Drug-war recap
I'm reposting a response I made to a comment in which someone asks why the FDA still claims marijuana is dangerous, in light of all of the scientific evidence. I'll try to track down more details to add to this later, but I can attest to the validity of all of this, and encourage my readers to do outside research to confirm what I said.
Here's the fact of the matter: The FDA has no unbiased studies that prove any negatives associated with cannabis use, at least not that I've been able to find. There were many complex issues that led to cannabis being criminalized in the first place. Utah was the first place to ever criminalize pot in the US, because a church group came back from Mexico with cannabis talking about how great it was for worshiping God. This was something the Mormon's couldn't handle. Several border states quickly followed suit because of a growing movement that was concerned about Mexican immigration who claimed that cannabis made Americans lazy like Mexicans and violent like blacks, citing the longterm association of cannabis with those two minority groups.
Next we had a low level federal guy, Anslinger, who wanted an issue to ride to the top. He seized on pot, and started making sensationalist lies about how it led to rape and turned good white kids into lazy and/or violent animals. I've read the transcript of the federal hearing where they criminalized it, and he actually used lot of racist slurs in making his argument for criminalization. Meanwhile, the paper industry had just found out how much competition it could get from hemp paper, as hemp produes at least 4x as much paper per acre per year than tree, so they started running a lot of anti-cannabis propaganda in the newspapers that were owned by the timber industry. As a result of this propaganda barrage, and the racist arguements, Congress criminalized cannabis.
Since cannabis was also a major ingrediant in at least %40 percent of all medicines at the time, the American Medical Associate and the American Nurses Association were never even consulted at hearings to federally criminalize it. When they heard the news, they issued some scathing statements that were largely ignored. To this day, almost every state nurses association, the National Institute of Medicine, and many other state and federal medical groups vocally protest the continuing prohibition of cannabis.
Ever since then, we have been scientifically disproving all of their lies about cannabis, one by one. In the meantime, they have been unable to come up with any real reason why it should be illegal, hence the recent attempts to tie cannabis sales to terrorist funding. Once cannabis stopped being available for medical purposes, it lead it an explosion in the production and prescription of dangerous and highly addictive pharmeceuticals that would otherwise have to compete with the more natural, safer, and more versatile cannabis plant. Now those pharmeceutical companies are incredibly wealthy and powerful, and they are the ones who essentially bribe politicians and members of the FDA into continuing to ignore the scientific evidence. We've also had several rigorous, government funded studies that have concluded that cannabis use is safe, and medically beneficial, even when smoked, and have furthered concluded that it should be legalized. Of course, the government always seems to ignore such advice, even from its own studies.
In the 60's, one of Nixon's advisors (I forget which) told him that if they started a full-fledged war on drugs, it would give them an excuse to put a federal law enforcement presence in every town in America, something that was unheard of at the time. So they started the war on drugs, and now we have one of the highest percentages of our population in prison out of any major country. Thanks to cannabis laws in particular, we are now imprisioning a greater percentage of African Americans than were imprisioned in South Africa under the Aphartheid government that we claim to have hated so much for oppressing blacks. Additionally, prohibition has created an enviroment where honest, law abiding citizens fear their governemnt and law enforcement officials, which laws the fundation for all of the crazy stuff they've been doing to our civil liberties and privacy rights. Over the decades, we just gotten used to the idea that the feds can do this, and they know that if they relegalize cannabis, even for medical purposes, they lose a lot of power over us, and a lot of their wealthy supports like pharmeceutical companies, the paper industry, and big oil (hemp can also be used to make biodiesal fuel) will lose a lot of money. Also, they would have to release hundreds of thousands if not millions of minority voters from jail, and restore the voting rights for many others, which would lead to a substanial shakeup in the power structure after all of those disenfranchized voters had their rights restored.
So, in summary, it started with religion, was followed up by racism, and became a national issue because of the desire for money and power. And it remains illegal solely because of all the power structure would lose if they restored this right to everyday Amerians.
Here's the fact of the matter: The FDA has no unbiased studies that prove any negatives associated with cannabis use, at least not that I've been able to find. There were many complex issues that led to cannabis being criminalized in the first place. Utah was the first place to ever criminalize pot in the US, because a church group came back from Mexico with cannabis talking about how great it was for worshiping God. This was something the Mormon's couldn't handle. Several border states quickly followed suit because of a growing movement that was concerned about Mexican immigration who claimed that cannabis made Americans lazy like Mexicans and violent like blacks, citing the longterm association of cannabis with those two minority groups.
Next we had a low level federal guy, Anslinger, who wanted an issue to ride to the top. He seized on pot, and started making sensationalist lies about how it led to rape and turned good white kids into lazy and/or violent animals. I've read the transcript of the federal hearing where they criminalized it, and he actually used lot of racist slurs in making his argument for criminalization. Meanwhile, the paper industry had just found out how much competition it could get from hemp paper, as hemp produes at least 4x as much paper per acre per year than tree, so they started running a lot of anti-cannabis propaganda in the newspapers that were owned by the timber industry. As a result of this propaganda barrage, and the racist arguements, Congress criminalized cannabis.
Since cannabis was also a major ingrediant in at least %40 percent of all medicines at the time, the American Medical Associate and the American Nurses Association were never even consulted at hearings to federally criminalize it. When they heard the news, they issued some scathing statements that were largely ignored. To this day, almost every state nurses association, the National Institute of Medicine, and many other state and federal medical groups vocally protest the continuing prohibition of cannabis.
Ever since then, we have been scientifically disproving all of their lies about cannabis, one by one. In the meantime, they have been unable to come up with any real reason why it should be illegal, hence the recent attempts to tie cannabis sales to terrorist funding. Once cannabis stopped being available for medical purposes, it lead it an explosion in the production and prescription of dangerous and highly addictive pharmeceuticals that would otherwise have to compete with the more natural, safer, and more versatile cannabis plant. Now those pharmeceutical companies are incredibly wealthy and powerful, and they are the ones who essentially bribe politicians and members of the FDA into continuing to ignore the scientific evidence. We've also had several rigorous, government funded studies that have concluded that cannabis use is safe, and medically beneficial, even when smoked, and have furthered concluded that it should be legalized. Of course, the government always seems to ignore such advice, even from its own studies.
In the 60's, one of Nixon's advisors (I forget which) told him that if they started a full-fledged war on drugs, it would give them an excuse to put a federal law enforcement presence in every town in America, something that was unheard of at the time. So they started the war on drugs, and now we have one of the highest percentages of our population in prison out of any major country. Thanks to cannabis laws in particular, we are now imprisioning a greater percentage of African Americans than were imprisioned in South Africa under the Aphartheid government that we claim to have hated so much for oppressing blacks. Additionally, prohibition has created an enviroment where honest, law abiding citizens fear their governemnt and law enforcement officials, which laws the fundation for all of the crazy stuff they've been doing to our civil liberties and privacy rights. Over the decades, we just gotten used to the idea that the feds can do this, and they know that if they relegalize cannabis, even for medical purposes, they lose a lot of power over us, and a lot of their wealthy supports like pharmeceutical companies, the paper industry, and big oil (hemp can also be used to make biodiesal fuel) will lose a lot of money. Also, they would have to release hundreds of thousands if not millions of minority voters from jail, and restore the voting rights for many others, which would lead to a substanial shakeup in the power structure after all of those disenfranchized voters had their rights restored.
So, in summary, it started with religion, was followed up by racism, and became a national issue because of the desire for money and power. And it remains illegal solely because of all the power structure would lose if they restored this right to everyday Amerians.