In the early decades of the twentieth century, marijuana was released, although many people viewed it with bad eyes. In the US, the smokers were the increasingly numerous mexicans. In much of the West, smoking weed was relegated to marginalized classes and viewed with dislike for the middle class.
Few people knew, however, that the same plant that supplied the lower classes with smoke had enormous economic importance. Dozens of medicines - from cough syrups to sleeping pills - contained cannabis. Almost all paper production used hemp fiber from the stem of the cannabis as its raw material. The cloth industry also relied on cannabis - hemp cloth was widespread, especially for making ropes, sails, fishing nets and other products that required a very tough material. Ford was developing fuels and plastics made from cannabis seed oil. Hemp plantations took over huge areas in Europe and the United States.
In 1920, under pressure from protestant religious groups, the US enacted a ban on the production and marketing of alcoholic beverages. It was Prohibition, which lasted until 1933. That's when Henry Anslinger came into American public life - suppressing the Bahamas rum traffic. It was there, too, that weed came into the lives of many people.
Anslinger was promoted to head of the Foreign Control Division of the Prohibition Committee and his task was to handle beverage smuggling. It was at this time that he realized the antipathy against marijuana that was taking over the nation, which worsened greatly with the 1929 stock market crash. In the south of the country, it was rumored that the drug gave mexicans superhuman strength, which would be an unfair advantage in the scramble for scarce jobs. Added to this were hints that the drug induced promiscuous sex. Based on these rumors, several states began banning the substance, and by that time marijuana became the drug of choice for jazz musicians, who claimed to be more creative after smoking.
Anslinger clung tightly to the prohibitionist flag, struggled to spread the anti-marijuana myths, and in 1930, when the government, concerned about cocaine and opium, created the Federal Bureau of Narcotics office to deal with drugs, he articulated to head it. But the crusade was unlikely to be motivated solely by the thirst for power, as Anslinger was married to the niece of Andrew Mellon, owner of the oil giant Gulf Oil and a major investor of the equally giant DuPont.
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Du Pont was largely responsible for orchestrating the destruction of the hemp industry" says writer Jack Herer in his book "The Emperor Wears No Clothes". In the 1920, the company was developing various petroleum products: fuel additives, plastics, synthetic fibers such as nylon, and chemical processes for making paper made from wood. These products had one thing in common: they competed in the market with hemp.
It would be a considerable boost to the burgeoning synthetic industry if the huge cannabis crops were destroyed, removing hemp fiber and seed oil from the market. "Marijuana has been banned by economic interests, especially to open the natural fiber market to nylon," said lawyer Wálter Maierovitch, a drug trafficking expert and former national drug secretary.
Anslinger had a powerful ally in the marijuana war: William Randolph Hearst, owner of a huge newspaper network. Hearst was the most influential person in the US. Millionaire ran his companies from a monumental castle in California, where he entertained Hollywood performers for a walk around the private zoo or laps in the indoor pool adorned with Greek statues. It was in it that Orson Welles was inspired to create the protagonist of the movie Citizen Kane. Hearst knowingly hated mexicans. Part of this hatred may have been due to the fact that during the 1910 mexican revolution, Pancho Villa's troops (who, incidentally, made frequent use of marijuana) expropriated their enormous property. Yes, Hearst owned land and used it to plant eucalyptus and other trees to produce paper. That is, he was also interested in the destruction of american marijuana - taking with it the hemp paper industry.
Hearst began an intense campaign against marijuana in the 1930. Their newspapers went on to publish repeated drug stories, sometimes stating that marijuana caused mexicans to rape white women, others reporting that 60 percent of crimes were committed under the influence of drugs (a figure taken from nowhere). At that time, the story emerged that smoking kills neurons, a myth repeated to this day. It was Hearst who, if not invented, at least popularized the name marijuana (he wanted a word that sounded very hispanic, to allow direct association between the drug and the mexicans). Anslinger was a constant presence in Hearst's newspapers, where he told his horror stories. Public opinion was terrified. In 1937, Anslinger went to Congress to say that under the influence of marijuana, "some people embark on delirious rage and commit violent crimes."
The congressmen voted to ban the cultivation, sale and use of cannabis, disregarding polls that the substance was safe. Not only the drug, but the plant was forbidden. Man simply disallowed the right of the Cannabis sativa species to exist.
Anslinger has also acted internationally. He set up a network of spies and attended meetings of the UN predecessor League of Nations, proposing increasingly harsh treaties to curb international trafficking. It also began to find leaders from various countries and bring to them the same terrifying arguments that worked with the americans. It was not difficult to convince governments adopted federal anti-marijuana laws.
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Drug prohibition serves governments because it is a form of social control of minorities". It works like this: marijuana is mexican stuff, mexicans are a nagging class. “Because you can't ban someone from being mexican, you prohibit something that is typical of that ethnicity”. This way you can keep all mexicans under control - they will always be threatened with jail. That's why the marijuana ban was so successful in the world.
The ban became a form of international control by the US, especially after 1961, when a UN convention ruled that drugs were bad for the health and well-being of humanity, and therefore coordinated action was needed. to curb their use. "This made room for US military interventions. It has become an opportune pretext for americans to enter other countries and pursue their economic interests."
A worldwide structure was set up to keep drugs illegal, marijuana among them. A year later, in 1962, President John Kennedy fired Anslinger - no less than 32 years ahead of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics office. But prohibitions and economic interests have remained.
Re: Marijuana - a most complicated matter
Thank you Chester, for this thread, and I thank you and all the other contributors for your fearless testimonies.
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