The Issue Of Marijuana Legalization Essay

Before one can begin to explore why marijuana should be made legal, the factors going into the original ban on marijuana must first be known. Since the early 1900’s a great number Mexicans began to move across the border and find a new home in many of the southwestern states. Unfortunately, the American citizens at the time were not very welcoming. They viewed the massive Mexican immigration as a problem that needed to be dealt with. Unlike most Americans, many Mexicans used cannabis as a recreational drug by smoking it. American law makers used marijuana as a way to drive out the Mexican population. Even though at the time scientific research had been completed showing that the drug was not very dangerous, the government blamed the drug for all the negative qualities the American people viewed in the Mexicans. Harry Anslinger, head of the Bureau of Narcotics, began releasing waves of propaganda depicting the drug as extremely dangerous. He claimed that marijuana contributed to insanity, violence, and rebellion. Thousands of newspapers, magazines, and other sources of media depicted

because of the Mexican Revolution. These immigrants brought along a new culture and customs one of them being the use of Marijuana as a medicine and relaxant. Marijuana which had been known as “cannabis” by Americans was not illegal in the U.S. and was in fact commonly used for industrial and medical purposes. Citizens in the Western states were uneasy of the newcomers and with rising tensions in those states it was not a difficult task for the media to take advantage of the citizen’s unease and pit them against the newcomers and their customs. Harry Anslinger, who is considered the father of the war on weed was a prominent figure of prohibition during the time, used the media to demonize marijuana by using racist tactics. He made several racist claims such as, “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S. and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others”(huffpost.com). In succeeding in painting the Mexican immigrants in a bad light, the media also managed to arouse people’s fear towards the unknown effects of Marijuana The outlawing of marijuana would provide authorities with an opportunity to control Mexican immigrants.( Although the prohibition of marijuana was founded on racism one has to wonder if things are really the same today. Facts have continuously managed to show that

The beginning of Texas anti-marijuana laws can be traced back to the city of El-Paso (Drug Policy ORG). Prior to 1914 Texas had no laws concerning the usage or sale of the plant, but then the stories of people using marijuana in Mexico and terrorizing people made their way to El-Paso and the Deputy Sheriff Stanley Good. Deputy Good made it a personal mission of his to get El-Paso to make the substance illegal. The whole basis of his argument is that immigrants from Mexico will come to the Untied States and use the drug and terrorize El Paso. At the time marijuana use was prevalent in the border towns by both Americans and Mexicans but nobody gave it any

Marijuana was considered as a Schedule I drug, due to having no medical use. In Mexico during the 1970’s, the government chose to destroy the marijuana plants by spraying it with a toxic herbicide named Paraquat. The recreational users in Mexico were more worried about the toxins inside the plant due to the chemical destruction. Strict laws were passed due to possession of marijuana. People then relied on smuggled drugs.

"These new Americans brought with them their native language, culture and customs. One of these customs was the use of cannabis as a medicine and relaxant" (Burnett and Reiman). Americans always knew the plant as "cannabis" but Mexicans referred to it as "marijuana." The term "marijuana" was foreign on United States' soil therefore, it raised suspicion and fear amongst not only Texans but Americans as well. Surprisingly, the herb was never illegal during the time period of the massive immigration. However, it was originally used in Texas for medical reasons, such as arthritis but evolved into substance abuse over the next decade or so. As more immigrants came into American territory, so did marijuana. "In an effort to control and keep tabs on these new citizens, El Paso, TX borrowed a play from San Francisco’s playbook, which had outlawed opium... the idea was to have an excuse to search, detain and deport Mexican immigrants" (Burnett and Reiman). Of course, the drug got into the hands of rich white men and since America is known for their free market economy, money started to be made. This turned into the entrepreneurship we know today as drug dealing. Laws were made to help regulate and control the exchange of marijuana. It became illegal during the 1930's."Twenty-nine states carried restrictions on cannabis by 1931" (Rathge). Eventually that's how the old "Say no to drugs" campaign was

Back in the 1900’s when there was a large immigration influx of Mexicans into the U.S., citizens not only saw there was an influx of their customs. This included the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes (Burnett and Reiman, 2014). What most Americans didn’t realize is that it is the same as what they knew as cannabis, which had been used in many medicines for years and was found in may American households. The U.S. had been known to control immigrants by having an excuse to search and deport certain races by outlawing the use of their traditional medicinal drugs, like had been done with Chinese immigrants and the use of opium in San Francisco (Burnett and Reiman, 2014). Texas adopted this way of thought by using marijuana to control Mexican immigrants. Claims were made that marijuana was able to “cause men of color to become violent and solicit sex from white women” (Burnett and Reiman, 2014). From accusation like this, the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 came into being and

When cannabis was first introduced its primary use was not for smoking or even medical it was for creating other things like clay pots and a fiber for making rope. Its first human consumption recorded back in 2737 B.C. by the Chinese emperor as a treatment for gout, malaria, beriberi, rheumatism, and poor memory. This drug didn’t enter the United States until the mid-1800s but by that time it was used as an intoxicant and a medicine. Marijuana entered the states by Mexican immigrants in the 19th and 20th century but was not popular. Marijuana was limited to the lower society pretty much minority smoked the drug. After its extended period of continuous use the government began to crack down and created different acts and legislation in 1937 such as the Marihuana act which puts a

From the eighteenth century onward in the United States, there has been a temperance movement. In other words, many people crusaded against what they saw to be the damaging effects of alcohol on health, personal and professional relationships, and society at large. The temperance movement gained so much gravity that the production, sale, and consumption of alcohol were actually prohibited from 1920 to 1933. As we all know, prohibition of alcohol was a dismal failure, as a thriving black market continued to produce what many citizens wanted. Marijuana prohibition on the other hand, was not a direct cause of public outcry. It was made illegal due to political maneuvering and an attempt to make amends for the fuck ups of prohibition of alcohol.

The inception of cannabis prohibition in the United States began no more than a century ago. During the colonization of the free nation, the consumption, production, and sale of cannabis was legal due to high reliance on hemp at the time. By the close of the nineteenth century cannabis became, alongside tobacco and cotton, one of the leading crops produced in the Americas. During this time physicians often prescribed cannabis for medical, however, after a rise in opiate addiction following the Civil War, cannabis fell under the same fate as many other commonly stigmatized drugs such as heroin and cocaine. Moreover, early restrictions on cannabis are documented as being under the guise of federal drug regulatory objectives backed with discriminatory

for marijuana. ” In the 1930’s fear of marijuana had spread throughout the country. During the Great Depression, not only fear, but resentment toward the Mexican race which made the American people further shame the drug. This made the public & government concern grow into a pseudo and biased investigation, which linked marijuana to minority or “Racially inferior” under class community. By 1931 twenty-nine states outlawed marijuana making it illegal. In 1932, concern on the rising use of marijuana and the studies linking the drug to crime created pressure for the government to take action. The national government the pressured the states to take action for themselves and adopt the uniform state

The reason it’s illegal today is because of the Mexican Revolution reaching past the border into United States territory. Mexicans were often seen smoking marijuana, and because of the negative views Americans had toward Mexicans, California passed the first law outlawing marijuana. After California outlawed it, there were many states that were influenced by that and passed laws prohibit it. In the 1930’s, Dr. A. E. Fossier wrote a New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal that quickly persuaded people to believe that marijuana would cause dangerous and violent behavior (Guither).

Marijuana has been used throughout history since before the 1600s and the timeline has continue to today. But it did not become an issue until the 1900s through 1920s after the Mexican Revolution. During this time many Mexicans immigrants arrived in overwhelming amounts into the United States introducing marijuana as a recreational drug to Americans and its culture. As a result, many Mexican immigrants became associated with marijuana and the terror and preconception that they all used marijuana. Anti-drug protesters stood in protest of the trespassing "Marijuana Menace" (“Marijuana Timeline”).

During the time that marijuana became illegal in the United States, there was a huge immigration of Mexicans into this country. These Mexican immigrants brought with them their culture, traditions, and customs, one of which included marijuana. This created fear for the citizens of the United States because the media depicted the Mexicans as disruptive and dangerous. Not only were the Mexican people exhibited in a negative way, but also the black

As early as 1853 when recreational cannabis was listed as a “fashionable narcotic” marijuana began its downward spiral from a plant that provides paper, clothing, medicinal and recreational benefits etc. to the heavily criminalized “gateway drug” it is labeled as today. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 while no real criminalization of cannabis is directly linked to this law required that drugs including cannabis be accurately labeled with its contents. The later revisions of this act aimed to restrict all narcotics to include cannabis, limiting the sale to pharmacies and require a prescription to purchase/issue. From 1907 thru the late 1920’s many states enacted marijuana laws. Western and Southwestern states with an influx of Mexican

Let us first look at why marijuana was first made illegal in the United States. Marijuana hasn’t always been illegal in the United States. Actually, from 1763 to 1767 it was illegal for farmers to not grow hemp plants on their farms. Hemp was an extremely valuable plant and was used for things like rope, clothes, incents, and more (Guither, 2013). Then in 1910 the Mexican war began to spill over into the United States. Many Mexicans migrated over to America to take the cheap labor jobs on big farms. Mexicans