This why marijuana was prohibited?

[Old Troop]

Harry J. Anslinger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger came along and convinced the powers that be to criminalize the stuff.

“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most 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, entertainers and any others.”

[Hestia]

1. Who was paid off by William Randolph Hearst who had just invested in and bought

up wood pulp mills, which was a fairly new process at the time. He was losing out to hemp paper, so he started demonizing cannabis in his pulp newspapers. As the sayings go, behind every great fortune is a great crime; behind every law is someone making money from it.

[valerief]

5. Bingo! It was the danger of hemp competing with other industries, not the marijuana high. nt

[Karenina]

15. . .

[geardaddy]

18. ^ this

[Tom Ripley]

22. Follow the money

[NYC_SKP]

2. Yes, largely. (nt)

[TheWraith]

19. Quite.

People like to spin a lot of stories about it supposedly being to prevent hemp rope from competing with synthetics (which are actually stronger and never rot) or fabric, etcetera, but the real reason boils down mostly to good old fashioned racism combined with moral purity, since alcohol was too popular to ban.

[givemebackmycountry]

3. Well shit, I'm getting baked as I type this and even though I have to be at work at 7am tomorrow...

All of a sudden I have a desire to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.

Any others?

I'd much prefer MANY others.

LOL

[immoderate]

6. Bring a Dizzy Gillespie record.

--imm

[Tsiyu]

12. You have reached stage two

A- ROUS-al......

[dhill926]

4. wonder if this guy's wife....

sought sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.

[roody]

7. It was the music attracting the women more than the pot.

[Kurmudgeon]

8. I've also heard that Dupont and other chemical makers didn't want the competition from hemp rope.

[TheWraith]

21. That's a myth.

There has, unfortunately, grown (no pun intended) a kind of mythology around marijuana (and by extension, hemp) that presents it as the solution to everything in the world, from rope, to clothes, to food, to ethanol. In actuality, synthetic rope is stronger than hemp rope, and has the advantage of not being subject to rot the way natural fibers are.

[RainDog]

24. it's not a myth

that hemp was being touted as a new industrial "miracle" with the invention of a decorticator that made it possible to rett hemp by machine. Popular Mechanics had just such an article laid out for its pages with the advent of prohibition. The invention of this decorticator was essential to the growth of the industrial hemp industry and this occurred just before prohibition.

it's also not a mythology that hemp is a replacement for most all petrol-derived products and is the fastest growing biomass for that purpose.

it's also not mythology that the people who put this bill through Congress were all in bed with the DuPonts and J.P. Morgan.

just because a petrol-derived product is not subject to rot does not in any way deal with removing a competitor from the market.

[Politicalboi]

9. And now it's

Big Alcohol, and Big Pharma. They do not want it to interfere with their drugs.

[Demonaut]

10. just got this on my FB page, great video

Cured: A Cannabis Story (A film by David Triplett)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tghUh4ubbg&sns=fb

[RainDog]

11. insane, isn't it?

and members of the house of reps attacked the doctor who was the lone voice saying this made no sense.

[Lionessa]

13. IF I recall my history, it started so mexican "tobacco" wouldn't compete with ours.

So this buy may have had something to do with it, but the tobacco lobby or it's equivalent was also a driving force.

[Harry J Asslinger]

14. Manipulating fear is their favorite tactic.

Racial fear, fear of youth, fear for safety. He had a "gore file" in which he collected violent, reprehensible acts, linked them to marijuana, and would state marijuana smoking was the cause of it all. This eventually led to instances in which people used insanity induced by marijuana smoking as a defense in court, with the ultimate effect that the propaganda machine had the dangerous combination of lies mixed in with truth ("truth" in practice, at least).

Three-quarters of a century later, the War on Drugs remains true to its roots.

[Cirque du So-What]

16. In addition, it would be nigh impossible to regulate

If marijuana were legalized, how could governments justify supporting fleets of helicopters out searching for pot patches? Once aerial surveillance ceased, it'd be off to the races to play Johnny Potseed and plant seeds on every square inch of vacant real estate. Not much revenue to be gained if everybody could just grow their own or find a friendly neighbor with some weed to share or sell cheaply.

[Scuba]

17. If pot caused women to seek sex it would be legal. n/t

[arbusto_baboso]

20. You haven't been around many women who smoked pot, have you?

[Scuba]

23. Sure, but they were already seeking sex. Bad sample for this assertion, I guess. n/t

[arbusto_baboso]

25. It's a chicken-or-egg question, to be sure.

But it certainly lowers inhibitions. And if one WANTS their inhibitions lowered...

[ms liberty]

26. These two books are very informative:

Drug Crazy by Mike Gray, and
Smoke and Mirrors by Dan Baum.

Both give a decent history of the war against marijuana and they're readable. There may be newer books out that do as well, but I haven't read them.

[spanone]

27. then spanone says...'THANK JESUS FOR POT'