The drug problem was on the radar of social scienThists for many decades. In the 1960s, drug use became a politically contentious matter. Following the general resentment about drugs, scholarly literature contributed to the policy agenda by questioning the social and historical roots of drug regulation . Typically, scholars framed the drug problem through two perspectives—sociology of deviance and crime control studies . Sociology of deviance described drug regulation as a moral enterprise, and crime control studies—as an essential element of the war on crime. Both approaches complemented each other and provided macro-level, outcome-based explanations of the US’s history of drug regulation. Macro-level explanations—which still prevail in the sociological and socio-legal literature on drugs—are based on several theoretical propositions: the drug problem is socially and politically constructed; drug laws are a product of symbolic struggles that define the borderline between deserving and undeserving social groups; the stakes of the war on drugs are the accumulation of power and status by the elites; the public discourse on the drug problem is shaped by the mass media. Later, I discuss how these features are manifested in the “told” history of cannabis criminalization. According to Emile Durkheim , normality and pathology are defined in relation to social context; that is, what is normal for a particular society in a given historical period may be pathological in other circumstances. Throughout history, greenhouse benches human beings have been using plants— e.g., tobacco, alcohol, poppy seeds, coffee beans, tea leaves, sugar cane, coca leaves, cocoa beans,or cannabis—to alleviate pain and distress.
Some of those plants were socially constructed as dangerous, immoral, and deviant, and therefore fell under the state authorities’ control. Other plants, in contrast, were valued for their healing properties and potential to provide energy, alertness, or relaxation . In this section, I describe how cannabis from a legal healing herb became one of the most dangerous drugs in the course of the US’s twentieth century.The criminalization of cannabis is one of the most mysterious and contested episodes in America’s war on drugs. In the scholarly literature, the history of drug regulation is often described as a moral enterprise directed against certain ethnic, racial, social, political, and other “non-American” groups. To understand how cannabis from a harmless intoxicant became a perilous drug, it is important to look at the cultural origins of cannabis legislation. According to Katherine Beckett, the association between drugs, crime, and racialized images of dangerous classes has characterized anti-drug campaigns throughout American history . The first anti-drug law restricting the use of opium was adopted in California in 1875 as a reaction to massive Chinese immigration and the fear of job competition . Similarly, the federal prohibition of opium in Canada at the beginning of the 20th century was a racialized project against Chinese immigrants . The first major campaign against cannabis started in the Southwest during the Great Depression when Mexicans were blamed for high unemployment rates . Until the 1910s, cannabis was a legitimate and innocent plant used for industrial, therapeutic, and recreational purposes.
It had deep roots in Asian and European countries as a healing herb and a source of fiber. In the 1850s, cannabis became available in American pharmacies and was included in the 3rd edition of The Pharmacopeia of the United States as medicine helping with rheumaThism, tetanus, epidemic cholera, hysteria, and mental depression. Until the “reefer madness” era, the word“marijuana” was unknown in the US : pharmacists knew the plant by its botanic name cannabis sativa 15 , and recreational users referred to it as “hashish” or “Indian hemp.” There were no laws in Europe and Northern America regulating access to cannabis. Anti-alien sentiment in the United States grew in the mid-1880s as a response to social problems associated with mass migration . The Mexican Revolution caused thousands of immigrants to flee to the United States for safety and work. At the time, cannabis use was flourishing in Mexico, and Mexican laborers brought the plant into the US as a cheaper and more accessible substitute for alcohol and tobacco . Before Mexican immigration, Americans consumed cannabis mainly in chewable or liquid form, while Spanish speaking foreigners introduced a new form of consumption—smoking a mix of dried cannabis buds and tobacco.16 Like immigration, cannabis use was highly racialized: the main target of policymakers was not smoking, but smokers. The advent of the Depression made Mexican workers unwelcome and heightened anti-Mexican sentiment. The growing number of unemployed Mexicans were perceived as a welfare and crime problem, and jailing Mexicans on cannabis charges became part of the general attempt to reduce the labor surplus .
The media and state officials popularized the term “marijuana”—a Spanish word used by farm workers—that tied the public perception of cannabis to “dangerous” Mexican migrants . Most Americans were not even aware that “Mexican marijuana” and “cannabis paste they get in the pharmacy” were essentially the same substance. The concern about Mexicans generated a new ideology about cannabis: since the Anglos perceived Mexicans as criminal types, cannabis also became associated with violence . African Americans were the second-largest group consuming cannabis . Both minorities were blamed for violent crimes committed against the white population, the worst of which was considered the seduction of white girls. By the 1930s, cannabis was gradually framed as an evil plant whose consumption damaged the brain and induced violent behavior. The image of cannabis as a “killer weed” justified the prohibition of cannabis at the state and federal level. According to Howard Becker, wherever rules are created and applied, we should expect to find people attempting to establish their code of right and wrong . The Federal Bureau of Narcotics , created in 1930, and its head Harry Anslinger played a pivotal role in criminalizing cannabis. Cannabis was not covered by the Harrison Act of 1914, which regulated the non-medical use of narcotics because pharmaceutical manufacturers confronted the criminalization of such a seemingly harmless drug . Instead of adding cannabis to the Harrison Act, the FBN issued a special prohibitive taxing scheme—the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937—which established onerous licensing rules, imposed high excise taxes, and introduced harsh penalties to discourage cultivation, distribution, and consumption of cannabis. From the mid-1930s until the early 1960s, the FBN shaped public beliefs about cannabis: it defined what was true about the drug and how it should be handled . Anslinger propagated myths about the criminogenic and psycho-pathological character of the plant. In particular, he claimed that continued use of cannabis produced mental disorders and physical deterioration, blamed doctors for intentionally overdosing patients, growers equipment stymied all scientific studies on the plant, and repulsed any competing ideas that confirmed cannabis’s harmlessness . The impact of the La Guardia Report in 1944—which refuted that cannabis use results in insanity and criminal behavior—was limited because the FBN successfully restricted its distribution. The mass media and anti-cannabis propagandistic movies were at the service of Anslinger’s campaign giving cannabis bad publicity and sowing fears among the American public. Fabricated stories had a tremendous effect, and in 1941, cannabis was excluded from The Pharmacopeia of the United States. Doctors and pharmacists could not withstand Anslinger’s attack and defend their professional monopoly over drug testing, prescription, and distribution, and were ultimately forced to hand it over to state officials. Later, the American Medical Association and the American Pharmaceutical Association joined the crusade against cannabis. In 1951, the Boggs Act20 strengthened the Marijuana Tax Law.
Louisiana Congressman Thomas Boggs, who thought that drug laws were too lenient, sponsored a package of tough antidrug laws establishing the same punishment for all narcotics. For the first time, cannabis and heroin were lumped together. Cannabis possessors could be sentenced to 2 to 5 years in prison for a first offense, 5 to 10 for a second offense, and 10 to 20 for subsequent offenses. Repeat drug offenders were denied parole considerations . In 1956, the passage of the Narcotics Control Act superseded the Boggs Act, and the minimum for a first offense increased to 5 years. The FBN gained tremendous power: by the end of the 1950s, it comprised 2% of the total law enforcement officers but was accountable for 17.6% of the federal prison population . According to Himmelstein , the role of the FBN in cannabis criminalization was more complicated than most authors suggest. The FBN became a dominant actor in shaping public beliefs and policies when states have already limited access to cannabis. In the early 1930s, the FBN was not interested in national cannabis control and was not aggressive or expansionistic. Although it is commonly thought that cannabis prohibition began with the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, some US states took pre-emptive administrative measures to limit access to cannabis . By 1937, most states had already passed anti-cannabis laws, and various senators and members of Congress had proposed federal anti-cannabis legislation. Drawing on an established image of cannabis as the “killer weed,” the FBN enhanced—rather than created—the cannabis problem . The “Mexican hypothesis” also requires further elaboration: to what extent are anti-Mexican sentiments responsible for cannabis criminalization? In his thorough analysis of the origins of cannabis prohibition in California, Dale Gieringer shows that cannabis prohibition resulted from bureaucratic initiatives prompted by the Progressive Era ideology. California was the first state that started the anti-cannabis campaign in 1913 by including cannabis in the Poison Act, which prohibited the sale and possession of certain substances except with a doctor’s prescription. At the time, the law did not receive any public coverage because recreational use of cannabis was largely unknown in California. Although the Poison Act’s passage coincides with the Mexican revolution and the mass migration of Mexican citizens to the US, the prejudices against ethnic minorities were not a significant factor in anti-cannabis policies in the 1910s. The connection between cannabis and Mexican communities appeared later when Mexican immigrants themselves were recognized as a “problem. ” According to Gieringer, the forbiddance of cannabis was a logical extension of prohibitionist principles and the technocratic rationale of the Progressive Era bureaucrats. Even without Mexican immigration, the California government was well on its way to outlawing cannabis. Neither were Mexicans the main object of concern in the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937. As Himmelstein shows, cannabis’s association with Mexican laborers and other lower class groups influenced anti-cannabis legislation in less direct ways than it is often thought . When the FBN began talking about the federal regulation of cannabis, the image of youthful victims has replaced that of violent Mexican users in the public discussion. The concern was with what cannabis can potentially do to young people who can be seduced and ruined by the drug. In other words, by the end 1930s, the main goal was not to punish Mexicans but to save the youth. From the late 1950s, cannabis and its users were seen in new terms. The focus of cannabis policies shifted to new social groups that did not fit the definition of “good” citizenship—first to jazz players and poets, then to hippies and rock stars, and finally to social and political activists. Cannabis smoking increased among the white middle-class, including college students, and was no longer a chiefly Mexican and African American drug. The large-scale spread of cannabis use to middle-class youth led to a reevaluation of the drug’s dangers and to pressure for its decriminalization . As more young people experimented with cannabis, they came to realize that it did not turn them into miserable addicts but gave a gentle euphoria and relaxation. 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. 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 .