Marijuana is racist

[Sparko]

You can't make this stuff up.

The word "Marijuana" is now apparently racist.

The Washington State Legislature recently passed a bill replacing the word "marijuana" with "cannabis" in all state laws, citing the alleged racist origins of the Spanish word.

"The term ‘marijuana’ itself is pejorative and racist," said Democratic state Rep. Melanie Morgan claimed during 2021 testimony regarding House Bill 1210, which she sponsored, according to local CBS affiliate KIRO 7.

"As recreational marijuana use became more popular, it was negatively associated with Mexican immigrants," Morgan explained. "Even though it seems simple because it’s just one word, the reality is we’re healing the wrongs that were committed against Black and Brown people around cannabis."
https://news.yahoo.com/washington-st...150221155.html

Marijuana: is it time to stop using a word with racist roots?

As marijuana arrests disproportionately affect minorities, controversy grows over a term prohibitionists hoped would appeal to xenophobia

It’s been known as dope, grass, herb, gage, tea, reefer, chronic. But the most familiar name for the dried buds of the cannabis plant, and one of the few older terms still in use today, is “marijuana”.

For the prohibitionists of nearly a century ago, the exotic-sounding word emphasized the drug’s foreignness to white Americans and appealed to the xenophobia of the time. As with other racist memes, a common refrain was that marijuana would lead to miscegenation.

Harry Anslinger, the bureaucrat who led the prohibition effort, is credited as saying back then: “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”

Today “cannabis” and “marijuana” are terms used more or less interchangeably in the industry, but a vocal contingent prefers the less historically fraught “cannabis”. At a time of intense interest in past injustices, some say “marijuana” is a racist word that should fall out of use.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/...annabis-racism

So, shouldn't "Taco" and "Burrito" be racist also since those words are associated with Mexicans?

[seer]

So, shouldn't "Taco" and "Burrito" be racist also since those words are associated with Mexicans?

And Montezuma's revenge...And do I have to give my sombrero back?

[Sparko]

And Montezuma's revenge...

And Spanish. Spanish is racist since on this continent it is a language that is mostly associated with brown people and immigrants.

[rogue06]

You can't make this stuff up.

The word "Marijuana" is now apparently racist.

The Washington State Legislature recently passed a bill replacing the word "marijuana" with "cannabis" in all state laws, citing the alleged racist origins of the Spanish word.

"The term ‘marijuana’ itself is pejorative and racist," said Democratic state Rep. Melanie Morgan claimed during 2021 testimony regarding House Bill 1210, which she sponsored, according to local CBS affiliate KIRO 7.

"As recreational marijuana use became more popular, it was negatively associated with Mexican immigrants," Morgan explained. "Even though it seems simple because it’s just one word, the reality is we’re healing the wrongs that were committed against Black and Brown people around cannabis."
https://news.yahoo.com/washington-st...150221155.html

Marijuana: is it time to stop using a word with racist roots?

As marijuana arrests disproportionately affect minorities, controversy grows over a term prohibitionists hoped would appeal to xenophobia

It’s been known as dope, grass, herb, gage, tea, reefer, chronic. But the most familiar name for the dried buds of the cannabis plant, and one of the few older terms still in use today, is “marijuana”.

For the prohibitionists of nearly a century ago, the exotic-sounding word emphasized the drug’s foreignness to white Americans and appealed to the xenophobia of the time. As with other racist memes, a common refrain was that marijuana would lead to miscegenation.

Harry Anslinger, the bureaucrat who led the prohibition effort, is credited as saying back then: “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”

Today “cannabis” and “marijuana” are terms used more or less interchangeably in the industry, but a vocal contingent prefers the less historically fraught “cannabis”. At a time of intense interest in past injustices, some say “marijuana” is a racist word that should fall out of use.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/...annabis-racism

So, shouldn't "Taco" and "Burrito" be racist also since those words are associated with Mexicans?

I thought that the folks along the Pacific Coast thought that marij... cannabis was like, you know, kinda like cool, man. So... [what was I saying? oh yeah!] So, um, like why are they now saying that it is a bad thing that something that is, like, you know, good, is associated with Mexicans?


smiley stoned.gif

[Sparko]

I thought that the folks along the Pacific Coast thought that marij... cannabis was like, you know, kinda like cool, man. So... [what was I saying? oh yeah!] So, um, like why are they now saying that it is a bad thing that something that is, like, you know, good, is associated with Mexicans?


smiley stoned.gif

Duuuuude!

[rogue06]

Duuuuude!

Like, dude... how can one, you know, pass dis here blunt to a hook?

[Sparko]

Like, dude... how can one, you know, pass dis here blunt to a hook?

Stop harshing my mellow! This thread is like, serious stuff. Y'know?

[rogue06]

Stop harshing my mellow! This thread is like, serious stuff. Y'know?

Buzzkill.

[Gondwanaland]

You can't make this stuff up.

The word "Marijuana" is now apparently racist.

The Washington State Legislature recently passed a bill replacing the word "marijuana" with "cannabis" in all state laws, citing the alleged racist origins of the Spanish word.

"The term ‘marijuana’ itself is pejorative and racist," said Democratic state Rep. Melanie Morgan claimed during 2021 testimony regarding House Bill 1210, which she sponsored, according to local CBS affiliate KIRO 7.

"As recreational marijuana use became more popular, it was negatively associated with Mexican immigrants," Morgan explained. "Even though it seems simple because it’s just one word, the reality is we’re healing the wrongs that were committed against Black and Brown people around cannabis."
https://news.yahoo.com/washington-st...150221155.html

Marijuana: is it time to stop using a word with racist roots?

As marijuana arrests disproportionately affect minorities, controversy grows over a term prohibitionists hoped would appeal to xenophobia

It’s been known as dope, grass, herb, gage, tea, reefer, chronic. But the most familiar name for the dried buds of the cannabis plant, and one of the few older terms still in use today, is “marijuana”.

For the prohibitionists of nearly a century ago, the exotic-sounding word emphasized the drug’s foreignness to white Americans and appealed to the xenophobia of the time. As with other racist memes, a common refrain was that marijuana would lead to miscegenation.

Harry Anslinger, the bureaucrat who led the prohibition effort, is credited as saying back then: “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”

Today “cannabis” and “marijuana” are terms used more or less interchangeably in the industry, but a vocal contingent prefers the less historically fraught “cannabis”. At a time of intense interest in past injustices, some say “marijuana” is a racist word that should fall out of use.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/...annabis-racism

So, shouldn't "Taco" and "Burrito" be racist also since those words are associated with Mexicans?

I mean, they're not actually wrong. The push to call it marijuana was indeed driven by anti-Mexican, anti-immigrant sentiment. Before then all the medical, government, etc. lkterature called it Cannabis.

a good article on the topic:

Criminalized, Decriminalized, Recriminalized

THE first American law pertaining to marijuana, passed by the Virginia Assembly in 1619, required every farmer to grow it. Hemp was deemed not only a valuable commodity but also a strategic necessity; its fibers were used to make sails and riggings, and its by-products were transformed into oakum for the caulking of wooden ships.

Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland eventually allowed hemp to be exchanged as legal tender, in order to stimulate its production and relieve Colonial money shortages. Although a number of the Founding Fathers, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, later grew hemp on their estates, there is no evidence that they were aware of the plant's psychoactive properties.

The domestic production of hemp flourished, especially in Kentucky, until after the Civil War, when it was replaced by imports from Russia and by other domestic materials.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century marijuana became a popular ingredient in patent medicines and was sold openly at pharmacies in one-ounce herbal packages and in alcohol-based tinctures as a cure for migraines, rheumatism, and insomnia.

The political upheaval in Mexico that culminated in the Revolution of 1910 led to a wave of Mexican immigration to states throughout the American Southwest. The prejudices and fears that greeted these peasant immigrants also extended to their traditional means of intoxication: smoking marijuana. 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. Sailors and West Indian immigrants brought the practice of smoking marijuana to port cities along the Gulf of Mexico. In New Orleans newspaper articles associated the drug with African-Americans, jazz musicians, prostitutes, and underworld whites. "The Marijuana Menace," as sketched by anti-drug campaigners, was personified by inferior races and social deviants.

In 1914 El Paso, Texas, enacted perhaps the first U.S. ordinance banning the sale or possession of marijuana; by 1931 twenty-nine states had outlawed marijuana, usually with little fanfare or debate. Amid the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment fueled by the Great Depression, public officials from the Southwest and from Louisiana petitioned the Treasury Department to outlaw marijuana.

Their efforts were aided by a lurid propaganda campaign. "Murder Weed Found Up and Down Coast," one headline warned; "Deadly Marijuana Dope Plant Ready For Harvest That Means Enslavement of California Children." Harry J. Anslinger, the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, at first doubted the seriousness of the problem and the need for federal legislation, but soon he pursued the goal of a nationwide marijuana prohibition with enormous gusto. In public appearances and radio broadcasts Anslinger asserted that the use of this "evil weed" led to killings, sex crimes, and insanity. He wrote sensational magazine articles with titles like "Marijuana: Assassin of Youth."

In 1937 Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act, effectively criminalizing the possession of marijuana throughout the United States. A week after it went into effect, a fifty-eight-year-old marijuana dealer named Samuel R. Caldwell became the first person convicted under the new statute. Although marijuana offenders had been treated leniently under state and local laws, Judge J. Foster Symes, of Denver, lectured Caldwell on the viciousness of marijuana and sentenced him to four hard years at Leavenworth Penitentiary.

It's not a mistake pr coincidence that the term used by the people who were demonized over use of it, became the term used instead of what had been previously used.

And if you still have any doubt, here's a Newspaper editorial that was presented by the Narcotics Commisioner Harry Anslinger when he testified before congress in 1937, shortly before cannabis was made illegal:

"I wish I could show you what a small marihuana cigaret can do to one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents. That's why our problem is so great; the greatest percentage of our population is composed of Spanish-speaking persons, most of who [sic! such an enthusiastic sic!] are low mentally, because of social and racial conditions."

Yeah......


Now, whether Washington's Legislature actually cares or is just tryong to get brownie points, that can certainly be questioned (I suspect a number are in the latter camp).

But the mainstreaming of the term "marijuana" in place of cannabis during the push to illegality it, while preying on fears of the populace of immigrants/Mexicans trying to kill their kids with the "locoweed" .... that can't really be denied as legitimately racist.

[Sparko]

I mean, they're not actually wrong. The push to call it marijuana was indeed driven by anti-Mexican, anti-immigrant sentiment. Before then all the medical, government, etc. lkterature called it Cannabis.

a good article on the topic:


It's not a mistake pr coincidence that the term used by the people who were demonized over use of it, became the term used instead of what had been previously used.

And if you still have any doubt, here's a Newspaper editorial that was presented by the Narcotics Commisioner Harry Anslinger when he testified before congress in 1937, shortly before cannabis was made illegal:


Yeah......


Now, whether Washington's Legislature actually cares or is just tryong to get brownie points, that can certainly be questioned (I suspect a number are in the latter camp).

But the mainstreaming of the term "marijuana" in place of cannabis during the push to illegality it, while preying on fears of the populace of immigrants/Mexicans trying to kill their kids with the "locoweed" .... that can't really be denied as legitimately racist.

so are you in the liberals pocket now?

Lick them boots!

[seer]

And Spanish. Spanish is racist since on this continent it is a language that is mostly associated with brown people and immigrants.

But Spanish people come from Europe....

[Gondwanaland]

so are you in the liberals pocket now?

Lick them boots!

The facts are the facts, my friend.

[Sparko]

But Spanish people come from Europe....

The white people forced it on the natives!

[Sparko]

The facts are the facts, my friend.

I was just messing with you. But the fact is that nobody living today thought the word Marijuana was racist or thought of it as derogatory towards Mexicans, until some liberal dug up some ancient history with the express purpose of being woke. I think liberals look for anything they can complain about just to feel relevant. If they can find a way to make someone a victim and then rail against the injustice of it, or if they can find a way to call out something as racist, they will do so. No matter how ridiculous it happens to be. Milk is white so it must be racist. White people selling tacos is "cultural appropriation." Cinco de Mayo is racist. Taco Tuesday is racist. Peanut butter sandwiches are racist.

[Gondwanaland]

I was just messing with you. But the fact is that nobody living today thought the word Marijuana was racist or thought of it as derogatory towards Mexicans, until some liberal dug up some ancient history with the express purpose of being woke. I think liberals look for anything they can complain about just to feel relevant. If they can find a way to make someone a victim and then rail against the injustice of it, or if they can find a way to call out something as racist, they will do so. No matter how ridiculous it happens to be. Milk is white so it must be racist. White people selling tacos is "cultural appropriation." Cinco de Mayo is racist. Taco Tuesday is racist. Peanut butter sandwiches are racist.

Oh, certainly ( though those well versed in the history understand the racism involved). I have little doubt most of the liberals are just looking for something new to latch onto and look good doing.