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Going to try to give you a clear, concise summary, since a lot of these answers are either too specific or blatantly unhelpful.
First, alcohol has been used by humans since before recorded history. It was probably the first drug we ever used, and barley was even used as a currency in ancient Mesopotamia. Alcohol is ingrained in almost every human society, and banning it is always difficult. The United States actually made alcohol illegal between 1920 and 1933, and it was an unmitigated disaster.
Second, Marijuana wasn't always illegal in the United States. To give you a very oversimplified summary, the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst ran a racist, xenophobic campaign to vilify Marijuana in the early '30s. He saw hemp crops as a threat to his holdings in the lumber and paper industry, so he had his newspapers run exaggerated or false stories about crime and violence related to Marijuana use, usually center around Mexicans or black Americans. The movie Reefer Madness is a great example of this kind of propaganda. Marijuana was eventually made illegal in 1937, and as the War on Drugs ramped up over the decades, enforcement and penalties for Marijuana crimes only got worse.
Anyway, there's a ton more that could be said about Prohibition, pre-Hurst Marijuana use, and the War on Drugs, but those are the broad strokes. Hope that helps.
So would it be fair to say that keeping marijuana illegal is a major part of institutional racism?
Oh yes, 100%.
This is and always has been the case. Any resistance to change here is fully based on racism.
Agree on your second point but i doubt your first is relevant.
Its true what you say about alcohol but cannabis too was cultivated before recorded history, estimated to have started 12000 years ago at the same time we figured out farming in general.
For most of human history it was a well known medicinal plant (in asia)
It did exist in Europe and America but i knowledge about drugs just wasn’t all that common while brewed alcohol drinks, which where much healthier then dirty unboiled water was common everywhere. I bet if someone passed you a joint in those times you'd just assume its a weird brand of Tobacco and because thc and cbd balance was on a more natural level you wouldn’t have gotten very high from it.
Yes, but Marijuana wasn't nearly as widespread as alcohol. Cannabis crops didn't start to spread globally until the 12 century, so tons of cultures developed without it. Meanwhile, alcohol isn't a crop, it's an organic compound that can be fermented from tons of crops across the globe. Aside from the North American tribes, pretty much every human civilization developed a fermentation process.
Thanks for reminding me how much I fucking hate Hearst (the family and the corporation). Also, good summary.
Thanks! I wanted to give OP a broad understanding without going into an overwhelming amount of detail, but boy did it take a lot of restraint to not to go into a three paragraph rant on drug scheduling and mandatory minimums.