Campos - Mexicans and the Origins of Marijuana Prohibition in the United States; a reassessment

The Mexican Hypothesis

• The Mexican Hypothesis holds that Mexican migrant workers brought marijuana to the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century, and that marijuana prohibition was a racially-motivated effort to criminalize and control these workers. This theory suggests that the perception of marijuana as a dangerous substance was influenced by xenophobia and anti-Mexican sentiment.

• The Mexican hypothesis became crucial to broader understandings of the War on Drugs and its history in the U.S.

Reasons for Constructing Constraints on Marijuana

• The paradigm has reinforced the general belief that drug prohibitions are a product of racism or a tool wielded to oppress labor in the U.S., where, in addition to the association between Mexicans and marijuana, opium was once linked to the Chinese and and cocaine to the African Americans.

Marajuana and the 60’s

• An herb whose effects contrasted so sharply with the “psychologically numbing” alcohol of the mainstream

• The natural wonder whose persecution was just another injustice blindly accepted by the anesthetized conformists

• The prohibition of marijuana in 1937 demonstrated how public polocies sometimes result from from “moral entrepreneurship”, with the main entrepreneurship here being Harry Anslinger, the controversial head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN)

The Anslinger Hypothesis

• The Anslinger Hypothesis posits that Harry Anslinger played a key role in shaping public perception of marijuana as a dangerous substance, using propaganda to fuel fears and support prohibition. This theory was initially employed by scholars to explain the origin of the Marijuana Tax Act and later became fundamental in analyzing the political and social dynamics surrounding drug policy in the United States.

Marijuana Tax Act

A 1937 law that imposed strict regulations and taxes on the sale and use of marijuana, effectively criminalizing its use in the United States.

Mexicans

• Mexicans were important in that prejudice against them that led to the invention in the American southwest of the “killer weed” mythology, and the fear that this Mexican “killer weed” was now infecting children.

• This evidence that Mexican ideas were important, rather than Mexican immigrant Marijuana smokers, led to the demonization of marijuana and its association with violence and moral decay.

• Mexican use of Marijuana was minimal in reality (mostly only used by prisoners or army men) and it had been available in the U.S. before Mexican immigration

• Mexicans had negative views of the effects of marijuana

Campos’ 6 Hypothesies

1 - If something important was introduced with respect to marijuana during this period, perhaps it was the practice of smoking marijuana rather than swallowing it

2 - Some of the emphasis by sources on Mexican users may have been a product of the same kinds of prejudice that today led to African-Americans being disproportionately associated with coca, and their similarly disproportionate targeting by police for drug-law violations

3 - Today’s heroin market demonstrates how Mexican immigrants can become heavily involved in the trafficking of drugs that they themselves rarely use and the use of which they deem morally repugnant simply due to the economic opportunity the market affords.

4 - Surley some of the marijuana users identified in the early 20th century were more accurately defined by their social and economic status than by their ethnicity, suggesting that class issues played a critical role in marijuana prohibition.

5 - The smuggling of pharmaceutical cannabis from the U.S. into Mexico might partly explain why there was a disproportionately large market in El Paso during the Mexican Revolution

6 - The apparent boost in marijuana use in the United States during the 1910s. might simply be explained by the prohibition of various intoxicants at the time