Reading Between The Lines Of Global Cannabis Policies: An Historical Perspective

In 1971, Congress created the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, now called the Schaffer Commission. A reluctant President Richard Nixon appointed 13 members to the group that consisted of senators, congressmen, and physicians. One of these members, Dr. Thomas Ungerleider was a psychiatrist and researcher at UCLA. Nearly 30 years after the commission was formed, Dr. Ungerleider reflected on the experience in a paper titled: Marijuana: Still a “Signal of Misunderstanding”. This title alludes to the title of their first year’s report: “Marijuana, Signal of Misunderstanding”, in which the commission unanimously recommended that cannabis be decriminalized. Notably, they did not recommend legalization, but they felt strongly that possession should not be grounds for imprisonment. In the end, the commission’s recommendation was opposed in Congress, and the Nixon administration failed to implement its recommendations. Consequently, 25 years after the report was issued, there were still nearly 600,000 arrests for personal possession.

One of the commission’s task’s was to travel around the world to study cannabis laws and use patterns in various countries. These experiences revealed the global pervasiveness of the United State’s anti-marijuana agenda. The United States had a major influence in the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which established an international treaty for outlawing specific drugs, including cannabis.

Adhering to the treaty’s policy against cannabis exposed a country’s bias against certain ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Just as the United States justified cannabis’ illegality by tying its use to crime among immigrant populations, Dr. Ungerledier recalls several instances in which the stated justification for a country’s cannabis policy diverged from the truth. These stories were divulged to members of the commission in unofficial meetings and social events, often after the consumption of “free-flowing use of alcohol”.

Global reach

In India, there were two types of cannabis: 1) the stronger smoked cannabis (called charas), which was illegal, and 2) the legal weaker cannabis beverage (called bhang). The official reason charas was illegal was because it was reported to be more like heroin, whereas bhang was like coffee. But Dr. Ungerleider reports that the real reason charas was illegal was because it was used mainly by the lower class while bhang was commonly used by the upper class. By making charas illegal, India complied with the international treaty established at the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs that was strongly supported by the US, while preserving its use among the upper class.

In South Africa, marijuana, or dagga as it was called, was illegal for the official reason that it harmed the nation’s youth. But dagga was mainly used by the Bantu natives suppressed by the apartheid regime. After centuries of use by the Bantu, there was a growing market for dagga among the white middle class. It was feared that the money used to purchase dagga from the Bantu would be used to buy weapons to overthrow apartheid. This fear was revealed to the commission in unofficial meetings with government officials, adding to the number of countries that used cannabis laws to suppress minorities and the lower classes.

Iran adopted a policy of capital punishment for cannabis smuggling. Of the 160 smugglers who were executed, all were Afghans, thereby preserving the cannabis smuggling operation for Iranians citizens.

Dr. Ungerleider recalls heavy skepticism of the commissioners wherever they visited. Some foreign agents assumed they were on a secret mission with the CIA, or investigating other drugs like heroin or cocaine. Most couldn’t fathom that the United States would invest resources towards the study of cannabis alone. He remembers statements like, “You are not really a marijuana commission; no one would appoint a commission to study just marijuana. How gullible do you think we are?”

The commission was not on a mission for the CIA, nor were they secretly investigating other drugs, but they did discover ways in which a US-led international drug treaty was used to suppress minorities, immigrants, and the lower-class. What they couldn’t find was the serious harm their own government claimed cannabis caused. Instead, cannabis’ greatest harm seemed to stem from the way it was handled by the governments themselves.

Note: this was originally published on May 3, 2018 by Josh Kaplan