The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 had been passed to require the listing of certain substances, including cocaine, morphine, opium, and cannabis on patent medicines sold over state borders.
By way of the Smoking Opium Exclusion Act, which was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1909, opium had been limited to import by pharmaceutical companies. The law was used as an argument at the Shanghai Opium Conference of 1909 to urge other countries to place similar limits on the opium market. It was also the first law in the U.S. to make a certain drug substance illegal to import, possess, or sell outside of a licensed pharmaceutical business.
The first laws in the U.S. against opium had to do with the Chinese opium dens in San Francisco and other parts of California in the 1880s. Those laws had more to do with the anti-Chinese sentiment in California because the Caucasians were mad at the railroad companies for using Chinese immigrant laborers, and angry that Chinese were “taking jobs” away from White gold miners and other labor forces. Taxes were placed on Chinese who worked in the fishing and mining industries. The prejudice was also fueled by intolerance of a people who were of a different culture and religion.
In People vs. George Hall, the California Supreme Court ruled in 1854 that Chinese could not testify against Whites. In 1860, Chinese children were segregated from the White students. When the Burlingame Treaty was signed in 1868, which increased trade between the U.S. and China, and allowed the Chinese to legally immigrate, more hostilities arose. The Chinese labor force was also blamed for the 1868 recession because many believed the Chinese were flooding the labor force and lowering the pay rates for everyone by working for low wages.
The depression of the 1870s resulted in more friction between the White and the Chinese laborers, which the Whites blaming the Chinese for the ailing economy. Flare-ups against the Chinese living in California resulted in public hangings of Chinese laborers. Boycotts were called for against Chinese-made products, Chinese-owned businesses, and Chinese laborers.
Not all Whites were against Chinese, but those who were began to get organized. While some churches defended the Chinese, others, including many in the Catholic Church, spoke out against Chinese immigration and labor. A California Irish man named Dennis Kearney used the slogan of “The Chinese Must Go!” to organize the Workingman’s Party. The group held that the Chinese must be excluded from society and sent back to China. In 1871, a mob of Caucasians killed a group of Chinese by hanging them in the Chinatown section of Los Angeles. Others were stabbed and burned in their homes. As anti-Chinese groups formed around the West, violent anti-Chinese protests also occurred in other states, including in Oregon, Washington, and Colorado.
In the 1870s, California passed laws determining how many Chinese could live in a house or apartment, how long Chinese prisoners could keep their pony tails, and laws against Chinese prostitution (which was largely supported by Caucasians). And of course, laws against Chinese opium dens.
California had no laws against Caucasians going to saloons and getting as drunk as they wanted to get and fight with each other. But there were laws made against Chinese opium dens, which allowed authorities to arrest Chinese, confiscate their property, and ruin their lives.
History is filled with examples of a certain type people who think they are better than others denying the basic rights of and doing horrible things to those they view as beneath them. The squalor the poor live in often is related to the wealth hoarding of the mansion-dwellers and the laws they create.
Hamilton Wright, the person credited with getting the U.S. Congress to pass the 1909 law restricting opium went on to lobby for the passage of other laws to control cocaine. Wright spread rumors to get people to back him. One of his most notable claims was that cocaine use drove Black men to seek out sex with White women. Wright was partly successful in getting laws enacted that put some control on certain substances. His interaction with Congressman Francis Burton Harrison helped lead the way to the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914, which required that records be kept of medicinal drug dispensing and the transactions of those dealing with them, and that such transactions be taxed. The department of the government in charge of collecting the tax was the U.S. Treasury, which set up a narcotics division. Under the advice of the American Medical Association and the National Association of Retail Druggists, cannabis, which was a common over-the-counter medication for headaches and glaucoma, was not included as a controlled substance. At that time cannabis was a medication that was known for its safety and nonaddictive qualities.
The limits of the Harrison Act increased the price of cocaine, opium, and morphine while turning more people onto the less expensive, safer, and more available cannabis as a recreational substance.
As the demand for cannabis increased, so did the importation of it from lands where it easily grew, such as the fertile and warm soils of Cuba, the islands in the Caribbean, and in Central America. Sailors involved in transporting other goods had the option of making extra income from importing cannabis.
The first law in the U.S. placing limits on cannabis was not a federal law, but one enacted in the state of Louisiana in 1911. That law prevented pharmacists from refilling prescriptions for medications containing cannabis, cocaine, or opium.
In an act against Mexican immigrants who were often seen as users of marijuana and falsely accused of violence, in 1914 the border town of El Paso, Texas, banned the sale and possession of marijuana within its borders. Many believe this was driven by racism against the Mexicans who were the underclass living in the poverty-stricken areas where they carried on the culture of their homeland. There was hatred against the Mexicans who were viewed as problematic and they were accused of flooding the job market and causing unemployment to surge. In reality their poverty drove them to take low wage jobs that nobody else wanted, especially in factories and on corporate farms that were not a part of labor unions. The law against marijuana was passed using lies that marijuana drove the Mexicans as well as the Blacks to become violent and to cause problems for White women.
Other cities learned that this was one way they could work against immigrants, creating a crime where one had not existed, and making a potential problem for immigrants wanting to locate within a city.
As a result of complaints from the El Paso city authorities to their federal government representatives, on September 25, 1915, the U.S. Treasury Department Decision 35719 instituted a ban on the nonmedicinal importation of cannabis. No scientific evidence was used in this decision and it was based on xenophobic misinformation. However, the borders of the country were hardly secured against the importation of much of anything. Because cannabis is so easy to grow, its cultivation was not stopped, and it was commonly sold in stores throughout Texas and the Southwest for both medicinal and recreational use.
New York City took its own steps to control drugs, and in the 1930s added cannabis to a list of drugs that could be obtained only through prescription. But, being a port city, cannabis wasn’t the easiest substance to control. Whoever wanted it could get it, especially since it grows very easily in the New York countryside.
States took it upon themselves to pass their own laws against cannabis, often with lobbyists and legislatures using racist and alarmist wording to plead their case to outlaw the substance. Anyone who wasn’t Caucasian was suspect, especially if they followed the culture of their homelands.
Some of those who wanted laws passed against cannabis were those who wanted to put restrictions on immigrants, such as Asians, Mexicans, and those not looked at as true Americans, including African Americans.
Others had their own agenda.
The pharmaceutical companies knew that if they could influence the creation of laws limiting cannabis to the pharmaceutical market they could then make more money by controlling the substance. Additionally, law enforcement departments realized they could have their budgets increased to help control cannabis, if cannabis were made illegal.
“Within the last year we in California have been getting a large influx of Hindoos and they have in turn started quite a demand for Cannabis indica; they are a very undesirable lot and the habit is growing in California very fast.”
– Henry J. Finger, California Board of Pharmacy, in a letter to Hamilton Wright, July 2, 1911
The first state to pass an antimarijuana law was Utah in 1915. Mormons had been introduced to the plant in Mormon settlements in Mexico, where church members had been sent to spread their gospel.
Wyoming and California also passed antimarijuana laws in 1915, followed by Texas in 1919.
Those presenting their case to legislatures often used blatantly racist wording to state their viewpoints, associating the use of marijuana with those they considered to be lowlifes, including musicians, artists, laborers, and specifically Native Americans, Mexicans, and African Americans. When the law was being considered in Texas, a senator arguing for passage stated, “All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff is what makes them crazy.”
Prohibition on alcohol in the 1920s increased the demand for marijuana.
In 1921 U.S. military personnel serving in San Antonio were forbidden to use or possess marijuana.
“1925: Concerned by the high number of ‘goof butts’ being smoked by off-duty servicemen in Panama, the U.S. government sponsors the ‘Panama Canal Zone Report.’ The report concludes that marijuana does not pose a problem, and recommends that no criminal penalties be applied to its use or sale.”
– Greenkind Magazine, July 2006; GreenKind.net
After a number of military personnel in the Panama Canal Zone were found to be smoking marijuana, in 1925 the U.S. Army Medical Corps undertook a study. Military personnel including two military police officers, four military doctors, and some soldiers were involved in the trials. The study concluded that, “There is no evidence that marihuana as grown and used here is a ‘habit-forming’ drug in the sense in which the term is applied to alcohol, opium, cocaine, etc., or that it has any appreciably deleterious influence on the individual using it.” The study advised that the substance not be banned. After further study, which came to the same conclusion, the military still took action to ban marijuana possession on its bases in 1930.
In the 1920s there were several more states considering laws to ban marijuana. In 1923, laws banning marijuana were passed in Arkansas, Iowa, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. Montana and Nebraska made marijuana illegal in 1927.
In Montana a legislator was quoted in the Butte Montana Standard as saying, “When some beet field peon takes a few traces of this stuff he thinks he has just been elected president of Mexico, so he starts out to execute all his political enemies.”
One doctor who versed opposition to the laws being made against marijuana was a Dr. W.W. Stockberger of the Bureau of Plant Industry. In a 1926 edition of Literary Digest Dr. Stockberger is quoted as saying, “The reported effects of the drug on Mexicans, making them want to ‘clean up the town,’ do not jibe very well with the effects of cannabis, which so far as we have reports, simply causes temporary elation, followed by depression and heavy sleep.”
Alabama also passed antimarijuana legislation in 1927, placing a fine of $500 and a maximum penalty of six months in prison on those who violated the law. Of course, this did not stop people from growing or smoking marijuana, but only got people to conceal it.
Adhering to the voluntary guidelines of the Geneva International Convention on Narcotic Control set up at the International Opium Conference held in Geneva in November 1924, the Mexican government also passed restrictions on cannabis in 1925, but the laws had little effect.
Other countries were also coming on board the anticannabis crusade. England outlawed cannabis for nonmedical use on September 28, 1928. It did this by adding it to the list of substances in the Dangerous Drug Act.
Canada had outlawed opium in 1908 and cocaine in 1911, but placed no limits on cannabis until passage of the Opium and Narcotics Drug Act of 1923.
Canada was one of the last frontiers for the spread of cannabis culture. What Canadians knew about it wasn’t limited to the outlandish news stories first printed in U.S. media.
“Persons using marijuana smoke the dried leaves of the plant, which has the effect of driving them completely insane. The addict loses all sense of moral responsibility. Addicts to this drug, while under its influence, are immune to pain, become raving maniacs, and are liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence to other persons.”
– Emily F. Murphy
Canada had its own little propaganda darling in the form of a priest’s wife named Emily F. Murphy. From a well-to-do family, Murphy had family connections to those who formed the laws, including her politician grandfather, an uncle who was a Supreme Court judge, and another a senator.
Murphy helped spread racist and distorted viewpoints about those who used cannabis and about what it did to those who smoked it.
To her credit, Murphy fought for the property rights of married women. Additionally, in 1929 she was a member of The Valiant Five, a group of women who successfully fought for the specification that women were “persons” under the law, and therefore eligible to be appointed to the Senate. Under the British North American Act of 1867 women were not considered to be persons. Murphy had been rejected as a Senatorial candidate by a number of prime ministers. Another woman, Cairine Wilson, who wasn’t a member of The Valiant Five, became the first female senator in Canada. There is a monument of statues of each of the five women on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill. They have also been featured on the back of Canada’s $50 bill.
In 1916 Murphy became the first female police magistrate. Although Murphy was involved in the women’s rights movement to do away with ridiculous laws and standards, she also held some preposterous views. She expressed them in writing for Maclean’s Magazine under the pseudonym of Janey Canuck. Her articles were popular and, according to Murphy, triggered a number of letters to the magazine. Among her claims was that the Assyrians, Chinese, Greeks, and Negroes who were selling “dope” were going to weaken the White race through addiction and then take over the world. She had toured Vancouver’s opium dens and compared opium smoking “Chinamen” to cellar rats, referred to them as “black-haired beasts,” and encouraged people to insist that the Chinese be excluded from the continent. She was against immigration, and thought “lesser humans” should be sterilized so that the population of the world could be controlled, which she reasoned would stop war.
Murphy claimed that there were two million drug addicts on the North American continent. This claim was surely a wild guess at best since even today there is still no way of knowing how many drug addicts there are on any continent. She also warned against the “Negroes coming into Canada” who were working to control the “White men.” The Canadian government largely considered the rumors Murphy spread, treating them as factual, and using them to pass their law against cannabis. Her racist words helped to establish laws against marijuana.
“All honest men and orderly persons should rightly know that there are men and women who batten and fatten on the agony of the unfortunate drug-addict-palmerworms and human caterpillars who should be trodden underfoot like the despicable grubs that they are.”
– Emily F. Murphy, from her book The Black Candle, May 1922
As drug laws were created on the North American continent to control cocaine and opium, recreational use of marijuana increased.
Just as in any of the major port towns, marijuana was easy to get in The Big Easy – New Orleans. Sailors made extra money bringing in stocks of marijuana grown in the West Indies and the Caribbean. Immigrants from these regions also brought their culture and customs with them, including the use of marijuana. Reefer was commonly used among the blues and jazz community. As the musicians began to travel to other cities, they brought their music and marijuana with them.
The great Louis Armstrong was born in 1900 in an area called Storeyville. It was a section of town with a number of jazz and blues clubs accompanied by gambling, prostitution and alcohol.
Using the prevalence of cannabis as one of the reasons for their actions, in 1917 the New Orleans authorities raided Storeyville, effectively closing down the so-called dens of iniquity. One has to wonder if the point of the action was more driven by racism. It certainly worked against the disenfranchised that already had been denied so much, and were just starting to develop their culture. That act helped spread the music and culture of New Orleans into St. Louis, Kansas City, Memphis, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and other cities.
In the 1920s New Orleans authorities acted to place limits on cannabis. Even though Caucasians were not unfamiliar with the recreational use of cannabis, the immigrant communities as well as other non-Whites were often targets of the cannabis laws. In 1927 the Louisiana state legislature outlawed the sale and possession of cannabis and placed a steep fine of $5,000 or a six-month prison sentence on those caught breaking the law.
The racist comments in relation to cannabis were not limited to the backwoods and southern states of the U.S. Other publications ran stories that today look like some sort of comical form of journalism more likely to appear in today’s mockunewspaper The Onion.
“A widow and her four children have been driven insane by eating the marijuana plant, according to doctors, who say that there is no hope of saving the children’s lives and that the mother will be insane for the rest of her life. The tragedy occurred while the body of the father, who had been killed, was still in a hospital. The mother was without money to buy other food for the children, whose ages range from three to 15, so they gathered some herbs and vegetables growing in the yard for their dinner. Two hours after the mother and children had eaten the plants, they were stricken. Neighbors, hearing outbursts of crazed laughter, rushed to the house to find the entire family insane. Examination revealed that the narcotic marihuana was growing among the garden vegetables.”
– Mexican Family Go Insane, a news story about a Mexico City family, The New York Times; July 6, 1927
“The debasing and baneful influence of hashish and opium is not restricted to individuals but has manifested itself in nations and races as well. The dominant race and most enlightened countries are alcoholic, whilst the races and nations addicted to hemp and opium, some of which once attained to heights of culture and civilizations have deteriorated both mentally and physically.”
– Dr. A. E. Fossier, The Marihuana Menace, New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, 1931
By 1934 there were antimarijuana laws in 33 states. Even so, cannabis continued to be used as a medication, and as an ingredient in patent medicines.
The first antimarijuana legislation to be introduced on a federal level was S. 2075 sponsored by Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas in 1929. The bill would have altered the Narcotic Drugs Export and Import Act of 1922 to include marijuana. Colorado Senator Lawrence Phipps requested that a study be done to determine the consequence of these changes. The Surgeon General undertook a study and issued a report titled Preliminary Report on Indian Hemp and Peyote.
“In the year 1090, there was founded in Persia the religious and military order of the Assassins, whose history is one of cruelty, barbarity, and murder, and for good reason: the members were confirmed users of hashish, or marijuana, and it is from the Arabs’ ‘hashish’ that we have the English word ‘assassin.’”
– Harry Anslinger using more outlandish claims to argue for creating laws against marijuana. He carried on the lies of the Roman Pope Innocent VIII, who in 1484 issued a precedent declaring marijuana to be an “unholy sacrament,” and a substance used by heretics and Satanic worshippers. He claimed that Arabic culture and Arabs who smoked hashish were ruining society.
Interestingly, the report dug up old rumors about marijuana, including the myth of the Assassins (explained later), and relied on alarmist newspaper stories of the day that claimed marijuana instigated violence in the underclass. Marijuana had not yet been subjected to the propaganda of the soon-to-form Federal Bureau of Narcotics. People were relatively uninformed about marijuana, which was still used only by a small segment of society. S. 2075 failed in attracting enough sponsors and didn’t make it past committee hearings.
But things were about to change.