These quotes are from Harry Anslinger, the man uber-racist FDR dispatched to put brown-skinned people in jail not for drugs, but for not having one certain little stamp proving they paid a tax; an economic crime.
By 1937, many of today’s drug companies made hundreds of popular and efficacious medicines dispensed by pharmacists containing Cannabis for over a hundred years. Stopping them was one reason FDA was created by the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.
But the cat was already out of the bag; the American Medical Association actually argued against the ban on Cannabis as their doctors knew what humans have known for thousands of years, that it indeed has substantial medical value. Even in government-run PubMed, the first paper on the medical value of Cannabis was 1840, almost a hundred years earlier. And there’s not just one paper back then, but dozens.
The following statement is the genesis of FDA and DEA’s later Schedule 1 and the lie of Cannabis having “no medical value:”
“In June of this year, at Geneva, an international committee of experts in going over the reports received from all over the world said that the reports thus far indicate that the medical value of cannabis derivatives is very doubtful.”
The cruel irony of this statement is profound because today the opioid crisis is a leading cause of death while marijuana has been shown to be an exit drug for opiate addiction and has never killed anyone:
“In medical schools, the physician-to-be is taught that without opium he would be like a one-armed man. That is true, because you cannot get along without opium. But here we have drug that is not like opium. Opium has all of the good of Dr. Jekyll and all the evil of Mr. Hyde. This drug is entirely the monster Hyde, the harmful effect of which cannot be measured.”
Even Harry himself quashed that silly Gateway Theory, back in 1937 no less:
“When asked the question, ‘Is marihuana a starter drug?’ Harry Anslinger answered: ‘No, sir; I have not heard of a case of that kind. I think it is an entirely different class. The marihuana addict does not go in that direction.’“
bUt PrOhIbItIoN iSn’T rAcIsIsT!:
“Hearst newspapers nationwide in 1935: ‘Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice.’“