Regarding Erin Schwartz’s excellent Feb. 9 column (“Drug war has turned into race, class conflict”), the drug war’s early beginnings are rooted in a race and class conflict.

The drug war is mainly a war on marijuana, by far the most popular illicit drug. Prior to passage of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 and the subsequent reefer madness campaign, few Americans had heard of marijuana, despite widespread cultivation of industrial hemp. Recreational use was limited to Mexican migrants.

Historians argue the first marijuana laws were a reaction to Mexican laborers taking jobs from whites during the Great Depression. Legislation was passed in large part because of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst’s sensationalist yellow journalism.

Incredibly violent acts were allegedly committed by minorities under marijuana’s influence. Interestingly enough, whites did not begin smoking marijuana until the government started funding reefer madness propaganda. These days the plant is confused with 1960s counterculture, despite mainstream use.

This misguided culture war is dangerous. As the most popular illicit drug, marijuana provides the black market contacts that introduce users to drugs like heroin. Current drug policy is effectively a gateway policy. Given that marijuana is acknowledged by many public health experts to be less harmful than alcohol, it makes no sense to perpetuate flawed policies that finance organized crime and facilitate hard drug use. Unfortunately, mainstream politicians, many of them former pot smokers, are more prone to counterproductive preaching than cost-effective pragmatism.

Robert Sharpe
program officer at
The Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation,
Washington, D.C.