The difference between lived experience and official anti-cannabis propaganda raised a general skepticism toward state authority . Considering the growing awareness about the harmful effects of alcohol and tobacco consumption, the draconian measures against cannabis looked increasingly arbitrary and unreasonable. Cannabis supporters believed that prohibitory policies violated their constitutional rights to privacy and freedom of choice and insisted that consuming cannabis for recreational and medical purposes was an individual’s choice, not the government’s business. Thus, the social background of cannabis users changed the perception of cannabis. State authorities viewed cannabis as a symbol of the counterculture and a catalyst for political change.Student activism started as an on-campus movement but soon went off campus and merged with other social movements . Conservatives systematically linked civil rights movements to calls for law and order, arguing that the philosophy of civil disobedience was a leading cause of crime . Hippies were dangerous not due to their violence but due to their nonconformity. The 1969 Life article—known for its first use of the phrase “sex, drugs, and rock”—portrayed protesters as unconventional drug addicts whose life-style was “antithetical in almost every respect to that of conventional America.”The middle-class position of cannabis users affected cannabis laws by altering typical stereotypes about consumers and generating new arguments against the existing laws. The public saw cannabis smokers not as violent criminals but as someone’s kids who happened to commit deviant acts. The adverse effects most commonly attributed to cannabis use were amotivational syndrome, passivity, and lack of achievement. Thus, from the mid-1960s, cannabis was no longer described as a “killer weed” that spoils human nature but as a “drop-out drug” that destroyed users’ motivation . Since cannabis users were primarily threats to themselves rather than others, the focus of cannabis regulation should be shifted from a “public safety” perspective to a “public health” perspective . The Kennedy administration was seriously thinking about the decriminalization of cannabis.
Held in 1963, the White House Conference on Narcotics and Drug Abuse brought to attention that the existing penalties for cannabis possession were too cruel . Following the event, President Kennedy issued an executive order creating the Advisory Commission on Narcotics and Drug Abuse to evaluate federal programs and prevent the abuse of narcotics. The Commission made several recommendations for improving the federal government’s role in drug policies,microgreen flood table including civil commitment for cannabis possession as an alternative to imprisonment, and dismantling of FBN. Following Kennedy’s course on drug policies, President Johnson passed the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act that allowed convicted criminals who were drug abusers to enter rehabilitation programs rather than be incarcerated. Nevertheless, the federal decriminalization of cannabis did not come to fruition. Instead, in the 1970s, the war on cannabis picked up stream, disregarding the previous governments’ achievements.On October 27, 1970, Congress passed the Controlled Substance Act ,which placed all drugs into a schedule, according to its potential for abuse and medicinal value. Drugs were divided into five categories. Along with heroin and LSD, cannabis was reduced into a class of drugs with the highest potential for abuse and no medical value . Since cannabis was often presented as a major cause of heroin addiction, those two drugs became closely connected in public opinion and fell into the same scheduling scheme. According to §802 of the CSA, the term “marijuana” means “all parts of the plant Cannabis sativa L., whether growing or not; the seeds thereof; the resin extracted from any part of such plant; and every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or preparation of such plant, its seeds or resin.” In other words, the CSA criminalized not only a psychoactive component of cannabis but an entire plant, including CBD and hemp . Drugs became the public enemy number one for President Nixon, who launched “a massive assault against drug abuse” and pledged “the most intensive law enforcement war ever waged”in order to gain political advantage and satisfy the public demand for restoring social order.
The “war” rhetoric of the campaign against drugs shaped the American public’s beliefs about the drug problem and related policy resolutions . The Controlled Substance Act was Nixon’s response to radical protestors and was aimed at “stigmatizing youth protest, antiwar sentiment, rock’n’roll music, and other expressions of cultural ferment” . Nixon believed that by attacking cannabis smokers, he would eradicate the counterculture and civil rights movements. He spread the idea that people go out on the streets not because they protest against the Vietnam war but because they are on drugs .The Controlled Substances Act prescribed the creation of the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse to assess the real physical and psychological harm of cannabis. Chaired by former Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Shafer, the Commission became “one the most legendary fact finding bodies ever conceived” . Called “Marijuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding,” an 1184-page report debunked every myth that the federal government had been claiming for forty years—the study found that cannabis caused no addiction, no compulsion to use heavy drugs, no brain damage, no violent behavior, and so on. The Shaffer Commission conducted more than fifty research projects and dozens of hearings and eventually came to the conclusion that the threat of cannabis was over dramatized. The authors of the report declared that cannabis use was not a major public health concern, and thus the government did not have the competency to invade the privacy of the citizen’s life: “We believe that the criminal law is too harsh a tool to apply to personal possession even in the effort to discourage use. […]. The actual and potential harm of use of the drug is not great enough to justify intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior, a step which our society takes only with the greatest reluctance. We believe that government must show a compelling reason to justify invasion.”But the report was too permissive for Nixon, and so he immediately rejected it. As he said to a reporter during a press conference in 1972: “I have read the report. […]. I am in disagreement. I was before I read it, and reading it did not change my mind. I oppose the legalization of marijuana and that includes its sale, its possession, and its use. I do not believe that you can have effective criminal justice based on a philosophy that something is half legal and half illegal.
That is my position, despite what the Commission has recommended.”Cannabis remained a Schedule I drug and was considered unsafe, even under a doctor’s supervision . Instead of decriminalizing cannabis, Nixon increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies. As he announced in the 1972’s Republican Party Platform, the budget for drug abuse prevention and treatment has increased from $46 million to over $485 million.A year later, Nixon launched a new law enforcement division, the Drug Enforcement Administration , which replaced the FBN. By the mid-1970s, the DEA had 10,000 agents throughout the world. As a result, cannabis arrest rates almost doubled from 1972 to 1974.30 In 1974, Nixon resigned, but the drug war remained “mainstream of American politics” and, with President Reagan in charge, turned into a real fanatic war.The “governing through crime” model emerged as a solution to political problems, which followed John F. Kennedy’s assassination . Growing socio-economic inequality, the decline of traditional values, and the higher crime rates produced anxiety about social democracy and gave rise to more conservative views among the middle class . Such transformations generated a demand for effective crime control and allowed the state to build a heavy-handed approach to crime . In the new political context, any objective could be defined in punitive terms and framed in the language of public threat. As Jonathan Simon argues, “Among the major social problems haunting America in the 1970s and 1980s, crime offered the least political and legal resistance to government action” . Crime became the lens through which other problems were “recognized, defined, and acted upon” and came to function as a rhetorical legitimation for social and economic policies that punish the poor . The reverse side of the security society was the mass-scale incarceration of non-violent offenders, of which the overwhelming majority were drug users. Thus, the drug problem became both a target and a tool of the war on crime. Launched by President Nixon, the war on drugs had been further escalated by almost every president since . Just as Nixon had dismissed the Shaffer Report, Reagan ignored a 1982 National Academy of Science’s research,seedling grow rack which found no evidence that cannabis use leads to increased aggression or causes morphological changes in the brain. The authors of the report insisted that more research and federal funding was needed to understand the potential risk to human health associated with cannabis use: “Without this new information, the present level of public anxiety and controversy over the use of marijuana is not likely to be resolved in the foreseeable future.”In their view, a drug that was currently used by a third of American high school seniors deserved more study. However, the Reagan administration believed that the demand for cannabis could be curbed by eliminating supplies. Drug addiction was seen as the inability to control oneself, and so, the solution to the drug problem involved encouraging personal moral fortitude and enhancing punishment rather than investing in social programs . Instead of being treated as a medical concern, the drug problem has entered criminal discourse and became an explanation for criminal behavior.
State officials argued that drug addicts commit the majority of street crimes in order to pay for their drugs . By associating drug use with violent crimes, the federal government made the war on drugs an integral part of American life . Reagan granted the DEA and other federal agencies extraordinary powers to battle against cannabis and other drugs . Congress passed anti-drug abuse laws in 1986 and 1988, which established draconian mandatory minimum prison terms for the sale and possession of drugs and incentivized the state enforcement of drug violations . The elimination of judicial discretion through mandatory sentencing laws forced judges to impose longer sentences for drug offenses. In addition, millions of dollars, training, military intelligence, technical support, and financial incentives were provided to states willing to wage war on drugs . As a result, in the late 1980s, drug offenders represented the largest segment of the American penal population, and cannabis accounted for the majority of drug arrests and convictions. Remarkably, neither drug abuse rates nor public opinion were the primary impetus for the campaign against drugs. The war on drugs was waged in the 1980s when the reported incidence of drug use was declining . Between 1979 and 1990, the number of cannabis, cocaine, and hallucinogen users decreased by 23%, 32%, and 52% respectively . The percentage of Americans identifying drug abuse as the nation’s most important problem had also dropped—from 20% in 1973 to 2% in 1982 . Public concern rose back in the mid- 1980s, after Reagan declared the war on drugs, and reached its maximum after President Bush’s national address in 1989 in which he focused exclusively on the drug crisis. If Reagan declared war on drugs as substances stating that individuals could not be blamed for their addictions, Bush took the “war” metaphor seriously and confined the enemy to specific groups of American citizens, i.e., urban ethnic minorities . The political rhetoric on drugs had strong racial connotations and reinforced the image of the poor as morally depraved . As Michelle Alexander argues in The New Jim Crow, the drug war had little to do with public concerns about drugs and much to do with public concerns about race .The metaphor of “war” suggested the existence of an enemy who is accountable for the problems and whose position should be attacked .According to James Morone, the right enemies and a good panic are two crucial elements of anti-drug politics . The mass media played an essential role in keeping public anxiety about drugs alive and intact. Privileged access to the mass media helped the political elites to place drugs at the center of the national political agenda and reinforce the image of punishment and control as the best solution to the drug problem .