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... hough his mind, that his mother and father were plotting to cut off his arms and legs as soon as they got up in the morning. This horrible obsession fixed itself in his mind; and so real was this imagined threat to him, that he decided the only thing to do was kill them first, while they slept. (reefer madness. org) This really was a case in Florida at the time. The important details about the book forgot to leave out were that Victor had suffered from serious mental problems. His parents were first cousins cannot be overlooked as the main cause of Victors mental problems.
The claim that marijuana drove Victor to kill was made by the author of the book, no doubt looking to sell as many copies as possible. Shock factor is the most important tool for government propaganda. Their aim is to depict marijuana as so evil that people will not try it objectively, and form their own opinion. This unfounded American fear of marijuana is still described currently as; a problem of increasing retreat in the face of complex, difficult problems to blob thinking, of insisting at the earliest possible moment that everything is all good or all bad and defining good as not bad and bad as not good. (Schroeder, ? ? ? ? ) A slinger set the tone for marijuana popular opinion in this country. But no visual force has been more destructive to the image of marijuana than the 1936 propaganda movie Refer Madness. The cover of the poster reads, women cry for it, men die for it!
and other slogans like the sweet pill that makes life bitter. These are simply outrageous claims about the drug, coupled that with the fact that in the movie marijuana is closely associated with heroin. The two were the most common illicit drugs of the time. One begins to find that such gross exaggerations about pot are very detrimental to publics opinion.
Films of the time were supposed to discourage vice and promote virtue. To achieve turning marijuana into as a vice, drug czars and movie makers demonized its use. Heroin was the only other widely available illicitly used drug of the time. To discourage teens from any drug use Reefer Madness lumped marijuana and heroin next to each other. A deadly association of the two drugs by the viewer was expected. The bias of the film seems humorous new with quotes like; In the past we have had officers of this department shot and killed by marihuana addicts and we have traced the act of murder directly to the influence of marihuana, with no other motive.
We have found from long experience and dealing with this type of criminal that marihuana is probably the most dangerous of all our narcotic drugs. - J. F. Taylor, Chief of L. A. P. D, 1933 (online pot.
org/Reefer Madness / quotes . htm) Marijuana was portrayed as a deadly sadistic addictive drug. Beautiful movie star actresses of the time were considered signs of lust. The government up until this point had used minorities, health risks, heroin, and tales of violent criminals to convince the public weed is an evil plant.
This quote by Los Angeles chief of police aims to convince the public that weed is the most evil of all illicit drugs. How could such misinformation be tolerated with? Addiction research of the time mainly focused on alcohol and heroin. Subsequently because of marijuana's prohibition it got lumped into the class of narcotics considered dangerous and addictive.
Most people of the time did not have first hand experience with weed. If they saw one of these films before trying the drug than surely it would bias their opinion of the supposed drug experience. To be in a different state of consciousness for the first time is admittedly a scary experience. Government propaganda of the time helped taint the general public against weed. The misinformation could have led to two possible outcomes. First, a first time user of marijuana could enjoy the experience and thus take the governments warnings as completely false.
So what was to stop people from assuming all illicit drugs, including heroin, were equally as mild a narcotic? Popular opinion about illicit drugs came directly as a result of the governments propaganda. Prohibition pioneers traveled all over the country helped sway public with popular propaganda (Musto, 1999). Decriminalization removes the consumer -- the marijuana smoker -- from the criminal justice system, while maintaining criminal penalties against those who sell or traffic large quantities of the drug (NORML. com) In 1972, President Richard Nixon's National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse recommended that Congress adopt this policy [decriminalization] nationally in the United States. Since then, more than a dozen government-appointed commissions in both the U.
S. and abroad have recommended similar actions. None of these commissions have endorsed continuing to arrest and jail minor marijuana offenders. (NORML. com) It seems odd that Presidents would assign commissions yet never listen to their findings. This is surprising considering most big wigs in Washington DC will not even give marijuana a respectable change to be argued. The politicians are simply not listening to professional advice on the decriminalization issue.
This problem is the problem inherent with our political system. The average politician. Since 1973, 12 state legislatures -- Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Oregon -- have enacted versions of marijuana decriminalization. In each of these states, marijuana users no longer face jail time (nor in most cases, arrest or criminal records) for the possession or use of small amounts of marijuana. According to national polls, voters overwhelmingly support these policies.
US STUDIES ON MARIJUNANA "In sum, there is little evidence that decriminalization of marijuana use necessarily leads to a substantial increase in marijuana use reducing the penalties for marijuana has virtually no effect on either choice or frequency of the use of alcohol or illegal 'harder' drugs such as cocaine. " - National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine (IOM). 1999. Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base. National Academy Press: Washington, D. C. , 102. - Connecticut Law Review Commission. 1997.
Drug Policy in Connecticut and Strategy Options: Report to the Judiciary Committee of the Connecticut General Assembly. State Capitol: Hartford. "The lack of decriminalization might have encouraged greater use of drugs that are even more dangerous than marijuana. The available evidence indicates that the decriminalization of marijuana possession had little or no impact on rates of use. - K. Model. 1993. The effect of marijuana decriminalization on hospital emergency room episodes: 1975 - 1978. Journal of the American Statistical Association 88: 737 - 747, as cited by the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine in Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base. [ 6 ] - E.
Single. 1989. The Impact of Marijuana Decriminalization: An Update. Journal of Public Health 10: 456 - 466. decriminalization has had virtually no effect either on the marijuana use or on related attitudes and beliefs about marijuana use among American young people.
The data show no evidence of any increase, relative to the control states, in the proportion of the age group who ever tried marijuana. In fact, both groups of experimental states showed a small, cumulative net decline in annual prevalence after decriminalization. " - L. Johnson et al. 1981. Marijuana Decriminalization: The Impact on Youth 1975 - 1980. Monitoring the Future, Occasional Paper Series, paper 13, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan: Ann Arbor.
Further, decriminalization has proven to be administratively and economically advantageous for state law enforcement efforts. " - D. Maloff. 1981. Review of the effects of decriminalization of marijuana. Contemporary Drug Problems Fall: 307 - 322. "Fear of apprehension, fear of being imprisoned, the cost of cannabis or the difficulty in obtaining cannabis do not appear to exert a strong influence on decisions about cannabis consumption...
Those factors may limit cannabis use among frequent cannabis users, but there is no evidence, as of yet, to support this conjecture. " - D. Weather burn and C. Jones. 2001. Does prohibition deter cannabis use? New South Wales (Australia) Bureau of Crime Statistics: Sydney. BIBLIOGRAPHY Jones, Nick Spliff, A Celebration of Cannabis Culture Schroeder, The politics of Drugs Nowlis, Drugs on the Collage Campus web web web web web
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Research essay sample on Academy Of Sciences Institute Of Medicine
