Editorial Observer: The Federal Marijuana Ban Is Rooted in Myth and Xenophobia
The
federal law that makes possession of marijuana a crime has its origins
in legislation that was passed in an atmosphere of hysteria during the
1930s and that was firmly rooted in prejudices against Mexican
immigrants and African-Americans, who were associated with marijuana use
at the time. This racially freighted history lives on in current federal policy, which is so driven by myth and propaganda that is it almost impervious to reason.
The
cannabis plant, also known as hemp, was widely grown in the United
States for use in fabric during the mid-19th century. The practice of
smoking it appeared in Texas border towns around 1900, brought by
Mexican immigrants who cultivated cannabis as an intoxicant and for
medicinal purposes as they had done at home.
Within
15 years or so, it was plentiful along the Texas border and was
advertised openly at grocery markets and drugstores, some of which
shipped small packets by mail to customers in other states.
The
law enforcement view of marijuana was indelibly shaped by the fact that
it was initially connected to brown people from Mexico and subsequently
with black and poor communities in this country. Police in Texas border
towns demonized the plant in racial terms as the drug of “immoral”
populations who were promptly labeled “fiends.”
As
the legal scholars Richard Bonnie and Charles Whitebread explain in
their authoritative history, “The Marihuana Conviction,” the drug’s
popularity among minorities and other groups practically ensured that it
would be classified as a “narcotic,” attributed with addictive
qualities it did not have, and set alongside far more dangerous drugs
like heroin and morphine.
By
the early 1930s, more than 30 states had prohibited the use of
marijuana for nonmedical purposes. The federal push was yet to come.
The
stage for federal suppression of marijuana was set in New Orleans,
where a prominent doctor blamed “muggle-heads” — as pot smokers were
called — for an outbreak of robberies. The city was awash in
sensationalistic newspaper articles that depicted pushers hovering by
the schoolhouse door turning children into “addicts.” These stories
popularized spurious notions about the drug that lingered for decades.
Law enforcement officials, too, trafficked in the “assassin” theory,
under in which killers were said to have smoked cannabis to ready themselves for murder and mayhem.
Timeline
Evolving on Marijuana
Highlights from the Editorial Board’s changing view of marijuana over six decades.
In
1930, Congress consolidated the drug control effort in the Federal
Bureau of Narcotics, led by the endlessly resourceful commissioner,
Harry Jacob Anslinger, who became the architect of national prohibition.
His case rested on two fantastical assertions: that the drug caused
insanity; that it pushed people toward horrendous acts of criminality.
Others at the time argued that it was fiercely addictive.
He
may not have actually believed his propaganda, but he fed it by giving
lurid stories to the press as a way of making a case for federal
intervention. This narrative had a great effect at Congressional
hearings that led to the enactment of The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, which tried to eradicate the use and sale of the drug through heavy taxation.
Mr.
Bonnie and Mr. Whitebread report that the witness list for those
hearings contained not a single person who had done significant research
into the effects of cannabis. Mr. Anslinger testified that even a
single marijuana cigarette could induce a “homicidal mania,” prompting
people to want to kill those they loved. The bill passed handily;
President Franklin Roosevelt signed it into law.
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