We all know by now that cannabis is basically harmless. So why is it outlawed. Well here's some investigative reporting.
Gateway drug theory
Studies have shown that tobacco smoking is a better predictor of concurrent illicit hard drug use than smoking cannabis.[47]
Addictiveness
Dr. Jack E. Henningfield of NIDA ranked the relative addictiveness of 6 substances (cannabis, caffeine, cocaine, alcohol, heroin and nicotine). Cannabis ranked least addictive, with caffeine the second least addictive and nicotine the most addictive.[37]"As 1933 witnessed ratification of the treaty by thirty-one additional nations, so may 1935 witness the adoption of the uniform drug act by at least thirty-one more states, thereby placing interstate accord abre for the promotion of the welfare of our people and the peoples of other lands."
ast of international accord, to the honor of the legislative bodies of our States and
—Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 1935 in a radio message read by United States Attorney General, Homer Stille Cummings, [25]
The decision of the United States Congress to pass the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was based on hearings and reports.[35][36]
In 1936 the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) noticed an increase of
reports of people smoking marijuana, which further increased in 1937.
The Bureau drafted a legislative plan for Congress, seeking a new law
and the head of the FBN, Harry J. Anslinger, ran a campaign against marijuana.[37][38] Newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst's empire of newspapers began publishing what is known as "yellow journalism", demonizing the cannabis plant and putting emphasis on connections between cannabis and violent crime.[39] Several scholars argue that the goal was to destroy the hemp industry,[40][41][42] largely as an effort of Hearst, Andrew Mellon and the Du Pont family.[40][42] They argue that with the invention of the decorticator hemp became a very cheap substitute for the paper pulp that was used in the newspaper industry.[40][43] They also believe that Hearst felt that this was a threat to his extensive timber holdings. Mellon was Secretary of the Treasury and the wealthiest man in America and had invested heavily in nylon, DuPont's new synthetic fiber, and considered its success to depend on its replacement of the traditional resource, hemp.[40][44][45][46][47][48][49][50]
According to other researchers there were other things than hemp more
important for DuPont in the mid-1930s: to finish the product (nylon)
before its German competitors, to start plants for nylon with much
larger capacity, etc.[51]
Some of his critics allege that Anslinger and the campaign against marijuana had a hidden agenda, DuPont petrochemical interests and William Randolph Hearst
together created the highly sensational anti-marijuana campaign to
eliminate hemp as an industrial competitor. Indeed, Anslinger did not
himself consider marijuana a serious threat to American society until in
the fourth year of his tenure (1934), at which point an anti-marijuana
campaign, aimed at alarming the public, became his primary focus as part
of the government's broader push to outlaw all drugs.[11] Members of the League of Nations
had already implemented restrictions for marijuana in the beginning of
the 1930s and restrictions started in many states in U.S years before
Anslinger was appointed. Both president Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Attorney General publicly supported this development in 1935.[11][12]
Around 1931 advertising started for hemp as the new billion dollar crop because of a decorticator working miracles on the hemp crop and taking the amount of time to harvest an acre of hemp down to 1–1.5 hours when 2 hours was the best time they could get harvesting cotton. But this could not change the fact that is it is only the outer part of a hemp stem, about 25% of the stem, that contains long usable fibers. New technology has not created growing billion dollar industries in countries where it is legal to harvest hemp.[13][14] See also Hemp#Paper.
Around 1931 advertising started for hemp as the new billion dollar crop because of a decorticator working miracles on the hemp crop and taking the amount of time to harvest an acre of hemp down to 1–1.5 hours when 2 hours was the best time they could get harvesting cotton. But this could not change the fact that is it is only the outer part of a hemp stem, about 25% of the stem, that contains long usable fibers. New technology has not created growing billion dollar industries in countries where it is legal to harvest hemp.[13][14] See also Hemp#Paper.
"An entire family was murdered by a youthful addict in Florida. When officers arrived at the home, they found the youth staggering about in a human slaughterhouse. With an axe he had killed his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister. He seemed to be in a daze… He had no recollection of having committed the multiple crime. The officers knew him ordinarily as a sane, rather quiet young man; now he was pitifully crazed. They sought the reason. The boy said that he had been in the habit of smoking something which youthful friends called “muggles,” a childish name for marijuana."[15]“By the tons it is coming into this country — the deadly, dreadful poison that racks and tears not only the body, but the very heart and soul of every human being who once becomes a slave to it in any of its cruel and devastating forms…. Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters. Hasheesh makes a murderer who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man who ever laughed at the idea that any habit could ever get him….”
Anslinger hoped to orchestrate a nationwide dragnet of jazz musicians and kept a file called 'Marijuana and Musicians'.[20]
"The reason there is violence in underground markets, is because they are underground, people can't resolve disputes in underground markets with lawyers, with advertising, with courts, they need some other mechanism to resolve their disputes and that actual thing is violence"
Jeffrey Miron, Ph.D. Harvard economist and author
Basically the war on drugs is the cause of crime.
"The reason there is violence in underground markets, is because they are underground, people can't resolve disputes in underground markets with lawyers, with advertising, with courts, they need some other mechanism to resolve their disputes and that actual thing is violence"
Jeffrey Miron, Ph.D. Harvard economist and author
Basically the war on drugs is the cause of crime.
Sources:
