When Pot Was First Made Illegal, and the manufacturing of consent

[VWFringe]

i was in anger management class the other week, and spouted off about how the government should give pot back to us, that they took it, and it belongs to the people, and should give it back! (damn it!)

the teacher said that "it's interesting that the reasons it was first made illegal were mostly racist in nature."

and in a flash of anger i said, (and I don't think i put this together for myself until that moment)

"No, that was just how they manufactured consent among the public, the real reasons were that Hearst wanted to protect his forestry investments!"

i guess i'm wondering if this is common knowledge, or still not the full picture, since i'm sure their were social conservatives among the GOP that had to be appeased same as today...but i like the conspiracy theory nature of William Randolf Hearst fighting to protect his forestry and paper profits.

 

[djonkoman]

well for me it is... I think it's common knowledge among evertyone who has read up on it a bit, but all my friends are unaware of it(or at least untill I told them... they call me the weedencyclopedia sometimes)

the first ilegalisation was in south-africa btw as far as I know

 

[VWFringe]

oh, jeez, don't tell me that's where Hearst borrowed the idea of making it racial from?!

 

[djonkoman]

well I don't remember exactly but as far as I know the illegalisation started in south africa(indeed because of racial reasons, the aparthead regime was still in power back then), and on some world conference or UN meeting or so they pleaed for illegalisation I think
but you'll have to google it for more details, because I forgot them(I think I got it from a site with the history of hemp back untill a few thousand years ago when it was first used by the chinese as medicine, there was a page about the chinese, the indians, the use of hashish in the middle east, and the last page was the illegalisation in modern times, very informative and usefull site, also with mentions of romans having a desert with weed in it, and the scythians or so who used to use weed and 'get drunk' from it according to history writers)

I found it again:
http://www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/hemp/history/first12000/abel.htm

 

[stuartambient]

I accept the history of the illegality however it seems that the 60's really made it into a national "issue". The idea that kids were just smoking marijuana recklessly was hyped by the l.s. media over and over again. The social impact of that programming really caused a big stigmatization of the plant. Even though it's normalized over the years it still lingers and certainly the laws have only become more stringent.

Recently , a few months back someone sent me a YT link of Jimmy Kimmel doing a bit, just prior to, was it Prop 19 for California legalization ? Anyway, it portrayed two "stoners" doing your typical "hey man, this and red eyes and all f*d up , basically drooling fools. I did not find it funny at all. Jimmy and his troll followers may think this is funny but to me it was a shot in the side (maybe even minor) of that bill. A little piece of media programming that doesn't link cannabis with medicine but with degeneracy. And truthfully coming out of a group that probably has tried it more then once it's a betrayal of one's integrity , IMO.

SA

 

[AGBeer]

So you mean to tell me that all of this time that I have been thinking that I am going to hell for smoking the devils weed is not true?

 

[stuartambient]

i thought there was a movie , pretty sure I watched it at some point. Woody Harrelson was narrator and it goes through the history. I want to say the guy that drove it was a man by the name of Armbruster ? I think I have that right but he was the start of the DEA I guess. After prohibition he decided there was another problem out there . Wait I think his name was Anslinger. He was somehow tied too Hearst. There was also the issue of hemp versus synthetics that the chem companies wanted to win. I think the racial part was tied into Mexicans who were at some point (at least the history of it showed) people who both sold and smoked it. At least that is one angle they try to promote. Still promoting I guess.

SA

 

[djonkoman]

the racial part is also from african americans, since smoking weed was most regular in jazz cafes, among african americans

 

[VWFringe]

I thought I had this nailed down, but I can see the more I look into it that social mores were as much to blame as any business protectionist back agenda...I do get to continue to ponder the use of social engineering as a way of maintaining control, even if i have to give up on the "main" reasons being Hearst's media campaign against cannabis. hahaha

thanks guys!

"I am only an egg"

- Valentine Michael Smith

 

[stuartambient]

I thought I had this nailed down, but I can see the more I look into it that social mores were as much to blame as any business protectionist back agenda...I do get to continue to ponder the use of social engineering as a way of maintaining control, even if i have to give up on the "main" reasons being Hearst's media campaign against cannabis. hahaha

thanks guys!

"I am only an egg"

- Valentine Michael Smith

Just throwing this out -
http://www.amazon.com/Tavistock-Institute-Human-Relations-Spiritual/dp/B000MQPTMQ
(book is around though )
has some good info on a social engineering institution. The use of media, polling is really big,
the use of opinion over objectivity. The cast of characters that founded , ran and expanded
Tavistock is eye opening in and of itself. I don' t know about his Beatles theory but that's another story.

SA

 

[reece]

From memory of reading The Emperor Wears No Clothes, the reason it was referred to as marijuana was to play on the racism against Mexicans. The "white women tapping their feet to Jazz music" angle was used to play on racism towards blacks. Hearst cared about the money. He didn't want the competition but the case couldn't be made on those grounds, hence the fear angles mentioned above.

But it's been decades since I read it.

On another note: I teared up a little when Jiraiya died.

 

[VWFringe]

On another note: I teared up a little when Jiraiya died.

Thanks for that, so did I, and at a lot of other points tho too,
like:
Naruto shaking hands with Gaara
when the town acknowledged him in ep 175, which was a corny but satisfying climax to a lot of story lines. http://www.hulu.com/watch/174312/naruto-shippuden-hero-of-the-hidden-leaf
when Kakashi got to tell his dead father he was proud of him,
when Naruto got to meet his dead father.

There's a lot of touching stuff mixed in with the action, huh?

Naruto...is the blossom of hope that never wilts. How many other cartoon super heroes have "making friends" as their super power? How many super hero stories put emotion and interpersonal interaction that high up? (prolly a lot i don't get out much, or read much)
---------------------------------------
I believe Jack Herer didn't know about President Washington or Thomas Jefferson smoking hemp, and if they did I'd like to know more about when and who was doing it in America before 1870.

Jack Herer, "The Emperor Wears No Clothes"

"The first known* smoking of female cannabis tops in the Western hemisphere was probably in the 1870s in the "

---------------------------------------------------
(I found the Tavistock book and will check it out)

 

[treecityrnd]

If you want a great research-based book, read Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century by William B. McAllister (http://www.amazon.com/Diplomacy-Twentieth-Century-William-McAllister/dp/0415179904). Ive eaten dinner with him several times through colleague at various conferences. Most working in fields related to pharmacology (behavioral pharmacology, psychiatry, substance abuse/dependence, clinical pharm, etc.) swear by it for its thorough research and documentation. This is the best resource guide IMO for issues of drug-related/influenced politics...in the 20th century

 

[treecityrnd]

i thought there was a movie , pretty sure I watched it at some point. Woody Harrelson was narrator and it goes through the history. I want to say the guy that drove it was a man by the name of Armbruster ? I think I have that right but he was the start of the DEA I guess. After prohibition he decided there was another problem out there . Wait I think his name was Anslinger. He was somehow tied too Hearst. There was also the issue of hemp versus synthetics that the chem companies wanted to win. I think the racial part was tied into Mexicans who were at some point (at least the history of it showed) people who both sold and smoked it. At least that is one angle they try to promote. Still promoting I guess.

SA

Simple called Grass . Not 100% accurate from a historical standpoint, but fun to watch. Im a bigger fan of his other doc called Go Further (in reference to Kesey's bus). Little out-dated now, but that movie made me buy only organic milk.

 

[djonkoman]

maybe not america, but they found pipes with traces of hemp(and coke) in the backyard of shakespearres old home(wich doesn't necessarily mean it was shakespearre's, but it's possible)
also somewhere around that time I think there was a group of poets(here in europe) called the hashish club who used to come together to experiment with drugs(mosty hash I think)

 

[chucku]

IIRC as prohibition ended the liquor industry feared cannabis and pushed to have it made illegal.