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Unfortunate History of Marijuana Prohibition in the United States

Posted by admin on Monday, December 7th, 2009

Most Americans associate marijuana use with the hippie movement of the 1970?s. Little do most know, marijuana was very important to this country when it was founded. In 1610 the Jamestown colony mandated that every household cultivate the native Indian hemp. They used it to make clothes, fiber, cloth, and medicine. In fact, the Declaration of Independence was signed July 4, 1776 on hemp paper. In 1850, the Census Bureau estimated that 8,327 plantations nationwide grew hemp. It took all the way until the early 1900?s for the United States to suddenly have a problem with plant.

Southern California and Texas were flooded with immigrants from Mexico around 1910. After long days of laboring they would often smoke marijuana to relax. The US abolished slavery in 1865 but equal rights for non-whites were still far from being realized. As a result, the public started unfairly associating marijuana use with the Mexican immigrants, who they didn?t like because they looked different. El Paso was the first place to outlaw marijuana in 1914 because of a bar fight attributed to ?loco weed.? Texas? first law against marijuana read, ?All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff is what does it to them.? After marijuana was outlawed there, it was only a matter of months before the government enacted The Harrison Act of 1914, followed five years later with The Alcohol Prohibition of 1919. These laws effectively robbed taxpaying citizens? access to substances that had been legal since the beginning of time.

Fearful of the spread of this terrible ?Mexican crazy drug? the government began to put out massive propaganda to discourage the spread of marijuana use. Marijuana use was a conflict of interest for our government because they made tax revenue from doctor-prescribed cocaine, heroin, and morphine. They feared that Americans would obtain marijuana to use as a substitute to these substances and they couldn?t get their hand on those tax dollars. The first campaigns were launched immediately and the commissioner of Federal Bureau of Narcotics proclaimed, ?Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death.?

During the Great Depression, massive unemployment increased public resentment and fear of Mexican immigrants, escalating public and governmental concern about the use of marijuana.