The Potency of Pot in America

The Potency of Pot in America: Past and Possibilities

Heather Marie Cohu

If you take a little trip down the road of America’s past, it becomes quite apparent that our nation has had a very love/hate, on again/off again relationship with drugs. Marijuana, the most widely used illegal drug within our society, has been particularly susceptible to Americans’ capricious feelings. While some believe marijuana to be a relatively harmless drug akin to alcohol or tobacco, others believe it to be a threat to the success of our society as a whole; many others still fall somewhere in between, viewing marijuana as totally irrelevant within the framework of their lives or approaching it hesitantly due to nearly a century’s worth of negative propaganda about the drug. Aside from where you fall within the pot perspective spectrum, marijuana use in America is a relatively widespread reality that shows barely any signs of subsiding from our culture. Even beyond that, research has shown that marijuana may have a wealth of medical applications. Whether you see pot through the eyes of Harold and Kumar, Reefer Madness, or you just don’t know what the hell to think, it is wise to examine the history behind our varied perceptions about marijuana, as our current views of it are rooted in misperceptions about drugs spread by politicians and popular media rather than scientific research and rational discussion. We will begin our journey through perceptions at the turn of the century, a time when people were just beginning to look at drugs with a critical eye. Marijuana, virtually unknown to suburban, white-collar Americans at the start of the 20th century, would not join the demonized drug club until the 1920s; nevertheless, changing opinions about drugs that were popular at the time set the stage for negative feelings regarding marijuana to develop. Anxiety about drugs became the norm, replacing the public’s formerly nonchalant

attitude towards all things pharmaceutical. The lack of drug regulation in the 19th century created scores of people addicted to opium, heroin, morphine, and other such drugs that were marketed as over-the-counter remedies for everyday ailments. According to Martin H. Levinson, an Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Counselor, when government statistics indicated that drug addiction was on the rise, there was much concern that “ruinous drug effects” were afflicting the nation and that it was time for drug regulation (14). Sympathy for drug addicts began to wane as the view that they were “unproductive and a drag on the economy” prevailed (14). Views like this were facilitated by the growing pace of industrialism in America; high productivity levels became priceless and businesses could not afford to lose workers to drug addiction. It must also be noted that safer drugs such as aspirin were developed, so the public no longer saw the need for the use of addictive substances to treat medical problems (Musto 20). Drugs that were once considered miraculous by everyday people quickly became regarded as devilish substances that should be avoided at all costs.

Like drugs themselves, minorities became feared by white Americans and were perceived as perpetuating the use and spread of drugs as the 1920s unfolded. Rudolph J. Gerber, a former judge for the Arizona Court of Appeals, suggests in Legalizing Marijuana that current negative perceptions of pot in America stem from feelings of racism and xenophobia that surfaced during this time period. An increase in the influx of Mexican immigrants after 1910 along with the introduction of marijuana to the south by West Indian immigrants helped create a fan base for marijuana that drew in “African-Americans, jazz musicians, prostitutes, and the underworld” (3). Marijuana was thus in no position to win over the public since it was introduced by groups of people many Americans felt hostile towards. Mitch Earleywine, an associate professor of psychology at the State University of New York in Albany, highlights the impact that negative attitudes towards immigrants had on future policy decisions regarding cannabis in Understanding Marijuana: “Discrimination against Mexican and African immigrants may have contributed to later cannabis prohibition.

Few people in the United States actually used marijuana at the turn of the twentieth century, but those who did were not members of mainstream, Protestant, Caucasian society” (23). Though marijuana was initially seen as undesirable because of its association with unpopular minorities, its spread to white society proved to be inevitable. It was easy to blame outsiders for pot’s gradual spread, but in reality, prohibition policies condemning alcohol as 1920 approached were greatly to blame for marijuana’s growing popularity. When the 18th Amendment went into effect marijuana became a viable alternative to alcohol, bringing the drug subtly into the limelight, though its use was not prevalent enough to cause much of a stir (Gerber 3). Nonetheless, according to Earleywine, the rate of marijuana use increased after alcohol was prohibited (23). Anti-drug sentiments spewing from members of reform movements and strict anti-alcohol laws were ultimately not enough to keep drugs out of the hands of Americans—the attempted abolition of one drug merely led people to cozy up with another. In this case, that drug was marijuana. Xenophobic beliefs led some Americans to irrationally elevate marijuana’s status as a drug considered to be used by small, marginal segments of society comprised of “petty crooks, the avant garde, and Mexican immigrant agricultural workers” to that of a drug that there should be great alarm about (Levinson 18). The composition of America was changing during the Roaring Twenties, and some Americans embraced these changes; it was not uncommon to see young white people at jazz clubs mingling with minorities, for example. However, many Americans were miffed by these changes. Gray calls this time period in America a “xenophobic hotbed,” and such a great degree of intolerance towards outsiders likely fostered Americans’ willingness to scapegoat people of different races, ethnicities, and nationalities as the primary purveyors of drugs in society, even though this was not necessarily the case. According to David F. Musto, a professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, marijuana use was very limited until the 1960s, so marijuana did not pose any real threat to society before that time (25). If America was not

exactly poised to experience a marijuana crisis of monumental proportions, then the burgeoning fuss being stirred about its minute presence within society seems quite unfounded. Marijuana continued to gain a bad reputation not because it was causing societal problems, but because of its connection with immigrants and races that some Americans felt threatened by. Forces in the 1930s further sealed marijuana’s fate as a substance thought to be “ ‘the worst evil of all’ ” through the use of a very effective weapon: sharp rhetoric (Speaker 215). Using foreboding rhetoric to scare people into submission and prevent them from using marijuana was not a new concept, but rather a recycled tactic from prohibition times in America, as Susan L. Speaker, a historian for the History of Medicine Division at the National Library of Medicine, states that alcohol was dubbed “ ‘Demon Rum’ ” and the “ ‘great destroyer’ ” to curb its use (204, 211). Similarly, in the 1930s marijuana was portrayed as the “ ‘killer weed’ ” with anti-drug propaganda films like Reefer Madness extravagantly exaggerating its effects (215). The peculiar thing about the raging campaign against marijuana in the 1930s is that it had no basis in “any lengthy or broad experience with the plant” like the campaign against alcohol had (Musto 27). In Depression-era America, the use of drugs like opiates and cocaine had drastically declined and general disdain for drugs was ubiquitous (Musto 23-5). If America was devoid of a marijuana problem or any other drug problems, then why was a fully-fledged campaign raged against it? It seems that the sensationalist claims and scare tactics were mainly used to prevent racial and ethnic mixing among whites, especially since marijuana’s actual effects were little known to science at the time. Most of what was known about marijuana was that Mexicans, who were considered “an unwelcome minority,” grew, used, and sometimes profited from the plant (Musto 25). Americans felt threatened by members of other minorities as well, whether they were blacks in the south, Hindus in New York, or Chinese workers in California. Harry J. Anslinger, the leader of the Federal Narcotics Bureau from its creation in 1930, helped propel such racist and xenophobic sentiments,

claiming that “fifty percent of the violent crimes committed in districts occupied by Mexicans, Spaniards, Latin-Americans, Greeks, or Negroes may be traced to this evil [of marijuana]” (qtd. in Speaker 215) as well as that “marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes” (qtd. in Gerber 9). A study conducted in 1939 by the New York Academy of Medicine refuted many of the exaggerated claims that had reverberated throughout the decade, finding that marijuana did not cause crime, violent mannerisms, personality changes, addiction, tolerance or overt sexual behavior (Grinspoon 26-7). The findings of this research panel were largely kept under the surface by the Bureau of Narcotics since they had the potential to divert attention away from the government’s firm anti-marijuana stance, thus instilling many Americans with a one-sided, extremely negative view of pot. To the Federal Bureau of Narcotic’s credit, insecurity was rampant in the economically hard times of the 1930s and using harsh rhetoric was a fairly sensible route to drug prevention in that it was cheap, but it cannot be ignored that the anti-marijuana campaign likely stemmed more so from racial and ethnic tensions between Americans than from the actual existence of a drug problem. Though it may seem our society has progressed exponentially since the 1930s, we will later see that history has a thing for repeating itself. As time passed fears about marijuana lessened. Americans had more pressing issues to deal with, such as mobilizing for World War II and getting through the Cold War that would follow. Marijuana remained of little concern to people until it made a comeback in the tumultuous 1960s, a time marred with clashing between people of different generations, races, and genders. In the midst of American society grappling with issues like the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, and the controversial Vietnam War, marijuana became “a powerful rallying symbol for antigovernment attitudes” to a significant portion of young adults who felt disillusioned towards as well as alienated from the surrounding society and adult decision makers (Gerber 140). With social upheaval taking place, marijuana likely provided young adults with a means to transcend current conflicts in order to achieve some semblance of

cohesiveness and common experience; the exact opposite of the climate of division, fear, and moderation in which their parents had grown accustomed to during the earlier part of the century. Though young people developed more tolerant views about marijuana and constructed new meanings for the drug, older generations were not so willing to embrace it. Norman E. Zinberg, who was a professor at Harvard Medical School specializing in drug abuse treatment, states the telling results of a poll conducted by Time magazine in 1969: Over 90 percent of [parents] questioned associated drug use with moral corruption and decay. 42 percent of the parents questioned were willing to turn their own children over to the police if they used drugs; and 73 percent of parents said they would report a son to the police if they knew that he was selling marijuana to his friends for a profit. (29-30) Looking solely at the results of this poll, it seems as though the parental generation’s views about marijuana were in sharp contrast with their children’s views. Zinberg describes the parental generation as “terrorized by the uncertainties of [WWII] and their childhood memories of the Great Depression; they accepted security and life without risk as basic values” (69). On the other hand, young people in the 1960s were distanced from their parents’ experiences and “had the need for different goals and meanings” (69). As young people began to embrace fellow peers regardless of their race or ethnicity, so too did they welcome marijuana into their lifestyles. Unlike their parents, many baby boomers did not perceive marijuana to be connotative of danger or abhorred minorities, which they typically did not abhor in the first place, being considerably more open-minded than their adult counterparts. Would the long standing misperception that minorities were infecting the nation with drugs like marijuana finally become outdated? Our nation, unfortunately, was not ready to scrap the anti-marijuana propaganda that had been vehemently fed to the public over the course of the 1920s and 30s. Fears about marijuana resurfaced for reasons beyond its sudden

proliferation among young people. Such qualms concerning marijuana could have been squelched if past studies, such as the one conducted by the New York Academy of Medicine in 1939, had been reported to the masses. Since scientific information about marijuana was not disseminated through the media, parents “assumed […] because marijuana was against the law, that it was as dangerous as heroin and cocaine” (Levinson 20). It did not help that information about drugs like marijuana was suppressed during the 1930s, as it was feared that discourse about drugs would encourage use among young people, leaving parents during the 1960s with a faulty foundation of knowledge about drugs. With addictive drugs such as heroin, amphetamines, barbiturates, and cocaine being casually used and shared like gum, parents were rightfully concerned that marijuana could pose a similar threat, but government agencies did little to provide the public with scientifically-based information about the drug. Accordingly, marijuana continued to be viewed as a highly dangerous drug among the general public. By 1970, most adults were in a panic about the state of young people, prompting President Nixon to refer to drugs as “public enemy number one” (qtd. in Speaker 219). While some segments of the population felt increasingly laissez-faire towards the use of marijuana, many of the voices that counted, i.e. the voices within the government, remained fearful of its mounting use. But as the 1970s played out, it became obvious that the public had grown rather impartial to marijuana use, with Oregon decriminalizing the drug in 1973 and the American Medical Association as well as the American Bar Association rallying for laxer marijuana laws. Such a disconnect between the American people and the government concerning opinions about marijuana led President Jimmy Carter to jump on the decriminalization bandwagon, though political scandal ultimately reared its ugly head; Carter’s advisor on drug policy, Dr. Peter Bourne, was accused of using cocaine and falsifying a prescription so he could obtain tranquilizers (Levinson 25). The case for marijuana decriminalization was thus hastily closed, as Carter feared that his reputation would be scarred if he followed through with a decriminalization

campaign that was recommended by an advisor who likely had a personal stake in it. While many Americans had come to the conclusion that marijuana was not the horrendously dangerous substance that leaders in the past had painted otherwise, political circumstances such as the decriminalization scandal got in the way of marijuana use being considered by the government in a rational manner. The 1960s had shown that the widespread use of marijuana did not have disastrous affects on society, especially in comparison with other popular drugs, yet the government was still unable to relinquish its anti-marijuana position. Views about marijuana would shift dramatically again during the 1980s. As the counterculture movement died out, so did the use of marijuana and its relative amount of acceptability within society. In 1980, the Gallup Poll found that 53 percent of Americans supported the legalization of small quantities of marijuana, while by 1986 only 27 percent of people still held this view (Musto 26). What could have made 26 percent of those polled in 1980 change their minds about pot a mere six years later? Ronald Reagan’s ascendancy over Jimmy Carter in the presidential election of 1980 may provide some answers.

Reagan made it clear from the outset of his term that he would step up the “War on Drugs,” using two-thirds of its budget for law enforcement, increasing efforts to halt drug trafficking and organized crime, and creating the “Just Say No” program for school-aged youth (Levinson 26-7). Carol Jenkins, a medical anthropologist, attributes the sharp rise of anti-drug fervor in America to news stories and politicians that exploited the limited use of crack cocaine among certain black communities as if it was a national epidemic (49). Craig Reinarman, a sociology professor at the University of California in Santa Cruz along with Harry G. Levine, a sociology professor at the City University of New York, note that “like other demon drugs, crack became a scapegoat—it was blamed for a range of enduring and intensified urban problems that its use sometimes exacerbated but did not cause” (8). Though it is easier to conclude that drugs such as crack or marijuana directly cause societal problems like

increasing crime rates, the complicated truth is that other forces often have greater influence. In the case of the so-called “crack epidemic,” that force was hard economic times for blacks in poor neighborhoods due to a decrease in jobs; thus, crack provided these poor blacks with potentially lucrative job opportunities that would facilitate the spread of the drug. The media was in headline heaven as the “crack epidemic” began to unfold in 1985, bombarding Americans with daunting stories about “crack babies” and “instantaneous addiction” that paid no attention to the reality that crack use was not a widespread phenomenon (Levine and Reinarman 3). Fears about crack in the 1980s can be compared to fears about marijuana in the 1930s in that both drugs posed a threat to a very small segment of society as well as in that politicians along with government officials played a considerable role in constructing these “epidemics.” It can also be said that our perceptions about marijuana are frequently influenced by politicians’ interpretations of current events and the media’s subsequent frenzy in response to their interpretations rather than by existing realities. Ultimately, Reagan’s conservative administration combined with irrational worries about crack in the mid-1980s drastically decreased liberal feelings towards drugs, including marijuana. Conservatism and drug issues continued to go hand-in-hand under the administration of President George H.W. Bush during the late 1980s. According to a poll conducted in 1989, about 65 percent of Americans felt that drugs were a pressing issue in society, while only 10 percent of people felt that way one year later, as political discussion and media coverage about drug issues waned (Heath 136). Public opinion was not swayed by some drastic drop in drug use or drug problems, but by the absence of dialogue about drugs. When Clinton took over, drug issues were pushed entirely into the backseat, with issues like the economy, diplomatic relations, and health taking precedence (138). Since 1996 there has been a movement in states such as California and Arizona to legalize the use of marijuana for medical circumstances such as AIDS wasting, nausea from chemotherapy treatments, glaucoma, and pain

relief (Levinson 30). The medical marijuana movement has been met with resistance, but voters in these states have shown that they believe the medical use of marijuana to be acceptable within society. It is not new knowledge that marijuana has potential medical applications; Gerber testifies to this, noting that marijuana was listed in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia as an acceptable medicine between 1840 and 1942, not to mention that it was used by reputable individuals like George Washington and Queen Victoria (2). Research conducted by the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine in 1999 points to marijuana’s medical benefits, stating that “scientific evidence for the potential therapeutic value of THC [the active ingredient in marijuana] for pain relief, nausea and vomiting control, and appetite stimulation” in fact exists, but at the same time the researchers concluded that smoked marijuana does have some nasty, health-threatening side effects, such as “increased risk of cancer, lung damage, and poor pregnancy outcomes” as well as a small risk of dependency (Fisher 76). Whether or not the benefits of marijuana outweigh the costs is still debatable, but it should be considered that many prescription and overthe-counter drugs carry risks with use as well. It seems obvious that more research needs to be conducted in order for us to better understand the complexities of marijuana and its potential medical applications, but an editorial featured in Scientific American highlights the difficulties that researchers often face when they wish to obtain marijuana for study: “The government may […] have a stake in a certain kind of result. One scientist tells of a research grant application to study marijuana’s potential medical benefits. NIDA [National Institute on Drug Abuse] turned it down. The scientist rewrote the grant to emphasize finding marijuana’s negative effects. The study was funded” (qtd. in Fisher 83). The possibility that the government gives priority funding to researchers that want to explore marijuana’s negative qualities is further bolstered by the fact that the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and its Drug Czar John Walters have skewed information about marijuana in the past. Walters once declared that according to the IOM report “smoked marijuana did not have any long term

medical use” when the report had actually stated that “for certain patients, such as the terminally ill or those with debilitating symptoms, the long-term risks [of smoked marijuana] are not of great concern” (77). Nowhere in the report did it state that smoked marijuana should never be used as a long-term medication.

Gary L. Fisher, a director at the Center for the Application of Substance Abuse Technologies at the University of Nevada in Reno, charges that the government’s blockade on marijuana research is wrong and unnecessary, and he goes on to claim that “the barriers to research are puzzling and lead to suspicions that federal officials are afraid the results that would come from solid research would be contrary to their beliefs” (83). As long as government officials and agencies distort information about marijuana, the American public will have distorted perceptions about the drug. The logic behind blocking the doors to medical marijuana research is questionable, especially when the recreational use of marijuana is hardly understood. It must be kept in mind that marijuana made the transition between a naturally growing plant to a feared, illegal substance in the 1930s not because it was causing mass societal problems, but because politicians and leadership figures decided to capitalize on the minimal use of marijuana in order to undermine racial and ethnic minorities, thus keeping the dividing line between whites and “everyone else” exceedingly clear. As the civil rights movement played out and whites began to mix with blacks, marijuana began to spread from the so-called margins of society into mainstream culture. Though levels of use have fluctuated over time, marijuana has proved to be anything but another fad of the 1960s like hippie communes or LSD. According to Earleywine, in 1999 about 1/3 of Americans reported that they had tried marijuana at least once. If marijuana is here to stay, then why not conduct research to better understand its recreational effects as well as its potential medical applications? Unfortunately, such research is scarcely pursued due to government agencies’ unwillingness to embrace the possibility that pot may be something other than a menace to the American populace.

Though cannabis use is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States, drugs like marijuana have been used for thousands of years and societies throughout time have fashioned an array of meanings for them. Writer Aldous Huxley once said: That humanity at large will ever be able to dispense with Artificial Paradises seems very unlikely. Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and always has been one of the principle appetites of the soul. (qtd. in Goldberg 44) Huxley presents the idea that drugs can never be completely eradicated from society because they are always desired by human beings. Huxley’s position holds quite a bit of truth, as anti-drug campaigns and harsh punishments have barely put a dent in drug use across the globe or within America. Huxley is not alone in his thinking. Dwight B. Heath, an anthropologist at Brown University, discusses how it has been “postulated [that] a universal human need for occasional changes in mood and perception” exists (139). This makes a lot of sense if you think about the amount of people in America who enjoy drinking alcohol or coffee, smoking cigarettes, or using other drugs from time to time, including prescription drugs. Once you eliminate every individual who uses at least one of these substances, the population of America would probably fit into the state of Delaware or Rhode Island. Earlier it was noted that around 33% of Americans have used marijuana at least once during their lifetime, which is a staggering amount considering the illegality of the drug and the potential for citizens to incur steep fines as well as jail time if caught using, selling, or merely possessing the drug. U.S. drug laws then seem much more idealistic than realistic if such a substantial amount of the U.S. population has broken them. If so many people have tried marijuana, then why do citizens across “various socioeconomic groups agree on the evils of drug use, seeing in it the seeds of destruction for society and of the breakdown of normal standards of decency and self-control” (Zinberg 36)? What about the “War on Drugs” rhetoric emphasizing an “us” vs. “them”

position? Is the non-drug using “us” really so divided from the drug using “them”? Heath claims that American perspectives about drug users often do not add up with reality: Those who were ‘on the other side’ in the war on drugs were generally portrayed and perceived as being black or Hispanic, poor (or unjustly rich), unwilling to work, too quick to resort to violence, and in other respects deserving of collective condemnation. Such a stereotype of addicts is regularly contradicted by national surveys of drug use and by enrollment in drug treatment programs, both of which reveal that regularly employed middle-class whites predominate in both categories. (136) Since our commonly held beliefs about who uses drugs have been proven wrong, it seems likely that the “War on Drugs” as well as our general philosophy concerning drugs is somewhat illogical and misdirected. If we lack understanding about the drug use situation in our country, then it does not seem possible that we can rectify the situation that actually exists. Ted Goldberg, an anthropologist and sociologist who has conducted an abundance of participant observation research about the drug culture in Stockholm, believes that “to understand the effects of drugs we must learn to see society in narcotics” (3) and that unless societal problems can be eradicated, drug use and abuse will always be a reality for some (8). Ultimately he suggests that instead of looking at drugs as these chemical substances that wreak havoc on unsuspecting members of society, we should understand that the crux of the problem rests in societal conditions and human relationships rather than in drugs themselves (14). Goldberg’s “society in narcotics” approach, asserting that societal problems often lead people to use drugs, greatly contrasts with the U.S.’ point of view, which asserts that drug use causes “the high dropout rate in schools, slow learning, teenage pregnancy, accelerating unemployment, falling productivity, the cost of social welfare, and a host of other aspects of contemporary life that people find annoying and discouraging” (Heath 14950). Which perspective holds more truth than the other is beyond the scope of this paper, but it must be pointed out that the way in which we initially

view drugs may have an impact on what roles drugs eventually play within our society. American society, both in the present and past, has tended towards viewing societal problems as a product of drug use, but it may be wise to be open to other possibilities, especially when it comes to marijuana. Viewed as inherently bad before it was even popular, marijuana has been robbed of its chance to prove itself beneficial to the American people, but it may be time to give it that chance. Mixed messages about marijuana abound within popular culture, with high-profile politicians such as Michael Bloomberg, Al Gore, and Newt Gingrich all admitting to smoking pot in the past. When Bloomberg was asked if he ever smoked pot, he enthusiastically responded “You bet I did. And I enjoyed it” (qtd. in Gerber xvii). What then are we supposed to believe if important public figures take the drug lightly, while newspapers publish stories about studies linking marijuana use to schizophrenia and certain groups like the Marijuana Policy Project dispute such studies’ findings? Who the hell, not to mention what the hell, are we supposed to believe? Marijuana has been around for long enough that such discord about it should not exist. Our current perceptions about marijuana stem from misperceptions spread by politicians and popular media in the past rather than scientific research or open, logical discussion concerning the drug, which should raise red flags about the validity of some of the negative perceptions we believe to be true today. Marijuana use remains legally unacceptable within America, even in regards to its potential medical applications. By refusing to be open to the possibilities that pot may hold outside of the recreational realm, we may be doing our society, and thus ourselves, a great disservice. Rational thought and scientific study must lead the way in order for us to gain a greater understanding of marijuana and the medical benefits that these powerful green plants just may hold.

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