Stigmas Are So Yesterday Part 2

The world of legal cannabis seen through pre-legalization eyes.

stig·ma

/ˈstiɡmə/

noun

1. 1.

   a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person.

So many stigmas to overcome or ignore. I battle all the time with stigmas, but the stigmas of cannabis use has been one of the hardest ones to let go of. I grew up in the time of good old Tricky Dick Nixon and his war on drugs. Did you know what that war on drugs was really about?

“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?

We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. 

Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

^{~ John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon}

This “war” has been going on since 1970 when the Controlled Substances Act was enacted into law. Cannabis became a Schedule I drug, placed into the same category as the highly addictive drug heroin, where it remains to this day. Even cocaine, oxycodone and fentanyl are considered Schedule II drugs. The stigma against cannabis use is still present with many people, despite the fact that there are now 38 states with medical cannabis use laws and 24 states have recreational use laws.

Some embrace a stigma so hard it becomes an unwavering part of their belief system. Even when presented with absolute proof that a stigma is not what it seems, they do not waver. I am not that much of a hard ass but I still struggle sometimes with the stigma of cannabis use. And I have been working in a medically focused dispensary for over two years now.

Wait, what?!

Yes, I work at one of the oldest medical cannabis dispensaries in California, which means it is one of the oldest in the entire country, and I still struggle with the stigma. I had to take courses about all things cannabis, cannabinoids, terpenes, medical uses and more. I consider myself well educated on cannabis, although I learn new things all the time. Some of my coworkers have have been there a very long time, which in the cannabis business is not the norm. But they are dedicated to helping people learn about and use cannabis for their ailments or pleasure. Cannabis is used medicinally for so many reasons, from pain relief to cancer. Neurodivergent minds like mine can find that cannabis helps with anxiety, autism, depression, PTSD and so much more.

I also think that cannabis helps those who are just seeking respite from this horribly stressful and chaotic world we live in right now. Cannabis is easier on your body than popping a pill or taking a shot, and is not addicting. That’s a win-win for me.

I have to say, you could not have told teenage me that that where we are now in the cannabis world would become the reality. Back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s we were all sneaking around, hoping someone’s older sibling had some weed. We were looking over our shoulders for the police or our parents, so afraid of getting busted because we knew someone who got busted. You knew who the undercover narcs at school were, and watched for the security guard (in this case my classmate’s mother, who was tough as nails. She only carried a walkie talkie, and that’s all she needed!) My parents were fairly conservative and had to be. They were “Firsts” meaning Blacks who were the first to do something. My mother was the first Black nurse at the main hospital in Fort Wayne, IN back in the 1950’s. My father graduated with his masters degree from the first class at the USC School of Public Administration, were he was the only Black man. Being a Black person who was trying to succeed and just live your life in America meant you had to be a certain way, act a certain way and present yourself a certain way. They were the Black Bourgeoisie. Smoking weed was not something you did. That was for the Jazz musicians and artists. If you did indulge you didn’t let everyone know.

Those of us in the next generation were different. Because we grew up without as many of the social stigmas, or rather we were very young and didn’t always realize how many stigmas were still out there, we experimented more. Growing up in California also meant our upbringing was different from Blacks who were in the South. This was the time of Civil Rights, Black people fighting to be more than second class citizens. Marching from Selma to Montgomery Alabama. Fire hoses and police dogs let loose on Black marchers in Birmingham, Mississippi. Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, The Little Rock 9 and Ruby Bridges just trying to go to school, Medger Evers, John Lewis, Malcom X and so many everyday Americans who demanded change. By the time we were emerging into fine young citizens the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was well established.

“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing. The Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs. It also strengthened the enforcement of voting rights and the desegregation of schools.”

Quote from the US Department of Labor

Unfortunately our current sitting government in the United States is working hard to unravel many of these established, constitutional rights. Woman’s rights have taken a direct hit with the overturning of Roe vs Wade, but that is a whole other essay.

So, our bougie Black selves were more at ease and ready to try things that the older generations were not about. We were going to fight the power, fuck that Just Say No bullshit the Reagan Administration came up with. Nancy Reagan (a scary First Lady if there ever was one) would put on red dress and tell the youngsters that weed was the gateway drug to all other drugs. Schools became part of the war on drugs. This campaign really contributed to the stigma of cannabis use, because it effectively made any and all who consumed drugs of any kind as “bad” people. Didn’t matter if you were a college professor with a Phd or the janitor at the college, you were a bad person if you smoked weed. We didn’t buy into it, but the stigma was still strong.

The weed of my youth was very different weed from what you will find today. I mean, even how I describe it, weed vs cannabis, is deliberate. We would pull out our vinyl albums, open the plastic sandwich bag the weed would come in, and clean it of all the stems and seeds. It was dry and didn’t have much nuance. But it got you high and allowed creativity to spring forth, allowed you and your friends to dissolve into giggles and was fun. Back then the cultivation techniques were different, which resulted in weed that had been allowed to be pollinated, meaning it was full of seeds which were ready to be planted for another crop. I should say all the weed wasn’t full of seeds, but much of it was. It wasn’t until I went to college in Northern California in 1981 that I first got to experience the best weed in the United States, the weed grown in Humboldt County. It’s still the best in my humble opinion. It was stinky and sticky and potent. It was amazing. There weren’t a bunch of seeds, but if you did find one you kept it so you could grow your own. Which no one I knew ever did because of the stigma and fear of being busted. I did try once when I moved into my first apartment, but once the sprouts started growing my cat Waldo ate them. Good thing I loved him.

I remember smoking Acapulco Gold, Colombian Gold, Thai Sticks, Maui Wowie, Haze and many other landrace strains which have been used to breed many of the popular strains cultivated today. Cheech and Chong smoked weed and pushed the boundry of what was acceptable when they released the film “Up In Smoke” which was a flop then but went on to become a cult classic, and is considered to be the first stoner film to be made. Now they have their own cannabis business as well as another business which sells gummies and drinks made from federally legal hemp derived cannabis.

Hemp and cannabis are from the same plant family call Cannabaceae. Hemp has been grown for fiber, clothing, food and other uses since humans learned how to cultivate crops thousands of years ago. In fact, here in America it was a common crop grown since this country was founded. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and many others of the time were hemp farmers. Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag from cloth made from hemp. But in the 1930’s the first war on drugs was fought. Henry Randolph Hearst, a major newspaper publisher decided hemp derived fiber was too much competition for his timber, which were used to make paper. He began publishing what we today would call “alternative facts” about cannabis and hemp. Cannabis began to be referred to as “Marijuana” a Spanish word specifically used to make cannabis and hemp seem foreign to White Americans. In fact, the first use of the term marijuana was in the 1936 movie “Reefer Madness” where a man tries marijuana at a jazz party for the first time, goes mad and kills his family with an ax! Oh the Horror!

Enter Henry J Anslinger, the first director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which became our present day DEA. In 1937 he testified before congress with a racist and inaccurate portrayal of cannabis, meant to stoke fear.

“Marijuana is the most violence causing drug in the history of mankind. Most Marijuana smokers are Negroes, Hispanics, Fillipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes.”

Can’t have those White women dancing to jazz and swing music while seeking sex with the Negroes, now can we?! Oh, the Horror!

The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was passed and hemp could no longer be grown by farmers in America, even though it was a money making crop for them because of its many uses. Hearst got to continue profiting off the sale of his timber and publishing “Alternative Facts” about whatever he wanted to. The Farm Bill of 2018 finally made it legal to grow hemp, and more importantly, transport it across state lines.

Notice how both wars on drugs were started as a way to keep those uppity negroes and other people of color in their place? And liberal, left leaning Americans too. Hmmmmm. . .

Is it any wonder that the stigma was and still is so strong? The use of “Alternative Facts” and misinformation were used to scare White Americans into thinking that using the devil’s weed would cause you to become a degenerate, would make White woman give themselves sexually to Negroes, would make you commit crimes and murder your family. It was a gateway drug that would lead you to addiction.

And all the while it wasn’t really a war on drugs, but a War on Americans of Color. They needed to be kept in their place, which for many meant jail. Millions of Black Americans are now incarcerated for low level drug offenses. As low level as possession of small amounts of cannabis for personal use. These are not the cartels or volume drug dealers.

With less than 5 percent of the world’s population but nearly 25 percent of its incarcerated population, the United States imprisons more people than any other nation in the world – largely due to the war on drugs. Misguided drug laws and harsh sentencing requirements have produced profoundly unequal outcomes for people of color. Although rates of drug use and sales are similar across racial and ethnic lines, Black and Latino people are far more likely to be criminalized than white people.

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

The harm the war on drugs and the stigma created by it will continue to have profound effects on generations to come. And ironically but not surprisingly, the majority of legal cannabis businesses in America are owned by White Americans. Those who have suffered the most are effectively shut out of the cannabis world. Those who have been arrested are still behind bars. The war on drugs has become the “New Jim Crow” according to the ACLU. A few thousand people received pardons from President Biden in 2022, but that is a mere drop in the bucket.

Cannabis needs to be removed from Schedule I so it can be studied. More medical professionals are recommending cannabis to their patients, especially after seeing the extreme harm done by the over prescription of opioid drugs and the ensuing addiction and overdose epidemic in the America. Cannabis has been used medicinally for thousands of years by cultures around the world. We must be reminded that western medicine is not the only medicine. Chemically derived medications are not always better than their naturally produced counterparts.

Cannabis is just a plant. But what an amazing plant.