Cannabis regulation is a tool of white fear that marginalizes minorities.
Mike Schuster 21, Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at Terry College of Business at UGA; Robert Bird, Professor Business Law, Eversource Energy Chair in Business Ethics at the School of Business at the University of Connecticut, Spring 2021, “Legal Strategy During Legal Uncertainty: The Case of Cannabis Regulation,” Stanford Journal of Law, Business, and Finance, 26(2), p. 367, Lexis, kav
The history of cannabis regulation is tainted by racism and xenophobia. The first modern attempts at criminalization coincided with an influx of Mexican immigrants to the United States. 21 The public began to associate the increase in cannabis consumption with this immigration, and the stereotypes that Mexicans are lazy and dangerous were tied to cannabis use. 22 Opponents also argued that cannabis made white women vulnerable to black men's lust and encouraged [black people] blacks and Mexicans to perpetrate violent crimes. 23 Cannabis's alternative name - marijuana - was used specifically to stoke fear and foreignness in American citizens about the otherwise banal-sounding cannabis plant. 24As a mid-century commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics infamously opined: "There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., 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." 25 Cannabis prohibition was as much an invidious cultural expression of white fear as it was a legal prohibition of a supposedly dangerous drug.