What's the Real Story Behind Marijuana Being Illegal? The Mexico Link
The Mexican Link
During the early 1900s, the western states had major concerns in connection with the inflow of Mexican-Americans. This emerging trend of Mexico in 1910 poured across the border, with General Pershing’s military clashing with bandit Pancho Villa. Eventually in that decade, negative feelings formulated among the smaller farmer and the big farms that utilized more cost-effective Mexican labor. Then, the great depression arrived and elevation of worries, as work and welfare options grew to become in short supply.
Among the list of “differences” that came about during this period was the reality that a lot of Mexicans puffed marijuana and they had brought the plant along with them, and it was by means of this that California seemingly approved the very first state pot legislation, outlawing “ production of hemp, plus marijuana.”
Nonetheless, among the initial state laws and regulations outlawing marijuana had been influenced, not merely by Mexicans utilizing the plant, but, perhaps surprisingly, due to Mormons making use of it. Mormons who journeyed to Mexico in 1910 returned to Salt Lake City with cannabis. The church’s response to this might have led to the state’s cannabis law.
Other states swiftly adopted suit with cannabis prohibition legislation, which include Wyoming (1915), Texas (1919), Iowa (1923), Nevada (1923), Oregon (1923), Washington (1923), Arkansas (1923), and Nebraska (1927). The regulations were specially catered up against the Mexican-American people.
When Montana banned cannabis in 1927, the Butte Montana Standard documented a lawmakers remark: “When some beet field peon takes a few traces of this stuff… he thinks he has just been elected president of Mexico, so he starts out to execute all his political enemies.” In Texas, a senator mentioned on the floor of the United States Senate: “All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff [marijuana] is what makes them crazy.”
Part 4 Assassins and Black Jazz
