why was weed initially banned?

It was made illegal because William Randolph Hearst wanted to destroy the hemp industry, because he knew he would lose money if people didn't rely on timber. They ran a smear campaign against it. This included the use of scare tactics, racism, and basically bullshit to make cannabis illegal.

And no I don't think it was a nation wide ban, it happened from state to state. The first was DC in 1906. Then states followed in suit.

 

I remember hearing the first ever law against weed was in Texas because Mexicans were bringing their weed over the border and ruining the local business there.

 

Im not a historian nor do i retain most of what i read but i do recall it went somthing like this.

Hearst owned a lumber business and a media business in 1937. His lumbr business was threatened by the emerging hemp industry and the hemp decordicater which was a new invention to extract the fibers from the hemp plant. The hemp decordicater was going to change the whole textile fabric industry and put hearst out of business.

So since hearst was very wealthy and owned the media companies he teamed up with a few other tycoons who had interest in supressing this hemp technology in order to keep their industries from being taken over. So in 1937 they create these propoganda about "marijuana" the devils weed. A new drug that was brought in by mexicans and causing rape and murder of women by black men. They aired all these scare tactics to the country with hearsts media company and everybody foolishly jumped on board.

By using the word marijuana all of the hemp industries were fooled into not lobbying against the laws because they didnt know hemp and marijuana were the same plant!

Basically the hemp industries got owned by some rich evil conniving bastards.

Here we are 80 years later and not a damn thing has changed.

 

It was also legalized during WWII, then re-illegalized after the war.

 

It is if I'm not mistaken.

 

The common man is a fool.

 

It should be re-legalized to treat all the PTSD cases as a result of the current war

 

you should what the movie "The Union" it tells you everything in the movie that people posted above. Very entertaining documentary I watch it every week or so while im high.