Neil: This past week, the House of Representatives passed landmark legislation that would decriminalize (but not legalize) marijuana at the federal level. While it doesn’t mean a legitimate weed market across all 50 states, it represents a paradigm shift in attitude towards the drug within the American government and especially the Democratic party who control the House. Against the backdrop of that, it seems that a dive into a brief history of the United States of Grass.
The arrival of weed into the US is a story with many versions. Some claim that the plant was grown here by communities dating back to the prehistoric Clovis culture, some that the first Spanish voyages to the New World had hemp plants in tow, and some argue that because of its illegitimacy as a substance it was smuggled from Europe during mass migration with no records. In any case, the first concrete evidence of weed in the Americas dates back to the 17th century when early colonies established hemp plantations. However, this hemp wasn’t for recreational smoking and was mainly for industrial purposes. The smoke-able kind was first brought to the Americas by the Portuguese and British to the Caribbean and Brazil and was used to ‘calm’ slaves. In this form, cannabis first entered US land during the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century when refugees fled across the border and brought their pot with them. The tradition of weed-smoking in Latin America had spread across the region at that point and it was taken with the refugees into states like Texas. The story of weed introduction to the US goes hand-in-hand with the story of weed regulations- El Paso, Texas was the first city to have laws against weed, beginning in 1914.
Marijuana spread like wildfire especially among people of color all across the south, but its history here remains largely under-the-table. The famous jazz singer Cab Calloway’s song Reefer Man is a rare glimpse into weed culture in New York during its introduction. Weed was a primary target of Prohibition-era drug policy and the newly formed Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The prohibition era in the United States saw a federal ban on alcohol and marijuana as a common filler-in to take the edge off especially in inner-city communities. From there on out, weed remained in that context- the poor man’s liquor, popular among the disenfranchised and city air ripe with the smell of it. There it remained until the sixties where it gained newfound popularity among white college kids and the broader American youth, and it became the Hippie drug of choice, switching hands of the community it connoted once more.
The modern era of weed is mostly concerned with its legality as well as washing away the scars from the War on Drugs of the 70s and 80s. Thousands upon thousands of non-violent offenders, especially young men of color were thrown behind bars for possession of a drug with fewer consequences than alcohol or cigarettes, representing a stain on the US justice system only now in the limelight. For the vast majority of states, and at the federal level, the fight over weed is a matter of distinctions between decriminalization and legalization, as well as medical use versus recreational use. Generally, the conservative viewpoint is a rare medical allowance and a ban otherwise, if at all it is thought that if the bill passed by the house makes its way to a Republican-controlled senate, it is essentially doomed. That being said, the dynamic is definitely changing in the relationship between weed and America, slowly but surely.
Sources:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xd7d8d/how-marijuana-came-the-united-states-456
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/health/marijuana-laws-timeline/
https://www.mpp.org/news/press/
Photo: DEA Museum
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