I watched a few articles and youtube vids about the history of the war of drugs but now after getting a general picture of it I want to delve more into the details as it seems like a very interesting subject.
So here's what I know so far:
-Cannabis was first made illegal in the 19th century by the American president of that time (can't remember the name) to keep mexican immigrants from coming into the country because they were often stoners
-In 1970 Richard Nixon started the war on drugs officially as a political strategy during the cold war to 'destroy'/impair the left-wing communities of hippies and black people who were anti-war. IIRC this has been proven many years later when one of his councilors actually admitted that publicly, and that they were aware that they were spreading false propaganda.
Correct me on anything if I am mistaken from a factual point of view. Now my questions are as follows:
-What happened happened first in America. How did it spread to Europe and the rest of the globe? Drugs being illegal is a pretty global phenomenon as far as I'm concerned, even in Asia, Africa, pretty much everywhere. What's the history of that?
-What exactly happened in between the 19th century and 1970? Was marijuana illegal before '70? Did it become legal again and then Nixon criminalized it again? If not then what did Nixon exactly do? Were only certain drugs legal in the USA before 1970 and Nixon criminalized only the remaining ones?
Hemp fibers were extremely prevalent in colonial America. Hemp was a primary fiber of civilization, and always in demand for shipbuilding, canvas, ropes, cloth, and recycled into paper. Hemp has the longest and strongest natural fibers, so it was always important up until the industrial revolution and was always encouraged to be grown. Cannabis Sativa was the name for hemp, and no one used it to get high.
High quality hemp was all imported. The US Navy couldn't get enough of it, and wrote a few reports on it in the 1800s. The biggest US hemp industry was a slave based in Kentucky. All the hemp went for cotton binding and bagging, none for shipbuilding.
https://cannabisandthegoddess.com/the-surprising-story-of-hemp-slavery-in-america/
Cannabis drugs were common in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East since forever. They were called Cannabis Indica (from India) and have no fiber value. They came to the Americas in the 1800s, but they weren't smoked, they were typically eaten. Cannabis drugs began being studied medically in the 1840s and entered the US pharmacopoeia in the 1850s. Hashish was openly advertised and sold through the 1800s in drugstores. Imports were unreliable so US pharma firms started growing their own around the turn of the century which they marketed as Cannabis Americana.
http://www.edwardtdodge.com/2016/10/25/testing-cannabis-medicines-the-old-fashioned-way/
George Washington may have imported the first Cannabis Indica seeds and grown them at Mount Vernon in the 1790s while he was President. No joke. He definitely grew hemp in the 1760s. It's all in his farm diaries and letters.
https://cannabisandthegoddess.com/george-washingtons-india-hemp/
Hash was sometimes mixed with tobacco and smoked. Rolling papers are a product of the industrial revolution and come on the scene in the 1880s. No one smoked joints before that.
A couple things happen in the 1910s. Opium addiction was a big problem in the US and in China in the 1800s, and there was a push to control sales and restrict the drug. The first international drug control agreements came around 1914. Cannabis would eventually be tacked onto international opium prohibitions at the League of Nations in 1925 which the USA did not sign because it was not hard-line enough to satisfy the Americans.
Pancho Villa and the Mexican revolution causes a wave of immigrants into the US in the 1910s. Mexico had marijuana for a long time. Mexican Catholic elite hated marijuana violently, but it was popular with the lower classes and natives. When the immigrants came to the USA they brought marijuana and their attitudes about it.
Black folks, especially in the south and musicians were smoking marijuana. It spread with the popularity of jazz music out from New Orleans across the country. Now that people were smoking marijuana it seemed like something different to white folks from the familiar cannabis indica drugs, which weren't very popular anyway.
Combine racist Jim Crow law enforcement, anti-immigrant attitudes, and the rising tide of progressive government controlling all drugs, peaking in the New Deal, and you have the recipe for marijuana prohibition. Prohibition begins in El Paso, TX, New Orleans, and California around 1914-15, and goes national in 1937 with the Marihuana Tax Act.
http://www.edwardtdodge.com/2018/05/11/why-was-marijuana-made-illegal-in-the-first-place-part-i/
Harry Anslinger became the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1930. A true believer in the prohibition of all drugs and alcohol, his hard line views set the tone for international drug prohibition. He opposed all forms of medical treatments to treat opium addiction and insisted on lock-em-up and throw away the key policies. Anslinger hated marijuana too. He was very racist, an old-school segregationist, and he hated jazz music. He targeted jazz musicians for spreading marijuana and spied on them. He headed the FBN until 1962 and was active at the UN, where he headlined the writing of the Single Convention on Drugs in 1961.
http://www.edwardtdodge.com/2018/05/14/why-was-marijuana-made-illegal-in-the-first-place-part-ii/
The Marihuana Tax Act was deemed unconstitutional in 1969 in Leary v USA. This led to the creation of the modern Controlled Substances Act and the DEA. The act required that marijuana be studied to decide how it should be treated. President Nixon's handpicked Shafer Commission determined that marijuana was not a threat and should be decriminalized. Nixon was outraged and threw the report in the trash. This was the last honest report about marijuana the federal government ever produced. After that the government constantly lied and fear-mongered about cannabis to justify having wide police powers that targeted the poor, colored folks, and the anti-war left.
Its worth noting that America was unique in insisting that the entire plant species of cannabis be made illegal, with no distinctions made between fiber hemp and ditch weed that has no drug value. The communist countries like the USSR and China, who had no tolerance for drugs, never stopped growing hemp. You can grow all the poppy flowers you want in the USA, and poppy seeds can get you high and cause you to fail a drug test. But cannabis for some reason gets the harshest prohibition.