Was marijuana always an illegal substance?
Marijuana has not always been an illegal substance. In fact the cannabis sativa” plant was used to create hemp which was put on the conestoga wagons or hemp was closely connected to the early history of this country. People often hear stories about George Washington and the founding fathers and indeed the conestoga wagons were covered with material derived from “cannabis sativa” plant. The marijuana tax stamp act was actually based on another idea that Congress had put through related to machine guns, The National Firearms Act, which created tax stamps for machine gun sale transfers over states. Of course the catch was the government did not produced these stamps, so anytime such a transfer occurred it was illegal because it did not have the requisite stamp. Well they did the same thing for marijuana after figuring out that this worked relatively well and started the process of marijuana prohibition essentially at that point of marijuana prohibition in earnest at least. Marijuana prohibition did not really hit hay-day until 1970 when Richard Nixon decided that he wanted a new tool to crack down on the social movement that was blossoming before him and which made him in all of his paranoia, extremely uncomfortable. He wanted a new bludgeon to be able to wield against some of the folks who were rising up against his administration so that is at least one speculation as to why it was in there. Obviously this country has a strange relationship with marijuana going back to marijuana tax stamp act, going back to the jazz age. There are racist tendencies of course racist implications in the drug war but essentially in 1970, the congress and Richard Nixon decided to make marijuana illegal under federal law, put it in schedule one of the controlled substances act (which is the most harsh schedule available). It means that the drug has absolutely no medical value and it means it's extremely dangerous and has a high potential for addiction. Well of course as we all know, cocaine and methamphetamine are probably a lot more addictive than marijuana is. Yet both of those drugs that are just named are in the lower schedule than marijuana is, believe that or not.
