Major citation:
If you don’t want to have another reason to distrust our hypocritical government then you probably should not read the following of how Cannabis Sativa was made illegal in the United States. This account is up to 1987. More is to follow, but this is a great start to see the foundation of many of the laws we are still dealing with today.
Cannabis, known as many other titles in various times/cultures, has been around for tens of thousands of recorded years and found even as early as ancient Egypt. The first recorded account according to most historians is in China during the stone age. Yet it wasn’t until 1842 when __________ used cannabis in medicine in England which began a common knowledge of the drug. Its amazing to me that just over a 150 years ago most Europeans (and certainly Americans) did not know about the “laughing smoke” and now it has created this mess for our society today.
In the United States, the most influential migration of cannabis was from south of the border as many migrants moved north looking for prosperity and escape from the Mexican Revolution of 1910 while also bringing their drug of choice. The southwestern states were the first to enact laws prohibiting marijuana. (The term marijuana or commonly spelled at this time marihuana is actually a term from Mexicans, thus beginning its prejudicial statement.) It just shocks me that no one contested this as being unconstitutional and prejudicial against Mexicans. Actually as this “problem” of marihuana began to stir, congress was beginning to see bills to deal with the drug on a federal level, but them not allowing its consumption was never considered due to constitutional quandary. The first act on a federal level was the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, which restricted marijuana to medical and industrial users. Even opponents of drugs will have to admit that such a bill would have NEVER passed through any level of government today. The bill was directly aimed at a certain group of people (the Mexicans and blacks of the jazz/harlem renaissance) which would have been easily thrown out by any right-minded judge now.
The first time marijuana was blamed for being a gateway drug was by the commissioner of The Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger, charging that heroin addiction increased after the war due to marijuana use. This logic is what helped pass the Boggs Act on a federal level of 1951. The act mandated imprisonment for first offense of possession of any drug. It was not until a decade later when marijuana was introduced into mainstream youth culture. It quickly obtained acceptance with youth a period of social unrest in America. It was not until many friends, neighbors, and a non-criminal culture was being quickly inundated to the criminal justice system that something obviously needed to change. By the early 70s most states significantly reduced marijuana penalties. After a mass upsurge of drug use in the late sixties, congress overhauled drug laws in 1970 with the Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act. This distinguished marijuana from harder drugs and reduced the penalty of possession. At the same time, congress created a commission head by _____ Shafer to work on a report, the 1972 Mairihuana: A signal of Misunderstanding, the members being hand-picked by president Nixon. The Shafer commission ironically reported to reduce sanctions of marijuana and refuted the myths surrounding the drug. The study did not find harm to society with low-to-moderate use of marijuana and stated the risk is found with heavy, long-term users which only represents 2-4% of the total user base. This report recommended far more research and proclaimed a lack of overall knowledge of risks or potential benefits.
Despite all this, Nixon disagreed with his own, hand-picked, commission and remained against marihuana legalization. His reasoning stands as "I do not believe you can have effective criminal justice based on a philosophy that something is half legal and half illegal". I'm not sure if you understand what that means, but I certainly don't and seems like an easy get around for actually explaining his reasoning for drug prohibition. Despite the lack of action on the part of the federal government, the commission's report wasn't for nothing. Marijuana gained acceptance into US culture and became the third most used drug following the obvious tobacco and alcohol. Due to the upsurge in use by common citizens, the judicial system reexamined the harsh penalties for marijuana convictions, and caused many states to lower punishment levels; the Shafer study being a driving force of evidence to push decriminalization on a nation-wide level.
Interestingly, Alaska in 1975 legalized marijuana for private use of marijuana for adults. This is the first victory (and most notable case) of the constitutionality of marijuana laws. Although this didn't quite touch on the government infringement on rights, it held up state laws for privacy. To be addressed later is the lack of privacy the drug war has introduced to Americans. It might be more surprising than you can imagine.
It should be noted that the states that choose to decriminalize marijuana did not see a rise in cannabis use. “Those states decriminalizing marijuana possession in the 1970s generally reported savings in police and judicial resources while maintaining cannabis use rates close to the states retaining criminal sanctions” (Columbia). The criminal laws did not stop or open the door for drug use, but rather is a part of a much more complex social phenomena that is not under jurisdiction of any law.
1980s
The 1980s did not bring much positive energy to marijuana as it was being placed in the same category as other increasingly abused hard drugs such as cocaine. America was being convinced by Reagan propaganda that they should hold a strict prohibition on all illicit drugs, not even mentioning the levels of health hazards different illicit drugs held. “The Institute of Medicine's 1982 survey, Marijuana and Health, concluded that ‘marijuana has a broad range of psychological and biological effects, some of which at least under certain conditions, are harmful to human health.’ The Institute voiced ‘serious national concern’ over the rapid spread of a new intoxicant in society and called for ‘a greatly intensified and more comprehensive program of research into the effects of marijuana on the health of the American people… the Institute admitted ‘we have no convincing evidence thus far of any effects persisting in human beings after cessation of drug use.’ The Institute's findings discredited studies purporting to find brain damage in laboratory animals subjected to supposedly human-equivalent marijuana dosages, as well as clinical speculation on the erosion of mental faculties among marijuana users.
The report also addressed the charge that cannabis consumption leads to the use of other illicit substances. ‘Association does not prove a causal relation,’ the Institute wrote, ‘and the use of marijuana may merely be symptomatic of an underlying disposition to use psychoactive drugs rather than a 'stepping stone' to involvement with more dangerous substances’ (Columbia). This is an important argument for what drug use really is about. Some people want to change their state of being and others want to remain in their normal conscious state. Marijuana is just one of the many drugs at the disposal of those trying to break reality. The fact that the government has made so much hoopla about it has actually caused it to be a gateway drug for those looking for an intoxicant. Teens try marijuana looking for an intense high, as they have been informed they would receive and after trying it they realize it is actually far less intense than they thought. The myth that marijuana is a gateway drug is a debunked one and is not a valid argument anymore. Even the US government in all their crappy publications will admit that. Anyone that tells you differently is not educated enough on the subject matter.
They wrapped up that report stating that “Prohibition itself causes serious health hazards because of an unregulated marijuana market, which results in adulteration, contamination, unknown potencies, and toxic herbicides applied by government eradication programs” (Columbia). How interesting that we can relate this hazard of prohibition to all illegal drugs. Go back to the MDMA section to see the health hazards prohibition has done to the drug.
Another report from the National Academy of Sciences in 1982 challenged the current rationale of marijuana prohibition. They believed “that current policies directed at controlling the supply of marijuana should be seriously reconsidered.” Due to this outcome, the report was highly criticized. They agreed that “ marijuana use, particularly among adolescents, is "cause for extreme concern," the committee decided that minor health risks cannot dictate drug policy: “Our judgment as to behavioral and health-related hazards is that the research has not established a danger both large and grave enough to override all other factors affecting a policy decision." DESPITE THIS RECOMMENDATION BY A FEDERAL GROUP, NOTHING CHANGED.
Probably my favorite part is one of the committee’s opinion was that "[a]lienation from the rule of law in democratic society may be the most serious cost of current marijuana laws." Funny how that was written in 1982 and yet it still remains perhaps the most caustic part of federal marijuana laws.
The 1982 report pretty much recommended an end to prohibition and even theorized on regulation. Advantages of regulated legal marijuana would include "the disappearance of most illegal market activity, the savings in economic and social costs of law enforcement directed against illegal supply systems, better controls over the quality and safety of the product, and, possibly, increased credibility for warnings about risks." A regulated system of supply could be modeled on current alcohol policy, with its mixture of federal, state and local provisions tailored to specific concerns. Crime and corruption stemming from the multi-billion dollar cannabis black market are commonplace and include the deaths of many law enforcement officers and marijuana traffickers.
The biggest risk of a regulated, legal marijuana supply would be an increase in consumption. Folks who are for and against legalization try to justify this in many ways and to be honest, whats wrong with more people smoking marijuana? Honestly I HOPE MORE PEOPLE SMOKE MARIJUANA. There are very few people I know in college who don’t drink, even if just on a limited social level and for those people who use it to be social and break down social anxieties should have access to an option that is far less harmful than alcohol. The rise in marijuana use is not where issues would arise, the issues would be found in the users who are already heavy-users who would have even more of the drug at their supply with cheaper prices. But the committee “placed faith in the judgment of users not to abuse cannabis” which is an easy faith to hold if you have ever smoked marijuana. Your body naturally will stop you from smoking. There is a point where subconsciously you just don’t want to intake anymore. “Most people now who try marijuana do not progress to regular use, and most users do not advance to daily smoking” (Columbia).
An Analysis of Marijuana Policy suffered official rejection similar to that which greeted Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding a decade earlier in 1972. The rejection of the report exemplified the Reagan administration's commitment to escalating the war on drugs, including marijuana.
Evidence to maintain marijuana law
Adolescent Use, potency, cocaine abuse
Support for decriminalization of marijuana was faltered by groups such as the National Federation of Parents for Drug Free Youth (NFP) as they pressed for harsh action to eliminate illicit drug use from adolescents.
As a result… “The question of adult civil liberties has faded from the marijuana debate, replaced by the perceived threat to the (very) small percentage of marijuana smokers who are adolescents.”
Many groups used rising marijuana potency as evidence to continue public fear of the drug. And I’m going to call a big bullshit on this one… Ever since reading Jim Rendon’s Super Charged I realized what the potency shift really was a result of. Most people (even now) consider potency to be rising due to the drug being on the black market, reaping the benefits of greater prices paid for the stronger stuff, which is only a part of the reasoning. But really higher potent bud is not really a bad thing. In fact higher potency means less smoke in the lungs and you have to consume less toxins to get high. High potent weed can be dangerous for inexperienced users as they will be at risk for the acute effects of THC, such as anxiety and hallucinations. But I will remind you no one has ever, EVER died from marijuana overdose. One of the major reasons that the potency has actually been rising is actually due to a shift in cultivation practices seen over the past 40 years. Moving away from smoking marijuana leaves, cultivating the buds of the female while removing the male plant so that the female does not germinate (produce seeds) which allows for the plant to devote all of its energy in the bud.
Cocaine abuse rising in the 1980s was commonly connected with marijuana. “The panic over cocaine prompted a surge in drug law enforcement, but few realized that marijuana, being far more pervasive and easier to detect, would still command a lion's share of police resources. A large majority of cocaine users smoked marijuana prior to trying cocaine, inspiring the charge that marijuana constituted a dangerous "gateway" to cocaine.” But before you get too excited, “over 75% of regular marijuana smokers, however, have never used cocaine, rendering the gateway quite narrow.”
Federal Resources
On a federal level we are wasting away many valuable resources on this “drug war”. Among the agencies that you obviously know are involved, such as the DEA or US Customs; “The Central Intelligence Agency provide satellite surveillance and information on illegal drug activity abroad. Complex financial investigations of suspected drug traffickers provide the Internal Revenue Service with a major role in drug law enforcement. The Federal Bureau of Investigation entered drug enforcement in 1982 to pursue drug trafficking by organized crime. And perhaps the most illustrative of the war's seriousness, the Department of Defense, in 1981 began logistical and intelligence support for offshore drug enforcement programs” (Columbia).
Congressionally
Congress has really been just a bunch of pussy push overs when it comes to drugs in general. They have constantly leaned on the side of caution and have been in support of any of the rhetoric anyone loud enough could create and would go along with the biased opinion of this rather than listening to research or findings of their own committees. In 1984 they passed the “Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, hailed as a wish list by the federal drug enforcement community. One of the Crime Act's more draconian features, the Bail Reform Act, has resulted in pretrial detention for thousands of accused drug violators who previously would have received bail. Defendants charged with drug crimes carrying sentences of ten years or more are presumed dangerous and must be incarcerated before trial, unless the defendant can rebut this presumption at a hearing. 1984 Crime Control Act capped fifteen years of expanding asset forfeiture laws and enshrined forfeiture as a cornerstone of drug law enforcement. Basically, civil forfeiture provisions now allow the government to seize upon probable cause all assets, including real estate, that are traceable proceeds of drug transactions or are used to facilitate drug transactions. An arrest for a criminal offense is not required. Innocent parties whose property is used in drug transactions generally have no defense to civil forfeiture…The 1984 Crime Act mandated criminal forfeiture for all defendants convicted of felony drug violations and generally expanded civil forfeiture. “
1986 saw the $3.93 billion, Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 passing almost unanimously over the rising crack and cocaine abuse. “The 1986 Act belatedly budgeted over one billion dollars for drug treatment and prevention programs, erasing the decreases in federal spending for these programs in the 1980s. The bulk of spending went for massive increases of law enforcement budgets, including more personnel, equipment and prisons. The 1986 Act restored mandatory federal prison sentences for large scale marijuana distribution, which had been removed in the 1960s. Congress also decreed a mandatory $1,000 minimum fine for persons convicted of possession of less than one ounce of marijuana. The lawmakers imposed tough new sanctions on money laundering, coinciding with expanded Treasury Department regulations requiring that all cash transactions over $10,000 be reported.” Yeah that last one is still with us and is in my opinion a HUGE violation of our privacy. That’s right any time you draw or deposit $10,000 or more a red flag comes up to the IRS and that transaction will be audited. Along with that great privacy buster, the act also “ added colleges to the ‘school yard statute,’ which doubles penalties for drug offenses committed within one thousand yards of a school. "
In 1988, Congress began preparation of another election-year anti-drug bill, focusing on fining drug users and depriving them of access to federal programs.”
Judicial
If it isn’t bad enough that congress and the presidents are on a war path to stomp out all illicit drug use, but the judicial branch, those guys who are supposed to be protecting our rights, drank the kool-aid. While not fully supporting the government on drug-related cases, they have validated many common techniques used by drug agents. “The Supreme Court in drug cases has loosened standards for obtaining warrants, electronic surveillance, searching ships and automobiles and saving evidence from exclusion. Warrantless aerial and ground searches for marijuana in fields and barns surrounding homes also have received the Court's approval. In a related erosion of constitutional safeguards, courts have sanctioned the escalating practice of haling drug defense lawyers before grand juries to divulge their clients' fee arrangements and even factual information concerning their clients.”
“The consensual nature of drug crimes necessitates undercover agents, paid informants, and covert surveillance. These law enforcement methods that blur the distinctions between police and criminals have jeopardized civil liberties and concepts of limited police powers to an unparalleled extent.”
But yet… we still say FUCK YOU. “Despite the boom in drug arrests and incarceration, marijuana remains widely available at reasonable prices.”
Moving Marijuana out of Colombia, but it shall return
And in one of the most pivotal moves for marijuana in the United States was Operation Hat Trick I in the fall of 1984. The Coast Guard and Navy placed a blockade of vessels off the Colombian coast at the height of marijuana harvest for 60 days. This successfully eroded Colombia as a source for American marijuana. This allowed for Jamaica, Belize, Mexico and domestic sources to take over. Remember Mexico was a major source of cannabis in the US, but was quickly removed after the US government purposely poisoned its own citizens by applying dangerous herbicides to the crop.
If you smoke weed, you should die
Yeah so remember how the US poisoned its own citizens? Well I don’t but I guess it was actually a thing in the 1980s. It wasn’t just a media scare but actually a large role in United States drug strategy in the 1980s, despite the risks to the health of American marijuana smokers and the limited effectiveness of these programs. Colombia, Mexico, Belize, Panama, Jamaica, Guatemala, and Costa Rica received extensive financial assistance from the United States in applying herbicides to marijuana crops. Herbicidal eradication of marijuana has accelerated in the 1980s in disregard of strong warnings from the medical community. Oh wait but ironically “The appearance of paraquat-contaminated marijuana in the United States and attendant public concern prompted Congress in August of 1978 to adopt the Percy Amendment, which prohibited government support for spraying herbicides on foreign marijuana if the practice posed a serious risk to consumers of the sprayed cannabis. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare subsequently determined that such a threat existed, and the United States terminated support for the Mexican paraquat program. In late 1981, however, Congress repealed the Percy Amendment and again authorized spending for herbicide eradication programs abroad.” As grows began to pop up on a more domestic level, the spraying was heavily reduced and no plants were sprayed on US soil in 1987 and on due to the cunning efforts of growers and small grow sites.
If we can’t stop drug production, we are going after its users
In 1986 the President’s Commission on Organized Crime cited drug trafficking as “the most serious organized crime problem in the world today.”
They continued in their report stating that- “drug trafficking is only part of a broader, unified phenomenon which also includes the illicit use of drugs. It is the users who finance organized crime through their drug purchases, and it is they who must accept responsibility for the broad range of costs associated with the drug industry.... This Commission believes that the Nation's drug policy must have as its goal the elimination of illegal drug use”
The first time I read this I almost threw my computer across the room. Its bullshit like this that has caused us to be in the shit hole we are in now. Instead of addressing the bigger picture of organized crime and what is fueling it, they are going to just cop out and point the finger at the user. The fact that they have already said that drug users are criminals says to me that they really don’t want to fix this issue. From what I get is that this group is trying to stamp out organized crime, which they have cited drug trafficking to be the worst. Wouldn’t the best way to eliminate organized crime in the sense of drug trafficking would be total legalization of drugs?
The committee stated that “it is the users who finance organized crime through their drug purchases, and it is they who must accept responsibility for the broad range of costs associated with the drug industry” while in fact the people who are continuing to keep drugs illegal, forcing drug trafficking in the first place, should actually accept responsibility for their actions. I guess no one stood up to the obvious crack pot who released this post. The commission urged for more drug user arrests and pushed for urine tests for the general population.
“The Commission's call for targeting drug users through urine tests reflected the new consensus in the mid-1980s of prohibition advocates - stringent supply reduction measures have failed and winning the drug war requires bypassing the criminal justice system to inflict punishment on drug users. Since the 1960s demonstrated that imprisoning marijuana users is an ineffective policy, striking at the economic livelihood of marijuana smokers under the guise of a drug-free workplace offers a panacea for prohibitionists. Urine drug screens of millions of citizens annually have undercut the marijuana decriminalization policies of the 1970s and have marked a sharp escalation of the illegality of cannabis.” Urine testing really just pisses me off, especially when it comes to marijuana. Now that does not mean I am against drug-free workplaces. Being in a dangerous industry I work in, I know the importance of being completely sober for any day of work. What I am against is my employer telling me what I can and cannot do when I am not working. Marijuana is the only drug that remains in your systems after 72 hours. Even heroin, cocaine, and meth will clear your system after only a couple of days but the most benign illicit drug will remain in you (as it is fat soluble) for weeks, depending on your size and other factors.
Many employers and government officials have no rationale for drug screening other than its legal status. But drunk driving is illegal as well, and what are they going to force me to take a breathalyzer every time I drive in my personal car, off the clock?
“Prohibitionists seeking to justify testing for marijuana use have relied on flawed research purportedly demonstrating that off- the-job marijuana use erodes workplace productivity. A widely cited study by the Research Triangle Institute pegged lost productivity from marijuana use at over $34 billion in 1980. The researchers based this figure on a survey finding that former heavy marijuana smokers generally have lower incomes than non-marijuana smokers, while current smokers show no difference in income from non-smokers. The report extrapolates this extremely loose correlation into an estimated $34 billion productivity loss from marijuana use. Misconstruing research to support marijuana prohibition is common, but this report has been embraced to legitimize a workplace vendetta against marijuana users.”
“Drug testing has enabled prohibition to transcend the criminal justice system's constitutional constraints on punishment, thus adding untold thousands of victims to the hundreds of thousands arrested each year for marijuana possession. Urine drug screening amounts to one of the most pervasive attempts at social control in American history and resembles police state measures with its reliance on instilling fear of arbitrary testing and accusation.”
In 1937 the US government began its prohibition towards marijuana due to ungrounded fears of it being a dangerous substance. Mainstream use of the drug in the 60’s and 70’s forced decriminalization. Many who saw the substance as benign were quickly stomped out in the 1980s after the inflammation of hard illicit drugs, which began to be lumped with the far less harmful marijuana, and then placing all drugs as a threat to the social fabric. (What a stupid fucking reason to prohibit something). Once the general population had a strong misconception of drugs the government took advantage of this by escalating police power and bypassing the criminal system by encouraging workplace drug testing.
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