{"id":27689,"date":"2023-02-09T13:45:53","date_gmt":"2023-02-09T13:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabishealthnews.co.uk\/?p=27689"},"modified":"2023-02-09T13:45:57","modified_gmt":"2023-02-09T13:45:57","slug":"colonialism-class-and-crime-the-racist-roots-of-cannabis-prohibition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannabishealthnews.co.uk\/2023\/02\/09\/colonialism-class-and-crime-the-racist-roots-of-cannabis-prohibition\/","title":{"rendered":"Colonialism, class and crime: the racist roots of cannabis prohibition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cannabis laws in the UK and US have a long, complex past. But no matter where you look, race is at the heart of the cannabis prohibition conversation.\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The history of cannabis prohibition is a history of racism, classism and control. In the US, cannabis prohibitionist propaganda was used as a tool to criminalise Black communities and demonise Mexican immigrants throughout the 1900s (and, arguably, to this day).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the UK, cannabis prohibition<\/a> evolved slightly differently. As the power of the British Empire dwindled throughout the 19th century, a new set of beliefs instilled fear amongst the colonial elites: that cannabis causes madness \u2014 and hence, crime \u2014 and that the ‘ganja smoking’ labour classes of former colonies or the \u2018cannabis peddling Negros\u2019 of the 1950s would spread this madness and destroy polite society as we know it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Cannabis in colonised India<\/b><\/h4>\n

Whether for fibre, food<\/a>, medicine,<\/a> religious practice, or relaxation, <\/span>cannabis has been part of human culture<\/span><\/a> for more than 10,000 years. Cannabis cultivation likely originated in either central or Southeast Asia and its seeds spread across Eurasia through trade, migration and war. Cannabis could have been farmed in the UK as early as the Bronze age, and for centuries, Hemp was one of the Crown\u2019s most important crops.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Cannabis prohibition in the UK, like in the US, was born out of false beliefs about its abilities to turn \u2018normal\u2019 people into depraved lunatics who were out to steal your wealth (and your women), and which associated it with the \u2018others\u2019 of society \u2014 essentially those who were on the outside of the white ruling class.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While medicinal cannabis<\/a> was somewhat popular in Victorian times (with Queen Victoria herself suspected to use cannabis to treat menstrual cramps), its acceptance in high society began to wane in the late 19th century as reports from colonised India described insane asylums filled with patients afflicted by cannabis-induced insanity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In colonised India, attitudes around cannabis consumption \u2014 as well as its cultural significance in the region \u2014 were as varied as the geography itself. Both Muslims and Hindus used cannabis as part of religious practice, and it was observed that elites in urban areas enjoyed consuming cannabis just as much as the workers and poor of the lower castes.<\/span><\/p>\n

As James Mills points out in his <\/span>examination<\/span><\/a> of cannabis and colonialism in India: \u201cThe picture from the middle of the 19th century that emerged from across India was of a population that enjoyed its intoxicants. These were resorted to for the pleasure of stimulation or for the relief of torpor. They were taken as aphrodisiacs by some and to enable a hard afternoon’s work by others. The various classes and castes of the Indian population constituted the largest market in the world for cannabis products.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Image Source: Semantic Scholar<\/p><\/div>\n

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The beginning of false beliefs: cannabis, madness and India\u2019s insane asylums<\/b><\/h4>\n

Around the mid 1900s, colonial-run insane asylums in India, basically prisons for anyone deemed dangerous or disruptive to society, began to keep detailed records which started to paint an alarming picture: according to the statistics, the number one cause of madness amongst patients<\/a> was cannabis.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These so-called \u2018hard\u2019 statistics claiming cannabis caused widespread mental illness worried the Government of India who, after its own enquiry, deemed the claim to be true: \u201cThere can be no doubt that its habitual use does tend to produce insanity.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Based solely on the statistics provided by the colonialist-run asylums, India\u2019s Government proceeded to ban the cultivation and consumption of cannabis in Burma and called for other areas of British India to do the same. Concerns around the ill-effects of cannabis began to grow across the Empire.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But the evidence behind these claims was not based in scientific fact, and this is perhaps one of the first instances of police enabling \u2014\u00a0and enforcing \u2014 false ideas around cannabis.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Two decades after the initial inquiry, members of the India Hemp Drugs Commision (IHDC) conducted their own investigation and found that most records linking cannabis to madness were not provided by doctors or any person who would understand mental illness, but by: \u201cthe guesses of police officers as to the history and habits of a friendless wanderer; and in other cases, where a local inquiry is possible, it is generally made by a subordinate police officer [\u2026]. It would be absurd to accept without great distrust the statements, especially as to the cause of insanity, compiled by such an agency as has been described.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While the IHDC concluded that cannabis was not harmful and could actually be beneficial for a number of reasons, a few members of the commission still objected to the findings. One in particular called for prohibiting \u2018charas and ganja\u2019 consumption in the long term, and wished to create a register of cannabis users to act as a surveillance system designed to monitor people they deemed as \u2018bad characters, low class people and beggars\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the commission’s recommendations to regulate and tax cannabis, the damage had already been done, and fear of cannabis\u2019 impacts on mental illness, and on \u2018polite\u2019 society in general, solidified across the colonies. This complex web of prejudice, policing and cannabis would inform UK drug laws for decades to come.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: Wikipedia<\/p><\/div>\n

The rise of racist cannabis policy in the US and UK<\/b><\/h4>\n

While cannabis had been used as medicine in the US for some time, and hemp had been a prized crop in the US since before the American Revolution, California was the first US state to outlaw cannabis in 1913.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe move served as a pretext for harassing Mexicans,\u201d says Martin A. Lee in his book \u2018Smoke Signals\u2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe target of prohibition was not the drug so much, but those who were associated with its use. Typically in the United States, drug statutes have been aimed \u2014 or selectively enforced \u2014against a feared or disparaged group within society.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As one Texas senator said during this time: \u201cAll Mexicans are crazy and this stuff [marijuana] makes them crazy.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Cannabis was then used as an excuse to break up labour unions and demonise migrant workers for decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

The father of cannabis fear-mongering in the US was Harry J Anslinger, who served as the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) for more than 30 years and was a vocal proponent of alcohol prohibition.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Throughout the 1930s Anslinger went on a xenophobic and racist warpath against cannabis and what he viewed as the ultimate destruction of the American way of life. He even popularised the term \u2018marijuana\u2019 to emphasise a foreign connection to the new \u2018devil weed\u2019 and distance the association with medicinal cannabis. Around the same time, a slew of anti-cannabis propaganda, including the infamous <\/span>Reefer Madness <\/span><\/i>film, would depict cannabis as a deadly perversion.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Lee points out in his book: \u201cAnslinger depicted marijuana as a sinister substance that made Mexican and African American men lust after white women. One of the worst things about marijuana, according to the FBN, was that it promoted sexual contact across colour lines.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Anslinger himself once stated: \u201cThere are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Anslinger\u2019s outcries \u2014 as well as newspaper baron William Hearst\u2019s constant yellow journalism linking marijuana with migrants and Black communities \u2014 heavily informed the passing of the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The purpose of the act, according to Lee, was to control behaviour, rather than raising any revenue. Cannabis wouldn\u2019t become officially illegal at the federal level until 1970.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By 1937, cannabis had already been outlawed in the UK. The prohibitionists of the early 20th century believed cannabis should be banned alongside all \u2018dangerous\u2019 drugs including opium, cocaine, and others. Cannabis was being blamed for various uprisings in the colonies, and many Brits clung to the (false) findings from the India insane asylum statistics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the 1925 Opium Convention at Geneva, Egypt and South Africa \u2014 which either were or had been part of the British Empire \u2014 as well as Turkey, applied pressure to include cannabis in the meeting conversation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Egypt had made cannabis possession a capital offence in 1868, linking it to an epidemic of \u2018chronic hashishim\u2019, where labouring classes were believed to be most at risk of cannabis-induced madness and immortality.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Convention ended up including cannabis in the new international drug control system and, as a result, Britain passed the 1929 Dangerous Drug Act making cannabis illegal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n