Cannabis, according to a study by RAND, was
never a real problem. A recent finding indicates
that it was first smoked in Chinese burial grounds
2,500 years ago. In fact, this particular cannabis
had higher than average THC, indicating that it
was selected for its psychotropic qualities. It was
a burial ground so these nomads were seeking
relief and something mystical, and the female
cannabis plant provides that.
Since then it’s been distributed worldwide,
and it remains one of the most
commonly used substances.
However, most
Americans didn’t
spark up
until the 1970s. It was first banned in the
United States in 1937 under the hands of Henry
Anslinger, America’s first drug czar and head of
the Treasury Department. He nailed the coffin
shut in the 1950s by making it fully illegal.
Harry Anslinger was working, in part, at the
behest of DuPont, who wanted hemp out of the
way so their petrochemical fibers could enter the
market with no natural competitors. Anslinger
also had a personal hatred of African Americans
(Billie Holiday in particular) and Mexicans, who
had been smoking it long before Anglos arrived.
Cannabis was a drug he could use to imprison
them.
He gained the help of William Randolph
Hearst, who also hated Mexicans because he
lost land to them in the Mexican American War.
He helped Anslinger by sending his lobbyists
to Washington. Hearst printed ads and articles
demonizing marijuana, a derogatory term derived
from Mexican Americans, who had long spelled
it with an h; he didn’t want to use cannabis, a
European word, so he rebranded it.
According to records from Readers
Digest, the terms cannabis and marijuana were
not mentioned in articles until 1937, after which,
over 14 articles made mention of the substance.
Many of the articles were featured in Hearst’s
publications, and Anslinger wrote some of
them himself. He also penned books published
by Hearst, with titles like Murders, in which
Anslinger credits marijuana as the cause of
crimes clearly committed by psychopaths.
Stigmas have a way of becoming Schedule
1 narcotics. President Richard Nixon, working
with Anslinger, made cannabis a Schedule
1 narcotic in 1971. Nancy Reagan continued
the stigmatization in the 80s with her DARE
campaign, which inculcated a notion that
cannabis was as dangerous as LSD and heroin.
Although Anslinger admits in Murders that
cannabis isn’t addictive, he goes on to say that
small doses cause “raving fits” and “criminal
assaults.” Neither Anslinger, Nixon nor Reagan
commissioned serious studies of the plant;
they simply used it as a means of control for
ideological purposes.
America’s fascist side, personified in leaders
DAVIDE-RAGUSA
Alcohol was made illegal because of all of
the problems it caused. We’ve always been a
nation of drinkers; it’s in our European heritage.
As W.J. Rorabaugh notes in Prohibition: A
Concise History, it started with rum. During the
Revolutionary War the British cut off its supply
from the West Indies, but thanks to ample corn
fields, we made up for it with whiskey. Successful
politicians, like George Washington, coaxed
voters with it. Whiskey was cleaner than the
water, and was served in saloons, which were for
men only. They drank a lot of it, and their wives
and children bore the brunt of it. Violence was
common: A celebrity like Wild Bill Cody was shot
in the back while playing poker at a saloon in
Deadwood. The West was indeed very wild.
But while we’ve always been drinkers, a
penchant for temperance also brewed beneath
the surface, with the Puritans in Massachusetts,
Evangelicals in the South, James Oglethorpe
in Georgia and Dr. Benjamin Rush with his
temperance thermometer. Prohibition was
the pendulum shift after a century of violent
inebriation. And it worked. Alcohol consumption
was reduced to a third of what it was before the
Volstead Act, and didn’t rise again until the 1950s
when Anheuser-Busch started advertising during
sports games. According to the US Department of
Health and Human Services, the average person’s
annual consumption was 2.6 gallons in 1910, 1.02
in 1935, 2.7 in 1980 and 2.3 in 2014.