Being BLACK or BROWN in the GREEN RUSH

The term reefer madness is in itself, madness. However, like so much of the history of people of color, if we don’t understand where we’ve been, we’ll never understand how we journeyed to the present, or where we’re going in the future.

Reefer Madness was featured in the 1936 propaganda film, now a classic cult movie of the same name. For 50 years, the failed drug war has cost more than one trillion dollars, resulted in more than 40 million arrests, destroyed families and communities, absorbed limited law enforcement resources, devastatingly and disproportionately impacted people of color, and increased the numbers of widows, orphans, and homes without at least one parent, due to mass incarceration.

There’s a well-known adage, “numbers don’t lie,” and the cannabis prohibition numbers tell the truth and nothing but the truth. As was evident in the past decade, there was a 53% increase in drug arrests, a 188% increase in the number of people arrested for marijuana offenses in states where marijuana is not legal, and a 52% increase in the number of people in state prisons for drug-related offenses.

In fact, this “war” has netted an unprecedented and unparalleled rate of incarceration, particularly for people of color in the United States. And while the US accounts for approximately 5% of the world’s population, it has 25% of the world’s prison population. Go USA!

To see who has benefited from the war on drugs, you just have to follow the money. To see why the policies continued to do what they did, you must look at some of the most vocal corporate interests who have historically been opposed to marijuana legalization—liquor companies, cigarette producers, casino operators, pharmaceutical companies, and of course, the highly profitable private prisons.

Have you ever wondered why those powers have opposed sensible drug regulations? Well, companies of adult “amusements” would undoubtedly be opposed to marijuana legalization, since they will do whatever it takes to keep those discretionary dollars from being expended on anything other than their products. The pharmaceutical companies are ever present, fighting along the way, as they have lobbied heavily against legalization to protect their self-interests. While some pharmaceutical companies now offer processed pills that are derived from the cannabis plant, patients contend that the efficacy of the product is best derived from the plant in its raw form. However, the problem the pharmaceutical companies face is that they can’t patent a plant!

Times are changing, however. As the opioid crisis has raged, and kids are dying on the streets and in the suburbs, a magnifying glass has been focused on the billions of dollars that the industry has made by feeding the addiction of Americans. Everyone—from physicians to the government to parents—is seeking alternatives to highly addictive pills. They recognize that cannabis can be that alternative.

The marijuana plant has been around since the beginning of mankind. In the US, smoking cannabis was just considered a way of life for decades. Abraham Lincoln once said, “Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica.” In fact, hemp and marijuana were an accepted part of American society until the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919, called the Volstead Act, or more commonly referred to historically as (alcohol) prohibition.

Alcohol prohibition birthed criminal kingpins, such as Al Capone and Bugsy Siegel. Prohibition was at its peak in the late 1920s into the 1930s. As a result, it became clearer to even the most corrupt of government officials that the Volstead Act had to go; prohibition wasn’t working. However, if the ban on alcohol consumption had to be lifted, some other substance that was in demand had to be prohibited to keep the corrupt government officials’ coffers full, and organized crime in business.

EXIT STAGE RIGHT: ALCOHOL PROHIBITION; ENTER STAGE LEFT: MARIJUANA PROHIBITION.

Prior to the repeal of alcohol prohibition, the majority of Americans recognized marijuana as nothing more than a plant that grew virtually anywhere in the world and made you feel better. Marijuana was not considered bad, nor was it considered as toxic. It had mild hallucinogenic effects, with virtually no side effects.

Local and federal law enforcement had been “living large” during alcohol prohibition, and any repeal would literally cut off a huge revenue stream for the underworld. Around that time, “tyrannical” William Randolph Hearst, the most powerful newspaper owner in America, began printing false and exaggerated stories about the “evils of marijuana.”

Hearst was described as a blatant racist who despised Hispanics and Blacks. Hearst used his power to create a sense of unwarranted hysteria amongst white America (sound familiar?), about the undesirable impact comingling the races could have. To express his severe disdain towards people of color, Hearst referred to them as “drug pushers.” He utilized his newspapers as the platform to make baseless and vague claims that minorities were dealing marijuana, and predicting that marijuana would turn their “pure white children” into addicts.

The truth is that Hearst was at the helm of creating public hysteria over smoking marijuana as a smokescreen for him and his compadres, the wealthy DuPont family; but the motive behind this campaign actually had nothing to do with the mind-altering, THC part of the plant. No! Hearst and DuPont had no real interest in marijuana because they considered that a “darkie” problem. They did have a vested interest in demonizing the plant to prevent the cultivation and importation of the non-mind altering hemp products in the United States. Most people didn’t realize that their actions were quite calculative and strategic, and their motive was purely financial.

Why hate hemp? Andrew Mellon was the Secretary of the Treasury under President Hoover, and the owner of Mellon Bank at the time. His bank was the financial support of the Dupont petrochemical company. The DuPonts held many lucrative patents on the chemicals used in manufacturing plastics, paper, and paints. Meanwhile, those patents could become worthless if the cheaper hemp products and hemp oil derivatives became ubiquitous and Mellon would lose millions. They knew they needed an “insider” in the government to prevent their billion dollar patents from becoming worthless.

Enter Harry Anslinger. Known as “the father of the war on weed,” Anslinger fully embraced racism as a tool to demonize marijuana. He was appointed as the first commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics, a predecessor to the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency). Appointed by department secretary, Andrew W. Mellon, his wife’s uncle, Anslinger was the son of German immigrants who immigrated to the United States in 1881.

Anslinger believed that pot had an “effect on the degenerate races”—people of color—so he made marijuana prohibition a top priority. To understand the venom with which Anslinger shared the beliefs of William Randolph Hearst, one has to look at some of his notable statements regarding the “harmful effects” of marijuana. Here is one of his more deplorably memorable quotes:

Enough said!

When considering the inherent impacts that racism has had on the war on drugs, Hispanics have not fared much better than Blacks. As delineated by Eric Schlosser, in his landmark piece in The Atlantic, “Reefer Madness”:

There was a plethora of acclaimed atrocities that came into play due to the heavy consumption of marijuana. Police officers in Texas claimed that not only did marijuana ignite violent crimes, it also aroused a “lust for blood,” and gave its users superhuman strength. In fact, rumors spread that Mexicans were distributing this killer weed to innocent American (i.e. white) schoolchildren. As the hysteria spread, reports of this alleged “loco weed” that caused “tremendous violence,” began to escalate and take on a life of their own. One Dallas Morning News story, from 1923, even bore the headline, “Mexican, Crazed by Smoking Marijuana, Uses Knife on Five.”

With no basis in science or in substance,...