5 ms·

> America declared war on cannabis not because “it’s a drug” but because it was something enjoyed by migrant laborers (Mexicans) during the Great Depression and

> America declared war on cannabis not because “it’s a drug” but because it was something enjoyed by migrant laborers (Mexicans) during the Great Depression and outlawing it was thought to cause them to become outlaws and white folk would have jobs again. To be fair, it was both. If you look at contemporary writing among lay Americans, they earnestly thought it made Mexicans crazed and dangerous. It's good to look at history through economic and political lenses because that's often the steering wheel or gate control, but (in approximate-democracies) it's also good to acknowledge what everyday sentiment was among lay citizens. A country can be calculating and moralizing/prude at the same time, and America's biggest historical moments almost always hinge on getting those two things to align. Even today.

riversflow 3y ago
> If you look at contemporary writing among lay Americans, they earnestly thought it made Mexicans crazed and dangerous. Yes, but where did that idea originate from? I think the insinuation here is that the reason it was thought of that way was because that image was being propagated by the media. See: reefer madness, which a comment below indicates was a production of Hearst.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  It's nearly impossible to make that kind of attribution for folk knowledge, and its arguable that there's so much of an interdependent feedback loop between calculating aristocrats and public opinion that neither is meaningfully causal or original. Tracking down the source of widespread folk ideas about marijuana is like trying to figure out who invented "the floor is lava". If you're very very lucky, you might be able to find a political source that predates your earliest known popular mention, but that's still not very authoritative. And if you can't trace some plausible epidemic-like spread over time and geography, which you almost certainly can't, you really just can't make a strong causal determination. Even with Hearst (or Murdoch, or any other media titan), you can easily paint them as savvy amplifiers, cranking up the volume of existing rumors to the benefit of their own vision.
  - reactordev 3y ago
    Mmm that 3rd image is golden. You say this like people haven’t already done this. Stop dismissing and start accepting. This is fact. This happened. It’s real and it was a hysteria perpetrated by racism. https://libguides.law.uga.edu/c.php?g=522835&p=3575350 https://libguides.law.uga.edu/c.php?g=522835&p=3575350

riversflow 3y ago

> If you look at contemporary writing among lay Americans, they earnestly thought it made Mexicans crazed and dangerous. Yes, but where did that idea originate from? I think the insinuation here is that the reason it was thought of that way was because that image was being propagated by the media. See: reefer madness, which a comment below indicates was a production of Hearst.

swatcoder 3y ago
It's nearly impossible to make that kind of attribution for folk knowledge, and its arguable that there's so much of an interdependent feedback loop between calculating aristocrats and public opinion that neither is meaningfully causal or original. Tracking down the source of widespread folk ideas about marijuana is like trying to figure out who invented "the floor is lava". If you're very very lucky, you might be able to find a political source that predates your earliest known popular mention, but that's still not very authoritative. And if you can't trace some plausible epidemic-like spread over time and geography, which you almost certainly can't, you really just can't make a strong causal determination. Even with Hearst (or Murdoch, or any other media titan), you can easily paint them as savvy amplifiers, cranking up the volume of existing rumors to the benefit of their own vision.
- reactordev 3y ago
  Mmm that 3rd image is golden. You say this like people haven’t already done this. Stop dismissing and start accepting. This is fact. This happened. It’s real and it was a hysteria perpetrated by racism. https://libguides.law.uga.edu/c.php?g=522835&p=3575350 https://libguides.law.uga.edu/c.php?g=522835&p=3575350