Marijuana Tax Act Passed – War on Drugs Escalates
The 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, widely regarded as a major milestone in the U.S. policy of criminalizing drugs, was passed on this day.
The criminalization of drugs escalated into a “war on drugs” in the 1970s, fostering mass incarceration and resulting in many civil liberties violations. The law was prompted in part by a national panic over the dangers of marijuana, as can be seen in the now famous (and ludicrous) 1936 film Reefer Madness (see below).
See the ACLU report on marijuana arrests and the war on drugs published on June 3, 2013, which documented the dramatic increase in the number of arrests for mere possession of marijuana and the disparate number of African Americans and Latinos who have been arrested and imprisoned for possession.
The “war on drugs” continued for decades, with different emphases. In the late 1970s it escalated with an emphasis on longer and harsher prison sentences, which resulted in what law professor Michele Alexander labelled “mass incarceration.”
Read: Larry Sloman: Reefer Madness The History of Marijuana in America (1998)
Learn more about the war on drugs: http://www.drugpolicy.org/
Learn more at NORML: http://norml.org/
Watch the famous marijuana scare movie, Reefer Madness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54xWo7ITFbg
Read the 2013 ACLU report on marijuana arrests and the war on drugs:
https://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform/war-marijuana-black-and-white-report
Learn about mass incarceration: Michele Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, New Preface ed. (2020)