Racist past of the word marijuana raises new concerns
Is the word marijuana racist?
It’s a long-standing debate in the cannabis world, but the question is now slipping into the mainstream as the drug is on the edge of becomingly legal for recreational use. Many people aren’t aware of the history of the term marijuana, which is linked to campaigns in the U.S. in the 1930s to demonize the plant by associating it with Mexican immigrants.
Halifax Coun. Shawn Cleary recently created controversy when he declared he would no longer use the word. “Let’s do what we can to not perpetuate racism,” he said on Twitter.
The response from some was a big eye roll.
“Next year it will be legal to smoke it. But not say it. Only in Canada!” replied fellow Coun. Matt Whitman on Twitter.
Whitman ended up apologizing for the language he employed when he tried to explain his stance on CTV. Whitman said the term marijuana can’t be racist because “Mexican” is not a race.
The intensity of the debate is an indication of a growing controversy over the word. Some users, activists and businesspeople deliberately choose “cannabis,” the term for the plant, instead. It doesn’t have negative connotations.
Health Canada, which has regulated medical marijuana since 2001, stopped using the word marijuana in its most recent set of rules, the Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations, adopted in 2016.
Some argue that the word marijuana will fade, a relic of a soonto-be-forgotten “reefer madness” world that demonized pot.
But others defend its use, saying the term no longer has pejorative associations.
The word marijuana has Mexican- Spanish roots. It wasn’t commonly used in the U.S. until the 1920s and ’30s, when states began to pass laws against the cannabis plant. At the time, there was a growing wave of sentiment against Mexican immigrants entering the country. The immigrants brought pot smoking with them.
The term “marijuana,” sometimes spelled “marihuana,” sounded foreign. It was used by “racist politicians who first criminalized cannabis because they wanted to underscore that it was a Latino, particularly Mexican, vice,” according to the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators, a group that represents the interests of Hispanic state lawmakers in the U.S.
During the Depression, Americans were searching for someone to blame, says an article about the origin of the term in Leafly, a cannabis news and review website.
“Due to the influx of immigrants (particularly in the South) and the rise of suggestive jazz music, many white Americans began to treat cannabis (and, arguably, the Blacks and Mexican immigrants who consumed it) as a foreign substance used to corrupt the minds and bodies of low-class individuals.”
The use of the term increased dramatically in the ’30s, when it was systematically employed by Harry Anslinger, the director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who waged a three-decade long campaign against cannabis.
Anslinger used the term “marijuana” to reinforce the plant’s “foreign” identity.
“Marijuana is the most violencecausing drug in the history of mankind,” Anslinger said in testimony before Congress. “Most marijuana smokers are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage.”
The word marijuana has become a slur, writes Erik McLaren in Herb, an online magazine covering cannabis news and culture. It’s time the word is dropped, he argues. “It’s not as though people today who call weed ‘marijuana’ are racist. But, that word is a celebration of prohibition, and a gross reminder of racial prejudice. Plus, it’s victory for Harry Anslinger.”