Poo transplants

[Marburg]

Alot of times, I end up just irritating people with my seeming 'knowitallness' & sometimes I deserve a smack for it, but when it comes to marijuana prohibition I knows mah schtuff because it's literally my favorite subject in the world.:cool:

The basis of recreational MJ prohibition has its roots in racism. South Africa banned it 1st in 1911, followed by Jamaica in 1913 & El Paso TX in 1914. In all three cases, the laws were created in order for the white minorities in power to control the non-white majorities. The bulk of my knowledge starts with El Paso since that is where the snowball really got rolling & draws a direct line to the present state of worldwide prohibition today.

::ahem::

Once upon a time, there was a little thing called the 'The El Paso Ordinance' in 1914.

Back then, pot was mostly unknown to Americans...however, it was pretty popular with the Mexicans who, because of the Mexican Revolution back in 1910, started coming over the border in droves. Between 1910 & 1914 alot of bad blood was created because the larger farms in the area were taking advantage of the cheap Mexican labor & squeezing out the ability for the smaller farms to compete.

Since many of the Mexican workers preferred to get high after a day of working instead of going out & drinking, the bad blood just kept getting worse because (from the Americans point of view) not only were the Mexicans taking jobs away from them but they were also not spending the money they made within the El Paso city limits, which they felt was a large secondary blow to the towns economy.

(Keep in mind that at this time, city government was 100% white, as were the vast majority of retailers)

During those years, the city vilified the Mexicans by demonizing the weed they smoked, falsely claiming that marijuana caused violent insanity. By 1914, the El Paso Ordinance was passed in order to "protect" the city's populace from the "violent crimes" committed by "insane, bloodthirsty Mexicans."

Wyoming was first to outlaw marijuana statewide a year later in 1915, followed by Texas in 1919, Iowa, Nevada, Oregon, Washington & Arkansas in 1923 & Nebraska and Montana in 1927.

In about 1929, the Geneva Convention limited the import of opiates & cocaine to "quantities necessary to meet legitimate medical and scientific needs of importing countries." Under pressure from Egypt, South Africa, Canada & the US, cannabis was also added alongside...& to be absolutely clear, the US had the largest role making sure it (pot) was added in. The Geneva Convention was not the only international agreement to get the ball rolling on pot prohibition...there were others, but in every one of them, the US was always the alpha dog throwing its weight around.

Before the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) was created by Nixon in 1973 to replace the FBN (Federal Bureau of Narcotics) the head of the FBN named Harry J. Anslinger (the guy that created the whole 'Reefer Madness' propaganda campaign) passed "The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937'

In a nutshell, in order to legally possess 'marihuana' (which is how they spelled it back then so that the white people didn't mispronounce it as 'marijooana') you had to buy a federally issued marihuana tax stamp...however, the FBN refused to issue out any stamps, which made possession nationwide illegal overnight...& that lasted until 'The Boggs Act of 1951'

I know I said I hate text walls so I'll stop here for a while as I wrote most of this already a couple of years ago in another cool thread;)

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