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Abstract
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Scientific research depends on legitimacy. We challenge legitimacy by questioning methods, researchers, funders, bias, and myriad other means. Popular culture has created a cottage industry on the dangers of the brilliant but arrogant mad scientist and the incompetent amateur, who stagger into unknown and dangerous waters. The stories rarely end well, and they are played as cautionary morality plays. From Frankenstein*,1 to Stranger Things,†,2 the consistent message is that humans should not try to become gods.
Cannabis falls into a different category. In 1850, cannabis, a plant with a history of medical usage for thousands of years, was listed for the first time in the United States Pharmacopeia, third Ed., as “Extractum Cannabis or Extract of Hemp.”3 The listing continued until 1942, 5 years after the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act (MTA) of 1937.4 The 1937 Act began a period of federal prohibition, a policy that continues today under the Controlled Substance Act (CSA),5 which classifies cannabis as a Schedule I drug with a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use, like heroin, and more dangerous than cocaine or methamphetamine.
Neither the 1937 MTA nor its successor, the 1970 CSA, was founded on a fact-based inquiry, serious policy considerations, or even morality. Historians continue to debate whether the anticannabis campaign leading to the passage of the MTA was for the economic benefit of William Randolph Hearst, the Dupont Corporation, and Andrew Mellon, one of Dupont's investors.6,7,‡,§ Even putting economic interests aside, Hearst and Mellon were at the center of a vicious anticannabis campaign based on racism, sensationalism, and social control of racial minorities. Racism and sensationalism are strong allegations, but consider the roles of Hearst, Mellon, and Harry Anslinger.
William Randolph Hearst controlled a journalism empire unheard of at the time8 and dwarfing any modern media conglomerate.** In 1923, a Hearst paper reported that “Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse for horrid specters.”9 In 1928, a Hearst paper reported that “marijuana was known in India as the ‘murder drug,’ it was common for a man to ‘catch up a knife and run through the streets, hacking and killing every one he [encountered].’”10 In one of the most bizarre claims, the article claimed one could grow enough cannabis in a window box to “drive the whole population of the United States stark, raving mad.”10
Hearst newspapers published a steady stream of anticannabis stories, but they were not alone. As early as 1913, The Salt Lake Tribune, under the headline, Evil Mexican Plants that Drive You Insane, reported that “marijuana make(s) the smoker wilder than a wild beast”11 and provided anecdotal evidence of average people who became murderers after smoking cannabis.
In 1930, Harry Anslinger, became the first director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.12 Ansliger was appointed to the position by Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, his wife's uncle.13 Ansliger, an avid supporter of prohibition, had minimized the dangers of cannabis before his appointment. Once appointed, he began a campaign based on race and violence. Anslinger did not hide his prejudice, with comments like, “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, results from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and others.”14 Anslinger helped popularize the use of “marijuana” instead of the more common “cannabis,” to tie the drug to anti-Mexican prejudice.15,16 Anslinger's themes were replicated in the movie Reefer Madness17: cannabis turns men to violence and women to sexual promiscuity ...
Language: en |