Privileged White Americans love to drink alcohol (see Demographics of Alcohol below). Conversely, White Evangelical Protestants, primarily women, are most likely to oppose marijuana in society. [1] “Just Say No To Drugs,” they warn. They don’t consider alcohol a drug. “We’ve got to protect the kids from the evil weed,” they say.
Kids easily get pakalolo from criminals and thugs. The 40-plus-year War on Drugs has not removed marijuana from our streets. It’s noble to protect our children. Regulated markets are simply more effective.
My friend, Brett Vroman, played college basketball at UCLA. We became acquainted working basketball camps at BYU. He provides some truth about cannabis corruption.
In fact, the only two major mood-mind-altering substances not included in the federal government Controlled Substances Act are alcohol and tobacco. This is quite alarming, as outside the opioid prescription drug epidemic, alcohol and tobacco pose the greatest danger to American society and our public health. [2]
Despite the rise of drug epidemics, a new report found alcohol and tobacco continued to pose a bigger threat to human welfare across the globe.
For example, here are rates of dependency for leading substances: [3]
- Cannabis: 9%
- Alcohol: 15%
- Heroin: 23%
- Nicotine: 32%
On the other hand, it is generally White people who claim cannabis leads to weird orgies, wild parties and roots in Hell. How did cannabis (marihuana) get such a bad wrap? The answer is simple. Racism. [4]
“Some people will fly into a delirious rage, and they are temporarily irresponsible and may commit violent crimes.” Harry Anslinger, circa 1930
To this day, cannabis remains criminalized and disproportionately affects minority groups in the US. Nearly 80 percent of inmates in federal prison and almost 60 percent of individuals incarcerated in state prisons for drug offenses are Black or Latino. As the ACLU reported in 2010, Black people were four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than White people, even though both groups consume marijuana at similar rates.
I showed the irrational and unscientific bias in Dr. Siegel’s 2019 article. Here are the numbers:
- Cannabis leads to psychosis in one of 10,235 users.
- Adderall / Vyvanse lead to psychosis in one of 486 users.
- Ritalin / Concerta lead to psychosis in one of 1,046 users.
A slight majority of Republicans oppose cannabis legalization (51%) compared to 69 percent of Democrats who support legalizing use (Oct 8, 2018). Over 90 percent of all Americans support legal compassionate Medical Cannabis.
Judgmental and Racist Society
My Facebook friend and Republican, White-Male-Army reservist, Travis Gentry, enjoys drinking alcohol — lots of it. He admits alcohol consumption “kills brain cells,” yet is concerned about marijuana “idiots” who don’t know they are idiots.
Travis also doesn’t believe “women are women” anymore … “sad, but true in lots of cases,” he wrote on Facebook. He also is a binary believer. People who think differently have a “wide range of mental disorders,” in his opinion.
Found this meme from Boomer Bass on social media. Here’s a guy bragging about pleasing his wife because he offered to get her drunk at 10:00am in the morning. He tells friends, “I’ve never seen her so happy!”
If a guy was planning to get his wife “high” on cannabis at 10:00am, wake & bake, society would look down on the couple, yet he is applauded for starting the day drinking alcohol. I believe a more responsible society would discourage behavior that intoxicates people in such a manner — whether alcohol or cannabis. Currently, the drinkers are accepted; tokers sent to prison. That’s the insanity!
Our Privileged Children
Many of our most privileged children are on Spring Break boozing at the beach. Olivia Jade Loughlin’s parents will likely go to prison for buying her a seat in USC classrooms. “I don’t know how much of school I’m going to attend,” she told followers on social media. She just wanted the “experience of game days” and “partying,” before admitting, “I don’t really care about school, as you guys know.” She wanted the alcohol-fueled parties! [5]
Alcohol is part of the Rich, White Kid experience growing up
Alcohol is part of the Rich, White Kid experience growing up — considered normal by society. Brock Turner, a 19-year-old White scholarship athlete at Stanford, attended one of the college frat parties. Although under the age to legally consume alcohol, party hosts offered him excessive amounts. The boy ended up drunk and accused of raping an also drunk, although older, young woman, who apparentlhy passed out due to excessive alcohol consumption. Mr. Turner lost his scholarship, was booted from the university, and suffered national scorn for his reckless behavior. He’s gone, but alcohol remains.
“Good people don’t smoke marijuana,” Jeff Sessions, U.S. Attorney General
Recently, President Trump’s first Attorney General, a White conservative male, Jeff Sessions, rescinded the DOJ’s progressive positions on cannabis. “Good people don’t smoke marijuana,” he decried. Critics claimed Sessions had racist motives.
CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta pleaded with AG Sessions not to take the nation backward: [6]
Dear Honorable Jeff Sessions,
I feel obligated to share the results of my five-year-long investigation into the medical benefits of the cannabis plant. Before I started this worldwide, in-depth investigation, I was not particularly impressed by the results of medical marijuana research, but a few years later, as I started to dedicate time with patients and scientists in various countries, I came to a different conclusion.
Not only can cannabis work for a variety of conditions such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and pain, sometimes, it is the only thing that works. I changed my mind, and I am certain you can, as well. It is time for safe and regulated medical marijuana to be made available nationally. I realize this is an unconventional way to reach you, but your office declined numerous requests for an interview, and as a journalist, a doctor and a citizen, I felt it imperative to make sure you had access to our findings.
Cannabis History [7]
As early as the 1800s, there were no federal restrictions on the sale or possession of cannabis in the US. Sometimes it was used medicinally, but as a recreational drug, it wasn’t that widespread. A New York Times article from 1876 even cites the positive use of cannabis to cure a patient’s dropsy — swelling from an accumulation of fluid.
In the 19th century, British brought 1.5 million indentured laborers from India to the Caribbean, who also brought along their ganja. University of Kansas professor Barney Warf pointed out, “It was brought to the Americas by the Portuguese, who took it to Brazil, and again by the British, who took it to Jamaica. In both cases, it was used to pacify slaves.”
Warf explains cannabis entered the United States with two groups: Mexican citizens escaping the violence of the Mexican Revolution, and sailors and immigrants from the Caribbean into New Orleans. The author adds, “The Black community also began to pick up on cannabis, so that reinforced this racial stereotype that Brown and Black people smoke cannabis, and White people did not. Because it was used by Black Americans and Mexican Americans, it helped to feed into the racist fears and stereotypes that were used to make it illegal in the 1930s.”
In 1936, a propaganda film called Reefer Madness was released. In the movie, teenagers smoke weed for the first time and this leads to a series of horrific events involving hallucination, attempted rape, and murder. Much of the media portrayed it as a gateway drug.
Hawai’i Star Advertiser continues to run an Associated Press article that misleads about cannabis and psychosis.
These racist ideas didn’t just influence the media’s portrayal or the public’s perception of the drug. The discrimination they encouraged was evident in real numbers. In the first full year after the Marihuana Tax Act was passed, Black people were about three times more likely to be arrested for violating narcotic drug laws than Whites. Mexicans were nearly nine times more likely to be arrested for the same charge.
Across America, cannabis has long been connected with our country’s institutionalized racism.
Demographics of Alcohol [8]
According to the 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 80.2 percent of survey respondents reported they had consumed alcohol at some time during their lifetime; 64.8 percent said they had consumed some alcohol in the past 12 months; 50.7 percent said they drank alcohol the month prior to the survey, defined as current alcohol drinkers.
White People Drink More Than African Americans
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 56.7 percent of Whites describe themselves as “current drinkers,” compared to 42.8 percent of African Americans, 41.7 percent of Hispanics, 37.6 percent of Asians, and 47.6 percent of multiracial people. (Other studies consistently show Caucasians consuming more alcohol than other ethnic groups.)
Rich People Drink More Than Poor People
Research from the CDC shows 45.2 percent of adults from households whose incomes are below the poverty line report having consumed at least one alcoholic beverage in the last 30 days, compared to 72.6 percent of adults whose household incomes are at least four times the poverty level.
College Graduates Drink Twice As Much As People Who Didn’t Finish High School
Rates of alcohol use increase with levels of education, as 68.4 percent of college graduates and 35 percent of adults who didn’t finish high school describe themselves as “current drinkers.”
Washington, D.C. Politicians Consume More Alcohol than People in other Locations
Comparing gallons of wine consumed per capita per year, the Beer Institute clocked the nation’s capital at 6.6, and California at only 3.4. No wonder alcohol is protected!
The War on Drugs in Black & White [9]
Although marijuana is just a word, a strong case can be made that prohibitionists specifically used the word to exploit racism and rising xenophobia.
Prohibitionists like Harry Anslinger — a former alcohol prohibitionist who ran the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 to 1962 — started to use the term “marihuana” instead of cannabis while spouting outrageous claims about this new public menace. Anslinger feed the media endless crazy marihuana-related stories about axe murderers and rapists (almost always non-white) from his Gore Files, and media tycoon William Hearst—whose anti-Mexican sentiments likely stem in part from looting and lost family lands during the Mexican Revolution—was happy to spread the tall tales through his various newspapers.
It is believed Anslinger utilized the term marihuana to make the plant sound foreign, stoke already simmering anti-Mexican racism and avoid any associations with cannabis. The general public did not have televisions or internet, just newspapers that often printed yellow ink, telling them about a new Mexican drug that made people go crazy. Naturally, even people who took cannabis for medicinal reasons turned against the new Mexican menace.
During his testimony about marihuana use, Anslinger said, “Some people will fly into a delirious rage, and they are temporarily irresponsible and may commit violent crimes,” while Doughton called the “menace” an “evil” that made people “become criminals.”
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