Legalize It (Peter Tosh, 1976)
Recently, members of the Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) did something absurd. They formed a working group dedicated to the legalization of marijuana.
For a socialist organization whose agenda is crowded with important issues, it may seem unnecessary to organize for a policy change that already has broad support from a supermajority of Wisconsinites. Yet because Wisconsin’s spiritual bumper sticker remains “Where Majority Rule Goes to Die” it is still one of only six states in the country with a total ban. Assembly leader Robin Vos recently declared, with the smug indifference that comes from unchallengeable power, that he sees no path forward to the legalization of marijuana. This is especially absurd because it’s almost as easy to smell marijuana outside a working-class bar in West Allis as it is to smell it being used legally in downtown San Francisco.
As a tribute to this absurdity, our Leader Socialist Song of the Week is “Legalize It”, by reggae master and marijuana aficionado Peter Tosh.
Drug prohibition laws started coming into effect in the early 20th century, riding on the coattails of the Temperance Movement. There was a complex of social factors leading into the drive for regulation of mind altering substances, and for the continuation of these regulations. One factor has been the need of capitalism for clean, sober laborers starting bright and early every morning, and the related need for reliable social reproduction of labor, i.e, the making of the next generation of workers. Driven by the rise in illicit drug use since the 1960s, the modern demand for the former, is reflected in use of employee drug testing, which started in the mid 1980s, and in studies noting the economic costs of drug use; and in the latter in studies with an emphasis on the destructiveness to families that comes from addiction and the “Just Say No” advertising campaign, also started in the 80s.
For sure, there were real drug problems throughout the 19th and early 20th century. Opium was a common ingredient in patent medicine, for example, and quality control was nonexistent. However, many drug laws came into existence more because of who used, or were thought to use, a particular drug, rather than any particular quality of the drug itself. This was accompanied by histrionic accounts of madness, rage, and even temporary superpowers that were believed to come from the use of certain drugs, or that if “your kids” got mixed up with the “wrong crowd”, it could destroy their promising lives [1]. This was the case with marijuana.
While there were a number of state ordinances against marijuana use starting in 1911, it came under federal prohibition in 1937 with the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act. The origin of the law has been linked to the association of marijuana use with Mexican immigrant labor, though more recent research argues that there’s not much evidence that Mexicans actually used a lot of marijuana [2]. Regardless, at the beginning of the Great Depression, conflict among workers for jobs naturally and sadly devolved into looking for reasons for pushing out excess labor, and Mexican migrant workers became handy scapegoats, and their alleged marijuana use became a handy excuse. Of course, the justification for the law wasn’t merely “We think Mexicans use it”. This is where the aforementioned histrionics came into play. The legendary 1936 propaganda film Reefer Madness is a case in point.
Peter Tosh wrote his song in the mid-70s Jamaica, but under a similar dynamic. Marijuana was outlawed in Jamaica in 1913, under the Ganja Law, and for what seems to be similar reasons as the Marijuana Tax Act was passed in this country [3]. In the Jamaican case, the use of marijuana was associated initially with Indian indentured servants, who introduced ganja smoking to the island, and black plantation workers who picked up the habit from them. By the 1960s, the usage had taken on cultural and political tones, associated with the Rastafari movement, with its strong emphasis on black consciousness, influenced by the American black power movement. In his song, Tosh asks to have marijuana considered on its own terms, something wholesome, widely used, natural, even healing.
Because there are no serious personal or social problems associated with marijuana use, marijuana laws have long been the “broken tail lights” of drug laws. They exist to harass people. In an apparent attempt to emphasize this, a month ago, the conservative Wisconsin State Supreme Court ruled that the scent alone of marijuana is enough to justify a search, even though there are legal products that have odors indistinguishable from marijuana. There is currently a bewildering array of federal, state, and local ordinances, with different nuances. On a drive around the state, you may find decriminalization here and there, with no consistency in fines. You may come across a DA who won’t prosecute in one area, but who may be replaced by one who does in the next election. In other places, for example, while camping at Devil’s Lake, you might discover that the state law still holds, meaning the first offense is a misdemeanor, but the second offense is a felony. And of course, the federal prohibition still exists, if largely ignored except on federal land, such as the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. This mess is ripe for abuse and arbitrariness. The time has come to clean it up. Legalize it.
I would be remiss as a socialist if I didn’t mention that legalization of marijuana should not be the end of our organizational interaction with it. Legalization doesn’t just mean we can buy an ounce from our friendly neighborhood dealer with impunity. Legalization, especially if done on the national level, would turn marijuana from a black market commodity to a white market commodity, which already has generated a whole, very lucrative, industry. The tobacco industry, also, has long been at least interested in getting into the marijuana market as tobacco use has waned. As a white market industry, manufacturers would have legitimized access to power through a lobbying branch, and would have a strong interest in regulations regarding production and usage laws, labor laws, quality control, health and safety, advertising standards, potency limits and standards, user age and public use prohibitions, etc. We shouldn’t be fighting for legalization just to let someone make a legal profit off it. The next challenge will be in taking control of this industry.
If you are interested in marijuana legalization, and would like to work on it with the Milwaukee DSA Legalization Working Group, contact eric.marsch333@gmail.com for more information and upcoming meetings and actions.
_____
Notes:
1. For the original source referred to in this link, see “Negro Cocaine “Fiends” Are A New Southern Menace”, New York Times, Feb. 8, 1914.
2. For a more scholarly analysis, see David Musto, ”The 1937 Marijuana Tax Act,” Archives of General Psychiatry, vol. 26, February 1972, pp. 101-108.
3. See Barry Chevanes, “Criminalizing Cultural Practice: The Case of Ganja in Jamaica,” in Axel Klein, Marcus Day, and Anthony Harriott, eds., Caribbean Drugs: From Criminalization to Harm Reduction (New York: Zed Books, 2013), chap. 2.
