In the early 1900s, peasants across Mexico began to organize under the leadership of guerilla leaders such as Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata to oppose the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. By 1910, the armies comprised of Mexico’s poor revolucionarios swept through the countryside and began attacking and seizing government military barracks. The Mexican Revolution had begun, and many Mexicans fled their homeland to escape the violence. Most sought shelter in the Southern and Southwestern United States, and among the many cultural imports they brought with them was the practice of smoking cannabis, a plant they called, “marijuana.”

The United States was already well acquainted with the cannabis plant, which had a long history of cultivation for the production of hemp-based materials (Thomas Jefferson and George Washington could attest to this), but recreational use of marijuana was not widely practiced. Americans responded to the influx of Mexican immigrants with predictable xenophobia and jingoism, and one of the first tools used as anti-Mexican propaganda was the Mexicans’ use of marijuana. Respected publications such as “The New York Times” began printing articles about marijuana’s potential to cause insanity, violent crime and rape. Wait a minute, Mexicans? Violent crime? Rape? If this story sounds familiar, it should. American demonization of the Mexican people is anything but new, and anything but over *cough* Donald Trump *cough*.

Within two decades of the arrival of the Mexican war refugees, 29 states had passed legislation criminalizing the use of marijuana. At the same time alcohol prohibition had been abandoned as a failure. Anyone unfamiliar with the legacy of American Prohibition need only ask the Mafia how outlawing alcohol turned out for them (hint: very well). Yet the end of Prohibition created a problem. Four years before Prohibition was repealed, Harry Anslinger had been put in charge of the U.S. Department of Prohibition. Prohibition itself was now a thing of the past, but anti-drug government officials were still very much a factor. Without the evils of alcohol to peddle to the public, people like Anslinger were afraid they might be out of work very soon. Anslinger himself knew marijuana wasn’t nearly as harmful as the federal government made it out to be, but thanks to his efforts the Department of Prohibition was replaced with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and marijuana was outlawed federally in the 1950s, starting with the Boggs Act of 1952 which pioneered mandatory sentencing laws.

I tell you this history because, no matter the dangers of cannabis, marijuana prohibition was built on a foundation of falsehoods. Marijuana could kill with a single use, but the illegalization of the substance would still have its roots in attempts to arrest and deport brown people and to justify the existence of obsolete government agencies that relied on taxpayer dollars. Unlike alcohol prohibition, which lasted a mere 13 years, marijuana prohibition has remained in effect, at least federally, for more than six decades. This is the power of propaganda.

Things began to change in 1996 when California passed its Compassionate Use Act. It was the first measure that allowed, according to state law, the legal use of marijuana for medical purposes. Since then, 23 other states have followed suit. In 2012 the states of Colorado and Washington went a step further, legalizing marijuana for recreational use. Alaska, Oregon and Washington D.C. have since done the same. Yet the question remains, should marijuana be legal? According to “The New York Times,” a publication that once claimed marijuana caused permanent insanity, the answer is an unequivocal “yes."

“The Times” correctly points out that marijuana is less addictive than either tobacco or alcohol and that the idea that cannabis is a gateway drug is unsubstantiated. The truth is, medical marijuana can be used to remedy pain, nausea and seizures. It also has the potential to treat a wide variety of conditions, from Alzheimer's to Parkinson's disease to post traumatic stress disorder. However, it is true that further research is needed to conclude that cannabis can effectively treat any condition, yet this is not necessarily a reason to keep the drug outlawed. In fact, it is precisely because marijuana use is illegal that very little research on its therapeutic benefits can be conducted. Arguments against the legalization of marijuana are similarly limited because of lack of scientific research, which sometimes leads to misleading statements from both sides of the issue. For instance, Citizens Against Legalizing Marijuana, a volunteer organization dedicated to keeping marijuana illegal, is adamant that smoking cannabis causes cancer. Meanwhile, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, is quick to point out that the cannabinoids found in marijuana smoke may counteract the effects of the carcinogens that are also present. In reality, no one knows if smoking cannabis can cause cancer, or maybe even cure it, because not enough research has been done. Legalization will have to happen before scientists are able to get a true grasp of the plant's positive and negative effects.

There are so many other factors in the ongoing debate on cannabis legalization, from the risk of adolescent use of the drug increasing in the wake of legalization to the possible economic benefits of taxing recreational and medicinal cannabis, that I would have to write several more articles just to cover them all. At the end of the day, how safe marijuana is, and whether or not it should be normalized by society, technically remains an open question. What isn’t a question, at all, is that anti-marijuana laws disproportionately harm black Americans and contribute to the prison industrial complex. During the Prohibition era, crime was a reason to make the sale of alcohol legal again. Today, with so many profiting from the incarceration of their fellow Americans, crime is an incentive to keep marijuana prohibition alive and well. According to the ACLU, “ . . . the War on Marijuana has failed to reduce marijuana use and availability and diverted resources that could be better invested in our communities.” It’s up to us to decide if this is worth it or not.