# Why are hashish and marijuana illegal in so many countries **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 21, 2012, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-hashish-and-marijuana-illegal-in-so-many-countries/610202 "2012-01-21T06:34:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2012, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-hashish-and-marijuana-illegal-in-so-many-countries/610202/1 "2012-01-21T06:34:00Z")
In the US the history of prohibition of hash and marijuana is tied into things like racial prejudices (claiming marijuana was used by black jazz musicians and other socially undesirable groups caused a moral panic resulting in a public backlash) and WR Hearst wanting to ban it because he didn’t want hemp used as a substitute for timber. But even if those are the reasons they are illegal in the US, that doesn’t explain why they are illegal almost everywhere else. It seems like a fairly benign drug (exp compared to things like meth, cocaine or heroin), or compared to a legal drug like alcohol. So why have so many countries and cultures across the world decided to prohibit cannabis? Is there some kind of public risk that would cause so many countries to ban it? Most countries aren’t going to ban it because of racial prejudice or to protect the timber industry. ---
**Author:** ![campp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@campp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/campp)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2012, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-hashish-and-marijuana-illegal-in-so-many-countries/610202/2 "2012-01-21T12:22:47Z")
The story I read was that in the early and mid 20th century, hemp was a viable but unexploited competitor to products made from oil (nylon being the example). In short, Big Oil killed it off for economic reasons. Eventually and conveniently, it was lumped in with the other substances that were obviously addictive and outlawed, and that basically got us to the situation we are in today. I’ll mention the WWII story of Bush senior bailing out of a crashing plane using a hemp parachute. That may be an urban legend, however. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2012, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-hashish-and-marijuana-illegal-in-so-many-countries/610202/3 "2012-01-21T13:43:52Z")
> [@campp](#): > > The story I read was that in the early and mid 20th century, hemp was a viable but unexploited competitor to products made from oil (nylon being the example). In short, Big Oil killed it off for economic reasons. Eventually and conveniently, it was lumped in with the other substances that were obviously addictive and outlawed, and that basically got us to the situation we are in today. That story is complete and utter BS. Hemp was never, and will never be a competitor for Nylon. The “Legalize-It” crowd tried to re-write history to add corporate conspiracies & sinister motives when a simple but powerful crusade to ban marijauna was already underway in the wake of prohibition being repealed. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2012, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-hashish-and-marijuana-illegal-in-so-many-countries/610202/4 "2012-01-21T13:46:38Z")
> [@campp](#): > > The story I read was that in the early and mid 20th century, hemp was a viable but unexploited competitor to products made from oil (nylon being the example). In short, Big Oil killed it off for economic reasons. Eventually and conveniently, it was lumped in with the other substances that were obviously addictive and outlawed, and that basically got us to the situation we are in today. > > I’ll mention the WWII story of Bush senior bailing out of a crashing plane using a hemp parachute. That may be an urban legend, however. Yes, I believe the OP is aware of this. He wants to know, as do I, why it is illegal in so many OTHER countries. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2012, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-hashish-and-marijuana-illegal-in-so-many-countries/610202/5 "2012-01-21T13:47:22Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > In the US the history of prohibition of hash and marijuana is tied into things like racial prejudices (claiming marijuana was used by black jazz musicians and other socially undesirable groups caused a moral panic resulting in a public backlash) and WR Hearst wanting to ban it because he didn’t want hemp used as a substitute for timber. And exactly why wouldn’t Hearst want hemp to replace timber? It can’t, BTW, hemp paper is crap. Hearst, despite the lies of the “Legalize it” crowd, did not own forests for paper making and in fact was in debt for a large portion of his life to various paper mills. ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2012, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-hashish-and-marijuana-illegal-in-so-many-countries/610202/6 "2012-01-21T13:57:35Z")
Yeah, as a user of MJ, I have to say that the ‘Hemp is so really cool’ position is historically unsound. Yes, it is a very useful crop, but marijuana was illegalized because of various factions in place at the time. This was the early 1900’s. A time of ‘moral reforms’ that still affect us now. Prohibition and the Harrison Act both led to the good weed being banished from legality. There was a large racist element in this both against black Jazz musicians and against the perceived Mexican threat personified by Pancho Villa. And there we have it. Almost a century later, we are just now coming to our collective sense. I hope. ---
**Author:** ![Billdo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/billdo/32/315_2.png) [@Billdo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Billdo)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2012, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-hashish-and-marijuana-illegal-in-so-many-countries/610202/7 "2012-01-21T16:26:31Z")
Marijuana is illegal because since the early 20th Century (or before) Western governments (as a reflection of the majority view of Western culture) have banned all similarly psychoactive recreational drugs _except_ those with a long history of acceptance within Western culture. We have a centuries-old tradition of widespread and public tobacco use and a millennia-old tradition of widespread and public alcohol use in Western culture. Other drugs simply don’t share that history. Instead, they were used primarily privately and by those outside of the cultural mainstream. and were perceived to be a cause of the users’ being dissipated and unproductive in society. Indeed, this view was so strong that the anti-alcohol forces were able to muster a sufficient coalition to enact the Prohibition amendment to the US Constitution. It is only because the cultural attachment to alcohol use was so great that the Prohibition “experiment” failed and the amendment was repealed. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2012, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-hashish-and-marijuana-illegal-in-so-many-countries/610202/8 "2012-01-21T16:32:47Z")
> [@Shakes](#): > > Yes, I believe the OP is aware of this. He wants to know, as do I, why it is illegal in so many OTHER countries. Yes I do. What is the motive for so many different cultures to all ban the same substance which does not appear to be very destructive to society at large. If the US banned it for reasons I listed in the OP, why did nations like Malaysia, Argentina, Norway, Taiwan, South Africa, etc. ban it? They didn’t have the same racial or economic elements motivating prohibition as we did. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2012, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-hashish-and-marijuana-illegal-in-so-many-countries/610202/9 "2012-01-21T20:19:09Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Yes I do. What is the motive for so many different cultures to all ban the same substance which does not appear to be very destructive to society at large. If the US banned it for reasons I listed in the OP, why did nations like Malaysia, Argentina, Norway, Taiwan, South Africa, etc. ban it? They didn’t have the same racial or economic elements motivating prohibition as we did. Perhaps they’re simply conforming to international standards. As for Malaysia, they’re Moslems, they’re puritans about psychoactive substances anyway. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2012, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-hashish-and-marijuana-illegal-in-so-many-countries/610202/10 "2012-01-21T20:30:54Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Yes I do. What is the motive for so many different cultures to all ban the same substance which does not appear to be very destructive to society at large. If the US banned it for reasons I listed in the OP, why did nations like Malaysia, Argentina, Norway, Taiwan, South Africa, etc. ban it? They didn’t have the same racial or economic elements motivating prohibition as we did. My very limited understanding is that a few of the western democracies had a collective freakout over the counterculture movements of the 1960’s, especially the US, and railroaded some broad anti-drug agreements through the UN. Muslim countries are very puritan anyway, and thus needed no convincing, and a number of other countries are enthusiastic social-controllers wiling to ban it just to be safe. Most nations had no significant drug abuse problem, but crucially, they also had no significant drug use tradition. Governments saw an easy way to show the spirit of international cooperation without really pissing off their citizens, so they just jumped on the anti-drug bandwagon. Of course a number of countries are strongly under US influence and went along for that reason. Against the few countries that dragged their feet, the US used economic measures to compel compliance. ---
**Author:** ![drastic\_quench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e36b37/32.png) [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2012, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-hashish-and-marijuana-illegal-in-so-many-countries/610202/11 "2012-01-21T23:03:33Z")
Marijuana never got itself a juggernaut industrialist. It needed a Carnegie, Rockefeller, Dole, or Ford. There was a window where it could have been successfully marketed from scratch to mainstream America - like diamond rings - and a lot of the western world would have followed. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2012, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-hashish-and-marijuana-illegal-in-so-many-countries/610202/12 "2012-01-22T06:50:35Z")
> [@drastic\_quench](#): > > Marijuana never got itself a juggernaut industrialist. It needed a Carnegie, Rockefeller, Dole, or Ford. There was a window where it could have been successfully marketed from scratch to mainstream America - like diamond rings - and a lot of the western world would have followed. Didn’t work for amphetamines. I mean diet pills. ---
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2012, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-hashish-and-marijuana-illegal-in-so-many-countries/610202/13 "2012-01-23T01:54:11Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Perhaps they’re simply conforming to international standards. As for Malaysia, they’re Moslems, they’re puritans about psychoactive substances anyway. yep it was a UN bill that we all signed and now can’t back out of without the US getting the bully out. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2012, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-hashish-and-marijuana-illegal-in-so-many-countries/610202/14 "2012-01-23T23:02:48Z")
The actual history is rather complex and there were several “reasons” that interacted. First, psychoactive drugs got a bad rap around the turn of the century because they so often formed the basis of so-called “patent medicines”. The prevelence of quackery had a huge imput into the passing in many western countries of legislation designed to put an end to the sale of fraudulent “medicines” of which the active ingredients were often opium or tinctures of pot. [A funny digression: I was helping a buddy repair a barn that was over 120 years old, and in one dark corner we found buried a trove of empty patent medicine bottles - ‘Dr. Migillicutty’s Ecclectric Oil’ 😃] Second, as someone mentioned upthread, there was a huge amount of casual racism about in the early part of the last century, and non-tobacco and alcohol drug use _for fun_ was associated with the supposed horrors of race-mixing and exploitation - opium use was part of the “yellow peril” (ironic that, in light of the Opium Wars), and pot use was considered endemic to Mexicans and Blacks, hence undesireable. In Canada, the leading text demonstrating this is entitled _The Black Candle_ and was written by Emily Murphy, a woman who was a feminist icon - first female judge and a leading litigant in the “Persons” case. > **[Emily Murphy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Murphy)** > > Emily Murphy (born Emily Gowan Ferguson; 14 March 1868 – 26 October 1933) was a Canadian women's rights activist and author. In 1916, she became the first female magistrate in Canada and the fifth in the British Empire after Elizabeth Webb Nicholls, Jane Price, E. Cullen and Cecilia Dixon of Australia (all appointed to office in 1915). She is best known for her contributions to Canadian feminism, specifically to the question of whether women were "qualified persons" to serve in the Senate unde... These trends - the desire to do away with quack medicines on the one hand and the desire to control the alleged evils of “foreign” influence on the other - combined with actual issues and problems of drug addiction (poorly understood even today) and a social climate in which prohibition of alcohol was deemed acceptable - all these contributed. What I do not believe is the notion that it was an anti-hemp conspiracy for industrial concerns. Edit: for flavour, here’s an extract from the section in The Black Candle on pot: > [@](#): > > This Indian hemp is used chiefly in Asia Minor, India, Persia and Egypt, but is being increasingly used on this continent, particularly by the Mexicans, who smuggle it into the United States. Last year fifty-four persons were convicted for using, or peddling it in Los Angeles, California. > > Charles A. Jones, the Chief of Police for the city, said in a recent letter that hashish, or Indian hemp, grows wild in Mexico but to raise this shrub in California constitutes a violation of the State Narcotic law. He says, "Persons using this narcotic, smoke the dried leaves of the plant, which has the effect of driving them completely insane. The addict loses all sense of moral responsibility. Addicts to this drug, while under its influence, are immune to pain, and could be severely injured without having any realization of their condition. While in this condition they become raving maniacs and are liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence to other persons, using the most savage methods of cruelty without, as said before, any sense of moral responsibility. > > “When coming from under the influence of this narcotic, these victims present the most horrible condition imaginable. They are dispossessed of their natural and normal will power, and their mentality is that of idiots. If this drug is indulged in to any great extent, it ends in the untimely death of its addict.” > > Mr. Hamilton Fyfe in The Real Mexico, writing of this drug says of it, “They (the Mexicans) madden themselves with a drug called Marahuana. This has strange and terrible effects. It appears to make those who swallow it do whatever is uppermost in their thoughts. At El Paso, a peon came across the International Bridge firing a rifle at all and sundry. Much talk against the Americans and a dose of Marahuana had decided him to invade the United States by himself. The bridge-keeper quickly put a bullet into the poor wretch.” [http://www.freeworldnews.com/p2\_17to25.html#Marahuana--A\_New\_Menace](http://www.freeworldnews.com/p2_17to25.html#Marahuana--A_New_Menace) ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2012, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-hashish-and-marijuana-illegal-in-so-many-countries/610202/15 "2012-01-23T23:18:13Z")
Because the United States bullies anyone who doesn’t go along with us. because we’ll bomb hella countries that grow marijuana if they don’t make it illegal (and it grows nearly everywhere.) I’m not entirely being tongue in cheek.