SpiralArchitect

Last night I was talking with a few members in the Chat, and we were poking at the idea -- what would the world be like if marijuana was never made illegal in the first place?

First, a brief history on marijuana prohibition for those who may not know it
(If I get anything wrong here, please, let me know, this is all from memory and from what I understand the jist of things);

By the 1930s most states (~30) had some sort of laws against cannabis.

The 1937 Marihuana Tax Act required people to purchase stamps if dealing in the commercial enterprise of cannabis. If you didn't buy the stamps you could be jailed/fined. Also included was a rigid set of guidelines and rules one most follow to have their cannabusinesss legal. In effect, it made dealing in marijuana a risky enterprise, but not illegal.

If you'll all recall for a moment, the United States lifted restrictions and even required some farmers to grow hemp during WWII because our supplies of abaca and jute were cut off from Asia. The fibers were used in creating uniforms, parachutes, and ropes, among other things, including lubricating oils for artillery.

The 1937 Marihuana Tax Act was eventually overturned in 1969 in Leary v. United States, which found the act unconstitutional as it violated our 5th amendment.

So, they just made the Controlled Substance Act in 1970. Marijuana is a Schedule 1 drug, along with drugs like Heroin, and GHB;

• The drug or other substance has high potential for abuse.
• The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
• There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.

Now that we have that done, let's all stop and try to comprehend a world that had never seen marijuana prohibition. Is it possible? It's a hard thing to imagine really, as all of us have grown up with marijuana use being criminalized to some sort of extent in our lifetime.

Was the criminalization of marijuana inevitable?
What would the world be like had it not been demonized by people like Harry J. Anslinger among others?
Perhaps if we had understood the power behind this plant, we could have harvested it's power long ago and reaped the benefits. Not only for industrial use, but medicinal as well. From my understanding Islam largely prohibits the use of drugs, but they even accept the medicinal benefits (among others) of cannabis sativa and I guess even responsible recreational hashish use is tolerated on some scale, and has been for thousands of years.

Maybe pollution, deforestation, and our dependence on fossil fuels (among other things) wouldn't be the same problem they are today? Maybe America wouldn't have worlds largest prison population (which a large % are drug users)?

But that brings us to perhaps the most important question of all....

If criminalization was inevitable -- what about legalization?
It took almost 40 years for the Marihuana Tax Act to be deemed unconstitutional. Is it only a matter of time before drug prohibition is viewed the same way?

Recreational use decriminalization is taking place nationwide (or at least making it a very-low priority crime), and medical marijuana is being established state by state. Change is happening, at a glacial pace, but it is happening, there is no doubt about that....

If you caught it yesterday I posted a news article discussing the UN's drastic perspective change in the last 10 years on drug prohibition. To quote the article "And strikingly, for the first time at a UN event, the prohibitionists found themselves in a distinct minority."



Well, I've tried to wrap my head around it a few times, but what I really want to hear is what you all think... let's hear it.

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Trocisp

I believe people put too much faith into the legalization of Marijuana alone.

The simple act of legalizing (or, retroactively, a world where marijuana was never illegalized) doesn't in itself stop deforestation, high prison populations, etc.

These problems are more deep rooted into our society than Marijuana Prohibition, there are underlying causes that need to be addressed as well.

As for the question of relegalization? It is, without doubt, inevitable. It's the form which it comes, and the time which it comes that are in question. Not if, when.

SpiralArchitect

Well, if we used hemp we could drastically cut down our use on trees and fossil fuels.
How much time/money do we waste enforcing these prohibition laws? A lot.
Also, the amount of marijuana users in prison is insane, the numbers just rise, and rise. Our prisons fill up while actual criminals walk the streets.

Of course we will still have other problems. Society always does. That's not what I am getting at, instead : the core of problem, MJ prohibition, and its far reaching effects in the world.

I am trying to convey that if MJ was never illegal, how would the world be different than it is today? Would we be fighting wars oversea for oil? Would we have mass induced hysteria about global-warming? Pollution? Our way of lives even?

I could be living in a house completely comprised of hemp right now. Driving a car made of bioplastics and runs on biodiesels derived from hemp, etc.

Trocisp

Well that's a far more complex question indeed.

What I meant to say, however, was that while I do agree that the prison population would decrease, I don't think that marijuana prohibition in itself is the only thing causing too many people to be in prison. And, I think that the issue of deforestation also has a deeper root cause, a lack of respect for the world around it.

What I meant to say in my post, and I obviously poorly conveyed it, is that Marijuana prohibition is fuel on a fire. And that, while I advocate marijuana legalization, I think that it's only one of many steps in fixing an ailing society.

Billyboob

Go to youtube and search "history channel marijuana" or something along those lines and watch the 5 10 minute segments on its history. Goes a long way back.

SpiralArchitect

Anymore thoughts on this?

Merry-juana

I see a bright future, a future where we sit infront of our hemp-electricity powered computers on our hemp chairs wearing our hemp clothes eating our hemp porridge posting about our backyard hemp garden. I see me surfing on a hemp surfboard in hemp baggies before smoking our hemp cigarettes and driving home in our hemp cars powered by our hemp diesel, which is much cheaper than old crap petroleum. I see me coming home to my wife in her hemp underwear and doing our thing under hemp sheets. I see a bright future indeed...