By Johann Hari

Across the world, more and more people are asking: Why is marijuana banned? Why are people still sent to prison for using or selling it?

Most of us assume it's because someone, somewhere sat down with the scientific evidence, and figured out that cannabis is more harmful than other drugs we use all the time -- like alcohol and cigarettes.

Somebody worked it all out, in our best interest.

But when I started to go through the official archives -- researching my book Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs -- to find out why cannabis was banned back in the 1930s, I discovered that's not what happened.

Not at all.

In 1929, a man called Harry Anslinger was put in charge of the Department of Prohibition in Washington, D.C. But alcohol prohibition had been a disaster. Gangsters had taken over whole neighborhoods. Alcohol -- controlled by criminals -- had become even more poisonous.

So alcohol prohibition finally ended -- and Harry Anslinger was afraid. He found himself in charge of a huge government department, with nothing for it to do. Up until then, he had said that cannabis was not a problem. It doesn't harm people, he explained, and "there is no more absurd fallacy" than the idea it makes people violent.

Harry J. Anslinger, commissioner of the Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics, poses for a photo on September 24, 1930. (AP Photo)

But then -- suddenly, when his department needed a new purpose -- he announced he had changed his mind.

He explained to the public what would happen if you smoked cannabis.

First, you will fall into "a delirious rage." Then you will be gripped by "dreams... of an erotic character." Then you will "lose the power of connected thought." Finally, you will reach the inevitable end-point: "Insanity."

Marijuana turns man into a "wild beast." If marijuana bumped into Frankenstein's monster on the stairs, Anslinger warned, the monster would drop dead of fright.

Harry Anslinger became obsessed with one case in particular. In Florida, a boy called Victor Licata hacked his family to death with an axe. Anslinger explained to America: This is what will happen when you smoke "the demon weed." The case became notorious. The parents of the U.S. were terrified.

What evidence did Harry Anslinger have? It turns out at this time he wrote to the 30 leading scientists on this subject, asking if cannabis was dangerous, and if there should be a ban.

Twenty-nine wrote back and said no.

Anslinger picked out the one scientist who said yes, and presented him to the world. The press -- obsessed with Victor Licata's axe -- cheered them on.

In a panic that gripped America, marijuana was banned. The U.S. told other countries they had to do the same. Many countries said it was a dumb idea, and refused to do it. For example, Mexico decided their drug policy should be run by doctors. Their medical advice was that cannabis didn't cause these problems, and they refused to ban it. The U.S. was furious. Anslinger ordered them to fall into line. The Mexicans held out -- until, in the end, the U.S. cut off the supply of all legal painkillers to Mexico. People started to die in agony in their hospitals. So with regret, Mexico sacked the doctor -- and launched its own drug war.

"The scientific evidence suggests cannabis is safer than alcohol. Alcohol kills 40,000 people every year in the U.S. Cannabis kills nobody."

But at home, questions were being asked. A leading American doctor called Michael Ball wrote to Harry Anslinger, puzzled. He explained he had used cannabis as a medical student, and it had only made him sleepy. Maybe cannabis does drive a small number of people crazy, he said -- but we need to fund some scientific studies to find out.

Anslinger wrote back firmly. "The marihuana evil can no longer be temporized with," he explained, and he would fund no independent science. Then, or ever.

For years, doctors kept approaching him with evidence he was wrong, and he began to snap, telling them they were "treading on dangerous ground" and should watch their mouths.

Today, most of the world is still living with the ban on cannabis that Harry Anslinger introduced, in the nation-wide panic that followed Victor Licata's killing spree.

But here's the catch. Years later, somebody went and looked at the psychiatric files for Victor Licata.

It turns out there's no evidence he ever used cannabis.

He had a lot of mental illness in his family. They had been told a year before he needed to be institutionalized -- but they refused. His psychiatrists never even mentioned marijuana in connection to him.

So, does cannabis make people mad?

The former chief advisor on drugs to the British government, David Nutt, explains -- if cannabis causes psychosis in a straightforward way, then it would show in a straightforward way.

When cannabis use goes up, psychosis will go up. And when cannabis use goes down psychosis will go down.

So does that happen? We have a lot of data from a lot of countries. And it turns out it doesn't. For example, in Britain, cannabis use has increased by a factor of about 40 since the 1960s. And rates of psychosis? They have remained steady.

In fact, the scientific evidence suggests cannabis is safer than alcohol. Alcohol kills 40,000 people every year in the U.S. Cannabis kills nobody -- although Willie Nelson says a friend of his did once die when a bale of cannabis fell on his head.


This is why, in 2006, a young man in Colorado called Mason Tvert issued a challenge to the governor of his state, John Hickenlooper. Hickenlooper owned brew-pubs selling alcohol across the state, and it made him rich. But he said cannabis was harmful and had to be banned. So Mason issued him a challenge -- to a duel. You bring a crate of booze. I'll bring a pack of joints. For every hit of booze you take, I'll take a hit of cannabis. We'll see who dies first.

It was the ultimate High Noon.

Mason went on to lead the campaign to legalize cannabis in his state. His fellow citizens voted to do it -- by 55 percent. Now adults can buy cannabis legally, in licensed stores, where they are taxed--and the money is used to build schools. After a year and a half of seeing this system in practice, support for legalization has risen to 69 percent. And even Governor Hickenlooper has started calling it "common sense."

Oh -- and Colorado hasn't been filled with people hacking their families to death yet.

Isn't it time we listened to the science -- and finally put away Victor Licata's axe?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-influence/real-reasons-marijuana-is-banned_b_9210248.html?

It all comes down to the Pharmaceutical Company's don't want it legalized cause their pockets would no longer be lined..

Most prescriptions have so many side effects you have to take more drugs due to the side effects.. It is just a domino for the Pharmaceutical Company's to keep lining their pockets..

When in reality Cannabis could do so much more good when it comes to health issues with very little side effects.

But when the Politicians all have their pockets lined by the drug company's how many of them do you really think they want Cannabis to be legal???

Many of the studies that have been done to prove how Cannabis can be used from seizures,bipolar,depression, cancer ect have been squashed cause they don't want the results out there..

i agree, big phrama has most politicians in their pockets, and they're happy to keep the voters on meds most of their lives...

I've run across a number of explanations for how it came to be banned to begin with. I find that there are other reasons entirely, why it has continued to be banned.

They include everything from racism (associating it's use with black musicians) to politics ("if those left-wing liberal hippies want it legalized, it must cause liberalism, so it's got to be kept illegal").

I'm skeptical of how much anti-marijuana push comes from pharma, only because they've shown they can market pretty much anything, and charge a premium for it, no matter what it is.

After all, if WATER can become a big profit making business (it falls from the sky by itself, for goodness sake), making money from pretending to have the best, safest, highest quality MJ seems obvious enough.

I'd suggest that Pharma opposition is more a result of their wanting to cater to the existing bias of the conservatives who they derive a lot of their other bribes... I mean "funding" from, who want MJ illegal for their own reasons.

Are all you people smoking the same weed ? We can't have three people agreeing, even if Igor is trying to say Big Pharma is coming in the back door.Wake up Sassy and sort these people out.

as long as a person can grow so much for themselves, Pharma will try to keep it illegal.

this seems to make some sense...

It wasn't just marijuana, coke had cocaine in it, almost every cough syrup had codeine in it and heroin was also legal. Big government saw a huge cash potential in making all of these substances illegal.

We shouldn't just single out marijuana to be legalized, all drugs should be legal. By doing so would end the cartels and cut crime by at least 75%. It would lower drug over doses because all the the drugs would be pharmaceutical and same purity levels. Drugs would be much more affordable to the addicted and thereby less crime to facilitate their habit.There are probably another 100 reasons I can think of to legalize drugs but it's wasted space since it will never happen.

Home grown should be legal. Street weed is being dusted with drugs that are more addictive substances.

they would never do that, big pharma wouldn't allow it... when they get 80 dollars a pill for something that only a doctor can prescribe, and anyone could could be on anything at any time...

Aside from the potential therapeutic properties of medicinal marijuana, there are great nutritional values as well. Hemp oil contains Omega 3, Omega6 and Omega 9 fatty acids that most people have to get from fish oil, which can contain PCB's, Mercury and other dangerous pollutants found in our streams and oceans. Hemp oil is all natural and a healthy way to get your EFA's.




This is legal in all 50 states

Funny how this topic is here today.

Because here in the UK the biggest pharma company (GlaxoSmithKline - GSK)has just been fined £37.6 million for stifling the release of a drug called paroxetine.

They paid their rivals 50 million to delay the release of their own version of the drug which meant GSK could charge what they liked for it.

The sad thing is, I'm not surprised.

.. I'm all for legalizing weed.. as long as they put the same restrictions on it as they do alcohol... no operating a motor vehicle well under the influence... no going to work well under the influence.... and as always the reason it is not legal ..is who is going to control the money.... right now cannabis is a all cash business... banks can't touch the money.. it is considered money laundering.. but once they figure out... how to regulate it control it.. slap a tax on it..
It will be legal just like alcohol.... the problem is you dealing with weights and measures... there is really no control.. nothing's stopping at producer from selling more than he claims.. the government can track the actual plant that the growop has.. but how much that plant yields is a unknown factor..

I think adults should be able to smoke all the weed they want ... and can afford with their own money.

I think all the laws concerning weed in particular, and some other drugs to some degree, should be focused on children.

I have two step nephews who smoked pot til they dropped out of school. Even though many kids have no visible money to buy pot, somehow they manage to get some pot almost every day.

Recent scientific studies (real ones) indicate that pot smoking in children slows the development of the brain.

To me, looking after the welfare of the country's children is more important that the ease of an adult getting high.

I don't do drugs but some of my friends smoke pot.

Some real science.

Brain under construction

Marijuana shows considerable promise for treating medical conditions including pain, muscle spasms, seizure disorders and nausea from cancer chemotherapy. At least some of those benefits are thought to come from cannabidiol, a chemical component of the marijuana plant not thought to produce mind-altering effects. But there's a lot left to learn about this and other chemical compounds in marijuana. Recently, the Senate recommended $800,000 for an Institute of Medicine study on medical marijuana, and has also encouraged the National Institutes of Health to support more research on cannabidiol.

What's clear, however, is that marijuana's signature high comes from a psychoactive component known as tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). And evidence is mounting, says Weiss, that THC is not risk-free.

In the short term, marijuana use has been shown to impair functions such as attention, memory, learning and decision-making. Those effects can last for days after the high wears off. Heavy marijuana use in adolescence or early adulthood has been associated with a dismal set of life outcomes including poor school performance, higher dropout rates, increased welfare dependence, greater unemployment and lower life satisfaction.

But it's not clear that marijuana deserves the bulk of the blame. Some researchers have suggested that factors such as peer influence, emotional distress or a tendency toward problem behavior could predispose people to drug use as well as poor life outcomes. "Is marijuana the causal agent in these outcomes, or is it part of a variety of vulnerability factors?" Weiss asks.

Few longitudinal studies have been conducted to follow the trajectories of young people before and after they take their first hit of marijuana. But one long-term prospective study from New Zealand showed worrisome findings.

Duke University psychologist Terrie Moffitt, PhD, and colleagues collected data from the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, longitudinal research that has followed 1,000 New Zealanders born in 1972. Participants answered questions about marijuana use at 18, 21, 26, 32 and 38. They also underwent neuropsychological testing at ages 13 and 38.

The team found that persistent marijuana use was linked to a decline in IQ, even after the researchers controlled for educational differences. The most persistent users — those who reported using the drug in three or more waves of the study — experienced a drop in neuropsychological functioning equivalent to about six IQ points (PNAS, 2012). "That's in the same realm as what you'd see with lead exposure," says Weiss. "It's not a trifle."

There are some reasons to think that adolescents may be uniquely susceptible to lasting damage from marijuana use. At least until the early or mid-20s, "the brain is still under construction," says Staci Gruber, PhD, a neuroscientist and director of the Cognitive and Clinical Neuroimaging Core and the Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery (MIND) Program at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School. During this period of neurodevelopment, the brain is thought to be particularly sensitive to damage from drug exposure. And the frontal cortex — the region critical to planning, judgment, decision-making and personality — is one of the last areas to fully develop, Gruber says.

Also immature in teens is the endocannabinoid system. As its name implies, this system comprises the physiological mechanisms that respond to THC. That system is important for cognition, neurodevelopment, stress response and emotional control, and it helps to modulate other major neurotransmitter systems, says Krista Lisdahl, PhD, director of the Brain Imaging and Neuropsychology Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

Repeated exposure to marijuana can dial down cellular activity in the endocannabinoid system. Such interference might be a bigger problem for immature brains, says Lisdahl. "That sets the stage for why adolescents may be more sensitive to the effects of repeated marijuana exposure, from a neuroscience perspective."

Some more real science.


Altered brains

Indeed, a number of studies have found evidence of brain changes in teens and young adults who smoke marijuana. In 2013, Rocío Martín-Santos, MD, PhD, at the University of Barcelona, and colleagues reviewed 43 studies of chronic cannabis use and the brain. They found consistent evidence of both structural brain abnormalities and altered neural activity in marijuana users. Only eight of those studies focused on adolescents, but the findings from those studies suggested that both structural and functional brain changes emerge soon after adolescents start using the drug. Those changes may still be evident after a month of abstaining from the drug, the researchers reported (PLOS ONE, 2013).

Some of those brain abnormalities have been linked to cognitive differences. Gruber found that regular, heavy marijuana users — those who reported smoking five of the last seven days, and more than 2,500 times in their lives — had damage to their brains' white matter, which helps enable communication among neurons. Those white matter changes were correlated with higher impulsivity, she found, particularly in people who began smoking before age 16 (Psychopharmacology, 2013).

Much of Gruber's work compares heavy, regular marijuana users who began before and after age 16. Her results suggest there's greater risk in starting young. Compared with users who began after 16, early-onset smokers made twice as many mistakes on tests of executive function, which included planning, flexibility, abstract thinking and inhibition of inappropriate responses. As adults, those who started using before 16 reported smoking nearly 25 times per week, while those who started later smoked half as often, about 12 times per week. The early-onset smokers also reported smoking an average of nearly 15 grams each week, versus about 6 grams for their late-onset counterparts (Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 2012).

Gruber's participants had reported using marijuana at least five times in the past week. But other labs have found structural differences in the brains of less frequent users. Jodi Gilman, PhD, at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Center for Addiction Medicine, and colleagues used MRI to look for brain changes in 18- to 25-year-olds who smoked marijuana at least once per week, but were not dependent on the drug.

Compared with nonusers, the smokers had changes in the shape, volume and gray matter density of two brain regions associated with addiction: the nucleus accumbens (which plays a role in motivation, pleasure and reward processing) and the amygdala (a region involved in memory, emotion and decision-making). Participants who smoked more often had more significant differences (Journal of Neuroscience, 2014).

..yes.. marijuana does have some long term.. side effects.. and some very short term side effects..lol.. but it is just like cigarettes and alcohol.. if a under age person wants it they will find a way to get it...yes... medical marijuana is used both by adults and youths... used under the correct intent..
It has a very good Medical result..
Now recreational pot is something different.. yes there is two classes medical and recreational...

The problem is it is like tobacco in the beginning.. widespread use was endorsed .. even recommended..
Remember all the cigarette ads everyone on TV smoked...
Now many years later... knowing the harm cigarettes cause... the drain they put on the medical system.... well now the government finds itself in a predicament.. they regulated it made it okay to sell it texted..it... but knowing now how harmful it is... they can't get rid of it.. all they can do now is tax the heck out of it making it very expensive.. to smoke...
. Perhaps the same thing will happen to marijuana... it will become mainstream... the government will regulate it tax it.. 10 years download Road... realize what a bad idea it was to legalize it... then they will have no choice but to tax the heck out of it making it more expensive... forcing it back underground... yep right back where it started...

I wish I had a nickel for every one of these pointless studies. The human body can not function without salt or sugar, yet if taken in excess can have unhealthy consequences. Wine is also very healthy for you in limited quantities but can have dire consequences if abused.
This can said about almost every substance known to man.
So whether it's drugs, alcohol or even food, everything should be done in moderation

Well.. it is still early in the evolution of man.. perhaps down the road somebody will discover something that we can all use.. to help us unwind and relax.. basically help us chill out..lol.. that is not in the slightest way harmful for us no matter how much of it we take or how often we use it... but right now.. everything we use is harmful.. cigarettes ,alcohol ,marijuana ,crack cocaine.. popping pills.. going to the casino.. by nature we are highly addictive... addicted to pain addicted to love addicted to thrill seeking .. we are all just a bunch of junkies...lol... but wouldn't it be nice to have something.. that is good to use and good for us... I guess for right now I will just stick with... being the best me I can be.. that gives me a pretty good high..... now if I could just quit smoking cigarettes..grrrrrrr..wink

people used to get sick from bacterias in water a long time ago, so wine was the main staple for drink... that changed with the invention of water purification...

but what gets me is that i can smoke all the weed i want, and still function, where as 1 bottle of wine and i can't see straight... and wine is legal