Part 3
A reason not to smoke cannabis? (2)
On The Redemption of African Slaves
Like the Mexican migrants if more so the African South Americans could not afford to get drunk or caught in possession of alcohol during prohibition, therefore they used marijuana. This heightened the music and during prohibition soon caught on having an affect upon the young white American population. Helping to change their prospectives and force some forms of racial and mental integration. Of course frightening for an older generation and members of the evangelistic law enforcement agency. While the jail systems where filling to capacity with Caucasian Americans, trading in illegal alcohol supply, African Americans through marijuana and Jazz music, where gaining influence and popularity.
A racist slur used by the anti marijuana campaign in 1930's America focused intensely on popular racist themes of the time:
"Coloured students at the Univ. of Minn. partying with female students (white), smoking [marijuana] and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result pregnancy"
"Two Negroes took a girl fourteen years old and kept her for two days under the influence of marijuana. Upon recovery she was found to be suffering from syphilis."
(Quote Harry J Anslinger Wikipedea)After Alcohol Prohibition ended in 1933, funding for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (now the Drug Enforcement Administration) was reduced. The FBN's own director, Harry J. Anslinger, then became a leading advocate of Marijuana Prohibition. In 1937 Anslinger testified before Congress in favour of Marijuana Prohibition by saying:
"Marijuana is the most violence causing drug in the history of mankind. Most marijuana smokers are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes."
(Quote: Encyclopaedia Harry J Anslinger)Made Tools of Oppression
With the heavy decision to criminalise cannabis or the prohibition of alcohol the men who reached that decision made it surely on the grounds of racist and unbalanced idealogical. Outlawing marijuana and legalising alcohol not only reversed a trend of integration, reflecting the fear in the minds of those racist theologians.
"Shortly before marijuana was banned by The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, new technologies were developed that made hemp a potential competitor with the newly-founded synthetic fibre and plastics industries. Hemp's potential for producing paper also posed a threat to the timber industry (see New Billion Dollar Crop). Evidence suggests that commercial interests having much to lose from hemp competition helped propagate reefer madness hysteria, and used their influence to lobby for Marijuana Prohibition. It is not known for certain if special interests conspired to destroy the hemp industry via Marijuana Prohibition, but enough evidence exists to raise the possibility."
(Quote: Marijuana Hemp Why Was It Banned)The then New York Lord Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in 1938 began leading his own scientific test that undermined the fear campaign the FBN where raining down around marijuana and its affects on the users. Those who stood up against the FBI where soon ridiculed and became the object of FBI controlled media slurs.
After the 1938-1944 New York City "LaGuardia Marijuana Report" refuted his argument, by reporting that marijuana caused no violence at all and citing other positive results, Harry J. Anslinger, in public tirade after tirade, denounced Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, the New York Academy of Medicine and the doctors who researched the report. Anslinger proclaimed that these doctors would never again do marijuana experiments or research without his personal permission, or be sent to jail! He then used the full power of the United States government, illegally, to halt virtually all research into marijuana while he blackmailed the American Medical Association (AMA) into denouncing the New York Academy of Medicine and its doctors for the research they had done.
(Quote: Jack Herer Chapter 5)On the Streets of America Race Wars began as the pressure surrounding illegal narcotics was reversed from alcohol being the threat to the now outlawed substance Marijuana. Police and white society now had an excuse to be watching and jailing the coloureds and Black African American's a good reason to feel oppressed yet again. The full rise of Black movements led by DR Martin Luther King and Malcolm X to name just a few, spurned on through this new wave of oppressions that preceded and followed the era of the Marijuana Tax Act 1937.
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