Cecil asks rhetorically: Why is marijuana illegal while alcohol and tobacco are legal?
I thought it was a great question. Because it is Cecil’s own question, I would like to see him answer it. In the meantime, what are the answers others would provide?
PriceGuy already supplied an explanation that alcohol and tobacco have a longer social history. (I am paraphrasing. PriceGuy should feel free to supply his own explanation here.) That, of course, doesn’t stand up very well when you consider than early colonial laws required farmers to grow cannabis, and it was a major crop at both Mount Vernon and Monticello.
Ummm, I can’t find my copy of Emporer so I’ll do my best to set this down from memory. I will prolly get a few things wrong; please forgive any errors or omissions.
What I remember is that marijuana was legal in this country until sometime last century. Pressure from powerful industry lobbies that competed with hemp sought to outlaw the production, distribution, possession and use of hemp. the over-riding reason for this, and what it made it so hard for hemp producers to fight back, was the fact that hemp can be used in so many different ways. Textile manufacturing, machine lubrication, medical uses, food products can all use hemp in some fashion or other. Marijuana’s use as a drug was also demonized in popular culture (most famously in the film now known as Reefer Madness).
Eventually, Congress passed legislation banning marijuana.
I know I left out a lot of details and anecdotes. Emporer is a thoroughly researched account of this story and does a much better job than my poor paraphrasing. I highly recommend that anyone interested in this issue or in the machinations of our government give this book a look.
This shows an analysis and comparison of the smoke from both marijuana and tobacco, in cigarettes of comparable size. This is prolly my favorite thing to show people who are very vocal in their opinion that marijuana is a “demon weed”.
It should be noted in discussing possible health problems that the quantities of marijuana and tobacco used in a day by a typical user is very different. I am a regular marijuana user and have been for more than 25 years. But there is no way that I could smoke 20-40 grams a day, every day, like many (most) tobacco users do.
A Jamaican once commented to me about the difference between alcohol and marijuana: “When was the last time you heard of a man beating his wife after smoking ganja?” That Jamaican had a point.
Marijuana is ridiculously easy to grow (they don’t call it weed for nothing) and it doesn’t require much processing to make it usable. Alcohol in its basic form is easy to make but to make it good requires some skill. Tobacco is hard to grow and the plant is a long way from a cigarette or a cigar or even a good plug to chew.
The government gets much revenue from the tax of tobacco products and alcoholic beverages (that’s why bars use mini-bottles in South Carolina…tax on each bottle, more bottles=more taxes, understand). If the government could find a way to tax marijuana it would be legal but since it would be more cost effective to grow your own, it won’t happen. Ever.
Not at all. This is a historical question, with definite historical answers. You know, like asking why alcohol prohibition was passed, and then repealed.
I dearly love Jack Herer and I consider him a friend, but I have to take issue with his explanation. There is really little to no evidence that the DuPonts were involved in any industrial conspiracy. For one thing, there is absolutely no documentation to show their involvement. For another, at the time hemp could have hardly been considered a threat to the DuPont empire. There were only a little more than 1,000 acres of the stuff growing in the US (that is, that farmers intended to grow – there were wild stands of “volunteer” hemp that covered big stretches of land), and it was apparent that even those farmers growing it were having trouble bringing the crop to market, even with the power decorticator.
The book Drugs, Crime, and the Criminal Justice System edited by Ralph Weisheit covers the subject of the history of drug prohibition very thoroughly. I highly recommend that anybody interested in the subject pick up a used copy from Amazon. I can’t find the passage right now, but the book describes how DuPont was a driving force in the criminalization of marijuana, with their efforts coinciding with the introduction of polyester in the mid 1930’s. I’ll see if I can find the relevant sections and post some more tomorrow.
That must be an insult to GQ. Actually, the answer is one of the more fascinating parts of our history. Are GQers not interested in history?
You get the prize for the best answer so far. However, Anslinger never made any of those statements about “darkies” and DuPont had nothing to do with it. The best answer can actually be found at the bottom of that page where they link to Whitebread’s story.
If that’s what the book said, then it is wrong. The DuPont story is certainly a good one. The only problem is that there is no evidence that it is true – other than some conjecture about A knew B who knew C, etc. In addition, there are some good reasons otherwise to believe it is wrong - like the fact that hemp was no threat to the DuPont fortune.
Actually, growing good marijuana requires a modest amount of skill and effort, about on a par with what it takes to produce wine, but less than required to produce distilled spirits.
I doubt that the ability to tax marijuana has much to do with it. You could say the same things about tobacco and I note that the vast majority of tobacco users buy it at the store. Also, from what I hear from prohibitionists, they simply don’t care that marijuana might increase tax revenue. They are against it, no matter what.
Pretty simple answer. Nearly everyone- especially the upper classes- the ones who wrote the laws- used alcohol and tobacco. Few- and mostly the poor- used marijuana. Before all of this special hothouse grown and special variety marijauna came along (staring n the 60’s0 hemp was a pretty harsh and low quality smoke. The Temperance movement came along, and tried to ban EVERYTHING- and suceeded. Note- Prohibition. There just wasn’t enough dudes (especially the right kind of rich, powerful dudes) who smoked pot to fight pot being outlawed. so it went Illegal along with everything else BUT Tobacco. There was no big conspiracy, or anything like that. It was just that few cared enough to fight FOR Pot while everything else was being banned. Before then, all sorts of dope was legal- laudenum and cocaine were sold in many “patent” medicines.
Tobacco had just came into common use by women- and it was mainly women who led the temperence movement. Tobacco had a huge lobby, was a main USA export, and didn’t seem to have any serious unhealthy effects (oh sure, dudes knew it generally wasn’t healthy to smoke, but they didn’t know about lung cancer). AND, it didn’t make you “high”.
So- really the question is- why didn’t Tobacco get banned along with everything else? For that, I offer the paragraph above, but if someone has a better answer,* please. * Marijuana wasn’t singled out to be made illegal- it just went with everything else.
