On my bookshelf there sits a brown bottle, pint-sized, with a white label that reads, in all-caps red type, “Fluid Extract, No. 96, Cannabis U.S.P.” A bit further down it says “Antispasmodic, Sedative and Narcotic.” And near the bottom: “Eli Lilly and Co., Indianapolis, U.S.A.”
The bottle was given to me by my brother-in-law, who found it in an antique store and, naturally, thought of me. Its contents have long since disappeared, leaving only a dark residue on the glass, but the bottle itself remains as a tangible link to a time when cannabis — whether as tincture for medicine, seeds for oil and feed, or fiber for all manner of textile and cordage — was an unremarkable and non-contentious part of American life.
“Normalized” is, historically speaking, America’s default position on cannabis. From the first colonies in the early 1600s to just over 80 years ago, the plant carried no particularly strong connotation, and its products were available without prohibition.
Today, “normalized” cannabis is one of the main foes anti-reform efforts say they’re struggling against. Our cannabis policies must “send a message,” they say — to everyone, but especially to kids — that the plant, if it’s not quite as evil as we used to say it was, it still basically no good for anyone.
So what happened to get us here?
Conspiracy theories abound: Hearst wanted no competition from hemp for the newsprint market; drug czar Anslinger needed a new bugaboo to keep bureaucratic funding flowing to his agency; Southwestern politicians used marijuana smoking to turn public sentiment against Latino immigrants competing with white workers for jobs.
Maybe these theories are true. But asking after them obscures another question that may be just as important: What did not happen to get us here?
I’ll tell you what did not happen: a careful, honest, informed discussion about cannabis.
In a fascinating 1995 speech to the California Judges’ Association, USC historian Charles Whitebread, who researched cannabis prohibition for Nixon’s Shafer Commission, laid bare the mockery of legislative process made by Congressional deliberations on the 1937 Marihuana Tax Stamp Act.
For starters, the hearings were so brief that the resulting volume “was so thin it had slid right down to the bottom inside the bookshelf.” Librarians had to break open the shelving to retrieve it.
Reviewing the transcripts, Whitebread found a dog-and-pony show: Federal Bureau of Narcotics chief Harry Anslinger read a statement from a New Orleans DA, asserting that “Marihuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death.” Representatives from several industries that used hemp were called to testify; most said they could change their products if hemp were outlawed, but “the birdseed people” complained, explaining that they were reluctant to use a substitute because they had “never found another seed that makes a bird’s coat so lustrous or makes them sing so much.”
What about medical evidence? A doctor from the American Medical Association was called to testify, and told Congress that “[t]he American Medical Association knows of no evidence that marihuana is a dangerous drug.” One of the congressmen retorted, “Doctor, if you can’t say something good about what we are trying to do, why don’t you go home?”
“That’s an exact quote,” Whitebread told the judges. “The next Congressman said, ‘Doctor, if you haven’t got something better to say than that, we are sick of hearing you.’”
When the bill came to the Senate floor, it passed without debate. On the floor of the House, where it landed on a summer afternoon in pre-air-conditioned Washington, debate lasted about a minute and a half, according to Whitebread.
The only questions came from a New York representative, one of the few Republicans left in the New Deal-dominated Congress:
“Mr. Speaker, what is this bill about?”
The speaker replied, “I don’t know. It has something to do with a thing called marihuana. I think it’s a narcotic of some kind.”
The New York rep then asked if the AMA supported the bill. Professor Whitebread explained to the judges what happened next:
“In one of the most remarkable things I have ever found in any research, a guy who was on the committee, and who later went on to become a Supreme Court Justice…leaped to his feet and he said, ‘Their Doctor Wentworth [his name was Woodward] came down here. They support this bill 100 percent.’ It wasn’t true, but it was good enough for the Republicans. They sat down and the bill passed on tellers, without a recorded vote.”
The rest, as they say, is history: “the bill went to President Roosevelt’s desk and he signed it and we had the national marijuana prohibition.”
Opponents of cannabis law reform don’t often talk about the history of prohibition. Small wonder, since to look at this episode is to confront the truth that cannabis was outlawed without the substantial due process that we expect of competent government. And to reflect on that truth is to realize that whatever we think we know about the dangers of cannabis is rooted in an 80-year propaganda campaign built by the federal government on a foundation of flimsy evidence and outright lies.
Matthew Meyer was born in Mendocino County and grew up in Chico. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Virginia, with a specialization in the cultural aspects of psychoactive plant use. He and his family live in Manton.
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