Racialization of Marijuana
The historical beginning of Cannabis does not have a concrete date. In fact, there is much speculation surrounding when humans first started to utilize one of the most useful and adaptable plants on earth. In today’s culture, the views of marijuana are changing in comparison to what they have been for the past few decades. Prior to this, it had been shunned by America, due to governmental disapproval of its psychoactive properties, consequently viewing it as an illicit drug (Office of National Drug Control Policy: 2015). The esteemed philosopher and artist Willie Nelson once said, “I think people need to be educated to the fact that marijuana is not just a drug. Marijuana is an herb and a flower. God put it here.” To understand why marijuana become outlawed in the first place, you have to consider the political nature and racial viewpoints of the time that it happened and essentially disregard anything the government has said on the topic ever since the start of the 20th Century and the beginning of the War on Drugs. Everything since has been governmental propaganda, in efforts to sway the population to negatively perceive the plant and promote their own political agendas.
Prior to it becoming illegal, marijuana was actually a huge part of the history of the United States. The first marijuana law of the country was enacted at Jamestown Colony, Virginia in 1619, which required all farmers to grow marijuana in order to use it for food, cloth, paper, rope, fuel, and much more. Many of the Founding Fathers, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, also grew marijuana as either a primary or secondary crop. In that respect, America, as well as much of the rest of the world, was quite dependent on marijuana in fact (Booth, 2013). Around the early 1900’s, the Federal Food and Drug Act of 1906 ordering all medications containing cannabis, heroin, or cocaine to be purchased over-the-counter. This adds to the fact that marijuana has been known to have medical properties well before it was labeled as a Schedule 1 Drug which raises the question, so why did the government brand it as having no medical use and being highly addictive? To answer this question, you have to look at racialization of marijuana within the United States.
Dangerous Native Behaviors
Shortly after the Mexican Revolution, around 1910, many Mexicans were fleeing Mexico to escape the conflict. The neighboring states of Texas and Louisiana saw an influx of these immigrants and, not surprisingly, they brought with them new customs, languages, and culture. One of the cultural influences they brought with them was the use of marijuana that was both similar and different to American use of the time. However, marijuana had existed in the lives of Americans well before the Mexican immigrations. The only difference was that the term for the when it was used in virtually all medicine and tinctures of the time was “cannabis” and not “marijuana”. The term “marijuana” is what the Mexicans called the plant. The media introduced this word with negative connotations to the people and was able to play on the fears of the public by spreading false claims about the “disruptive Mexicans”. The addressed “their dangerous, native behaviors”, including marijuana use. Meanwhile, that same public had no idea that the “marijuana” that the media was referring to was actually the same exact thing as the “cannabis” that was sitting in their medicine cabinets (Booth 2013).
Jazz Music
Latin and Black American jazz musicians were one of the leading groups of people that were heavily associated with marijuana culture. Along with the previous ridiculous notions mentioned at the hearings, it was said that marijuana also influenced them to “look at white people in the eye and step on a white man’s shadow”, fueled by the music they were creating that was supposedly “snatching up the white women and children” (Abel 1980). Eventually, the Boggs Act of 1952 and Narcotics Control Act of 1956 would allow the federal government to start requiring minimum prison sentences for drugs crimes, including possession of marijuana and in the 1970’s, President Nixon officially declared his “War on Drugs.”
Eventually, tabloids, newspapers, and other media/news outlets began to build a campaign against marijuana and much of it was rooted against Mexican immigrants, rooted in racist ideologies. By 1937, every state except for two had made marijuana use illegal. The method of controlling people by controlling their customs proved to be very successful for American government and they began to use it to monitor and keep control over other, certain populations as well. During the hearings to establish more marijuana control laws in the 1930’s, claims were also made that the plant would cause men of color to become even more violent and increase their desire to attack and solicit sex from white woman (Booth 2013).
The Controlled Substance Act of 1970 introduced the entire concept of “scheduling drugs” based on how dangerous they were perceived to be. It is crucial to note that before Nixon went ahead with declaring the “war”, he had a committee of doctors, scientists, and other professionals was established to determine the severity of these drugs and they assisted with the scheduling of the drugs. This is when marijuana became assigned to the highest level of being a Schedule 1 drug, meaning it had “no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse”. However, they reported that marijuana should not be Schedule 1 and even raised doubts about its claims of an illicit substance. They went on to discuss how they actually found the opposite of their assumptions, in that sense that weed could be used to treat other substance abuse of harder drugs, such as opium, and even as medicine for other ailments, while having no strong suggestions of it being addictive. Nixon completely disregarded these reports and went ahead with his plans anyway and also created the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1972.The prohibition America placed on the plant during the latter half of the 20 th Century reflected the confusion its legal system had when distinguishing the psychoactive and non-psychoactive strains of cannabis. By banning all consumption and cultivation of it, cannabis became repressed in American culture and was seen as morally unacceptable. Because it has been outlawed, there is a huge lack of research regarding the drug and its prevalence and applications in society. This subsequently undermined the application of an immensely versatile crop. In a way, it would be interesting to see where cannabis use and researchwould be today if it had not been set back by the prohibition. As our understanding ofcannabis changes and more evidence comes forth supporting medicinal, agricultural,nutritional, and industrial benefits of it, we are touching back to the roots of why weinitially started to integrate this plant so deeply with humanity’s cultural and biologicalprogression.
Taxonomy and Further CharacterizationsThere is some confusion amongst scientists regarding the proper taxonomy ofcannabis and how it should be broken up as a species and subspecies, partly due to the factthat there are so many hybrid strains of both sativa and indica. The general taxonomy ofthe plant places it under the family of Cannabaceae, or “hemp family”. Cannabis isdioecious, meaning that there is a sexual distinction between the male and female plants.“The economically valuable products of cannabis, whether fiber, seed, or drugs, all comeprimarily from female plants” (Ranalli 1999:15-16). Confusion to the taxonomy wasprominent in the outlawing of all cannabis in America. Lawmakers were unable todistinguish between non-psychoactive and psychoactive stains of cannabis and in turnmade even industrial hemp illegal (Warf 2014: 429). According to the U.S. Department ofAgriculture, the species is Cannabis sativa L. and there are two subspecies, cannabis sativaand Cannabis indica.