04 Jul Cannabis or Marijuana? What’s in a Name?

An insightful article a few weeks ago on MassRoots (www.massroots.com) urges readers to “rebrand” cannabis and call it by its proper scientific name: cannabis. The piece goes through the apparently racist history of those who adopted the term “marijuana” as they pushed for criminalization of cannabis in the US in the 1930s. Mexicans using cannabis recreationally who were immigrating into the US in the early 1900s after the Mexican revolution used that word to refer to cannabis.

In the 1930s there apparently was widespread dislike for the Mexicans coming into the US at a time when Americans were struggling through the Great Depression. This racist attitude was out front with Harry Anslinger, then the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who, as noted in the MassRoots article, said things like: “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.” They convinced many that cannabis was dangerous, addictive and led to violence and improper behavior. By using the term marijuana, they apparently sought to, and were successfully able to, tie it more to the widely resented immigrant Mexicans.

We can save for another day why then-tycoons like William Randolph Hearst and Andrew Mellon, both very close to President Franklin Roosevelt, strongly supported criminalization of cannabis because of its economic threat to their widespread timber interests, and they thus encouraged their friends in Congress and folks like Anslinger.

The term “Marihuana” was used for the first time in federal law when the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 first criminalized cannabis at a federal level. That law, declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in the late 1960s, was replaced by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 that governs and retains the federally criminalized status of cannabis today. A rapidly increasing number of Americans believe it is now time to reverse the actions of a racist few 80 years ago and allow the public the opportunity to access both medical and adult use cannabis in a safe and well-regulated environment as they did for many decades before “Reefer Madness.”