmacy fueled this paranoia, attributing immigration from India to the increasing popularity of cannabis in America, writing that a “very undesirable lot was initiating our whites into this habit.”
When it comes to cannabis reform, this is an aspect of cannabis history that cannot be ignored. While the United States was outsourcing its cannabis for its own people, the blame was shifted to those immigrating to America.
But it didn’t stop there. As the Great Depression resulted in mass poverty and unemployment, the hostility and fear toward immigrants and people of color grew. This sparked new types of pseudo-research of cannabis use that was associated with these groups.
In 1930, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was born. Its first commissioner, Harry J. Anslinger, claimed that marijuana would cause insanity, criminality and death. In 1931, cannabis was banned in 29 states.
The 1936 exploitation film, “Reefer Madness,” encompassed the frenzy surrounding cannabis that was sweeping the nation. One of many propaganda films of the time, “Reefer Madness” tells the story of young and impressionable (white) teenagers who begin a bizarre and violent downward spiral after trying marijuana for the very first time.
There’s a murder. There’s also a suicide. Everyone loses their mind.
Meanwhile, Anslinger continued to publicly denounce “evil weed” and the crimes he associated with it.
By 1937, Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act, which criminalized cannabis in every state. Anslinger’s views on drug use aligned with most of the American public, albeit even when contradicted by scientific research. In 1944, the New York Academy of Medicine issued an extensive report that found no connection with marijuana and violent behavior, sex crimes or inducing insanity. Anslinger doubled down, claiming that the authors of the report were dangerous and strange.
Nevertheless, cannabis found its way into American countercultures, with its use becoming more and more widespread in the 1960s.
In 1970, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act, which categorized drugs into schedules, based on their alleged medical benefits or risk of abuse. Spurred by President Richard Nixon’s war on drugs, cannabis was put into Schedule 1, alongside heroin and LSD. In 1972, the Shafer Commission, which Nixon himself appointed to study drug abuse within the country, recommended that marijuana be removed from Schedule 1 and decriminalized.
The Shafer Commission reported that “unless present policy is redirected, we will perpetuate the same problems, tolerate the same social costs, and find ourselves as we do now, no further along the road to a more rational legal and social approach than we were in 1914.”
Nixon rejected this, but a handful of states began to loosen their penalties for cannabis-related offenses.
Yet in 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which established mandatory sentencing for drug-related offenses. This led to stricter federal penalties and the eventual “three strikes and you’re out” policy, which required life sentences for anyone arrested for drugs multiple times. Drug-related arrests increased at a sickening amount, with the incarcerated population reaching 1.5 million in 2015.
The ACLU found that arrests involving marijuana contribute to more than half of all drug arrests, with Black Americans arrested at exorbitantly higher rates than white Americans, even though usage rates are similar.
Policy regarding cannabis has ebbed and flowed for years. California began its medical marijuana program in 1996 and, since then, 28 other states have followed suit. But the historical implications found within the history of cannabis illuminate the way in which systemic racism and bigotry have assumed the role of a cultural norm. The consequences of mass incarceration still run rampant. And as we reach a new era in which states begin to legalize and decriminalize marijuana, it remains illegal at a federal level; caught in the limbo of bureaucratic drug classifications and political policy.
