In the 1930’s, after parts of former Mexico like Arizona and California and New Mexico had been annexed by the US, many Mexicans found themselves living in the newly created American West, the same land Mexicans had lived for generations, but now under new ownership – the result of new borders and quasi-military invasions. Many of these ‘locals’ grew and smoked marijuana for medicinal as well as for recreational purposes. 

EVERY society since the dawn of man has enjoyed mind altering substances like alcohol and other naturally occurring intoxicants. The first beers in Egypt and Ancient China were gruel like meal made from fermented grains.   Small children spin until they get dizzy and fall down, only to get up and do it again. Peyote Mushrooms, Morning Glory seeds, Jimson weed – many existing plants with hallucinogenic properties have played integral roles in the lives of many cultures of people for millennia. Even jailed prisoners make hallucinogens from moldy rye bread. It is human nature to enjoy a ‘buzz’ when the occasion arises. Getting high has been a universal hobby for every human civilization since the dawn of mankind. Coffee breaks are required by law in some US states still in 2010.

Because as America entered the 20^th century, Mexicans were smoking cannabis, and because Mexicans now lived in the USA and couldn’t rightly be ‘removed’ from their land – Extermination, while it worked with the Native Americans and was the preferred form of ‘settlement’ by most European Imperialists during the 16^th and 17^th Century invastion of the ‘West Indies’, presently known as the Americas; and the 19^th Century ‘Scramble for Africa’, as it has been termed, extermination had started to receive a lot of negative press in the newly created Global Press by the 20^th century. Plus, there had already been much displacement as the incoming Americans took the better land. Extermination became a less common practice by colonial Americans achieving their manifest destiny. They opted to live side-by-side with Mexicans, since extermination was now considered not en vogue. 

White Americans needed an edge. Anti-cannabis legislation was one tool used to marginalize Mexicans and African- Americans living the US. Jazz Musicians like Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory and others, who were mostly African American and/or Creole – the 18^th and 19^th century French colonies, specifically New Orleans in Louisiana, named for the King of France, was the epicenter of a musical revolution. These mixed race Black French Americans created Jazz music. They were also targeted by anti-cannabis legislation. All the brass instruments: sax, trumpet, trombone, tuba, etc. are French, which partially explains why Jazz music has always been popular in France. Still, the darker elements of that culture found themselves persecuted.

That must have been a crazy time: the Deep South, plantations, French people; some Blacks free, some Blacks slaves; some Blacks famous musicians! Ann Rice, of vampire novel fame, wrote a really cool historical novel about New Orleans Creole culture at the end of the 19^th century called Feast of All Saints, a stellar novel that puts the reader there at that time. Sure, all the stories, all the people are probably made up, but you feel like you are there; and it’s a strange time – early America. Gore Vidal also writes brilliant historical novels about Colonial era USA – Burr and Lincoln and 1876. Even if the stories may be ‘historically inaccurate’, I don’t think that is the point. 

Just like Culturebook – we are not writing history. History is a point of view. What Rice and Vidal give to their readers is a slice of life – at that time. What was it like when Alexander Hamilton got shot by Aaron Burr on grassy knoll in a duel, and due to the law of the land, that pre-meditated murder was not a crime?  A small audience even attended the sporty execution!  Bets were made on the outcome. Hamilton ended up on the 10 dollar bill. Aaron Burr never went on to higher office. Who’s Aaron Burr? He’s the man who shot Alexander Hamilton. That’s all he is remembered for; but in his time, he was a brilliant statesman.

Because, for the most part, only these groups – Blacks, Creoles, and Mexicans – openly smoked cannabis, it was easy for White Americans to get behind the new legislation. The government, police, school principals and business owners, local leaders: all were White men! Marijuana legislation was largely an effort to incarcerate and marginalize African Americans and Mexicans.

It’s difficult to get a good job with a criminal record, or documented proof that you are a ‘drug addict’. Movies like Refer Madness in the 1930’s sought to show white Americans, who were ignorant of cannabis’ history, that marijuana caused Black people to rape white women and Mexicans to act crazy. The film, Reefer Madness opens with minutes of scroll propaganda – Marihuana is a scourge on the youth…the most vile evil on the planet. Etc. Then the movie begins with an educated looking man, a well-known 1930’s actor, speaking for several minutes at a podium about this ‘atrocity’. He basically gives a 5 minute lecture restating what the scroll said; then, the dramatic rendition. Racist White Americans accepted this misinformation as truth.

William Randolph Hearst was instrumental in promoting this new legislation. Hearst owned many newspapers and magazines and by calling the plant marihuana for the first time, the name later became marijuana; in effect, this renaming separated this ‘new drug menace’ from its well known nomenclature – hemp or cannabis, an agricultural staple known the world over for millennia. This renaming was similar to the tactics used by the Thought Police in Orwell’s 1984. And the word became flesh John 1:14   Carnitas – the other white meat. The words, canvas and cannabis and are related entomologically. The Mona Lisa was painted on a cannabis canvas. 

What had been known and used the world over since the time of Jesus times three, had become suddenly some Mexican menace in America in the minds of late 1930’s White Americans, shortly after the repeal of alcohol’s prohibition, which lasted from 1920 till 1933. In 1933, liquor became legalized. In 1937, Marijuana became illegal. That 13 year ban on alcohol makes the Roaring 20s either dry; or severly hypocritical.

In the history of the United States, Prohibition, also known as The Noble Experiment, was the period from 1920 to 1933, during which time: the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol for consumption were banned nationally, as mandated in the 18^th Amendment to the US Constitution.

The Repeal of alcohol’s ban took place after people called for the change in law. The 21^st amendment, which basically undid the 18^th amendment, is unlike any other amendment to the constitution because the 21^st amendment...

is the only amendment to have been ratified by state ratifying conventions, specially selected for one purpose [to repeal an existing law], whereas all other amendments have been ratified by state legislatures. The 21^st is also the only amendment that was passed for the explicit purpose of repealing an amendment to the Constitution.  -- from Wikipedia

Four years after liquor’s ban was repealed, anti-hemp legislation went into effect. It was as if Organized Crime, which included crooked officials, police, and mobsters, suddenly needed another “safe/social drug” to control and profit from once liquor was off the criminal market.  That safe/social drug was hemp: IT IS ONLY FOR PROFIT AND GREED AND ORGANIZED CRIME AND RACIST PURPOSES THAT CANNABIS HAS EVER BEEN ILLEGAL IN THE US. 

People still refuse to see the truth, even in 2010 MMX, with all this information. Racist white Americans were quick to accept these new laws back in the 1930s and 1940’s, since they sought to protect their daughters from Blacks and Mexicans; but sub-consciously, they also sought to protect the better jobs available for themselves.

During the depressions of 1890, 1910, and of course the Great One, the first one where poor Americans got any government relief, begining 1929, many Whites didn’t want to work for low wages, so recently freed ‘slaves’ and Mexicans began taking those jobs, a trend that STILL continues and causes anti-Mexican legislation. Yes, I’m talking about Arizona 2010. 

Believing in racial superiority is a survival mechanism. Racist White Americans can not really be blamed for believing the hype because humans will believe anything if they are told something at birth and made to believe it their entire lives.

William R. Hearst had an agenda for launching this ‘anti-hemp’ campaign. Hearst was a major stockholder in the DuPont Corporation, which had just produced nylon – a completely synthetic fiber whose production pollutes the environment, but whose uses could replace those of hemp, and whose mass production could make the executives of DuPont extremely rich, if they could monopolize the production of such everyday items. 

In twenty years, most rope, tents, parachutes and other materials would be made from nylon; thus, replacing hemp entirely, making Dupont one of the biggest companies in the world. All hemp cultivation in the US ceased and factories polluting our environment were erected on those fields, metaphorically. For the next thirty years, cannabis use in the US virtually disappeared, or went underground into the ‘criminal world’, while factories that polluted the environment were erected globally. White stockholders in DuPont also got rich from this US government anti-hemp policy, and the environment has suffered ever since.

The 1960’s saw a resurgence of marijuana use with hippies. Most of the marijuana smoked in America came from Mexico, or from Columbia via Mexico. Lumbo it was called. In the early 1970’s, the US government in an effort to control the import of cannabis began spraying the poisonous chemical ‘paraquat’ over pot fields in Mexico, poisoning the land as well as the crop. The pot crop, which still came to America, and was subsequently smoked by Americas who were later hospitalized, never lessened in popularity.

The RESULT of this attack on cannabis crops in Mexico – marijuana cultivation moved to the States, namely Northern California and Hawaii, the regions whose climate were best suited to the tropical plant – those areas are moist and never get any snow! 

When Reagan started his war on drugs in the 1980’s and began burning and destroying crops in the Northern California Triangle of Trinity, Mendocino and Humboldt counties, and imprisoning small business men and farmers in Northern California with no prior criminal records, the cultivation of cannabis did not end – it moved indoors. The Triangle still has the highest concentration of cash crops in the entire country.

The result is modern medical marijuana. Grown indoors, in grow rooms across the country, but especially in the Triangle, or nearby Santa Cruz or Eureka, at optimal conditions designed by the most educated and talented botanists of the present day – a typical marijuana plant can go from seed to mature buds inches in length and grams in mass with maximum potency, the likes of which has never been seen in human history, in just three months. From clone to mature bud in just two months! 

All lighting, moisture, temperature, every possible condition is controlled by man and machine. Seasons mean nothing – a grow room can easily have up to 5 harvests a year. Nature has nothing to do with the modern cultivation of cannabis anymore. Products like lights and nutrients and watering apparatuses and timers specific to the purposes of lighting and watering marijuana plants outsell all other nursery items each year. The amount of sophistication and technology that goes into the cultivation of marijuana each year begs the question: