(November 30, 2013 at 8:33 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote:If you truly think that whites needed the law behind them to harass Blacks or mexicans in 1937, your... at best an idealist. Fore you see they had this little thing called the KKK back then, and from what i have come to understand it was quite popular, and what's more this 'social club' operated apart from the law. Meaning it did not matter what the law said, they did what they thought to be 'moral.'(November 30, 2013 at 4:56 pm)Drich Wrote: . A soceity who bans pot looks to try and keep its citizens with sharp and acute minds. (Look at America's Industrial Age when the substance was first bann, look at China now)Actually, Marijuana was only banned nationwide in 1937, well into the Great Depression, and shortly after the beginning of the Roosevelt Recession.
And, really, the more I look at the circumstances behind making marijuana illegal, the more I think it has less to do with "keeping citizens with sharp and acute minds" and more with keeping down the "other." In fact, it was used as a quick and easy way to get Mexicans in jail (seriously, why do you think it's most commonly known as "marijuana" these days?) Hell, since it was also commonly used by black jazz musicians (fun fact: one of Louis "What a Wonderful World" Armstrong's first great recordings was "Muggles," written as an ode to the stuff), it gave the authorities two minorities for the price of one to harass.
So to use the stonner arguement that pot was made illegal because of blacks and mexicans is a mushed up mindless appeal to white a man's guilt. In truth the country was undergoing a purity reform this was not limited to just pot, the temperance movement was big in the fist 1/3 of the 20th century. Pot was orginally made illegal as earily as 1917 in some states as well as alcohol. Alcohol was bann in '27 nation wide, and pot wasn't acutally bann in 1937. It was made subject to a goverment tax/stamp like cigeretts. It's just the Goverment would not issue those stamps/tax certificates, which subsequently made possession and distrubution of pot illegal.
In order to rightly discern the intentions of that generation's 'morality' one has to look beyond the legalized pot propaganda stoners are trying to sell, and one must look at the entire state of the nation back then.
Again it had nothing to do with harassing blacks or mexicans, (because they did not need a reason back then) it had to do with keeping white minds clear and sharp, and ready to work. To tell the truth I don't see why it was not encouraged in non-white ethnic groups.
