12-29-2018, 12:05 AM
(12-28-2018, 09:25 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: It sounds like all it ever has been was propoganda to scare people away. I heard that one of the reasons that they made it illegal was because they put monkeys in gas mask-type deals with marijuana being put in but no air ways, so they suffocated and died, so they used that as a reason why it’s bad. Don’t know how true that is, but it makes sense.
Alcohol definitely kills brain cells.
The main reasons it was made illegal are racism, William Randolph Hearst, and Lammot du Pont. Hearst was a newspaper and timber mogul who hated cannabis due to the threat hemp posed to timber in terms of it's uses for paper products. Du Pont, of Du Pont chemical fame wanted to have it banned due to his development of a synthetic fiber known as rayon that could be used in textiles and other mass-consumed products. Hemp was probably as good or better for these purposes, and DuPont didn't have a patent for it, so it benefitted him to have it banned.
Add this to the fact that they both were immensely powerful and tied to the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a fella named Ainslinger, and you get enough pull to have it banned. They used racist propaganda to scare the general public and soften resistance. The whole reason it's called marijuana and not hemp or cannabis (as it had been to Americans forever) is to give it a Mexican name that would cause people to associate it with minorities. The word isn't even in the dictionary until prohibition.
I don't smoke anymore due to work reasons, but when you look into the actual history of weed prohibition, it's pretty infuriating. There's zero good reason for it to remain illegal for industrial, medical or even recreational purposes.
