Marijuana Prohibition
Marijuana prohibition only began in America in the 1920s and 1930s. Up until that point, it was completely legal and few considered it a social problem. It was during the early 1900s that our culture began to view "intoxication" by drugs--including alcohol--as something we should be trying to stop. There have been many studies which show that the prohibition of marijuana actually began a steady increase in its use that continues today. Very few Americans had even heard about marijuana when it was first federally prohibited in 1937. Today, nearly 70 million Americans admit to having tried it, (from National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Main Findings 1993, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1995). We can all agree that alcohol prohibition was a failure, but our culture cannot see that the same is true with marijuana. This is especially disturbing considering that every comprehensive, objective government commission that has examined the marijuana phenomenon throughout the past 100 years has recommended that adults should not be criminalized for using marijuana. For example: Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report, 1894; Panama Canal Zone Military Investigation, 1929; The Marihuana Problem in the City of New York (LaGuardia Committee Report), 1944; Marihuana, A Signal of Misunderstanding (Nixon-Shafer Report), 1972; An Analysis of Marihuana Policy (National Academy of Sciences), 1982; and others
There is much more to come on this matter.
I recently took a trip to Amsterdam where their attitude towards marijuana is much more reasonable.