Why is cannabis illegal

Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. And perhaps the biggest contradiction of all is that since the century-long drive for prohibition was initiated, marijuana has become extremely popular.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of unlucky citizens face criminal sanctions for getting caught with a drug that one third of all Americans—including college students, professional athletes, legions of entertainers, and the past three U. Presidents—have experimented with at least once. In popular culture, the drug has become accepted as harmless fun. In , a talk show host can joke with a former congressman about being pot smokers on cable TV. As Americans consider further legalizing marijuana it is worth reviewing how the use of this plant became illegal in the first place and why prohibition persists in much of the country more than a half century after its use became common.

Interestingly, while marijuana use has been an urgent topic of conversation for over a century in this country, the voices of doctors and scientists have been largely quiet. Instead, the debate has been shaped by media portrayals of drug use and reinforced by politicians and advocacy groups that supported them. Cannabis, like opiates and cocaine , was freely available at drug stores in liquid form and as a refined product, hashish.

Cannabis was also a common ingredient in turn-of-the-century patent medicines, over-the-counter concoctions brewed to proprietary formulas. Then, as now, it was difficult to clearly distinguish between medicinal and recreational use of a product whose purpose is to make you feel good.

While there were fads for cannabis across the nineteenth century, strictly recreational use was not widely known or accepted. But the practice of smoking marijuana leaf in cigarettes or pipes was largely unknown in the United States until it was introduced by Mexican immigrants during the first few decades of the twentieth century.

That introduction, in turn, generated a reaction in the U. The first attempt at federal regulation of marijuana came in , with the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act. The act included cannabis among the various substances patent medicine companies were required to list on their labels in order that worried customers could avoid it. Then, between and , twenty-six states passed laws prohibiting the plant. The anti-marijuana laws were uncontroversial and passed, for the most part, with an absence of public outcry or even legislative debate.

Flush with success in pushing through alcohol prohibition , temperance campaigners in the s began turning attention toward opiates and cocaine, which had become prohibited under increasingly strict Supreme Court interpretations of the Harrison Narcotics Act. The fact that marijuana smoking was a habit of immigrants and the lower class clearly played a role in its prohibition, though there is little indication that Hearst was more racist than might be expected of a man of his time and station. The association of murder, torture, and mindless violence with marijuana was not borne out by evidence or actual events but blossomed thanks to the vivid imaginations of the journalists charged with sensationalizing the tired story of drug use and addiction.

Until a few decades prior, the public was acquainted with opiates from widespread medicinal use, and with cocaine from its presence in drugstore potions including Coca-Cola.

Journalists, politicians, police, and middle-class readers had no similar familiarity with marijuana, allowing it to become the vessel for their worst fears: addicting, personality-destroying, violence-causing. Ironically, Harry J.

Anslinger, a former assistant commissioner of the Prohibition Bureau who headed the U. However, Anslinger began to capitalize on fears about marijuana while pressing a public relations campaign to encourage the passage of uniform anti-narcotics legislation in all 48 states. He later lobbied in favor of the Marijuana Tax Act of That the marijuana was a causal factor for the crime was taken for granted.

It was surely no coincidence that the scare movie Reefer Madness came a year earlier. The Marijuana Tax Act, which regulated the drug by requiring dealers to pay a transfer tax, passed in the House after less than a half-hour of debate and received only cursory attention in the press. Following high-profile campaigns, the UK government changed the law to allow doctors to prescribe cannabis products.

As US states such as California found in the s and s, familiarity with medical cannabis can soften attitudes towards recreational use. But in the UK, the Home Office says the recreational use of cannabis will remain banned, although senior figures, including former Conservative leader William Hague, have suggested a rethink.

Mexico has also had cases of children being denied medical cannabis, but it has also been motivated by the extraordinary violence of its drugs war.

Although marijuana makes up a relatively small share of drug cartel revenues, continuing to ban it is seen as increasingly at odds with reality. Mexican diplomats warned the US it was difficult to enforce the fight against cannabis when the neighbouring American state of California legalised recreational use.

With countries worldwide moving towards some form of legalisation, others are rushing to catch up. Often, as in many parts of Latin America, governments want their farmers to have access to the potentially lucrative medicinal cannabis markets that are developing. Corporations have also expressed interest. Over time, as the US demonstrates, it is quite possible that the medical trade could quite easily morph into recreational sales - potentially opening up an even bigger market.

One immediate obstacle is that cannabis for recreational purposes cannot be traded across borders. Countries can only import and export medicinal cannabis under a licensing system supervised by the International Narcotics Control Board. Farmers in countries such as Morocco and Jamaica may have a reputation for producing cannabis, but they can't access markets that domestic producers sometimes struggle to supply - as happened in Canada following legalisation.

More stories like this. Source: NHS Choices. While there are some rumblings of change within the international legal system, as yet this seems far off. Governments that want to move towards legalisation face a challenge: steering a course between uncontrolled legalisation and hard prohibition.

Poorly-regulated industry and mind-altering substances are not a combination about which many societies would feel comfortable. But it seems a virtual certainty that more countries will change their approach to cannabis in the coming decades.