History of Cannabis in the US

Did ya know? 🎍Marijuana tax act of 1937 was the same thing as prohibition for alcohol 🎍

Cannabis tincture was very popular & well known, frequently prescribed well into 20th Century

🎍Cannabis was very popular for 3000 years only banned for the past 70 years. 🎍The role of racism and xenophobia, anti-Mexican sentiment, played a large role in the demonization of cannabis. What we Americans knew as cannabis, Mexican immigrants were calling “marihuana” and we didn’t connect that’s what we already had in our medicine cabinets when we went after it.

🗣Curious about how cannabis went from being listed in the US pharmacopeia to prohibition? 📝

🌱Harry J Anslinger, an alcohol prohibition agent, was left unemployed after alcohol became legal again, along with many other agents, and he moved into the newly formed federal bureau of narcotics.🙄He began the campaign against cannabis, first order of business was to start calling it “marijuana,” successfully linking it with Hispanics and drawing on American’s anti-immigrant sentiment at the time. Which is why I try to always say cannabis instead.

🌱In 1937, he wrote the Marijuana Tax Act which actually did not outlaw cannabis but attempted to regulate and heavily tax it. Some industries were given tax exemptions like bird seed manufacturers and hemp farms, while patients were being taxed heavily, the American Medical Association did not support the bill. 🌱Dr William Woodward, the AMA representative, who was supposed to be arguing against cannabis, actually testified that further research would reveal new and exciting therapeutic applications,. It was never cannabis that the AMA was against, it was the high taxation for patients who need it.🆗

🌀In 1944, Mayor LaGuardia of New York commissioned a report which showed cannabis was not unhealthy and not addictive but that went ignored.

🌱In 1970 Nixon administration developed the comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act which placed cannabis into schedule 1, which is defined has having high potential for abuse and no medical benefits. This occured despite many objections from physicians stating it may have many medical benefits. Despite the US government taking out a patent on cannabis as a neuroprotectact in 2003. And despite cannabinoids being used in 3 pharmaceuticals currently on the market. It still remains on schedule 1 today, severely limiting our ability to research it.