by MAYNARD JAMES KELLER, MSW

"I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people." ~Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727)

To understand why so many remain fixedly opposed to - and even morbidly afraid of medical cannabis (let alone cannabis in general) - to a degree beyond anything justified by the facts - and even after many decades of the never won - and unwinnable - hugely costly Drug Wars (with no end in sight) - here are some (condensed) historical factors and psychological reflections on how we came to this odd pass:

Although liquor hitched a ride into western culture millennia ago and is long culturally established in most places, there’s an engrained fear of accepting any further conscious-altering substances into the US mainstream, with its abstention-promoting Puritan roots. So while cannabis and agricultural hemp had carved out niches for their medicinal and other valuable properties, by the 20th Century, various cultural tsunamis were about to sweep cannabis up and give it a dark new role as chief boogie man.

This was as clear in Utah, where I’m based, as anywhere in the US, so we’ll start there. While a number of states had begun to move against cannabis in the early 1900s for various reasons, e.g., the rise of the temperance movement in general and the recreational use of cannabis being associated with Mexicans, the Beehive State was the first to actually criminalize (as opposed to simply outlaw) the plant in 1915.

Background: A number of Latter Day Saint polygamists had set up religious colonies in Mexico in the later decades of the 19th century looking to escape US government pressure, and in Mexico, cannabis use was common and fairly widely accepted at the time. Over a period of years, some members of the colonies began returning to Utah for various reasons - and - some among those were arriving with a cannabis habit.

In other western states, cannabis (“loco weed”) use was generally confined to the Mexicans living mostly apart from the new “Americans.” While ingesting cannabis was not addressed directly in formal doctrine, seeing church members adopting the habit was appalling to local leaders - who - as today - were diligent in trying to get members to shun alcohol, tobacco and more - so a “smokable high” (from a foreign land populated largely by ethnically distinct Catholics) was anything but welcome.

Other states were taking similar actions and pressure was also mounting for action at the federal level. In this era the general “ban it to protect the people" mentality toward many things reached a cultural peak. Remember, it was also during this period (1905-37) that even the mainstream US “drug of citizen choice,” booze, became constitutionally banned by the 18th (Prohibition) amendment in 1920, and intoxication in general had its worst official reputation at any time before or since in our national history.

The “War on Booze” - same tactics, same failure - except alcohol's much deeper and well-established constituency pushed back.

Alcohol prohibition, however, proved highly unpopular among thirsty citizens, and led to other powerful “unintended consequences” (a phrase popular among today's anti-cannabis law reform opponents), including the ramp-up of organized crime fueled by the enormous profits to made off of alcohol smuggling. As a result, the prohibition amendment was repealed in 1933 - as the Great Depression was settling in for a good long stay - and the many millions of people who drank got their familiar “social lubricant” back, from then through the present.

Four years after repeal, in a slice of history familiar to many, and leading to federal legislation in 1937, a campaign of fear-driven propaganda was relentlessly hammered home by government and other sources via every available medium out of a variety of motivations - including racism toward Mexicans - especially in the emerging western US states - and secondarily toward African Americans (more in larger cities where cannabis was increasing in popularity).

Even though not government productions, the bizarre mischaracterizations of exploitation films led by "Reefer Madness" ended up being part of the campaign. In point of fact, that signature film wasn't even publicly released until 1938, and only became nationally notorious when pro-cannabis activists dredged it up in the 1970s.

Other films like “Marihuana” and “Assassin of Youth” were more contemporaneous with the campaign to pass the federal bill. And there many other crude pieces of propaganda certainly encouraged by the government, with some emanating from the Hearst newspaper syndicate.

(Be afraid, "American middle class” {1930’s style}, be very afraid… …note the typo above, and how one poster assumes cannabis is primarily an injectable drug!)

Within the government, this campaign had much to do with the fact that with Prohibition gone, many who’d been enforcing it were looking for a new target in order to keep their agencies in business and even grow their bureaucratic empires - and they decided that focusing on something mostly-little-known and with a much smaller user base than spirits would be ideal. Enter cannabis, stage left….

If you’re not familiar with the rest of the reasons, economic and otherwise, it’s worth looking up the story of the despicable Harry J. Anslinger, first head of the Federal Narcotics Bureau (FBN). A web search brings up thousands of links about him and all the other economic and other factors, which - with the backing of financially powerful families like the Hearsts, Rockefellers, DuPonts and Mellons - for whom hemp was a competitor - also wiped out the markets for hemp/cannabis’ many highly useful products. Pharmaceutical companies also had reasons to be pleased as medical cannabis - a staple in the US pharmacopeia for many decades before - was suddenly illegal. And pop culture was only too happy to pile on.

Cannabis, then, was literally a blank screen onto which Anslinger and company were able to project the darkest fantasies they could come up with, with little opposition or scientific correction.

Can you believe this was considered acceptable, let alone reasonable political speech in the US within the lifetimes of some still living?

Scientific correction was made public as early as 1944 when the New York Academy of Medicine released the "LaGuardia Committee" report. The Committee’s findings systematically contradicted claims made by the government that cannabis use results in insanity, poor physical and mental health, increases criminal behavior and juvenile delinquency, is physically addictive, and is a "gateway" drug to more dangerous drugs. These are, of course, all claims that anyone following the story knows have been thoroughly refuted by multiple studies over multiple decades but which are still being wrongly made today. As are Anslinger's racist and cultural slurs, if less publicly by politicians and heads of government agencies.

History does tend to ironically (and often sadly) repeat……

Harry J. Anslinger, Andrew W. Mellon’s nephew by marriage, and John Ehrlichman,

a chief Nixon political hit man - are connected by the same bigoted,

scapegoating strategy across the decades.

The government criticized and then ignored the Laguardia study at that time. Appointing and then dismissing the findings of a top shelf commission would be done again by the Nixon administration in the 1970s when the president’s hand-picked "National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse” expert panel did a thorough investigation of all available evidence and issued a report cutting the legs out from under Nixon's “War on Drugs” by recommending decriminalization of cannabis, and, no spoilers, since by now no readers will be surprised to learn that the federal government quickly consigned the report to oblivion.

The key point here is just how thoroughly people in the early twentieth century - and since - were able to use emerging psychological techniques of modern public relations to truly demonize cannabis - i.e., literally as “the devil’s weed” - in the public’s consciousness - and their collective unconsciousness - in a way no other specific drug ever had been attacked - or has been since. Not even heroin (and opioids), cocaine (and derivatives), amphetamines (and follow-ons, e.g., “meth") nor psychedelics, etc.

Another aspect of the federal campaign extended to re-christening cannabis as “marijuana” - which it really hadn’t been much known as before, if at all. This robbed cannabis of its respectable medical history (as one of the most prescribed drugs of the 19th century), and the covert but blatant racism involved was revealed by the sponsors calling their bill “The Marihuana Tax Stamp Act,” i.e., spelling the word with an “h” instead of a “j" to give it a distinct “Mexican accent” (conjuring up the pronunciation “maree-hu-ana”) although up to that point, it had seldom been called that (or spelled like that) by Mexicans anywhere.

Many reformers want to reclaim the historic, less emotionally charged - and scientific -

name cannabis, as “marijuana" richly deserves to be in history's dustbin.

Still, that horse likely got out of the barn for good decades ago.

Hopefully over time, though, more new state laws and ballot initiatives will use “cannabis."

While all this was going on, opiate use, meanwhile, was concentrated elsewhere (there were few heroin-abusing communities in the US at least until after WWII) - and the pharmaceutical industry depended (then as now) heavily on opiates for powerful pain relievers. So it was in the drug industry's self-interest to somewhat mute anti-opiate hysteria toward their legal products.

There were other factors well-documented in many readily available accounts, the point being that heroin in particular and opioid drugs in general were less sensationalized in the public’s minds at least until the 1950s, with the other drugs mentioned above only entering the debate in earnest in the 1960’s and beyond, mostly lumped together as part of “the drug problem” as a general legal target…

…so focusing on the unique psychology of cannabis opposition…. …a long stirred stew making cannabis, as noted, at least in the US, from the 1930’s and ever since - with a big booster shot in the 1970’s with the advent of the “War on Drugs” and the DEA, etc. - arguably the most demonized substance ever.

Even "the King" got taken in and was “knighted" in the Drug Wars.

Which has left a plant (a plant!) (with literally thousands of ignored and suppressed beneficial uses) caught in the middle of a huge, seemingly unending cultural row. Then as now.

This is why getting any form of cannabis, even research-supported medical cannabis, to be both legal and culturally accepted was always going to be a "heavy lift.”

The cartoon below speaks powerfully to the heart of the hysteria many feel about cannabis, capturing the essence of a syndrome I've been calling "Cannaphobia" for awhile now, while finding that reformers grasp the term on first hearing or reading.

Cartoon copyright Newsday

As of this writing (November, 2020), more states have made progress and a number of medical cannabis measures are in place or in process. And personal use laws have been passed in a few states.

Nonetheless a good number of states are still total medical holdouts and of the states with programs, too many are still full of rear-guard stipulations reflecting the aura of cultural PTSD surrounding cannabis, e.g., limiting use to non-psychoactive “CBD only” bills, to others allowing vaping (but not smoking) of "whole cannabinoid extracts" - along with the bills generally having a regulation-heavy approach inserting law enforcement between doctors and patients - and between patients and society at large.

So we live in a patchwork world where some states are still doling out felony charges and convictions to citizens for what citizens in other states are doing legally and where some diseases can be treated in some states and others in others and none in some - which can’t be said about any other widely used medicine. And large portion of incarcerated citizens in the US are there on cannabis charges, many put there by the federal government which has remained a major foot dragger on making medical cannabis available to all who can benefit and which remains a major impediment to doing more medical research on cannabis.

Back to Utah, during the fight to get a bill through the state Senate in 2016, the main sponsor took great pains to point out the differences in approaching cannabis his bill took from that taken in states like Colorado (with at least hundreds of dispensaries and recreational cannabis). The loudest laugh during the whole proceedings came when he said that wouldn't happen here because after all, "This is Utah.” Everybody in the chamber got the joke that we’re at base still that culture which first criminalized over a 100 years ago.

Utah State Senator Mark Madsen in 2016

Since then a great deal has happened nationally as noted. In Utah activists ran a ballot initiative campaign in 2018 (Prop 2) which achieved a landmark victory. However, under pressure from special interests, most notably the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints which took a very active role in opposing the ballot proposition, the State Legislature went into special session and replaced the just passed initiative with what was called (but wasn’t in any legitimate sense) a “compromise” bill. The bill gutted what the citizens had just passed, replacing it with a prohibition thinking tinged and severely over-complicated system which was never going to be able to meet patient needs as designed, if it was going to be able to function at all.

Because of the (not a) compromise’s crippling provisions, the legislature has been forced to have to address some of the issues in multiple further Special Sessions, and the very limited resultant program which is in its stumbling infancy after two years is still only barely serving a fraction of the Utah patients who would have been able to get medicine under the terms of the passed then badly sabotaged program. At inflated prices. When there’s stock.

Needless to say, the Utah underground market has continued to prosper. Despite all the decades of Drug Wars (as is well known to politicians, religious leaders and police) nearly anyone who really wants to get cannabis can readily do so in nearly any city of any size within a few hours of arriving. Further many Utah patients who can are personally importing their medicine from bordering Colorado and Nevada, a scenario which also exists between other states.

What we're fighting here, then, in all its traditional and evolving forms is that the taboo heavily engrained in the deepest recesses of many people's minds was - and still is - a visceral fear of and disgust at the prospect of giving cannabis (and its users, growers, recommenders and distributors) any “air of legitimacy” whatsoever. A Utah opponent, a landlord, filed a law suit calling medical cannabis users “repugnant” and he said he found them “repulsive.”

And yes, all kidding aside (not that I’ve been kidding), speaking as an experienced clinical psychiatric social worker, in my estimation, this fear, or cannaphobia (completely impervious to evidence and rational argument), rises in many to the level of a near if not actual phobia.

If you’ve ever perused the definition of any of the phobias in "the DSM” (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders), you’ll see I’m not being satirical in making that claim. Fear of cannabis absolutely reaches the kinds and levels of criterion behavior present in phobias.

All of the above is why I fear that however much legal reform takes place, because of the strength of societal cannaphobia, there will be uncomfortable cultural fault lines around the cannabis plant for at least decades to come. To paraphrase Buffalo Springfield, “cannaphobia strikes deep."

Ref: How Cannabis became Marijuana by Dr. David Bearman

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/587e76c4e4b0b110fe11db7c?timestamp=1484683508963

Ref: History of Cannabis as a Medicine By Lester Grinspoon, M.D., August 16, 2005: http://www.maps.org/research-archive/mmj/grinspoon_history_cannabis_medicine.pdf

Ref: The film that today stands for the demonization tactics used against cannabis for decades - Reefer Madness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM_vLk1I6G4

Ref: The story of “Marihuana" exploitation films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reefer_Madness

Ref: Fallout from the LaGuardia Committee - Harry Anslinger and the federal government given control over any mention of “marijuana” in Hollywood films. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Guardia_Committee

Ref: The longer term history http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/why-is-marijuana-illegal/

Ref: How Science is Skewed to Fuel Fears of Marijuana http://www.oregon.gov/pharmacy/Imports/Marijuana/Public/SRay/HOW_SCIENCE_IS_SKEWED_TO_FUEL_FEARS_OF_MARIJUANA.pdf

Ref: Marijuana http://www.history.com/topics/history-of-marijuana

Ref: Why People are Afraid of Cannabis https://www.marijuanamommy.com/why-afraid-of-cannabis/

Ref: Cannabis: A Journey Through the Ages http://www.ancient-origins.net/history/cannabis-journey-through-ages-003084

Ref: An alternative cultural zeitgeist we ought to bring back…. ….Magu: The Hemp Goddess who Healed Ancient Asia http://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-asia/magu-hemp-goddess-who-healed-ancient-asia-008709

Ref: Mormons Oppose Marijuana Initiative in Utah Despite History of Cannabis Use https://www.freedomleaf.com/mormons-utah-medical-marijuana-initiative/ (9/18)

Note: The DEA - bizarrely as ever - resurrected the “H” spelling of “marihuana" in their 2016 refusal to reclassify cannabis and remove it from its Schedule 1 narcotic status.

Note: Beneath all the fear-mongering and the real fear many people exhibit, suppression efforts, while totally ineffective, are a sizable sector of the economy (consider private prisons alone), and a net major long-term employer across many areas of the government and economy…

The Curious Case of "Cannaphobia"

Auditing Cannabis

Spotlight: Days for Girls