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Thursday 29 March 2012

Marijuana Prohibition History in the United States

By Lesley M. Varghese


Cannabis Sativa or, Marijuana, as it's commonly referred, has been around for thousands of years, but you may be surprised how recently it has been since our current regulatory structure was created. Indeed, as recently as the early twentieth century there still was no government oversight effecting the prohibition of marijuana. In 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed and that was the very beginning of the FDA, what most people think of as the Food and Drug Administration.

Although marijuana was completely unregulated up to this time in history, since the creation of the FDA, marijuana acceptance has been trapped in a sort of legal, moral, and ethical tug-of-war. The first actual marijuana specific law, however, did not come about till the year 1913, when, believe it or not, California was the first state to pass a marijuana related law. Reputedly, this law wasn't even really noticed by most people of that day, as the law stipulated "preparations of hemp or loco weed" rather than just explicitly use the scientific term for marijuana, Cannabis Sativa/Indica.

Shortly following, however, the anti-marijuana lobby started to take shape at a much more rapid pace. This verge in hemp control was circumscribed and inexplicably associated to the attempts of some toward the interdiction of other "dubious" substances including alcohol, cocaine, and opiates like opium, which is derived from the poppy plant. The FDA had then, as it does to present, an incredible amount of oppressive power over what was, and what was not, viewed as agreeable for an individual to elect to put into their very own body.

In 1915, the state of Utah passed a state anti-marijuana regulation, but that was relatively mild in contrast to what was about to materialize. Through what was perhaps one of the most successful brainwashing crusades in identified history, the U.S. Government set out to demonize the cannabis plant as "evil", "deadly", and entirely "corrosive to the human soul". In 1930, Harry J. Anslinger, a steadfast proponent of the prohibition philosophy, was consigned these endeavors and given authority of the newly forged Federal Bureau of Narcotics, an initial model of what is now referred to as the Drug Enforcement Agency, or DEA.

From that point in time on, hemp has had an unimaginable bumpy ride in the legislative sense. While alcohol dis-allowance was indeed reversed in a 1933 move that even incorporated the approval of a new 21st Amendment to the Constitution, in 1937, hemp prohibition first reared its head in the form of the Marijuana Tax Act. Integrating this new law, the incredibly high-reaching "reefer madness" propaganda campaign, and a substantial amount of "yellow journalism", the hemp plant was relegated the second class public opinion that it was just plain unsafe, and worthless for human usage, and it has been an uphill battle for this plant ever since. Presently in the U.S., over 800,000 hemp oriented busts are made each year.




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