“You can grow enough marijuana in a window box to drive the whole population of the United States stark, staring, raving mad.”

Those words appeared in the 1928 book Dope: The Story of the Living Dead by Hearst Publications journalist Winifred Black, who specialized in sensational stories.

Hostility toward smoking marijuana, the dried leaves and flowers of the cannabis plant, had been brewing in the U.S. southwest since 1910, when the Mexican Revolution significantly increased migration to the U.S., giving rise to anti-immigrant sentiments.

The Mexicans’ practice of smoking marijuana was blamed for making men sexually aggressive and prone to committing violent crimes. Statistics did not support these allegations, but nevertheless marijuana was branded as an intoxicating substance, the use of which needed to be restricted. Books and articles such as Black’s added fuel to the fire and caused a number of southern authorities mired in anti-Mexican prejudice to pass laws restricting the use of cannabis, even though medicinal preparations of the plant had been sold in the U.S. since the mid-19th century with no associated problems.

The anti-marijuana movement gained full steam when Harry J. Anslinger was appointed as the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1930. Despite having no science background, he viciously attacked marijuana as a “shortcut to the insane asylum” and a “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.”

Anslinger was also a racist, claiming that cannabis smokers were........

© Montreal Gazette