When Did Cannabis Become the Bad Guy?

If you grew up in the U.S. in the 1930s or later, you’ve been socially and politically programed to see cannabis as a reprehensible evil in a way every generation prior was not.

Consequently, it might surprise you that cannabis was once something even Puritan America had no issue with and looked upon as an herb that treated common ailments. It wasn’t the “devil’s lettuce” that ostracizes and imprisons hundreds of thousands of Americans. It had staunch support from the American Medical Association and was listed in the United States Pharmacopoeia and sold in pharmacies.

For comparison’s sake, imagine if treating diarrhea with star grass (another herb listed in the same U.S. government catalog) instantly made you a felon. Or if consuming dragon-root (of Indian origin like the cannabis indica in the catalog, listed there with it) to expand your mind and make you more creative put you in handcuffs. Or if using button snakeroot (again, listed there too) to save your life after being bitten by a snake made people look at you as a hoodlum. Well, the idea of being jailed and denigrated for using cannabis to treat a headache, insomnia, nausea, anxiety or anything else was equally ludicrous back then.

So, how did Americans go from lumping cannabis in with star grass, dragon-root and button snakeroot to lumping it in with heroin, crack and PCP? And how did they go from seeing it like we see ibuprofen today to seeing it like we see crack cocaine today? What happened? Read on to find out.

Fabric, Medicine and Candy: When Cannabis Was Wholesome

In the early 1800s, cannabis-derived textiles were indispensable to maintaining the United States’ armed forces in conflict. In the late 1800s, the U.S. Army’s field kits were required to contain cannabis for the plant’s medicinal properties. Throughout the U.S., cannabis was a government-approved, respectable homeopathic remedy for numerous ailments. It was a key active ingredient in numerous medicines, too.

Cannabis was also available in confectionaries, marketed as “hasheesh candy.” It was a mix of cannabis and maple sugar, described in an oft-cited “Vanity Fair” advertisement from Sept. 20, 1862, as:

“A most wonderful Medicinal Agent for the cure of Nervousness, Weakness, Melancholy, Confusion of thoughts, etc. A pleasurable and harmless stimulant. Under its influence all classes seem to gather new inspiration and energy.”

Similar praise was conferred upon it in ads in “Leslie’s Illustrated” in June 1863, “Boston Journal” in December 1864, “Philadelphia Inquirer” in December 1865, and many more publications – even the family-friendly Sears & Roebuck catalog.

Acknowledged but Not Restricted: Cannabis’s Brush with Regulation

Even when cannabis was eyed for regulation in the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 (aka the Wiley Act), it was neither demonized nor restricted in any way. Rather, it was counted among substances that had been sneaked into misbranded or adulterated food and drugs in interstate commerce.

The act was born of public outrage over the food adulteration and unsanitary practices exposed by Upton Sinclair’s 1906 book “The Jungle.” The masses weren’t aggravated about cannabis so much as false advertising and fear of what food producers might be putting into unwitting consumers’ bodies. As Rep. James Mann (Illinois) explained to the U.S. House of Representatives on June 21, 1906:

“I have here … a number of adulterated articles. Here is a bottle of cherries, originally picked green, in order that they might be firm, with the green color all taken out with acid until they were perfectly white, and then colored with an aniline dye which is poisonous in any quantity.”

The Pure Food and Drug Act laid the foundation for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA’s own explanation for the act further reiterates that it had nothing to do with cannabis being targeted for elimination:

“[T]he nauseating condition of the meat-packing industry that Upton Sinclair captured in The Jungle was the final precipitating force behind both a meat inspection law and a comprehensive food and drug law. … Since 1879, nearly 100 bills had been introduced in Congress to regulate food and drugs; on 30 June 1906 President Roosevelt signed the Food and Drugs Act, known simply as the Wiley Act … [which] prohibited the interstate transport of unlawful food and drugs under penalty of seizure of the questionable products and/or prosecution of the responsible parties.

“The basis of the law rested on the regulation of product labeling rather than pre-market approval. Drugs, defined in accordance with the standards of strength, quality, and purity in the United States Pharmacopoeia and the National Formulary, could not be sold in any other condition unless the specific variations from the applicable standards were plainly stated on the label. Foods were not defined according to analogous standards, but the law prohibited the addition of any ingredients that would substitute for the food, conceal damage, pose a health hazard, or constitute a filthy or decomposed substance. … Also, the food or drug label could not be false or misleading in any particular, and the presence and amount of eleven dangerous ingredients, including alcohol, heroin, and cocaine, had to be listed.”

Guilty by Association: A Symbol of the Political-Economic Scapegoat

Political Upheaval Triggers an Influx of Cannabis-Carrying Immigrants

As mining and agriculture boomed in the southwestern U.S., it attracted immigrants from Mexico in search of work and relief from political upheaval, particularly the Revolution of 1910. Between 1910 and 1920, more than 890,000 Mexicans immigrated to the U.S. legally, and the number of Mexican Americans in the U.S. more than doubled.

Along with their other belongings, they brought cannabis (“marihuana” in the parlance of the time) plants, something that Spain had introduced to Mexico to grow hemp for the Spanish navy. Laborers and cattle drivers in the southwest soon took to recreational cannabis smoking, and the latter carried cannabis across the nation with their 27-plus million cattle. Of note, many of the cattle were poisoned by the native, cannabis-resembling plant locoweed, which was confused for – and tarnished the reputation of – cannabis.

The Temperance Movement Exploits Xenophobia and Racial Discrimination

Fear of and prejudice about the Spanish-speaking newcomers was directed onto the peculiar plant they had brought with them. Prohibitionists were already occupying the moral high ground by trying to rid the nation of alcohol and opiates. Thus, targeting another intoxicant – cannabis – fell in line with their mission; if it could capitalize on the existing xenophobia and race baiting, so much the better for their cause.

To that end, many fanned the flames of nativist sentiment and racism and framed drinking and doing drugs as things foreigners and non-whites did. Campaigners warned against the encroaching “marijuana menace,” while Treasury Department officials reported on the dangers that “Mexicans and sometimes Negroes and lower-class whites” who smoked marijuana posed to upper-class white women. State-level officials added Indian immigrants to the conspiracy theory, claiming that they were “initiating whites” into the habit of smoking cannabis.

Prohibitionist lobbyists in the Anti-Saloon League paid Spanish-American War veteran and hero Richmond P. Hobson to speak about the threat posed by “marijuana” (no longer “cannabis”) to the national character. With his contributions to their information operation, melodramatic and sensational stories about addicts hit newspapers. Journalists, politicians, police and middle-to-upper-class readers weren’t familiar with marijuana, and their fears of what it was said to cause (violence, insanity, etc.) were easily transferred onto this alleged narcotic.

An interesting bit of irony is that Prohibition actually helped the cannabis market flourish for a while. After Prohibition went into effect, alcohol became a cost-prohibitive recreation. In Mexican ports, you could buy an entire kilogram of marijuana for $10 to $12, ($157.65 to $189.18 in Q4 CY 2024 U.S. dollars), yielding roughly 2,000 regular size joints. By contrast, a gallon of illegal liquor went for around $6 ($94.59 in 2024), yielding 78 shots or cocktails at 1.7 ounces per shot/cocktail (the standard). Plus, drinking was a high-stakes game to play because it was illegal; cannabis, which the laborers were already bringing with them to work anyhow, was not.

A Propaganda Alliance

To the Prohibitionists’ good fortune, the media had its own war to wage against cannabis and – by proxy – immigrants. (More on that later.) They lucked out when Mexico itself served up fodder for fearmongering. During the era of mass emigration from Mexico, cannabis had come under attack in Mexico for all the reasons that would later surface in the United States. Newspapers there claimed that marijuana caused madness and violence (another Head Magazine article for another time), and American newspapers caught wind of it. They were picking up stories transmitted via the Associated Press wire service from Mexico to be reported in “Mexico City Herald.” 

Publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, who owned dozens of newspapers and magazines, took up the Prohibitionists’ cause. At his behest, the newspapers he controlled began to publish sensational reports of violent acts committed by people under the influence of cannabis, especially minorities. And he ensured that “cannabis” was always replaced with “marijuana,” an Anglicized variant of “marihuana” and “mariguana,” both of which derive from the Spanish word “marijuango” (“intoxicant”). (Side note: “Pot” is short for the Mexican word “potiguaya,” a synonym for “mariguana.”)

Hearst’s literary misdirection reinvented cannabis as a symbol for Mexican immigrants; to see or read about “marijuana” was to see or read about every Mexican in the country. Noted historian Johann Hari observes in his book on the War on Drugs that Hearst was able to do this because he was tapping into very deep anxieties in the culture that were not to do with drugs, and attaching them to was had been rebranded a drug. Prior to that, news reports only ever used “cannabis” when referring to the plant.

In fact, prior to the “marijuana menace” era, cannabis was only ever reported on in the context of medicine or textiles. Suddenly, “cannabis” was out and “marijuana” was in and synonymous with reprobates – particularly those ravaging the country’s white women. That’s when scarier headlines emerged, such as “Delirium or death: terrible effects produced by certain plants and weeds grown in Mexico,” which appeared in “Los Angeles Times” in 1905.

From “Yellow Journalism” Came “Yellow Legislation”

The name for the phenomenon of manufacturing fake news at the time was “yellow journalism,” an unscrupulous practice among Hearst and his competitors. Throughout the 1920s, Hearst published yellow journalism articles about marijuana-smoking Mexicans and murderers throughout the 30+ newspapers and magazines in his print empire. Nearly 25% of the U.S. population read these, and it was inevitable that there would be a legislative impact.

In 1930, the U.S. government created the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) under the Treasury Department as the precursor to today’s Drug Enforcement Administration. Two years later, the Uniform State Narcotic Act was passed to address concerns about links between marijuana use and crime and social problems. Hearst had won.

Although a federal law, the Uniform State Narcotic Act was expected to be enforced at the state level. The same was true of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, which circumvented the federal government’s inability to ban marijuana by using Congress’ taxing power to make the plant too expensive to possess.

Drafted by the FBN’s first director, Harry J. Anslinger (more on his motives later), this act regulated the importation, cultivation, possession and distribution of marijuana. One of its provisions was a requirement that importers register and pay an annual tax of $24 ($525.50 in 2024). Receipt of payment was validated by a stamp affixed to each original order form. Failure to comply meant a fine of up to $2,000 ($43,792 in 2024) and up to five years in jail.

To intimidate Congress into passing the act, Anslinger cited examples from his Gore File, a collection of his friend Hearst’s finest yellow journalism full of stories that no evidence corroborated. (You can read all of those in the transcript of his statement before Congress.) He also claimed that 50% of violent crimes in districts occupied by Mexicans, Greeks, Turks, Filipinos, Spaniards, Latin Americans and African Americas could be traced to marijuana use.

Despite the absence of any scientific backing or data of any kind, and without regard to the American Medical Association’s objection to the act, Congress passed the bill after only two one-hour hearings – by a voice vote without a recorded tally. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it, and it went into effect Oct. 1, 1937. Anslinger had won.

Industry Giants Lash Out: Cannabis’s Competitive Advantage a Threat

Why did Hearst care about cannabis? Because the success of the cannabis industry conflicted with the success of his media empire. And he wasn’t the only powerful man threatened by cannabis as a competitive force in the market, either; the DuPont family, Andrew W. Mellon and the Rockefeller family had much to lose too. But with friends in high places to intervene in cannabis’s affairs, such as FBN Director Anslinger (married to Mellon’s niece), they had an in.

One example of how much influence businessmen had over government intervention in the market predates the Marihuana Tax Act by 24 years. In 1913, California banned marijuana as part of a way to counter cannabis agricultural competition with Mexico, the source of most of California’s cannabis. Migrant farm workers were large consumers of cannabis, and they composed the workforces of large corporate farms. Smaller farms that didn’t employ cheap Mexican labor sought to undermine the larger farms, and the small businesses had greater political influence, so they got their wish.

These weren’t even the leading moguls, but an entire state bent to their will. Imagine what Hearst, Dupont, Mellon and Rockefeller could accomplish to protect their own vested interests.

Vested Interest 1: Paper

To ensure a prosperous future for his media empire, Hearst was concerned with the survival and direction of his paper mills and land holdings. The industrial application of a relatively new machine called a decorticator had very recently made it possible to consider using hemp (i.e., cannabis) instead of wood pulp on a mass scale. The machine automated the process of stripping the fiber from hemp, eliminating the need to do this by hand after giving the plant time to rot under the sun. This not only saved time but also preserved much more of the original material, and it was poised to revolutionize papermaking.

In addition to owning publishing houses, Hearst owned the hardware used to print his newspapers, as well as the timber forests used to source the paper. By owning these instead of contracting out for them, he saved on overhead. Having a cheaper and higher-quality alternative to what he owned foreshadowed diminishing returns on his investments.

Also, DuPont had recently produced a new chemical treatment process for converting wood pulp into paper, and Mellon was a substantial DuPont investor. If hemp were to take off, the money that had gone into the research and development for that process could have been an intolerable waste to men of means. (That’s putting it lightly, considering that Mellon was the wealthiest person in the country at that time.)

Thus, Hearst, DuPont and Mellon could hardly have been eager to see wood-derived paper phased out as something more affordable and sustainable took its place. At a minimum, they had a compelling incentive – and the power – to shut hemp down by taking cannabis down through political and social channels.

This makes the irony of the 1914 series $10 bill so charming, given that it features Mellon’s signature prominently on a hemp-paper U.S. Federal Reserve note.

Vested Interest 2: Nylon

DuPont had just come out with a new synthetic fiber, nylon. The success of this new product, however, was contingent upon the demise of its competitor: hemp (i.e., cannabis). Mellon was one of DuPont’s nylon investors.

Vested Interest 3: Cellophane

Another recent invention of DuPont’s, cellophane, was set to become standard packaging for most U.S. goods. However, plastics at that time used plant oils, not petroleum like cellophane did. So, cannabis created competition for a third fledgling technology of DuPont’s.

Vested Interest 4: Gasoline

Standard Oil (Mobil/Chevron today) owner John D. Rockefeller viewed hemp-derived ethanol, made by fermenting the starches and sugars in hemp biomass, as competition for his company’s petrol. Henry Ford claimed that hemp ethanol, which was made from renewable resources, was more cost-effective and sustainable than traditional fuels were, and that it produced fewer emissions.

He tested this fuel his Soybean car, a 1941 Model T made entirely of plant-based plastics (notably, hemp) and built to run on hemp-derived ethanol. Its engine had been designed in collaboration with Rudolf Diesel, the German mechanical engineer who invented the fuel named after him. With the hemp ethanol, the vehicle’s fuel consumption was an amazing 40 miles per gallon. By comparison, the average fuel efficiency of 1940-model-year cars was 10 to 15 miles per gallon.

DuPont was motivated to oppose hemp-derived gas too, given that his company made the petrol additive tetra-ethyl lead. Similarly, Mellon owned Gulf Oil, another ethanol competitor. Also, DuPont was the leading shareholder in General Motors, Ford’s major competitor, so anything Ford stood to profit from was a target for elimination alone.

Henry Ford’s Soybean Car was proof positive that hemp was destined for industrial greatness.

Many sources addressing the history of cannabis’s smear campaign in the U.S. are adamant in denying that industry tycoons had anything to do with it.

The author respectfully disagrees.

Rebooting Prohibition: Fighting Cannabis to Stay Employed

Getting back to Anslinger now, what was his incentive to fight cannabis as aggressively as he did?

Before becoming the FBN director, Anslinger was an assistant commissioner of the Prohibition Bureau in the Treasury Department, then presided by his wife’s uncle, Mellon. At that time, he opposed federal legislation against marijuana because it would be too difficult for his agency to enforce. When he flip-flopped during his first year in office, he made no effort to hide what his real target was:

“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, results from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and others.”

Anslinger’s race-centric rage was, however, secondary to his motive to keep his job from appearing irrelevant and being dissolved. Prohibition was crumbling as the federal government became desperate for the alcohol tax revenues that once brought in 40% of its budget. The income tax was introduced to fill the alcohol tax gap that Prohibition would create, allowing Prohibition to be made law. But that only worked until 1929’s Great Depression gradually made government spending unsustainable without another revenue stream.

Suddenly, alcohol didn’t seem so dangerous and immoral after all.

Out of fiscal necessity, alcohol abruptly ceased to be portrayed as a demonic force undermining the American way. For 13 years, drinking had been done in secret throughout America. Then, drinking progressively became a cultural expectation throughout America. Think about it. Have you ever noticed that alcohol is the only drug you have to explain not using? For that matter, have you ever noticed that alcohol is always set apart in the phrase “drugs and alcohol,” implying that alcohol isn’t a drug? By contrast, cannabis – a plant, not something you have to process or manufacture to turn into a drug – is called a drug anytime it’s not referred to as “hemp.” (Hemp and marijuana are the same plant, by the way.) That’s another example of social and political programming. But the author digresses.

When the government needed money badly enough, politicians became booze-friendly with new or amended laws to get all that money back. In concert, industrialists took care of alcohol’s social makeover to get rid of the income tax. (Ultimately though, the industrialists ended up having to pay both alcohol tax and income tax.) This was bad news for Anslinger.

With Prohibition repealed only three years into a job that relied heavily on that act’s enforcement, Anslinger’s previously unlimited career prospects vanished. The FBN wasn’t a high priority for an already-strained budget, unless it could be made to appear necessary. By latching onto cannabis, especially without enough manpower to tackle it, Anslinger could keep the FBN going in perpetuity. The bureau was like a dog chasing a car, projecting the illusion of progress through what was really just momentum. The less that cannabis was defeated, the more that his job was secure. Indeed, rather than being laid off, he ended up keeping his job for three decades. 

America’s Attitude Today: Cannabis Advocacy on the Rise

Comedian Billy Murray once quipped, “I find it quite ironic that the most dangerous thing about weed is getting caught with it.” He wasn’t wrong. And people who, like Murray, see cannabis for what it is – not what it’s alleged to be – are speaking out in ever-greater numbers.

According to a January 2024 Pew Research Center survey, 88% of U.S. adults say marijuana should be legal for medical or recreational use, and only 11% say it should not be legal at all. By contrast, Pew data from 1969 showed that only 12% favored legalizing marijuana, with 84% preferring to keep it illegal. The ratio of opinions for and against legalizing marijuana, as reflected in additional Pew data, reached equilibrium in the early 2010s. Since then, the ratio has progressively trended upward for legalizing marijuana and downward for not legalizing it.

So, maybe propaganda’s war on reality in the U.S. is starting to wind down for cannabis now that Americans have ever-growing access to information about the plant’s benefits. That, of course, is only the socio-cultural impact; the aforementioned economic and political factors are still more susceptible to acting on feelings than surrendering to facts. Without a compelling incentive, U.S. legislators can’t reasonably be expected to fall in line with the views of the constituents who have little or nothing to lose from legalized marijuana.

Will that incentive emerge? If nearly 9 in 10 Americans want marijuana legalized (in full or conditionally), and if nearly 3 in 4 live in a state where recreational and/or medical marijuana is legal, the odds certainly make that prospect conceivable. It’s taken a century, but the tide may yet be turning.

Kathleen Hearons is a writer, editor, linguist and voice over actor from Los Angeles. She specializes in creative writing and research-intensive analysis and reporting.  

 

 

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