The Story of Several Misunderstandings

Zarathustra declared it a sacred plant, in Europe it was recommended for menstrual pain, and both Louis Armstrong and Paul McCartney ended up in jail because of it. We’re talking about Indian Cannabis sativa, from which both marijuana and hashish are derived. Both substances became especially widespread in Asia, where, in addition to medicinal and ritual uses, they were also used, let’s say, for pleasure.

Islam, in particular, strictly forbids alcohol for the faithful. However, according to some sources, in 800 AD, the Prophet Muhammad himself blessed the use of hashish. Other sources claim he died in 632, so the story remains unclear.

Christians had a somewhat more tense relationship with “weed.” Many marijuana-focused resources claim that in 1484, Pope Innocent VIII declared marijuana a satanic symbol. The consequences were predictable.

However, less than a hundred years later, the Spanish and English began actively cultivating marijuana. In fact, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I issued a decree in 1563 requiring farmers with more than 60 acres of land to grow marijuana or pay a fine. The following year, King Philip of Spain ordered marijuana to be grown throughout the vast Spanish Empire.

Later, marijuana had the support of American presidents Washington and Jefferson. Napoleon banned his soldiers from smoking “weed” and, according to some reports, sought to end England’s dominance in the marijuana trade, and so on.

How Marijuana Fell Out of Favor

How did marijuana fall out of favor with those in power? Why didn’t tobacco, which was just as widely grown in the U.S., or alcohol, meet the same fate?

Well, to start, alcohol actually did: Prohibition raged in the U.S. in the early 20th century, resulting in nothing but a surge in organized crime. In Finland, alcohol was only legalized, if memory serves, in the late 1980s, but people there still travel to St. Petersburg to drink. In the USSR, an attempt to introduce Prohibition also led to nothing good.

The story with marijuana is much more dramatic. What happened in the early 20th century in the U.S. is closely tied, first, to several international scandals in the 1920s, and second, to the introduction of Prohibition in the U.S. in 1920.

International Scandals and the Rise of Prohibition

What were these scandals? In 1923, a South African delegation to the League of Nations reported problems with productivity in their mines. The culprit was declared to be marijuana, which miners were using heavily. Naturally, after “weed,” no one wanted to work, and production suffered. So, a “group of comrades” from South Africa called for international control over marijuana distribution, or better yet, a total ban. A year later, marijuana was declared a narcotic, effectively equating it with heroin, cocaine, and other deadly substances.

In 1928, marijuana was banned in the UK, and in 1931, the U.S. established the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Its head, Mr. Harold James Anslinger, apparently didn’t see the need to study the many scientific works recommending marijuana for painful menstruation. Maybe he just longed for a crusade so much that he decided the truth could be sacrificed for the cause. He declared marijuana “the most potent trigger of aggression among all known narcotics.”

In 1937, the U.S. passed the Marijuana Tax Act, which essentially banned the cultivation and import of “weed” into the country. More precisely, it was similar to the Automatic Weapons Import Act, which prohibited importing automatic weapons without a government stamp. The difference was, a stamp was made for guns, but not for marijuana packages. Thus, Anslinger cleverly gave the ban a legal veneer: it was both banned and not banned at the same time.

Scientific Pushback and Media Response

However, Anslinger never achieved unity among those in power. For example, the journal US Military Surgeon openly stated that smoking marijuana was no more harmful than smoking tobacco. In 1944, the New York Academy of Medicine published a report stating that marijuana did not cause aggressive behavior, addiction, or insanity.

Anslinger loudly declared that the authors of this report were “strange and dangerous.” That same year, a newspaper owned by New York’s mayor, La Guardia, published an article titled “The Marijuana Problem in New York,” which also stated that marijuana did not cause the kind of addiction seen with cocaine and heroin, and that the rise in juvenile crime was not linked to “weed.” The publication also noted that there was no “catastrophic effect” from marijuana use in New York, and that public concern was unfounded.

It seemed that even the city’s own press was speaking out against the radicalism of the Bureau of Narcotics. However, the relentless Anslinger refused to give up and began threatening doctors conducting any marijuana-related research with lawsuits and prison.

Changing Narratives and the Jazz Crusade

In 1948, Anslinger abandoned his claim that marijuana caused aggression. On the contrary, he now insisted that since marijuana made people soft and peaceful, it could become an effective weapon for the “damned communists.” He claimed they were about to invade and would surely use marijuana to weaken the American people’s will to fight.

But the most amusing story involving marijuana and its crusader Anslinger happened in 1947-1948. At that time, Anslinger tried to destroy—not all marijuana, not even all drug dens—but jazz music in America. Completely…