Pubdate: Sun, 16 Dec 2012
Source: Arizona Republic (Phoenix, AZ)
Copyright: 2012 The Arizona Republic
Contact: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/sendaletter.html
Website: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/24
Author: Gene Johnson, Associated Press

A HISTORY OF WEED AS MARIJUANA GOES PROPER

SEATTLE - It's been a long, strange trip for marijuana.

Last month, Washington state and Colorado voted to legalize and
regulate the use of pot. But before that, the plant, renowned since
ancient times for its strong fibers, medical use and mind-altering
properties, was a staple crop of the colonies, an "assassin of youth,"
a counterculture emblem and a widely accepted - if often abused - medicine.

On the occasion of Thursday's "Legalization Day," when Washington's
new law takes effect, here's a look back at the cultural and legal
status of the "evil weed" in American history.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp and puzzled over
the best ways to process it for clothing and rope.

Indeed, cannabis has been grown in America since soon after the
British arrived. In 1619 the Crown ordered the colonists at Jamestown
to grow hemp to satisfy England's incessant demand for maritime
ropes, Wayne State University professor Ernest Abel wrote in
"Marihuana: The First Twelve Thousand Years."

Hemp became more important to the colonies as New England's own
shipping industry developed, and homespun hemp helped clothe American
soldiers during the Revolutionary War. Some colonies offered farmers
"bounties" for growing it.

"We have manufactured within our families the most necessary articles
of cloathing," Jefferson wrote in "Notes on the State of Virginia."
"Those of wool, flax and hemp are very coarse, unsightly, and
unpleasant."

Books such as "The Arabian Nights" and Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of
Monte Cristo," with its voluptuous descriptions of hashish highs in
the exotic Orient, helped spark a cannabis fad among intellectuals in
the mid-19th century.

After the Civil War, with hospitals often overprescribing opiates for
pain, many soldiers returned home hooked on harder drugs. Those
addictions eventually became a public health concern. In 1906,
Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, requiring labeling of
ingredients, and states began regulating opiates and other medicines -
including cannabis.

By the turn of the 20th century, cannabis smoking remained little
known in the United States, but that was changing, thanks largely to
The Associated Press, said Isaac Campos, a Latin American history
professor at the University of Cincinnati.

In the 1890s, the first English-language newspaper opened in Mexico
and, through the wire service, tales of marijuana-induced violence
that were common in Mexican papers began to appear north of the border.

By 1910, when the Mexican Revolution pushed immigrants north, articles
in the New York Sun, Boston Daily Globe and other papers decried the
"evils of ganjah smoking" and suggested that some use it "to key
themselves up to the point of killing."

After the repeal of alcohol prohibition in 1933, Harry Anslinger, who
headed the federal Bureau of Narcotics, turned his attention to pot.
He told of sensational crimes reportedly committed by marijuana
addicts. "No one knows, when he places a marijuana cigarette to his
lips, whether he will become a philosopher, a joyous reveler in a
musical heaven, a mad insensate, a calm philosopher, or a murderer,"
he wrote in a 1937 magazine article called "Marijuana: Assassin of Youth."

The hysteria was captured in the propaganda films of the time - most
famously, "Reefer Madness," which depicted young adults descending
into violence and insanity after smoking marijuana. The movie found
little audience upon its release in 1936 but was rediscovered by pot
fans in the 1970s.

Congress banned marijuana with the Marihuana Tax Act of
1937.

The Department of Agriculture promoted a different message. After
Japanese troops cut off access to Asian fiber supplies during World
War II, it released "Hemp for Victory," a propaganda film urging
farmers to grow hemp and extolling its use in parachutes and rope for
the war effort. 
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