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Ever notice that none of the words around Cannabis are ever spanish words. So then why do we say Marijuana? It isn't a scientific term or very descriptive, but it is used on purpose. Mexicans have been cultivating cannabis only as long as the 1500 century, but Cannabis has been used in Asia since 5000 B.C. at least.
There is a reason many feel, behind this cultural enigma, which is that the word was used to disguise the fact that industry leaders were trying to get rid of this very well known useful plant to make way and protect the interests of highly profitable alternatives. It is also a xenophobic point of view that was meant to be capitalized upon.
The Hemp plant is one of the oldest known plants to mankind. It's use dates back to 6000 BC and has been used for food longer than any of the items we may find in any of the supermarkets here in the USA. Not only did we eat it, our animals that we eat, also ate it. The recent craze in CBD is actually based in a CBD deficiency we have been suffering from, collectively since it was prohibited from our food supply. It's no wonder that the effects seem to be so phenomenal.
"Who is responsible?" you might ask. Well most people are aware of Henry Anslinger's role in the great hoax, but it goes deeper than that. Anslinger was head of the Drug Enforcement Agency from 1930 until 1962. The story with Anslinger is that after alcohol prohibition ended, he needed a new enemy to fight and cannabis was the perfect substitute. The problem was that Americans knew cannabis by it's common name, hemp, very well.
Hemp was the most important material in the history of the “New World”. Boston was built on (and around) the cordage industry which absolutely relied on this remarkable plant. From as far back as the Jamestown settlement, the hemp stalk was mandated to be grown in the colonies, and was even an accepted commodity for payment of tax.
As it turns out, there is more to the story. The invention of the decorticator was freaking out some influential folks from the private sector. William Randolph Hearst was a timber baron in the Pacific Northwest. He owned a few newspapers, and supplied many of the ones he didn't with their actual paper. He was very influential and was acutely aware of the danger that hemp presented to his land and business holdings.
Acre for acre hemp is 4 times as productive as are trees, for the harvesting of paper making material. Trees also take many years to mature and when harvested have a dramatic ecological impact, where as hemp grows quickly, reaching maturity in just a few months from the planting of it's seed, and can be harvested with minimal environmental impact, and leaves the soil in better condition than when it started. In fact the planting of Hemp is a long known method of soil remediation. Another foe to the cool cannabis crowd was that enemy to humanity Andrew Mellon and the Dupont family. Mellon was secretary to the treasury at the time and heavily invested in DuPont's synthetic petroleum based product, nylon, a natural enemy to the very natural and sustainable hemp woven fabric.
What many speculate is that the was collusion at some level between the media, government and big business. Stories which falsified the effects of Cannabis were pushed in the media, such as cinema, radio, and newspapers and a narrative was created linking specifically Mexicans with the arrival of the evil weed to otherwise good and upstanding citizenry. Stories were printed pushing anecdotes of women and men going insane after the use of cannabis. The capstone of this disingenuous campaign was the film Reefer Madness , which sold the story of cannabis prohibition being reasonable to the unwitting masses, through techniques of propaganda.
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Marijuana as a term is not racist. It is an official Spanish term and was the true word in Mexico. Many Mexicans even pride themselves on maintaining the use of the term and it was the term they themselves used after immigrating to work in the USA.
Marihuana, with h rather than j, is r mostly eefer madness and Hearst yellow journalism racist connotation tho.
PS: the wiki entry the term's etymology makes the presence of a Spanish term very logic. As it cannabis was said to be brought to the America's by the Spanish. Thus a term of much importance and time to bury Alex Halperin's campaign against the term. That's one, of very few things, he got wrong.
PPS: Anslinger's Gore Files were also very damaging as Hearst gave him column space and he also took them to radio.
I respectfully disagree, using j for h is an americanization perhaps but really does not change the word otherwise, also I am not suggesting that the folks mentioned here created the term, but rather, my point is an otherwise slang term has been promoted, because their was a desire to hide the word hemp, as it was a well known term at the time. Obviously that term has adopted wide spread use at this point, however the federal scheduling still refers to cannabis as Marijuana and makes the claim that it is a compound with no legitimate use, medical or otherwise, yet hemp is still regarded as a safe and valuable crop globally. There is not a biological difference between hemp and cannabis cultivated for medicinal compunds such as THC, so if it's not a racist term, why then are criminal statists still using a spanish word to describe a demonized plant with asian origins?
It wasn't slang. Not in Mexico. We need not whitewash everything just because it gives us a better, less guilty feeling. And I absolutely disagree, as someone who's obviously pro-endprohibition, that legal use DE facto systemic wrongs constitute because the law opted for the term. The moment you ban the use of the term, you wipe the Mexican heritage of the term away because you need to erase the bad history around it. It's American stigma it's not a worldwide racist persuasion. Your historical errors are not everyone's.
There's better ways to deal with that than worldwide stigmatizing a term which has historical importance before 8 decades of propaganda.
The americanization is Hearst at work. Truly racist propaganda. The term... see wiki entry.
Should it be removed from American legal texts? Yes, most likely since never used before in anything official (think medical compendium). Should the term be “erased”... no, it’s history and absolutely not just racially biased.
PS: I wrote the post linked for Gore Files. It's wrong, in fact the earliest prohibition started as early as 1906, towards the end of the century before already actually. Reefer Madness was propaganda to protect commercial interest but the war on weed was since long going already.
Also of note: the first Geneva Convention excluded male plants from prohibition in the draft.
Had account mixup due to diff devices lol.
Bonus: what will/should these legal places do?
Where are you there in 1900, what do you mean it wasn’t slang ,where does the word come from what does it mean? You’re missing the whole point, cannabis has nothing to do with Mexico ....not before the 1800s. It would be appropriate to use the word ganja that’s the Indian word cannabis does not belong to Mexico it should not have a Mexican word associated with it woul be like calling pizza “tomato pie” in Italy.
When people come with that supremacist pedestal
You’re missing your own point. And big time even.
The propagation of the term marijuana/marihuana in this article’s context has everything to do with Mexico since that was exactly the demographic Hearst and Reefer Madness were geared against.
Another point you’re missing is that you are seemingly against historical cultural preservation.
Don’t worry, I’ve long accepted that in today’s society in this topic I’m on the losing side. But that does not take away that I am on the wrong side of preserving people’s own history rather than erasing it because we cocked up.
We already cocked up enough times to continue our imperial supremacist bullshit and continue telling others what of theirs is not appropriate and what they should adopt/accept instead. Because... that’s not appropriate.
PS: Spanish is a widespread language in the USA. The Indians didn’t import marijuana, neither did the Chinese so ganja, which itself is a bastard term, would not apply either. Neither are prominent languages either.
Marijuana, the term, is Spanish, the term used by those who brought the thing there’s no need to dig deeper just so you get away from that guilty feeling, it doesn’t fly like that. Stop erasing cultures because that’s the whole point to grasp.
Also, stop calling fries chips or freedom fries because they are fries, nothing else, right. Same logic and yes, I’m Belgian so I darn know what fries are.
Also my Mexican friends call it “Mota”.
I’ll check that(halperin) out, thanks for sharing
Very informative article man!
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