Draft:The Racist Past of Cannabis and It's Hopeful Future

Historical Context: The war on cannabis is ongoing and has caused racial tensions throughout the United States and the world. This problem all started in the early “1900s when Mexican citizens fled to the United States for protection from the Mexican Revolution”(PBS.org). This fear of illegal immigrants and cannabis grew during the Great Depression as unemployment grew and more races started pouring into the cities. Harry Anslinger wanted to stop White women from going to the Harlem jazz clubs and having sex with the Black performers, and cannabis would just loosen the women up to make them want to have sex with them more easily. He passed the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937 to ban the possession or selling of cannabis. Over the next 40 years, some states started banning cannabis and the White media portrayed this “evil” drug in Reefer Madness and other propaganda films to scare people away from it and its main smoking culprits, Blacks/Mexicans. In “1970 Nixon’s Controlled Substance Act”(PBS.org) was passed banning weed nationwide and formed the DEA a few years later. As the punishment for weed grew in length and severity, Bush was pushing for a televised assault on cannabis and made it everyone's job to be scared of it. As we got closer to the 2000’s weed slowly started becoming legal recreationally and medical in California, Colorado, and other states. Even with it being federally illegal it still can be legal within each state's laws.

This problem is still going on in the United States today and even though “24 states have it legalized”(Wikipedia), it is a major debate in the United States. People argue whether it should be legal or not even with medical uses and this is due to many factors. Racism, stigmas with intoxicated effects, and a general misunderstanding of cannabis have caused a divide across the country. This has traces of the Darwinian Revolution as it was a process over a century long to get others to believe your right as Darwin did with Origins of Species and consumers do with the benefits of cannabis.

Opposing viewpoints: There are two main sides to this argument, the cannabis consumers and the cannabis opposed. These groups have cliques who all have reasons for their smoking or not. Smokers use cannabis for medical, social, and personal reasons all personalized to the individual. There are many ways to consume and dose cannabis with edibles, smokeable herbs, and oils. This is also a way to differentiate the types of consumers. On the other side, the cannabis opposed don't smoke for many reasons; health problems, religious beliefs, and personal views. And some people who don't smoke want legal weed, so people who sell and smoke weed want it illegal. Overall there is no set “person” who loves or hates weed. It is just a mindset whether or not you like it.

Social justice for cannabis would be hard because you would need to free all cannabis-related prisoners and compensation for their time being locked up. The cannabis industry is a highly inflated business, with thousands of dollars needed to buy paperwork to sell and also the building space for selling. This means the rich Whites of America own large amounts of the cannabis industry makes them way richer. At the same time, minorities are getting locked up for a small amount of weed, and “millionaires make millions of dollars worth of profit”(Brathwaite).

Reductionist thought: The war on marijuana can be reduced to racism towards Mexicans bringing it in from Mexico and also towards African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz Age. This racism has been a trail through this whole timeline and still is today. You can break down the start of the war on cannabis from racism and the fear of mass illegal immigration.

The technological fix to this can be to fully legalize cannabis to allow people to make their own decisions in life but that would upset the people who oppose weed. This problem will not be solved for a long time as each state will battle itself whether weed should be legal or not. This stemmed from the institution of slavery and the racial prejudice that was sent towards Blacks and any people of color in the United States.

Society’s influence on science: There were many studies throughout cannabis’s lifetime in the United States. “It was shown that cannabis, if used but infrequently is not physically or mentally unhealthy”(National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse). This was prompted by the mass imprisonment of people for possessing weed. Also, many famous people endorsed weed like Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and Mezz Mezzrow. With the public and musicians endorsing weed, it was a challenge for Anslinger to keep out these pro-weed articles and stop the Whites from smoking this “devil weed”(PBS.org). This rapid upward trend of pro-weed people helped push for the legalization of medical cannabis and this helps people with their aches and diseases. It also triggered scientists to want to discover the medical uses of cannabis and how it can be helpful for the public.

There are many medical uses for cannabis. It can ease pain for practically every ache or pain. It can also help with many diseases and health problems in people. Also, people have used marijuana for years and reaped the medical benefits of it, for example, “the Rastafarians in Jamaica”(Brathwaite). This is proof that weed doesn't make you insane.

Sciences influence on society: The legalization of medical marijuana allowed people to get access to medical weed in legal states. This helped turn the heads of people who were skeptical of weed because now it has medically backed research about it. This helped people see past the stigma of cannabis and see it as a beneficial plant for people's health. Medical cannabis can help with “Chron's Disease, Alzheimer's Disease, and Glaucoma”(mayoclinic.org), among others.

The scientific community did research that proved that infrequent use of weed is not physically or mentally harmful for people and that the benefits of weed can help with their pains and diseases. This issue is polarized as people support both the legalization of medical cannabis and others oppose it. Even when people know how useful weed is they still have been brainwashed to believe it is a terrible drug ravaging people's lives. This is similar to how R.C. Lewintin had to debunk the world's prior knowledge of Biology and had to set the record straight. These medical researchers and studies did a similar thing by showing the world that cannabis can be good for you, unlike the lies the world has been fed by politicians and the government.

References

City of New York, New York Mayor’s Committee. The La Guardia Committee 

Report: The Marihuana Problem in the City of New York. 1944, 18, New York Mayor’s Committee, https://www.druglibrary.net/schaffer/Library/studies/lag/lagmenu.htm

Grass is Greener. Fred Brathwaite, Snoop Dogg, Damian Marley, Bunny Wailer, Netflix, 2019.

Lewontin, Richard. Biology as Ideology. New York, NY, HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.

Marihuana Timeline. PBS.org. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/etc/cron.html Marijuana Timeline | Busted - America's War On Marijuana | FRONTLINE | PBS

Medical Marijuana. mayoclinic.org https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/in-depth/medical-marijuana/art-20137855

United States of America Federal Government, National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse. The Shafer Commission Report: “Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding; First Report”. 1972, 1. National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, https://beyondthc.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Nixon-Shafer.pdf