Medicine or Mexicans? The Origins of Marijuana Prohibition in the United States, 1890–1930

Until very late in the nineteenth century few people in the United States had ever heard of marijuana. Whereas cannabis, hasheesh, and Indian hemp were widely used terms, until the mid-1890s almost no mention of marijuana appeared; when, with sudden rapidity, newspapers begin printing stories out of Mexico. Even then, however, these descriptions implied marijuana was a substance specific to Mexico, new and unique. With startling regularity and uniformity these stories asserted marijuana use led to insanity and violence. So much so, that in 1905 the Superior Board of Health of Mexico issued an order prohibiting the sale of marijuana throughout the country. American newspapers also reported the ban - the New York Sun proclaiming it was “War on Marihuana Smoking.” In the 1910s, states and municipalities in the United States also began passing their own laws against marijuana. These facts led previous historians to portray marijuana as a “causal adjunct” to Mexican life; a commonly used drug brought north by migrant laborers. They argue, therefore, the origin of marijuana prohibition in the United States was the direct product of racism and xenophobia. Yet, states far removed from Mexican immigration also passed laws against marijuana in the 1910s; they simply did not know it. Absent both Mexican immigrants and marijuana terminology, these states simply continued the work of their nineteenth century predecessors by further curbing access to cannabis. A drug long deemed potentially dangerous by medical professionals. Alongside opium, cocaine, and heroin, cannabis was a drug in need of legal restriction. At the time few made the connection between cannabis and marijuana. Not until the 1930s did these divergent sources of restriction fully entwine to bolster the case for federal marijuana prohibition. In the three decades prior, both Mexican marijuana and American medicine offered their own reasons for cannabis restriction.