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Pre-criminalization (1600s–1800s)

Hemp (Cannabis sativa) was first brought to North America by the Puritans.

In the 17th century hemp was encouraged by the government in the production of rope, sails, and clothing; however, hemp use declined in the late eighteenth century. In the late nineteenth century, cannabis became a common ingredient in medicine and was openly sold at pharmacies.^[2]

U.S. founding fathers who cultivated cannabis

George Washington	Major General George Washington, U.S. Revolutionary War hero and first president of the United States, shown here on a U.S. dollar treasury note, cultivated Indian Hemp (Cannabis sativa indica, i.e. medical cannabis, which could also be used for fiber, although not as well as regular hemp) on his farm.[3] "Make the most you can of the Indian hemp seed. Sow it everywhere." -- George Washington, in a letter to his farm manager[4]
Thomas Jefferson	Thomas Jefferson, the co-author of the American Declaration of Independence was the third president of the United States. He cultivated cannabis.[3]
Benjamin Franklin	Benjamin Franklin, shown here on a U.S. $100 bill, started the first American paper mill, which made paper exclusively from cannabis.[5]

Criminalization (1900s)

The first significant instance of cannabis regulation appeared in District of Columbia in 1906.^[6] Regulations of marijuana (the phrase Indian Hemp is sometimes used) followed in Massachusetts in 1911; Maine, California, Texas, Wyoming and Indiana in 1913; New York City in 1914; Utah and Vermont in 1915; Colorado and Nevada in 1917. These laws were passed not due to any widespread use or concern about cannabis, but as regulatory initiatives to discourage future use.^[7][8]

Indian hemp regulation (1925)

In 1925 United States supported regulation of Indian hemp, also known as hashish, in the International Opium Convention.^[9] The convention banned exportation of Indian hemp and the preparations derived therefrom to countries that had prohibited its use, and required importing countries to issue certificates approving the importation and stating that the shipment was required "exclusively for medical or scientific purposes". The convention did not ban trade with fibers and other similar products from European hemp, high growing varieties of hemp from Europe traditionally grown in the United States for production of fibers with low content of (THC)

Uniform State Narcotic Act (1925–1932)

The Uniform State Narcotic Act, first tentative draft in 1925 and fifth final version in 1932, was a result of work by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. It was argued that the traffic in narcotic drugs should have the same safeguards and the same regulation in all of the states. The committee took into consideration the fact that the federal government had already passed The Harrison Act in 1914 and The Federal Import and Export Act in 1922. Many persons assumed that the Harrison Act was all that was necessary. The Harrison Act, however, was a revenue-producing act, and while it provided penalties for violation, it did not give the states themselves authority to exercise police power in regard to seizure of drugs used in illicit trade, or in regard to punishment of those responsible therefor. The act was recommended to the states for that purpose.^[10] As a result of the Uniform State Narcotic Act the Federal Bureau of Narcotics encouraged state governments to adopt it. By the middle of 1930s all member states had some regulation of cannabis.^[11][12][13]

Federal Bureau of Narcotics (1930)

FBN public service announcement used in the late 1930s and 1940s

The use of cannabis and other drugs came under increasing scrutiny after the formation of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) in 1930,^[14] headed by Harry J. Anslinger as part of the government's broader push to outlaw all drugs.

"When the present administration took office ten countries had ratified the Geneva Narcotic Limitation Convention. The United States was one of these ten.... It was my privilege, as President, to proclaim, on that day, that this treaty had become effective throughout the jurisdiction of the United States....On Jan. 1, 1933, only nine nations had registered their ratification of the limitation treaty. On Jan. 1, 1935, only nine States had adopted the uniform State statute. As 1933 witnessed ratification of the treaty by thirty-one additional nations, so may 1935 witness the adoption of the uniform drug act by at least thirty-one more states, thereby placing interstate accord abreast of international accord, to the honor of the legislative bodies of our States and for the promotion of the welfare of our people and the peoples of other lands." (Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 1935 in a radio message read by United States Attorney General, Homer Stille Cummings )^[15]

Anslinger claimed cannabis caused people to commit violent crimes, act irrational, and act overly sexual. The FBN produced propaganda films promoting Anslinger's views and Anslinger often commented to the press regarding his views on cannabis.

The 1936 Geneva Trafficking Convention

In 1936, the Convention for the Suppression of the Illicit Traffic in Dangerous Drugs (1936 Trafficking Convention) was concluded in Geneva. The U.S., led by Anslinger, had attempted to include in the treaty the criminalization of all activities – cultivation, production, manufacture and distribution – related to the use of opium, coca (and its derivatives) and cannabis for non-medical and non-scientific purposes. Many countries opposed this and the focus remained on illicit trafficking. Article 2 of the Convention called upon signatory countries to use their national criminal law systems to "severely" punish, "particularly by imprisonment or other penalties of deprivation of liberty," acts directly related to drug trafficking.

The U.S. refused to sign the final version because it considered the Convention too weak, especially in relation to extradition, extraterritoriality and the confiscation of trafficking profits.^[16]

Marijuana Tax Act (1937)

Tax stamp for a producer of cannabis

The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 made possession or transfer of cannabis illegal throughout the United States under federal law, excluding medical and industrial uses, in which an expensive excise tax was required. Annual fees for the tax were $24 ($337 adjusted for inflation) for importers, manufacturers, and cultivators of cannabis, $1 annually ($14 adjusted for inflation) for medical and research purposes, and $3 annually ($42 adjusted for inflation) for industrial uses. Detailed cannabis sale logs were required to keep record of cannabis sales. Selling cannabis to any person who has previously paid the tax is $1 per ounce or fraction thereof; however, it is $100 ($1,406 adjusted for inflation) per ounce or fraction thereof to sell any person who has not registered and paid the special tax.^[17]

The American Medical Association (AMA) opposed the act because the tax was imposed on physicians prescribing cannabis, retail pharmacists selling cannabis, and medical cannabis cultivation/manufacturing; instead of enacting the Marihuana Tax Act, the AMA proposed cannabis be added to the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act.^[18]

New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who was a strong opponent of the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act, started the LaGuardia Commission that in 1944 contradicted the earlier reports of addiction, madness, and overt sexuality.^[2]

In its 1969 Leary v. United States decision, the Supreme Court held the Marihuana Tax Act to be unconstitutional since it violated the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.^[19] In response, Congress repealed the Marihuana Tax Act and passed the Controlled Substances Act as Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, which repealed the Marihuana Tax Act.^[20]

DuPont, William Randolph Hearst, and hemp

The decision of the United States Congress to pass the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was based on hearings,^[21] reports^[22] and in part on testimony derived from articles in newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst, who had significant financial interests in the timber industry, which manufactured his newsprint.^[23]

Cannabis activist Jack Herer has researched DuPont and in his 1985 book The Emperor Wears No Clothes, Herer concluded DuPont played a large role in the criminalization of cannabis. In 1938, DuPont patented the processes for creating plastics from coal and oil and a new process for creating paper from wood pulp. If hemp had been largely exploited, Herer believes it would have likely been used to make paper and plastic (nylon), and may have hurt DuPont's profits. Andrew Mellon of the Mellon Bank was DuPont's chief financial backer and was also the Secretary of the Treasury under the Hoover administration. Mellon appointed Harry J. Anslinger, who later became his nephew-in-law, as the head of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (FBNDD) and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), where Anslinger stayed until 1962.^[24]

In 1916, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) chief scientists Jason L. Merrill and Lyster H. Dewe created paper made from hemp pulp, which they concluded was "favorable in comparison with those used with pulp wood in USDA Bulletin No. 404."^[25] In his book Herer summarized the findings of Bulletin No. 404:^[26]

USDA Bulletin No. 404, reported that one acre of hemp, in annual rotation over a 20-year period, would produce as much pulp for paper as 4.1 acres (17,000 m²) of trees being cut down over the same 20-year period. This process would use only 1/4 to 1/7 as much polluting sulfur-based acid chemicals to break down the glue-like lignin that binds the fibers of the pulp, or even none at all using soda ash. The problem of dioxin contamination of rivers is avoided in the hemp paper making process, which does not need to use chlorine bleach (as the wood pulp paper making process requires) but instead safely substitutes hydrogen peroxide in the bleaching process. ... If the new (1916) hemp pulp paper process were legal today, it would soon replace about 70% of all wood pulp paper, including computer printout paper, corrugated boxes and paper bags.

Hemp was a relatively easy target because factories already had made large investments in equipment to handle cotton, wool, and linen, but there were relatively small investments in hemp production. Big technological improvements in the wood pulp industry were invented in the 1930s; for example the recovery boiler allowed kraft mills to recycle almost all of their pulping chemicals, and other improvements came later. There was also a misconception hemp had an intoxicating effect because it has the same active substance, THC, which is in potent cannabis strains; however, hemp only has minimal amount of THC when compared to recreational cannabis strains.

An alternative explanation for Anslinger's opinion's about hemp is that he believed that a tax on cannabis could be easier to supervise if it included hemp and that he had reports from experiments with mechanical harvesting of hemp reporting that the machines was no success and reports about cannabis farms.^[27]

"The existence of the old 1934-1935 crop of harvested hemp on the fields of southern Minnesota is a menace to society in that it is being used by traffickers in marihuana as a source of supply."^[28]

"they were able to cut only a part of the Tribune Farm crop by machine, two thirds of it they did by hand with a sharp hand cuttertuff".^[29]

An argument for the alternative theory is that hemp was not an alternative as material in the new commercial products from DuPont using oil or coal as raw material, the nylon-bristled toothbrush (1938) followed more famously by women's “nylons” stockings (1940). Nylon was intended to be a synthetic replacement for silk not hemp.

Mandatory sentencing (1952, 1956)

Mandatory sentencing and increased punishment were enacted when the United States Congress passed the Boggs Act of 1952 and the Narcotics Control Act of 1956. The acts made a first time cannabis possession offense a minimum of two to ten years with a fine up to $20,000; however, in 1970, the United States Congress repealed mandatory penalties for cannabis offenses.^[2]

Reorganization (1968, 1973)

In 1968, the United States Department of the Treasury subsidiary Bureau of Narcotics and the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare subsidiary Bureau of Drug Abuse Control merged to create the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs as a United States Department of Justice subsidiary.

In 1973, President Richard Nixon's "Reorganization Plan Number Two" proposed the creation of a single federal agency to enforce federal drug laws and Congress accepted the proposal, as there was concern regarding the growing availability of drugs.^[30] As a result, on July 1, 1973, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) and the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement (ODALE) merged together to create the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).^[2]

On December 1, 1975 the Supreme Court ruled that it was "not cruel or unusual for Ohio to sentence someone to 20 years for having or selling cannabis."^[31]

Mandatory sentencing and three-strikes (1984, 1986)

During the Reagan Administration the Sentencing Reform Act provisions of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 created the Sentencing Commission, which established mandatory sentencing guidelines.^[32] The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 reinstated mandatory prison sentences, including large scale cannabis distribution.^[33] Later an amendment created a three-strikes law, which created mandatory life sentences for repeat drug offenders and allowed the death penalty to be used against "drug kingpins."^[2]

United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative (2001)

In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 215, which legalized medical cannabis. The Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, was created to "provide seriously ill patients with a safe and reliable source of medical cannabis, information and patient support" in accordance with Proposition 215.

In January 1998, the U.S. Government sued Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative for violating federal laws created as a result of Controlled Substances Act of 1970. On May 14, 2001, the United States Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Coop that federal anti-drug laws do not permit an exception for medical cannabis and rejected the common-law medical necessity defense to crimes enacted under the Controlled Substances Act because Congress concluded cannabis has "no currently accepted medical use" when the act was passed in 1970.

Gonzales v. Raich (2005)

Gonzales v. Raich ruled in a 6-3 decision that the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution allowed the federal government to ban the use of cannabis, including medical use. The court found the federal law valid, although the cannabis in question had been grown and consumed within a single state, and had never entered interstate commerce. Congress may ban the use of cannabis even where states approve its use for medicinal purposes.