Marihuana Tax Act

Although there was no evidence to show that Licata had killed his family while under the influence of marihuana, Harry Anslinger, the commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics, cited the case during the hearings on the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 as just one example of the dangers of marihuana ... 

The LaGuardia Report was not the only laboratory study of marihuana in the 1940s. The United States Public Health Service also conducted experiments on the effects of the drag. Unlike the LaGuardia study, however, subjects in this study were allowed to smoke as many marihuana cigarettes as they wanted for thirty-nine days. The marihuana was supplied by the Bureau of Narcotics. All six subjects in the experiment were prisoners, all had been previous users of marihuana, and ironically, all had been imprisoned for violation of the Marihuana Tax Act. 

When the Marihuana Tax Act became law in 1937, it called for imprisonment of up to five years and/or a fine of 2000 as punishment for breaking each provision of the law. The length of the actual term and fine were left to the discretion of the court. These penalties and sentencing powers remained in force until 1951 when the Boggs Act became the new law of the land. 

Instead of being merely a question of academic hair-splitting, the issue of a mono- versus a polytypic species has taken on far-reaching implications in the law courts. The single-species argument was the position taken by the U.S. Congress when it adopted the Marihuana Tax Act in 1937. At that time it outlawed Cannabis sativa, not marihuana, believing them to be one and the same. No mention was made of Cannabis indica or Cannabis ruderalis, since it was assumed that these were different varieties of Cannabis sativa rather than different species. 

Oteri, J. S., Silvergate, H. A. In the marketplace of free ideas A look at the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act. In J. L. Simmons (Ed.), Marihuana Myths and realities. North Hollywood, Calif. Brandon House, 1967, 137-162. 

In 1930 the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was established and its crusading Commissioner, Harry J. Anslinger, began an extensive nation-wide anti-marijuana campaign laced with horror stories of rape and murder perpetrated while under the influence of the diabolic weed. By 1937 every state, either by adoption of the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act of 1932 or by separate legislation, had prohibited marijuana use. In late 1937, Federal controls were added by enactment of the Marihuana Tax Act. 

Edestin. Globular protein originally obtained from hemp seed (Cannabis sotiva) Osborne, Am. Chem. J. 14, 662 (1892) Stock well el at., Prttc. Seed Protein Con/, New Orleans 1963, 56, C.A. 60, 3090d (1964), Approx mol wt 300.000. Since the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act in the U S A. commercial hemp seed must be heat-treated to destroy its narcotic properties, a process which also destroys the edestin. Very closely related proteins may be obtained from seeds of Cucurbita pepo L. (pumpkin), C. moschaio Duchesne, and C. maxima Duchesne (squash), Cilruiius... 

The law that made nonmedical use of marijuana (spelled marihuana in 1937) illegal was called the Marihuana Tax Act and was passed by Congress in 1937. How that law came to pass is a curious chapter in American lawmaking. 

Since outlawing marijuana would make all cannabis cultivation illegal, Congress also wanted to hear testimony from representatives of the rope, paint, and birdseed industries that used hemp for their products. Representatives from the rope and paint industries testified that they could use other raw materials in place of hemp. The representative of the birdseed industry, however, said no other seeds produced the glossy feathers that hemp seed did and they wanted to keep using hemp seed. As a result of that testimony, birdseed companies later received an exemption from the Marihuana Tax Act. They were allowed to use imported hemp seeds that have been treated so they do not sprout. That exemption remains in effect today. 

Soon after the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act, Commissioner Anslinger appointed James C. Munch, the researcher who had injected marijuana into dog brains, to be the Federal Bureau of Narcotics expert on marijuana. He held that position unril 1962. 

In 1942, only five years after the Marihuana Tax Act outiawed all cultivation of cannabis, the United States was embroiled in World War II and found itself cut off from Asian sources of cheap hemp fiber. The country s warships needed a lot of hemp for rope, however, so the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was ignored while the federal government went into the business of growing hemp on large farms throughout the Midwest and the South. 

During World Wur II, the need for stronger rope made from hemp fiber caused the federal government to ignore the Marihuana Tax Act of1937. 

In another murder trial during the same period, the defendant did not even claim to use the drug. He declared that there had been a bag of marijuana in the room and it had put out homicidal vibrations that made him kill dogs, cats, and ultimately two police officers. In the years immediately following the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act, where the marijuana defense was used, the defendants in those and other murder trials were all found innocent by reason of insanity. 

From 1919 to 1933, the United States undertook an experiment to stop the manufacture, transportation, and sale of all alcoholic beverages. The result was a set of laws known as Prohibition. Anslinger spoke about how he thought Prohibition should have punished the users of alcohol, an oversight that he intended not to repeat in the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. In fact, the thinking and social concerns that led to alcohol prohibition strongly influenced the formation of America s early marijuana laws, and because of the... 

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