Cannabis Prohibition: The Marihuana Tax Act

Let’s go back for a minute and talk about the Marihuana Tax Act—the first piece of legislature that officially prohibited the possession and use of cannabis. (And the first time the federal government as a whole took an official stance on ‘the marijuana problem’.) Up until 1937 hemp was a popular crop and farmers were encouraged—and in some cases even required—to grow it. Hemp fiber was commonly used to make paper and rope, and during colonial times, when European explorers were crossing the seas in search of new trade routes, sails for ships. Doctors were able to prescribe cannabis to their patients and pharmacies carried cannabis products on their shelves. But after the prohibition on alcohol failed, blame for the degenerate counterculture was shifted from liquor to marijuana—also note that law enforcement began to use the Mexican word for cannabis as a way to sow fear and distrust. The villainous figure that was the first director of the Federal Narcotics Bureau (FNB) which had been created in 1930 by the Hoover administration, Harry J. Anslinger found support from prominent American entrepreneurs such as William Randolph Hearst, Andrew Mellon, and the Du Pont family—who, it should be noted, had strong motives for harming the hemp industry. (Hearst had significant timber holdings which were more valuable without competition from hemp paper production, and Mellon and the Du Ponts were heavily invested in the new synthetic material nylon).

House bill 6385 was introduced before the 75th Congress’s Ways and Means Committee by North Carolina Representative Robert L. Doughton in April of 1937. The bill was authored by Harry Anslinger, and was meant to deter cannabis use by taxing it at an exorbitant rate—it did not outlaw it altogether. Anslinger used rhetoric and hyperbole to convince members of congress that the ‘killer weed from Mexico’ presented an imminent threat to the youth of America, supporting his assertions with his infamous scrapbook of tabloid articles known as the ‘Gore File’. Because the Mexican word ‘marihuana’ was used, many members of Congress weren’t even sure what the bill was about—when asked, House Majority Leader Sam Rayburn replied ‘It has something to do with a thing called marijuana. I think it is a narcotic of some kind.’ And it wasn’t just Congress that was confused, Dr William Woodward testified before the Ways and Means Committee on behalf of the American Medical Association (AMA)—the only dissenting voice heard—that physicians had been largely unaware that marihuana and cannabis were one and the same. Once they realized this, the AMA opposed the bill because of the taxes it would impose on prescribing physicians and pharmacies—and out of the rational fear that it would stifle any medical use of the plant.

Congress approved the bill in early August, and on October 1, 1937 the Marihuana Tax Act went into effect. Within days the first two arrests on marijuana charges were made. Moses Baca, 23, was arrested for possession of a quarter ounce of marijuana on October 3rd, and Samuel R. Caldwell, 57, was arrested for selling 3 marijuana cigarettes on October 5th. Both were sentenced to serve time at Leavenworth Prison (18 months and 4 years respectively), and Caldwell was fined $1,000. Anslinger himself was present at their trials in Denver, CO, and afterword praised the prosecutors in an article published by the Denver Post. Many have argued that the arrest of Moses Baca—a man of Mexican heritage—for possession of a small quantity of cannabis, when the law was supposedly meant to target distributors, is early proof of the racial bias inherent in the war on drugs. (Many also find the use of the Mexican term marijuana telling in and of itself.) In the mid 1960s Timothy Leary, the famous LSD activist, was arrested in Texas for violating the Marihuana Tax Act. Leary fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court, and on May 19, 1969 the Court ruled the Marihuana Tax Act was unconstitutional because it violated a citizen’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination—a small step, but in the right direction.

To read more about America’s cannabis prohibition check out our earlier posts The Beginning of America’s Cannabis Prohibition and Cannabis Prohibition: The LaGuardia Report!