Why cannabis is illegal

Not surprising, these new Americans brought with them their native language, culture and customs. One of these customs was the use of cannabis as a medicine and relaxant. The demonization of the cannabis plant was an extension of the demonization of the Mexican immigrants. The idea was to have an excuse to search, detain and deport Mexican immigrants. This method of controlling people by controlling their customs was quite successful, so much so that it became a national strategy for keeping certain populations under the watch and control of the government.

This imagery became the backdrop for the Marijuana Tax Act of which effectively banned its use and sales. Cannabis was placed in the most restrictive category, Schedule I, supposedly as a place holder while then President Nixon commissioned a report to give a final recommendation. The Schafer Commission, as it was called, declared that marijuana should not be in Schedule I and even doubted its designation as an illicit substance. However, Nixon discounted the recommendations of the commission, and marijuana remains a Schedule I substance.

In , California became the first state to approve the use of marijuana for medical purposes, ending its 59 year reign as an illicit substance with no medical value. Prior to , cannabis had enjoyed a year history as a therapeutic agent across many cultures. In this context, its blip as an illicit and dangerous drug was dwarfed by its role as a medicine.

And yet, its consumption is illegal. If the mainstream rhetoric around the alleged death by suicide of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput is anything to go by, cannabis — or its resin hash and flowers weed — is the epitome of evil.

The only paradox is that until 35 years ago, this view of the indigenous plant and its psychotropic by-products was not viewed as a crime. And Indians have been smoking up for thousands of years before that.

The association of cannabis with crimes, and by extension social stigma, is actually an import from the United States. Though India opposed the classification of cannabis alongside hard drugs during the Convention on Narcotic Drugs, it eventually buckled under the pressure in India enacted the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act in , effectively criminalising the use of the fruit and flower of cannabis, but excluding the leaves.

The leaves, which Indian grind on a mortar and pestle to make a paste called bhaang, have deep connections with the Hindu religion, especially the cult of Shiva, the god of destruction.

Since the first statewide medical marijuana laws went into effect in California in , the number of Americans with legal access to what for many is a pleasurable drug has been steadily growing. Twenty states and the District of Columbia now permit the sale of various forms of marijuana for medical purposes; in the past several months, the governor of New York, a state known since for its punitive drug laws, announced that he too would pursue accommodation for medical marijuana; and recreational marijuana is expected to be offered for sale in Washington State later this year.

Recently, the District of Columbia decriminalized the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana, treating it as a civil offense from now on. Medical marijuana remains solidly in the realm of alternative medicine, and few clinical studies have been conducted to confirm specific claims.

With the current state-level push toward legalization, voters seem to have found a way around the twentieth-century quest for prohibition—a prohibition that has become increasingly difficult to explain or justify.

Unlike alcohol, excessive pot smoking has not been unambiguously implicated in violent behavior or poor health. As a Schedule I drug, under federal law, marijuana is considered to have no medical use, although there are thousands of patient testimonials to the contrary.

And perhaps the biggest contradiction of all is that since the century-long drive for prohibition was initiated, marijuana has become extremely popular. Every year, hundreds of thousands of unlucky citizens face criminal sanctions for getting caught with a drug that one third of all Americans—including college students, professional athletes, legions of entertainers, and the past three U.

Presidents—have experimented with at least once. In popular culture, the drug has become accepted as harmless fun. In , a talk show host can joke with a former congressman about being pot smokers on cable TV. As Americans consider further legalizing marijuana it is worth reviewing how the use of this plant became illegal in the first place and why prohibition persists in much of the country more than a half century after its use became common.

Interestingly, while marijuana use has been an urgent topic of conversation for over a century in this country, the voices of doctors and scientists have been largely quiet. Instead, the debate has been shaped by media portrayals of drug use and reinforced by politicians and advocacy groups that supported them. Cannabis, like opiates and cocaine , was freely available at drug stores in liquid form and as a refined product, hashish.

Cannabis was also a common ingredient in turn-of-the-century patent medicines, over-the-counter concoctions brewed to proprietary formulas. Then, as now, it was difficult to clearly distinguish between medicinal and recreational use of a product whose purpose is to make you feel good. While there were fads for cannabis across the nineteenth century, strictly recreational use was not widely known or accepted. But the practice of smoking marijuana leaf in cigarettes or pipes was largely unknown in the United States until it was introduced by Mexican immigrants during the first few decades of the twentieth century.

That introduction, in turn, generated a reaction in the U. The first attempt at federal regulation of marijuana came in , with the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act. The act included cannabis among the various substances patent medicine companies were required to list on their labels in order that worried customers could avoid it.

Then, between and , twenty-six states passed laws prohibiting the plant. The anti-marijuana laws were uncontroversial and passed, for the most part, with an absence of public outcry or even legislative debate. Flush with success in pushing through alcohol prohibition , temperance campaigners in the s began turning attention toward opiates and cocaine, which had become prohibited under increasingly strict Supreme Court interpretations of the Harrison Narcotics Act.

The fact that marijuana smoking was a habit of immigrants and the lower class clearly played a role in its prohibition, though there is little indication that Hearst was more racist than might be expected of a man of his time and station. The association of murder, torture, and mindless violence with marijuana was not borne out by evidence or actual events but blossomed thanks to the vivid imaginations of the journalists charged with sensationalizing the tired story of drug use and addiction.

Until a few decades prior, the public was acquainted with opiates from widespread medicinal use, and with cocaine from its presence in drugstore potions including Coca-Cola.

Journalists, politicians, police, and middle-class readers had no similar familiarity with marijuana, allowing it to become the vessel for their worst fears: addicting, personality-destroying, violence-causing.