The Effect of Propaganda on American Cannabis Laws
The modern history of marihuana in the United States began with its arrival to the colonies of the ‘New World’ in the seventeenth century. Although not native to Mexico, flowering marihuana became associated with the country just south of the United States to the extent that white, upper class Americans felt that by eradicating one they could eradicate the other. False ideas about the effects of the plant informed white, upper class Americans of the violence and danger it presented. These ideas were sensationalized in the media through undying interest in crimes committed within the lower classes, racist rhetoric spewed on the floors of Congress, and blatant propaganda films dubbed ‘public service announcements’ to warn predominantly white Americans of new threats. In the first forty years of the twentieth century, marihuana went from regulated, pharmaceutical status to completely illegal on a federal level. This essay will analyse the mutual relationship between public opinion, propaganda, and legislation regarding anti-marihuana laws in the United States and how these origins in bigotry affects the lives of Americans today.
The popular associations with cannabis today have their roots in the colonial Americas. The cultivation of hemp to create fiber was vastly important to the colonies, and even required on every farm by the Virginia Assembly of 1619. The plant thrived in the Mexican heat and was cultivated, but was demonized by pious colonists when the intoxicating strain of marihuana arrived and was used recreationally by the locals. In this way it came to the same status as peyote, a hallucinogenic plant used in traditional healing for its spiritual and medicinal properties. Although used in traditional medicine for millennia before their arrival, Europeans saw peyote as a way to communicate with the devil and the association changed local popular opinion. However, colonizers themselves were known to use cannabis, albeit as a weapon to inebriate and weaken enslaved Africans rather than as a medicine.
Overall, the popularity and use of marihuana for any purpose beyond the creation of hemp fiber remained minimal for several centuries. After the American Civil War, when imports and other domestic materials replaced much of the need for hemp, its production diminished. Beginning the same century, Americans saw an increase in its use as an ingredient in medicine and were even able to buy cannabis in public pharmacies. Americans knew the plant as it was labelled on the popular cough syrups of the time: cannabis. The introduction of ‘marihuana’ to American society began in the first years of the twentieth century and held an entirely different connotation.
The difference between cannabis and marihuana was not necessarily a difference in the plants but a difference in who was using them. Around the time of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, Mexican immigrants began pouring into the southern United States in search of refuge, and introduced the recreational use of marihuana to American culture. The fear many (white) Americans had regarding these newcomers stretched to include the drug, as it then became, as well. The association of marihuana with Mexican immigrants became so strong that the spelling of the name itself was changed to ‘marijuana’ to mimic Spanish and add to the allusion of foreignness. To this day, English is the only language that spells marihuana with a ‘j’.
Marihuana use and association was not limited to Mexican immigrants, although that is where the initial association began. Marihuana had spread to port cities in the Gulf of Mexico and along the California coast through sailors and West Indian immigrants and began to be associated with other well-disliked groups: African Americans and Hindus. Jazz and cannabis seemed to go hand in hand, and Henry J. Finger, a powerful member of California's State Board of Pharmacy, even wrote in 1911 that “the fear is now that it is not being confined to the Hindoos [sic] alone but that they are initiating our whites into this habit.” While the popular dislike of these groups certainly aided the popular dislike of the things they liked, genuine ignorance and fear of the effects were the primary fuel for the hysteria. Although cannabis was used even in American medicine, the term marihuana was new and described what many believed to be a different plant altogether.
In the first few decades of the twentieth century, rumors of the effects of the plant were rampant. Police officers in Texas alleged that smoking marihuana made users violent and gave them ‘superhuman strength’. Some went as far as claiming that Mexican immigrants were giving this dangerous product to innocent American schoolchildren. Even worse were the newspaper articles that claimed marihuana brought only ‘delirium or death’. According to one article from the Los Angeles Times in 1905, "people who smoke marihuana finally lose their mind and never recover it, but their brains dry up and they die, most of times suddenly." Newspapers were also quick to report in detail any instances that proved this substance, as well as the people using it, were a danger to society. Most articles of this type focused on the crimes committed within the lower classes and committed by minorities, often blatantly blaming marihuana use for the violence committed. These claims fueled anti-drug campaigns that only ignited during the Great Depression.
The massive wave of unemployment in the early 1930s needed a racial scapegoat, and Mexican immigrants, among other racial minorities, fit the part. Fear and resentment of these communities only increased the fear and resentment of the plant they were known to use. It fueled the idea that smoking marihuana was an activity reserved for minorities and social deviants and was only exacerbated by the sensational headlines that linked the two to violence. In the first year of that decade, these fears had garnered enough support to warrant the criminalization of the plant in twenty nine states and the creation of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the first head of which was Harry Anslinger.
Anslinger was known for his fiery and racist quips that linked violence in minority communities to the use of marihuana and was a driving force behind the federal criminalization of marihuana. After rising concern about the drug and scientifically-lacking research describing the correlation between usage and various social problems was published, the federal government felt pressured to do something about it. Initially, it was an issue that was left up to the governing bodies of the individual states, but the rising popularity of anti-marihuana propaganda films urged the American government to make it a federal issue.
Before the Marijuana Tax Act was enacted in 1937, propaganda films like Assassin of Youth (1937) and Reefer Madness (1936) were shown to not only accurately reflect the fear felt by white Americans at the time but also to spread this fear. While Reefer Madness remains one of the most well known propaganda films on this subject, it was actually made by a French director with the intention not of educating the masses but of skirting Hollywood’s strict rules prohibiting the display of sex and narcotics on screen. On the contrary, Assassin of Youth was directed by Elmer Clifton, a man now known for his exploitation films. Over the course of five years, Clifton produced four films that depicted the threat of either marihuana or white slavery, another hysteria-driven fear of the time. Assassin of Youth depicts a journalist trying to warn the world of the dangers of marihuana while protecting his love interest from a young gang of marihuana users that bring nothing but violence and parties to their small town. The tone of the movie largely echoes the tone of Anslinger’s cautionary tales of marihuana.
Over the course of the twentieth century, popular opinion swayed in every direction regarding the plant. The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 effectively criminalized marihuana, but the Narcotics Control Act of 1956 set minimum mandatory prison sentences for anyone caught with it. By 1970, after marihuana began to be associated with the peaceful counterculture movements and white hippies of the 1960s, these mandatory sentences were overturned as they were widely deemed to be too harsh. The sharp turn towards modern day began in 1976, with the rise of conservative parental groups that advocated for stricter regulation of cannabis and prevention of teenage drug use. Some of these groups gained both power and the support of the Drug Enforcement Agency. By creating an association between marihuana and the crack epidemic of the 1980s, they ensured that cannabis was one of the substances targeted by the War on Drugs. Mandatory sentences for marihuana possession were reinstated and often compared to the sentences prescribed for possession of heroin.
Today, modern public opinion still has its roots in the racist stereotypes of a hundred years ago, especially in the way these anti-marihuana laws are enforced. Marihuana is not used exclusively by one race or ethnicity, but is actually used fairly equally among all Americans despite the illegality. However, the people arrested for marihuana use or possession do not reflect this in the slightest; Drug arrest statistics show that the vast majority of those punished are either Black or Latino. Their communities are still associated by many with rampant marihuana use and what is now considered to be the detriments of such: laziness, apathy, and overall slow mental capacity.
To conclude, the role of propaganda in the development of anti-marihuana laws in the United States was crucial. Racist sentiments affected the depiction of the effects of smoking and the two were often bound in local and national headlines. The devastating effects of the Great Depression were widely blamed not on faulty leadership but on Mexican immigrants and their marihuana. The name of the drug itself was changed to reflect and exacerbate the link between the two. Racist sentiment was obviously extremely common in the United States at this time, and proponents of anti-marihuana legislation capitalized on these phobias by linking them with the use of a drug they knew very little about. Propaganda films exploited the general fear of marihuana on the big screen to affect a wider audience. While much has changed in American society since the 1930s, we cannot deny that the legal remnants of that era are rooted in racism and hysteria that were only fueled by the use of propaganda.
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