The History of Marijuana/Hemp Prohibition

Posted by Mr. Baud on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 7:09pm in

Hemp

I'd like to start by saying I wrote this for an ethics class I took in college...it may be poor literary content but it gets to the point. All my information was gleaned from www.druglibrary.org and I will put my cited works at the bottom to avoid any case of plagerism. I would also like to say that the information on www.druglibrary.org is much more detail oriented and I tried to stick to the main points behind the entire story. Be forwarned, it is quite long.

I. History of Marijuana Prohibition in the U.S.
A. Information derived from “The Marihuana Conviction – The Legal History of Drugs in the United States”
1. Written by Prof. Richard J. Bonnie & Prof. Charles H. Whitebread, II
2. After writing a book “The Forbidden Fruit and the Tree of Knowledge” Richard was named the Deputy Director of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse and Whitebread was a consultant to that commission, in which they were given access to both the open and closed files of what was then called the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and what is now known as the Drug Enforcement Agency. The book went through six printings before being sold out primarily in sales to the FBI
B. The Situation in 1900
1. Between 2 & 5 percent of the entire adult population of the U.S. were addicted to drugs
2. Why?
a. Morphine administered in hospitals & on the battlefield
b. “Patent Medicine” with morphine content of up to 50% volume (i.e., “Doctor Smith’s Oil, Good for Man and Beast”)
c. So essentially most drug abuse was accidental
C. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906
1. Resulted from all the accidental addictions from patent medicine
2. Biggest impact was that patent medicines were not approved for human consumption once tested
3. Certain drugs could only be sold by prescription
4. Warning labels
5. Not a criminal law, the act did more to reduce the level of addiction than any other single statute the U.S. has passed in all of the times from then to now
D. The Harrison Tax Act of 1914
1. Very first criminal law at the Federal level in the U.S. to criminalize the non-medical use of drugs
2. Applied only to opium, morphine and its various derivatives and derivatives of the cocoa leaf like cocaine
3. Because of its structure it became the model for every Federal piece of legislation from 1914 right through 1969
4. 1914 was high water mark for states power and it was widely thought Congress did not have the power to one, regulate a particular profession, and two, that Congress did not have the power to pass a general criminal law
5. Therefore Congress had the novel idea to masquerade this whole thing as a tax
a. There were two taxes:
(1) One paid by doctors every year in which they received a stamp from the Government that allowed them to prescribed these drugs for their patients as long as they followed the regulations
(2) Two was a very hefty tax for every single non-medical exchange of every one of these drugs
b. So therefore, this wasn’t really a tax because no one could afford to pay the hefty tax rate, it was a criminal prohibition, with the Federal crime being tax evasion, not possession
E. The Early State Marijuana Laws (1915-1937)
1. During this time 27 states had enacted criminal laws against the use of marijuana and can be divided into three groups:
a. Rocky Mountain & Southwestern States (Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana)
(1) Period just after 1914 there was a substantial migration of Mexicans in search of better economic conditions
(2) To find out the motivation of the marijuana laws in these states the writers went directly to the legislative records of these states
(3) A proponent of Texas first marijuana law said (verbatim) “All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff (referring to marijuana) is what makes them crazy”
(4) A proponent from Montana said (verbatim) “Give one of these Mexican beet field workers a couple puffs on a marijuana cigarette and he thinks he is in the bullring at Barcelona”
(5) So the genesis of the rocky mountain and southwestern areas wasn’t a hostility to the drug, it was a hostility to the newly arrived Mexican community that used it
b. Northeast (Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey)
(1) Originated from the “fear of substitution”
(2) New York times editorial in 1919 stated: “No one here in New York uses this drug marijuana. We have only just heard about it from down in the southwest, but we had better prohibit its use before it gets here. Otherwise all the heroin and hard narcotics addicts cut off from their drug by the Harrison Act and all the alcohol drinkers cut off from their drug by 1919 alcohol prohibition will substitute this new and unknown drug marijuana for the drugs they used to use”
(3) This concept accounts for 26 of the 27 states enacting marijuana laws including the racially motivated laws in the rocky mountain and southwest states
c. Utah
(1) The most important because it was the first one to enact a criminal law against marijuana
(2) In 1876 in a case called “Reynolds vs. the U.S” the Supreme Court outlawed polygamy
(3) The Mormons who still wanted to practice the “Traditional Way” just after 1910, moved into northwest Mexico
(4) They had written a lot about their goals of converting the locals, what they called “heathens” to their religious doctrine, but by 1914, with very little luck in their endeavors, most decided to move back and with them, they brought marijuana
(5) The Mormon church has always been apposed to euphoriants of any kind, so when the “traditional” Mormons moved back, the Mormon church in 1915 decreed the use of marijuana contrary to the Mormon religion
(6) In October of 1915 the state legislature met and enacted every religious prohibition as a criminal law and we had the country’s first criminal law against the use of marijuana
F. The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937
1. The hearing on the national marijuana prohibition lasted one hour, on each of two mornings
2. When the writers asked the Library of Congress for a copy of the hearings, to the shock of the Library, none could be found. Four months later it turns out the volume was so small it has slid down in the bookshelf and they had to break the bookshelf to get it
3. There were 3 bodies of testimony at the hearings:
a. The first came from the newly named Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger (1930-1962)
(1) Working from a text written by a District Attorney from New Orleans named Stanley, Anslinger quoted “marihuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death.” That was the Government testimony
b. The second body of testimony came from the industries that would be affected
(1) The first person was a rope maker
(2) He told of its uses and how it was used in the Revolutionary War, but concluded that by 1820 it was cheaper to get from East Asia so it wasn’t needed (4 year later in WWII the Federal Government created huge hemp crops to outfit the naval vessels and other military needs)
(3) The paint and varnish people said they could use something else (fueled by DuPont losing a lot of money to hemp otherwise)
(4) The only people to balk were the birdseed people who to this day can still use marijuana seeds due to an exception in the Tax Act
c. The last testimony came from the medical community
(1) The first came from a pharmacologist at Temple University who claimed he had injected the active ingredient in marijuana into the brains of 300 dogs, and 2 of the dogs died. When asked by the Congressman (verbatim) “Doctor, did you choose dogs for the similarity of their reactions to that of humans?” he replied “I wouldn’t know, I am not a dog psychologist” (The active ingredient in marijuana was first synthesized in a laboratory in Holland after WWII. So what it was this pharmacologist injected in these dogs we will never know, but it almost certainly was not the active ingredient in marihuana)
(2) The other piece of medical testimony came from a man who was both a lawyer and a doctor and he was Chief Council to the American Medical Association named Dr. William C. Woodward.
(3) His response was (verbatim) “the American Medical Association knows of no evidence that marihuana is a dangerous drug”
(4) The amazing thing about what happened next was that one congressman said “Doctor, if you can’t say something good about what we are trying to do, why don’t you go home?” and the next congressman said “Doctor, if you haven’t got something better to say than that, we are sick of hearing you”
(5) Why was Woodward treated in such a high-handed way? Because the committee was made up heavily of New Deal Democrats and the American Medical Association from 1932-1937 had systemically opposed every single piece of New Deal Legislation
(6) So, the bill passed out of the committee and onto the floor of congress which lasted all of one minute and thirty-two seconds
(7) It was passed at 5:45PM Friday afternoon in the heat of pre-air-conditioned Washington on August 20th
(8) It was in the process of being passed on “tellers” when a Congressman from upstate New York asked Speaker Sam Rayburn “Mr. Speaker, what is this bill about?” Rayburn replied “I don’t know, it has something to do with a thing called marihuana. I think it’s a narcotic of some sort.” The Congressman then asked “Mr. Speaker, does the American Medical Association support this bill?” At this point, a Congressman, who also happened to have been on the committee stood up and lied by saying “Their Doctor Wentworth came down here. They support this bill one hundred percent”
(9) The bill went to President Roosevelt’s desk and was signed
G. 1938-1951
1. Immediately after the national marijuana prohibition was passed Anslinger held a national conference of 42 people. The day of the conference, 39 of those people left basically saying they had no information about marijuana and that they would be of no help. That left 3 people, Dr. Woodward from AMA and his assistant and the pharmacologist from Temple University. At this conference, Anslinger appointed the pharmacologist to the position of Official Expert of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics about marijuana…a position he held till 1962
2. In the late 30’s and 40’s marijuana was called the “killer drug” or “assassin of youth” and the movie “reefer madness” spawned
a. This was all propagated by Anslinger using the magic word “insanity” in his government testimony in 1937
b. Sure enough, five really flamboyant murder trials, the defendants sole defense was that he, or in the most famous of them, she was not guilty by reason of insanity for having used marijuana prior to the crime
c. In the most famous of these trials, two women jumped on a Newark, New Jersey bus and shot and killed and robbed the bus driver. They put on the marijuana insanity defense and called on the pharmacologist from Temple University to testify since he was an “expert”
d. He was asked “what have you done with the drug?” and his response was (verbatim) “I’ve experimented with the dogs, I have written something about it and I have used the drug myself”
e. He was then asked what happened when he used the drug. His response was “After two puffs on a marijuana cigarette, I was turned into a bat.” He went on to say that he flew around the room for fifteen minutes and then found himself at the bottom of a two-hundred foot high inkwell
f. One of the women in this case then testified that “after two puffs on a marijuana cigarette my incisor teeth grew six inches long an--d dripped with blood”
g. Every single one of these marijuana insanity defenses succeeded
3. After seeing these successful marijuana insanity cases Anslinger wrote the pharmacologist telling him that if he continued testifying he was going to have his “Official Expert” status revoked which ended the marijuana insanity cases but not before marijuana had gotten quite a negative reputation
H. Boggs Act of 1951
1. Important for two reasons:
a. First, it reflects the drug regulation formula that when there is a perceived increase in drug abuse, usually brought about by the media, a new criminal law is enacted with harsher penalties in every single offense category. The Boggs Act actually quadrupled every single offense category
b. Secondly, during the hearing for the Boggs Act a doctor from the Lexington, Kentucky narcotics rehabilitation clinic testified that the medical community knew that marijuana wasn’t an addictive drug, and that it didn’t produce death, insanity, or criminality but instead probably produced passivity. Who was the next witness? Anslinger. In what should be called a very slick “Federal Shuffle” Anslinger agreed with the doctor but said that marijuana is “the certain first step on the road to heroin addiction”
c. And so comes the birth of marijuana being labeled as the “Gateway” drug in 1951
I. Daniels Act of 1956
1. Hearings stated that there is organized crime in America and that it makes all its money selling drugs
2. This lead to marijuana possession being a minimum sentence of 20 years no parole, no probation
3. Sales of marijuana was mandatory 40 years
4. At the same time first degree murder was a minimum of 15 years, rape a mandatory 10 years

II. Medical Studies and Facts of Marijuana
A. Studies
1. Indian Hemp Drug Commission (1893-1894)
a. Contained 7 volumes and exactly 3,281 pages of research
b. Concluded that “the moderate use [of marijuana] practically produces no ill affects. In all but the most exceptional cases, the injury from habitual moderate use is not appreciable.”
2. LaGuardia Committee Report on Marihuana
a. Conducted by the New York Academy of Medicine in 1944
b. Mayor LaGuardia said “I am glad that the sociological, psychological, and medical ills commonly attributed to marihuana have been found to be exaggerated.”
3. Wootton Commission Report
a. Conducted in the UK in 1968
b. Concluded that “there is no evidence that this activity is causing violent crime or aggression, anti-social behavior, or is producing in otherwise normal people conditions of dependencies or psychosis, requiring medical treatment.”
4. The Report of the Nationnal Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse
a. Committee hand picked by President Nixon in 1972
b. Concluded saying “considering the range of social concerns in contemporary America, marihuana does not, in our considered judgment, rank very high. We would deemphasize marihuana as a problem”
B. The Synthetic THC (Marinol) Debate
1. Contains only delta-9-tetrahyddrocannibinoid but does not have the compounds cannabidiol (CBD), an anti-convulsant, and cannabichromiene (CBC), an anti-inflammatory.
2. Marinol produces high psychoactivity because of the way its administered. Because it passes through the liver, a significant proportion gets converted to other chemicals. One of these is 11-hydroxymetabolite, is four to five times more potent than THC
3. Delays drug from taking peak affect up to 2 to 4 hours after injestion
C. New Biological Studies
1. Dr. Bob Malamede, a molecular biologist from the University of Colorodo states ” Endocannabinoids are lipid compounds, produced by all of us, that act on cannabinoid (THC) receptors. Their biological activity is similar to that of cannabinoids such as THC found in marijuana plants (Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica). Endocannabinoids are lipid metabolites with global homeostatic activities. They regulate all of our body systems.”
2. Dr. Malamede goes on to state that THC has the possibility to fight cancer cells and the onset of heart disease due to its biological qualities