Cannabis referendum: ancient newspapers reveal drug culture shift from ‘medicine’ to ‘threat’

Advertisements and articles in old New Zealand newspapers reveal the cultural shift that took place around cannabis as the reputation of the plant changed from “medicine” to “threat”.

During the 19th century in New Zealand, cannabis was used primarily for medicinal purposes, considered a plant that could treat a variety of ailments. But a whirlwind of racial, political and economic forces eventually led to its prohibition and its reputation as “the most dangerous drug in the world.”

Cannabis has a long and colorful history dating back 5,000 years, and it is used by societies on almost every continent for fiber, medicine, and spiritual and recreational uses.

Perhaps one of the first plants domesticated in agricultural servitude, cannabis, as the currents of humanity have swept across the globe, has followed us everywhere we have gone, writes author James Borrowdale in your book: Weed: A New Zealand Story.

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“Cannabis, of course, has also caused moral panic, it has been demonized and used to demonize; it has caused the displeasure of popes, presidents and other powerful people around the world. ”

Irish physician William Brooke O’Shaughnessy introduced cannabis to Western medicine in 1841 after living in India. He wrote about its many therapeutic uses, including a case where cannabis stopped seizures in a child.

More than 100 scientific articles were published in Europe and the United States in the second half of the 19th century on the therapeutic values ​​of cannabis, and it was widely used as a patented medicine, described in the United States Pharmacopeia for the first time in 1850.

A roll of old newspapers from the National Library of New Zealand reveals the place of cannabis in pre-prohibition society.

A Dunedin dentist, John P. Armstrong, announced at the Otago Daily Times in 1888 for “cannabis indica, the most recent and successful local anesthetic, as well as cocaine”, for ordinary tooth extraction.

Another ad from Lyttleton times in 1889 for Grimault’s Indian Cigarettes of Cannabis Indica, which was said to “quickly relieve” asthma.

A recipe for curing corns was published in the Hairy guardian and defender of the miners in 1907, which included a salicylic acid remedy, cannabis indica extract, and collodion.

the Otago Witness in 1908 he made claims that cannabis could cure chilblains, with a remedy made from camphor, bell pepper, cannabis indica, and cajeput oil.

But articles earlier in the mid-20th century reveal the cultural shift that took place, with the first wave of US-led political hysteria and racist anti-marijuana propaganda leaking into the New Zealand media.

According to New Zealand’s Te Ara Encyclopedia, the country began to see “increasingly creepy” media coverage of drug scenes in Sydney, London and New York.

Ultimately, it was international pressure that forced New Zealand to further restrict drugs.

After the Mexican Revolution of 1910, a wave of Mexican immigrants came to the southwestern United States and helped popularize recreational drug use.

Anti-drug activists began to warn against the invasion of the “marijuana threat,” describing the terrible crimes attributed to the drug and the Mexicans who used it, from rape and murder to insanity.

A telegram from Guaymas published in the Nelson Evening Mail In 1925, which was also published in all the newspapers nationwide, it reported that a Mexican “maddened by smoking marijuana, went mad” in hospital with a butcher knife and killed six people before being subdued.

the Otago Daily Times He wrote in 1934 that marijuana had led to some “astonishing tragedies and crimes”, saying it could make him “a philosopher, a merry party animal, a foolish madman or a murderer.”

the Waipa Post in 1935 he reported that cannabis, which had a tendency to make his addicts “go crazy”, added the word “killer” to the vocabulary.

The debut of Joint madness In 1936, one of a series of anti-marijuana propaganda films helped fuel the drug hysteria.

The film centers on a series of hyperbolic events that occur when innocent high school students are lured into trying marijuana, from a hit-and-run accident to homicide, suicide, attempted rape, hallucinations and a rapid descent into insanity.

An article of Bay of Plenty Times in 1939 he reported that “weed is endangering America’s youth, turning those who become addicted to marijuana into degenerates or irresponsible criminals.”

In West Virginia, a young man was arrested for raping a 9-year-old girl while under the influence of marijuana, the report read. In Texas, a hitchhiker under the influence of marijuana murdered a motorist.

Other articles that linked drugs to gangs and smugglers also appeared in New Zealand, such as the Herald of New ZealandThe 1938 story detailing the “war on drug dealers” in a campaign to “clean up” the London underworld.

Another article from the Evening star In 1945, titled “Bane from Mexico,” it reported that authorities were working to blow up marijuana networks and that “Harlem street vendors” trafficked millions of cannabis cigarettes, and smugglers had been caught shipping cannabis between states, hidden under skin and camphor.

In 1947, the Otago Daily Times reported that the drug “is a sexual stimulant” that was being “widely used by sailors of color and the women they associated with in Australian ports”.

In 1924, an international convention required restrictions on a growing range of drugs, which the following year were extended to Indian hemp or cannabis.

Te Ara notes that the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1927 was implemented, designed to align New Zealand internationally, rather than control a local problem.

The minister admitted at the time that the country “had no evidence” of extensive use of recreational drugs.

The Poisons Act of 1933 also tightened controls on the use of cannabis in asthma treatments, but Grimault’s Indian hemp cigarettes and corn bandages were exempt.

According to Te Ara, in response to a request from the World Health Organization, New Zealand agreed to end medical cannabis imports in 1955 and eventually banned all cannabis products under the 1965 Narcotics Act.

Things changed quickly when the hippie era of the 1960s arrived.

Baby boomers reached adulthood and began to question authority. New Zealand became involved in the Vietnam War, sparking a decade of protests.

“In the 1970s a drug culture was established, there were stores selling drug paraphernalia such as flavored rolling papers, roach clips, water-cooled bongs, psychedelic posters and incense burners,” according to Te Ara.

The number of cannabis plants seized by the police increased from 3,000 in 1975 to 14,000 the following year, and in 1980 a national survey suggested that there were 600,000 regular cannabis users.

The practice spread to schools and the military. In 1990, there were more than 18,000 prosecutions and more than 150,000 cannabis plants were seized.

In response to the rise in recreational drug use in the 1960s, US President Nixon officially declared a “war on drugs” in 1971, claiming that drug use was “public enemy number one.” .

The US-led war on drugs has received wide criticism internationally over the years as a failure that has ruined lives, filled prisons and cost a fortune.

Decades after Nixon’s drug war campaign, one of his top advisers, a key figure in the Watergate scandal, publicly admitted in a controversial interview that the drug war was created as a “political tool.”

According to a 1994 interview published in Harper’s MagazineFormer Nixon internal policy chief John Ehrlichman said the Nixon campaign had two enemies: the pacifist left and blacks.

“We knew we couldn’t outlaw being against the war or against blacks, but by getting the public to associate hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then heavily criminalizing both, we could disrupt those. communities, ”he said.

“We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, disrupt their meetings and smear them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about drugs? Of course we did. “