Before the countercultural revolution in the 1960’s and the relative normalization of drug use among several subculture groups, many drugs, especially marijuana, were demonized and racialized in American media for various reasons. Harmful racial stereotypes were purposefully utilized to scare average citizens out of drug use, as well as to maintain certain companies’ profits. In this essay, I am going to examine the techniques that corporations such as DuPont employed to ruin the reputation of hemp products in order to monopolize their market. I will analyze several posters from the collection of artifacts in the book Altered States: The Library of Julio Santo Domingo, by Peter Watts and Yolanda Cuomo, through the lens of a thesis paper titled Narcotics, national security, and social control policy in the United States, by Jefferey Edwin Roth. I will also use lecture notes from a women’s studies class I was enrolled in last year, taught by Dr. Shogofa Abassi. I argue that these corporations purposefully slandered cannabis and recklessly played upon the xenophobic sentiments of the time to preserve their monopolies, without regard for the social harm they created as a result.
First, before the discussion of marijuana itself, it is important to understand the ideology leading up to “reefer madness.” During prohibition and the progressive era, between the 1910’s and 1930’s, drug and alcohol use were generally denounced by society, and there were many different legislative measures passed to try to combat the growing prevalence of narcotic use. Propaganda posters were used to scare people away from opium and cocaine, especially. The ones I specifically remember that were shown during lecture in my women’s studies class I could not find on the internet, but I discovered similar posters, as shown below. When advocating against opium, these posters grossly depicted Asian men luring white women into their opium dens. These posters were produced after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and around the time of the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923, so the American public was generally fearful of Asian immigrants and railroad workers seducing their women. For cocaine propaganda, African American men were depicted as enraged, hulk-like figures impervious to bullets, this time stealing white women off the streets to presumably rape or otherwise assault them. The overall message of these posters was to avoid these drugs in order to protect “our” women, and subsequently protect against the perversion of an otherwise decent society. Propaganda posters also took advantage of the general racism that was accepted in this age, especially during the World Wars. Although opium and cocaine were used in many common products, recreational narcotic use was viewed very negatively and was associated with the “undesirables” of society.
Marijuana received similar backlash among the general American population. However, the association of cannabis with Mexican deviants and the overall image of marijuana as a dangerous drug was carefully constructed by a small group of people. Before the “reefer madness” craze, hemp was approved by the USDA in October of 1916 as a viable replacement of wood pulp in paper production (Roth 27). By reducing the use of timber to make paper, it was predicted that the price of wood pulp paper would become considerably inflated, which would lead to a decline in sales. Famous yellow journalist William Randal Hearst owned a significant portion of the timber industry, which created an effective monopoly over his newspaper industry. In a similar position, E.I. DuPont was also a giant producer of paper, and was transitioning into the chemical industry during the 1920’s. As it turned out, hemp was not only an effective paper substitute, but it could also be used to make plastics, such as nylon. The combination of xenophobia with significant business competition compelled these men to fight against the mainstream introduction of industrial hemp.
Essentially, these two men, along with Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger, launched a campaign against the hemp plant to remove their competition. Although Anslinger did not have any financial reason to contest hemp, he fought against it merely to ban cannabis for recreational use. They managed to make this case by claiming cannabis had serious negative effects on the people who used it. Anslinger also re-branded it as ‘marijuana’ simply because it sounded more like an “evil Mexican drug,” regardless of where it might have actually came from. He testified in court during his campaign to ban industrial hemp, claiming it should be banned because it had a “violent effect on the degenerate races,” referring specifically to Mexican immigrants. “The commissioner presented bloody photographs of murders committed by reportedly deranged marijuana users, and told tales of young people driven to robbery, insanity, and to murder family members” (35). Despite protests from the American Medical Association and the lack of scientific evidence to prove these so-called violent effects, the Uniform Narcotics Drug Act was passed in 1934 to prohibit industrial hemp from becoming a competing industry of paper and cotton, as well as newly discovered plastics (24).
The banning of industrial hemp allowed DuPont to patent his nylon formula, as well as to maintain his and Hearst’s monopolies over the timber industry. “All of DuPont’s synthetic materials and paper would have faced significant competition from decentralized farming and milling communities manufacturing hemp products. Industries adopted artificial patentable materials for their production cycle and hoped to prevent the competition from utilizing natural products” (33-34). This was extremely problematic for several reasons. First, it was done merely out of personal reasons, primarily to maintain the financial success of the timber and plastics industries. Second, and more importantly, it created a distorted reputation of cannabis as a dangerous, Mexican drug. The xenophobic American public were already fearful of immigrants as a general group, and Anslinger especially played upon these fears by connecting hemp with unacceptable deviant behavior. By re-branding marijuana, he began the national “reefer madness” craze. People were genuinely terrified of the effects that even a single “marijuana cigarette” could have on someone, especially someone supposedly predisposed to becoming violent when exposed to the drug. Anti-marijuana campaigns targeted traditional, white American families. The posters below were found in the book Altered States: The Library of Julio Santo Domingo, which inspired my further research into the history of marijuana for this essay. Like the opium and cocaine propaganda posters, ‘marihuana’ was supposed to induce sexual frenzies and other unthinkable horrors on unsuspecting white women who dared to try the drug. It would corrupt the youth and certainly ruin a wholesome, happy family.
Although cannabis is viewed as one of the less dangerous drugs we experience today, it was once seen as an extreme threat to society. The extent of the madness could have been avoided if it weren’t for the pressure to ban the drug by a relatively small group of people that would profit by excluding hemp from the market. After all was said and done, the damage done by the corporations who sought to make cannabis illegal carried far greater social significance than merely getting a “dangerous” drug off the streets.
Primary References:
Watts, Peter, and Yolanda Cuomo. Altered States: the Library of Julio Santo Domingo. Anthology Editions, LLC, 2017.
Secondary References:
Roth, Jeffery Edwin. Narcotics, national security, and social control policy in the United States. Stephen F. Austin State University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1996.
Abassi, Shogofa. Women’s Studies 102 section 6. Race, Class, and Gender. Lecture, 27 September 2017.
American Culture 