A Short History of Marijuana in America

Civil Rights have always been high profile issues through the years. Gay rights make the news along with the abortion debate, and everyone hears about the issues. There is one issue though, that keeps its roots beneath the surface of the media for the most part, but is gaining ground ever so swiftly as the years pass by. The issue is the right to use marijuana recreationally and for medical purposes. When someone thinks of a historic civil right, they usually would think of woman’s suffrage, or rights for African Americans to be free. These are major historic civil rights that have been granted to the people after a long and hard fight by these groups. The marijuana movement is still going on today, and its history stretches all the way back to 1937 when it was made federally illegal. The official movement is called the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws, or NORML for short. The group does not demand marijuana to be made legal outright, but asks that these laws are re-evaluated. Their mission statement is to be the voice of Americans who oppose the prohibition of marijuana, and they make the effort to decriminalize the use to stop arrests of innocent Americans, and also push for applying marijuana to the medical treatment of conditions including glaucoma and multiple sclerosis. NORML has only been in existence since the 1970s, but that doesn’t mean that people haven’t been fighting for their right to use marijuana before then.

Concept420.com states that marijuana use is dated back to 6000 B.C., when cannabis seeds were used as food in China. Since then the use of the cannabis plant is widespread and very diverse, the hemp being used to make everything from clothes, rope, food and much more, while the buds of the plant were obviously used for recreational and medical purposes. The cannabis plant was such a useful plant in fact, that the American Government encouraged cultivation of it during World War II, and it was used to create uniforms for the soldiers. This cultivation was done mainly in Kentucky and made up a significant portion of Kentucky’s economy. This was the only time after 1937 that the government allowed the cultivation of the plant, and after the war it was again prohibited.

In the 1600s the view on the marijuana plant was very different than it was viewed post-1937. According to Pete Guither of DrugWarRant.com, the first law for the marijuana plant was enacted in 1619 in Jamestown Colony, Virginia. This law didn’t make the plant illegal, but quite the contrary. It was a law “ordering” all farmers to grow Indian hempseed. In the 1700s you could be jailed for actually not growing the plant during times of shortages, and you could use hemp as a legal tender to pay for supplies, even your taxes! The government went out of their way to encourage the cultivation of the cannabis plant for its many uses. The American flag was in fact made out of hemp back then.