Cannabis and Racism
Written by: ERIN WEIST
During the colonial era of the United States the production of hemp (the cannabis plant) was encouraged, as it was used in multiple products from rope to clothing. Through the late 19th and early 20th century it was used openly as a pharmaceutical ingredient in many products. After the Mexican Revolution in 1910, immigrants from Mexico poured into the country and brought with them recreational marijuana use. Cannabis use has been traced back almost 5,000 years throughout the globe, the earliest traces found in current-day Romania, so it should be no surprise that cultures around the world carried this tradition. The fear of immigrants, however, caused a panic that the anti-drug campaigners termed the “Marijuana Menace.” Cannabis use became associated with fear of immigrants who would disrupt a known way of life and who were deemed “inferior” to the prominent population. Unemployment increased during the Great Depression, fueling the fire of fear and tension between races. The Marijauana Tax Act of 1937 first put federal restrictions on the pharmaceutical, with increasing restrictions over the coming decades that finally culminated in the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 that fully prohibited the use of the plant, whether recreational or medicinal.
Mexican immigrants weren’t the only ones bringing this practice into the United States. The ports in the Gulf of Mexico brought African Americans with similar traditions around use of cannabis and the same anti-cannabis campaigners used caricatures of black people, jazz, even underworld practices to create an image of white superiority and immigrant inferiority. Police officers testified to cannabis use being responsible for violent crimes and that treacherous predators were selling this “killer weed” to elementary schools. “Meanwhile the New York Academy of Medicine issued an extensive report declaring marijuana did not induce violence, or insanity, or lead to addiction or other drug use.” (https://libguides.law.uga.edu/c.php?g=522835&p=3575350)
But despite lack of supporting evidence and even medical protestation, fear carried the day. Even today, when states are rolling back prohibitions– some allowing for medical use, some for recreational– prisons still carry exorbitant numbers of people arrested purely for cannabis use, and an ACLU report from 2013 suggests the gross disparity of white to non-white people incarcerated indicates a continued bias in racial profiling. The ACLU also submits that around 8.2 million marijuana arrests were made between 2000 and 2010, with 88% of them purely for possession. While a Forbes article from 2020 estimates that 40,000 people were currently incarcerated for marijuana offenses, even while the cannabis industry was booming.
As states, including Utah, continue to probe this issue it is important to consider the origins of our current laws. Since fear and prejudice seem to have previously decided them, our best way forward is to study, observe, gather data, and make clear conclusions, rather than making decisions based on reckless and unsupported tradition that further divide and condone unhealthy tribalism.
https://libguides.law.uga.edu/c.php?g=522835&p=3575350
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5312634/
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/07/14/201981025/the-mysterious-history-of-marijuana
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/08/reefer-madness/303476/
https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/061413-mj-report-rfs-rel4.pdf
