Use of the drug commonly referred to as marijuana may be a highly debated political topic at the moment, but as the media and the public begin to delve into why marijuana is largely a prohibited substance, many legalization advocates are pointing out that the substance should be referred to as cannabis, not marijuana.
Since marijuana is actually a politicized and derogatory term, not just the name for the green, skunky smelling stuff found on the black market, legalization advocates say that the public should be using the correct terminology. In other words, stop referring to the substance as pot, weed, Mary Jane, ganja, grass and reefer.
But since public support for marijuana legalization is at a record high, does it matter if the name was first used derogatively?
Mexican “marihuana”
Derived from the genus of plants known broadly as cannabis, there are two species of cannabis plants — Cannabis indica and Cannabis sativa — that have been used to treat a variety of medical conditions, including chronic skin disorders, cancer-related weakness and weight loss, chronic pain, Huntington’s disease, sleep disorders, eye disease, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, chronic pain, and multiple sclerosis.
Used by almost every culture for some combination of religious, medicinal or recreational purposes, the plant the world knows today as marijuana, was referred to as “cannabis,” a shortened version of the plant’s formal name, until the Mexican Revolution began in 1910.
As a result of the war, many Mexican peasants migrated into the U.S., specifically those states on the U.S.-Mexico border, and brought their drug of choice, “marihuana” with them. But due to large bouts of anti-immigrant sentiment, which intensified during the Great Depression, the U.S. began enacting arguably racist marijuana prohibition laws in order to curb the behavior of the immigrant populations who used the drug.
In order to convince the American public that they should fear a substance that many pharmaceutical companies, including Bristol-Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly, had been using in medicines for years to treat illnesses such as insomnia, migraines and rheumatism, the federal government largely referred to the drug as marijuana, so that it would sound Hispanic, foreign and dangerous.
But as attitudes about marijuana use begin to shift to one in which the majority favors legalization, there appears to be a resurgence in the number of people opting to not use the term marijuana, especially since the rest of the world opts to use less politically charged words. Mexicans for example, now refer to the drug as “mota,” “pasto” and “gallo,” while many other Latin American nations now use the term “chala.”
Justin Hartfield is the CEO of Ghost Group, an operating company that owns and manages marijuana technology companies, including Weedmaps, which is like Yelp for marijuana, and serves on the Board of Directors of the National Cannabis Industry Association, the Marijuana Policy Project and National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He told MintPress that while many legalization advocates prefer to use the term cannabis, he sees nothing wrong with the word marijuana.
The biggest reason Hartfield says he prefers to use marijuana to cannabis is because half the country doesn’t know what you’re talking about when you say cannabis.
“When you explain, ‘Oh, it’s marijuana,’ the response is usually ‘why didn’t you just say so.’”
Hartfield says people usually think you’re trying to “pull a fast one over them” when you use the word cannabis.
Although Hartfield recognizes there is a stigma attached to the word marijuana, he says it’s changing, and that most people in California use the term “weed” equally, if not more frequently, than marijuana.
“It’s a moot point,” Hartfield said when asked if legalization advocates should push for the public to refer to the drug as cannabis. “Whether its called, weed, marijuana or cannabis, those names will continue to exist. But what is most important is that the negative connotations are taken out.”
Just like racial integration, Hartfield says the term marijuana will go from having a negative connotation to a positive one — it will just take time.
Where the name “marihuana” originated from remains unknown, but historians do know that the cannabis plant was brought to Mexico from Spain, where the plant was to be cultivated for hemp, since the Spanish did not partake in the plant’s psychoactive properties.
Though there are some theories that the name came from the Spanish pronunciation of a Chinese word, and others that say the plant was named after two girls who lived in a port city in Mexico, one thing is certain — most of the world has chosen to ignore the U.S. request to use the term, since it has such a racially insensitive background.
Racial war on drugs
Harry Anslinger, who was director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 to 1962, was a vocal critic of the drug and traveled across the U.S. to encourage states and the federal government to ban the drug altogether. But it wasn’t just Anslinger who had a racially-charged vendetta against marijuana and its consumers.
According to an article by Eric Schlosser’s 1994 article for the Atlantic on “Reefer Madness,” which has been cited by a best-selling book of the same name, “Police officers in Texas claimed that marijuana incited violent crimes, aroused a ‘lust for blood,’ and gave its users ‘superhuman strength.’ Rumors spread that Mexicans were distributing this ‘killer weed’ to unsuspecting American schoolchildren.”
The media didn’t help lessen the confusion regarding “reefer madness,” as many news outlets reported that many West Indian and Mexican migrants had packed up their marijuana supply and moved to new cities along the Gulf of Mexico, including New Orleans.
A town riddled with jazz musicians, blacks and prostitutes, the media fueled some of the hysteria by referring to marijuana as “locoweed” — a dirty drug that leads to an increase in crime and makes people go crazy. But calling marijuana locoweed was problematic for a variety of reasons, namely that there is a poisonous weed named locoweed that is not related to the cannabis plant at all.
According to a report in Al Jazeera, it’s believed that the first city to prohibit marijuana was El Paso, Texas, which passed a law prohibiting the sale and possession of the drug as early as 1914. And by the early 1930s, 29 states had banned marijuana — most of which were border states with larger immigrant populations — largely after lawmakers convinced the public they should fear the drug and the “brown people” who used it.
Because of this racial aspect to marijuana’s illegal status, many legalization advocates such as John Collins, coordinator of the LSE IDEAS International Drug Policy Project in London, say Anslinger was racist, and that the war on drugs was more of a racial issue than it ever was about the health and safety of marijuana users.
Collins said that while he doesn’t know if he would go so far as to call Anslinger a bigot, he says “he knew that he had to play up people’s fears in order to get federal legislation passed. So when talking to senators with large immigrant populations, it very much helped to portray drugs as something external, something that is invading the U.S.”
But the issue seems to have been complex from the get-go. In 1937, Anslinger had his wish granted when Congress approved the Marijuana Tax Act, which criminalized marijuana possession throughout the U.S.. However, Mexico had passed a prohibition law a full 17 years earlier, citing concerns about what the drug could do to users.
What is hemp?
Although hemp and marijuana are two different “expressions” of the cannabis plant, with one being used for psychoactive and medicinal reasons, while the other is used for nutrition and industrial fiber purposes, both are currently illegal under federal law.
Unlike it’s cannabis cousin, hemp doesn’t have psychoactive properties, so smoking an entire garbage bag filled with hemp will not produce an altered state of consciousness. Yet despite this important detail, the crop was banned under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, making the once most important cash crop in the U.S. economy a Schedule I drug.
Used since the 1600s, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson noted they grew hemp on their land. Betsy Ross used hemp to create the first American flag, and a draft of the Declaration of Independence was written on paper made from hemp.
Like marijuana, state legislatures have pushed for hemp legalization, but many lawmakers and hemp advocates have to explain over and over that hemp is not marijuana. Hartfield says part of the confusion when it comes to the difference between marijuana and hemp is that the government has prohibited the substance for so long that knowledge is at a premium.
While the public may not be entirely savvy with the difference between hemp and marijuana, politicians for the most part are. A report released last March from the Congressional Research Service says that “although marijuana is also a variety of cannabis, it is genetically distinct from industrial hemp and is further distinguished by its use and chemical makeup.”
And since the U.S. is the only industrialized nation in the world that doesn’t allow hemp cultivation, many legalization advocates argue that if anything, the ban only proves how much power corporations have in Washington, since hemp was a major competitor of the paper industry, along with lumber, fossil fuels, steel, plastics, alcohol and food.
Even Henry Ford constructed an early version of the Model-T almost exclusively from the hemp plant. The car even ran on ethanol made from hemp. The car was reportedly so strong, Ford could hit it with an ax and not leave a dent, as hemp is supposedly 10 times stronger than steel, yet one-third the weight.
Because processed hemp creates such strong fibers, the material was also used to build homes, ships, planes and trains. Since its ban, corporations in sectors that oppose the legalization of the plant have seen profits increase.