Hemp, History and Race(ism)

A Sidebar to The Gold Rush

Edible Hudson Valley/Edible Westchester, Summer 2019

By Julia Sexton

To be clear, at this point, we were writing about hemp—the non-THC containing strain of cannabis. There were several reasons why we felt that it was important to devote an issue to weed in Edible. 1) We could see that cannabis agriculture was about to change the lives of many NYS farmers. 2) We were excited about weed as a regenerative crop that can literally remove pollutants from the soil. 3) We could smell that the legalization of recreational weed was imminent. 4) We knew that recreational weed was already hitting the underground food scene. 5) We were all for reparations made to the communities unequally prosecuted under Rockefeller Drug Laws. 6) After The Porn Issue of the previous summer, we wanted to top it.

Use The Weed Issue tag below to see some of the stories in this issue.

Hemp and the U.S.A. go back. The first American hemp law was passed by the Virginia Assembly in 1619: This law stipulated that every household must grow hemp. Not only was hemp a commodity that colonists could profitably trade with Europe, but hemp was necessary to the very ships that carried out that trade. Its strong fibers made up sails and rigging; also, hemp is the primary ingredient in the oakum used to caulk the ships’ wooden hulls. Hemp was raised by both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson—who struggled to make wine in Virginia, never realizing that cannabis could get them high—although later, during the Golden Age of patent medicines (when you could buy cocaine like aspirin), marijuana appeared in concoctions to treat migraines, insomnia, and rheumatism.

According to Eric Schlosser, in his book Reefer Madness, the stigma surrounding cannabis crept into the U.S. with the Mexican Revolution of 1910. That’s when a wave of Mexican immigrants fleeing to the American Southwest triggered the American propensity for prejudice. This new population brought its traditional intoxicant, cannabis, which grew freely on American soil. More than beer, whiskey, or even laudanum (tincture of opium, which, like cocaine, was OTC until 1914), marijuana was associated with people of color. With that came all the evils that Americans have historically attributed to black and brown people.

Harry J. Anslinger—who headed the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from its inception in 1930 until 1962—solidified the link between race and cannabis. He perpetuated the idea that marijuana hypersexualized and criminalized its users and that they were coming for our daughters. Anslinger once testified that “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their satanic music, jazz and swing, results from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.”

By 1931, marijuana was banned in 29 states, but the momentum to outlaw was fueled by anti-immigrant sentiment during the Great Depression. When the Marijuana Tax Act passed in 1937, possession of marijuana was criminalized throughout the United States.