Texas first banned Cannabis due to immigrants
Marijuana was first criminalized in El Paso, Texas in the '30's and its danger as a "drug" or "hazard" had nothing to do with the ban.
We all know that marijuana use is becoming less and less of a big deal across the country every day. Currently 27 states have decriminalized, or flat out legalized, marijuana to some degree.
Texas, we're looking at you ...
The prohibition of marijuana was first enacted in El Paso, Texas thanks to a law in San Francisco, California. In an attempt to control the Chinese population in Frisco, Opium was outlawed.
Why? Because they loved it and banning it gave the law probable cause to search, arrest and deport as many Chinese as they wanted. So, why outlaw marijuana? According to drugpolicy.org:
While Americans were very familiar with “cannabis” because it was present in almost all tinctures and medicines available at the time, the word “marihuana” was a foreign term. So, when the media began to play on the fears that the public had about these new citizens by falsely spreading claims about the “disruptive Mexicans” with their dangerous native behaviors including marihuana use, the rest of the nation did not know that this “marihuana” was a plant they already had in their medicine cabinets.
Get it?
Marijuana, which Mexicans were known to use medicinally as well as recreationally, became their proverbial "boot on the neck" as far as a way to search, arrest and deport them, (almost), at will.
Spurred on by other, ridiculous falsehoods like "pot makes men of color violent and lustful toward white women", the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 passed.
It was a stupid law and the Supreme Court said so, ruling it unconstitutional in the 70's.
The morons in charge at that time weren't going to let it go that easily though so they passed the controlled substances act of 1970 which landed mota on the list of truly dangerous drugs like heroin.
Which is where it still sits for half the country .. and the entire country at the federal level ... to this day.
Slowly but surely, legalized marijuana is becoming not only the norm but a true cash cow for the states that have embraced it.
C'mon Texas, it's "high" time we ... as the folks at El Paso NORML say ... "end prohibition where it started". Symbolically in El Paso but, ultimately, across the lone star state.
