This content traces the historical trajectory of various psychoactive plants and their derivatives, from ancient medicinal and recreational uses to their criminalization and the subsequent "War on Drugs," highlighting the complex interplay of societal fears, economic interests, and political agendas in shaping drug policy.
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from Every Mountain and Valley the world
over are flowers and plants of simple
beauty some hold a natural wonder
chemicals that soothe pain and Inspire
Euphoria at times they've been hailed as
a gift of heaven but in the last century
they've been condemned as a scourge of
man once marijuana cocaine opium ecstasy
LSD even heroin were perfect ly legal
today they compel a War on Drugs did
these plants and drugs change or did
we drugs are menacing our society it's
like a 5H hour orgasm wisely can produce
nose marijuana has been an Enemy of the
State since the first federal law was
enacted against it in 1937
since that time 20 million Americans
have been arrested convicted and
incarcerated for using the most popular
drug in the [Music]
[Music]
world your honor in this case the state
waves trial of the defendant Ralph Wy it
is convinced that he is Hocus incurably
insane a condition caused by the drug
marijuana to which he was
addicted the law is only one deterrent
and not that effective the government
relied on something else education
films this harmless looking cigarette is
cloaked in many innocent disguises but
light the match inhale the smoke and it
becomes an invitation to your own murder
they had to now control something that
was growing all over the United States
as a weed so they relied mostly on Words
uh because they didn't have many other
resources to uh to devote to it I think
madens that's better that's more like it
I know you like that really you will
just take
a though marijuana is now a household
name there was a time when it was an
obscure drug used only by the fringes of
society that some argue is the reason
why it was
criminalized drugs are illegal because
they do cause problems the ones that are
illicit drugs health problems
um uh crime related problems violence
related problems but it's also true that
none of the drugs currently uh illegal
became illegal before they were most
closely associated with uh what we're
commonly regarded as deviant groups one
of the girls was telling me about a new
cigarette that peps you up oh you mean
Reapers yes that's the name of them
would you like to try one sure why not
[Music]
marijuana's trip from a weed to
America's Archen enemy in a $400 billion
drug war begins with its [Music]
chemistry smoking pot draws the active
ingredient Delta 9 Tetra hydr canaban or
THC into the lungs and onto the brain
there it suppresses the neurons causing
a distortion of perception in time
a lack of coordination and sometimes uncontrollable
[Music] [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
[Music]
hilarity within 4 seconds of the first
drag muscles relax eyes readen puls rate
quickens Euphoria heightened sensitivity
or paranoid feelings arise in the user
an experience that dates back to the
dawn of time Herodotus records some of
the earliest uses of cannabis by the
scans and what they did was they would
build a big bonfire in the middle of the
camp and they would Heap a bunch of
marijuana on top of it and then they
would throw a tent over it and they
would all go under the tent and breathe
the smoke
and that way they consumed it next to
Opium marijuana is one of the planet's
oldest medicines ancient Chinese
herbalists applied it to stomach pain
menstrual cramps malaria and
consumption according to Indian
mythology Shiva the Hindu goddess of
creation and destruction endowed man
with the plant for a joyful Pastime an
apt Legacy for the drug of the
generation that preached free love
challenged Authority and was out to
change the world [Music]
cannabis grows anywhere but the Arctic
Circle the earliest record of its use
begins in ancient China and India from
the East cannabis migrated to the rest
of the
world Arab traders brought it from the
Spain from Spain The Conquistadors
carried it to the Americas it was a
prized source of fiber for rope and
canvas essential ingredients for ships
in fact the word canvas comes from the Latin
Latin
cannabis but it was another conqueror
who introduced the plant to
Europe 1804 Napoleon bonapart triumphs
in Egypt during the conquest his army is
introduced to an intoxicant unseen in
Europe unlike in France where
smoked the soldiers fancy cannabis over
Brandy because it doesn't cause
hangovers and carry it back to France as
a spoil of [Music]
[Music]
war in Paris it finds favor with the
Bohemian set with artists authors
students and prostitutes the poet bodair
writes under its spell one must be
forever drunken if you would not feel
the hor horrible burden of time that
bruises your shoulders and bends you to
the Earth you must be drunken without
cease with wine with poetry with what
you please be drunken Without
End from Paris it travels to London as a
smoking substance and an extract in
medicine ladies of high society eat
hashish Confections to lower fevers ease
stomach pains or any ache at all even a
Queen Victoria used it for menstrual
cramps um it was used for insomnia for
especially for tuberculosis patients who
had lost their
appetites um it was also used
recreationally the Drug's next stop is
New York where cannabis and hashish
become one of the many ingredients in
America's unregulated patent medicine
industry the writer Fritz Hugh Ludo uses
it as a recreational intoxicant after
first taking it for a to toach with
continued use lllo becomes addicted he
writes about his experience in Diary of
1857 when I shut my eyes I dwelt in a
delicious land of dreams on the wings of
his speechless music I floated through
the air and in the cloud valleys played
hide and seek with
meteors sometimes these accounts
magnified and glamorized the drug
experience and encourage many people to
follow suit interestingly enough Fitz hu
Ludo became one of the most Ardent and
earliest supporters of drug regulation
through law in the 19th century writing
quite a few stories for Harpers and for
various popular magazines on on drug
addiction in the United States trying to
it congratulations now you'll [Music]
[Music]
living my head is so light it feels like it's
it's
floating that's because your troubles
are all gone try another
Po in the 19th century marijuana was far
from the recreational drug of a future
time by and large its only use comes
from patent medicines Americans know
little of smoking it as an intoxicant
accustom widespread in the east that is
until Abdul Hamid II Sultan of turkey
makes a very special birthday gift to
the American
people the History Channel now returns
to hook illegal drugs and how they got
that way
1876 a World's Exposition is held in
Philadelphia to celebrate the 100th
anniversary of the Declaration of
Independence on display are the wonders
of the modern world among them the
telephone and the personal printing
press otherwise known as the
typewriter the Industrial Age has
arrived at the Turkish Pavilion the
sultan Abdul Hamid II makes a gift of a
rare and exotic treat the crowd is
introduced to smoking marijuana in what
may have been the first pop party in the
United States and perhaps the biggest
until Woodstock 93 years later the
Sultan's gift ignites a wave of Yankee
Ingenuity seeing dollar signs in another
idle pleasure entrepreneurs open Turkish
smoking parlors in the
north sometimes people would go to these
places in great secrecy sort of as a
lark and they'd be society matrons as
well as prominent businessmen and they
would either smoke hashish or eat Hashi
LED Confections at a time when the
temperance movement is trying to ban
alcohol and close saloons smoking parlor
could have been the alternative way to
get high but the Parlor closed
liquor not cannabis continues to be the
country's drug of choice until a
constitutional amendment bans booze and
marijuana New Orleans
1920 America's second largest port is
City in this brawling place where blacks
French Cajun Spanish American Europeans
and ch Chinese live work and play a new
music emerges out of the constant clash
jazz marijuana and Jazz Go Together Like
A Melody and lyrics where Jazz goes
reefers follow but there's another
reason for its widespread use in 1920 it
is the only legal drug in town even here
where everything the flesh desires can
be had prohibition keeps the flow of
liquor out of sight the choice of a new
intoxicant becomes the perfectly legal
weed shipped in from the Caribbean
Mexico and South America and sold like
cigarettes in jazz clubs markets and
pharmacies it is cheap and
popular but even in Paradise there's
trouble new orans is in the midst of a
crime wave murder dominates the
headlines and attracts William Randolph
hurst's attention eager for a
sensational story to
sell New Orleans was a sort of a source
the beginning of uh concern about
marijuana they saw it as linked to Crime
violent crime or even um predatory crime
also sometimes it seemed to be related
to murders uh to rape and so on Hurst
coins the phrase marijuana Menace and
prints lurid tales about the Drug's
capacity to cause rape murder and Mayhem
just as reports of cocaine crazed
Negroes a decade ago had stirred
lawmakers to ban cocaine headlines and
stories of the marijuana Menace were
affecting cannabis the same way Society
worries about its members who are not in
control of their mind so in order to
prevent chaos in society limit the use
of the product or the thing that's
inducing those kinds of
effects State lawmakers were quick to
ban a drug that they identified with
black violence in
in
1924 Louisiana joins 14 other states
banning the distribution of marijuana
for non-medical purposes and it gets
back to the scapegoat so you can
scapegoat different racial groups you
can scap scapegoat the uh lower classes
um you can use the drug to do the
scapegoating for you you can attack them
because they're using the
drug slowly and surely it will be banned
across the country state by state for
one reason or another in the southwest
the reason for a ban on pot was
economics and Prejudice they were
worried about all these Mexicans down on
the Texas border who were uh it was the
depths of the
depression and these Mexicans had been
uh a very useful labor force uh in the
20s when we needed them but now it's the
depression you got all these Gringos in
the bread line you sure as hell don't
need all these Mexicans so how could we
stigmatize them and get rid of this
cheap labor force and get them out of here
here
according to the San Antonio Gazette
quote the men who smoke this herb become
excited to such an extent that they go
through periods of near frenzy and worse
it is always aggressive as the crimes
which have been committed in Garrison's
armories barracks and the humble suburbs of
of
Mexico in 1931 Mexican repatriation
becomes law Mexicans who don't go
quietly are subject to varying forms and
degrees of harassment many are charged
with vagrancy others are arrested for
violation of New State marijuana laws
laws that are often an excuse to drive
Mexicans out of the country so in Texas
for example if you got caught with one
joint you could get sent to you could
get sent to jail for life in fact there
were um uh campaigns in some of the
states for the death penalty and there
are cases of um people serving many many
many years decades in um in jails for
possession except for a handful of
states in the southwest marijuana is
still legal in the United States but
that will change soon after Harry J
anslinger the nation's top drug
enforcement agent takes office at the
Federal Bureau of narcotics but first
anslinger must convince Congress to do
something it has never done before
Outlaw a weed his chief tactic is to
convince Congress and the public that a
weed is the cause of sex and murder a
message that scares an already fearful
Depression era America I had to kill
before they killed me I had to kill him
can't you understand I had to kill him
they kill me unless I kill
them the History Channel now returns to
hook illegal drugs and how they got that way
[Music]
1930 the gay of marijuana collides with
a nation in despair across the United
States the Great Depression has brought
joblessness breadlines and above all
America let me assert my firm belief
that the only thing we have to fear is
fear itself
but the nation's fear is not just
economic there are fears of crime and
alcohol since 1920 alcohol has been
amendment but after 14 years the law is
repealed the government now focuses on
narcotics under a new federal bureau the
federal bureau narcotics was was
unprecedented in that it was the sole uh
autonomous uh Bureau charged with
enforcing narcotics legislation uh in
1930 it is headed by a 38-year-old Harry J
J
anslinger he had had no particular
experience with
drugs and but he came in and what he was
was a
complete bureaucrat uh that is he wanted
to protect his
agency uh he wanted to keep his budget
going to anslinger there is nothing
glamorous about fighting drugs but soon
he sees that it is one of the most
important issues of his time endorsed by
some of the country's most powerful men
like publisher William Randolph
Hurst anslinger went to visit Hurst at
San Simeon Castle I guess it was one
time and Hurst told him that he
personally wrote all of the anti-drug
editorials and the Hurst newspapers and
I think that uh anslinger himself felt
that this was a uh kind of a disgusting
subject like maybe um uh being
Commissioner of garbage or something
like this and he was just astounded that
anyone would you know in who's reverly
important would care about it the
bureau's efforts have been aimed at
fighting heroin in cocaine but with
enens Slinger's arrival in 1930
marijuana is the new drug problem born
out of the trouble in the southwest with
Mexican migrant
workers ANS Slinger's first battle with
marijuana is over who will police it
there are no federal laws against the
drug and he wants to keep it that way
leaving the states to control it not the federal
federal
government he had tried to get the
states to adopt a uniform narcotic law
which would include cannabis and that
would allow each state to decide how
much of its resources it wanted to put
out for the control of marijuana or
cannabis and it wouldn't touch his
budget or his
agents that had some
success uh but not complete there was
continued pressure on the government in
Washington to do something about these
Mexican immigrants who smoked marijuana
and went into town on the weekends and
and created Havoc Texas California
Arizona and Colorado insist it's the
federal government's responsibility to
do something but anslinger resists he
has no interest in staking a career on
combating a weed he has only a staff of
300 and a $1.5 million budget to battle
drugs the world over he wants to avoid a
law that will be difficult to enforce
and offers a different approach he
wanted silence if you had to say
something you made it sound as awful as
possible and I say marijuana is a killer
drug but by and large there was nothing
they could do about it there was no real
big action they didn't have the funding
they didn't have the people and and um
he I remember he said to me once I was
driving around the upper pomac and I was
crossing the bridge and I just parked on
the bridge and I got out and I looked
and there was marijuana plants as far as
you could see and he said I said to
myself and they want me to wipe this
this out anslinger can do nothing to
stop the push from states of the
Southwest for a federal law against
marijuana the issue is less about the
dangers of the drugs and more about
politics marijuana is entangled in
immigration problems I remember when I
interviewed Harry anslinger about it he
said we weren't having any trouble with
it uh you could get it in Harlem he said
and it just it was not a problem and but
the the pressure came from the southwest
and the west where the Mexican
immigrants were seen as a unnecessary
and uh dangerous Surplus population and
so there was a tremendous campaign to
try to push the uh Mexican immigrants
back into Mexico and marijuana got mixed
up in in that because there was no
question that they grew marijuana and
smoked marijuana in the end the
southwestern States Prevail upon
anslinger to do something hesitant as he
may have been the pressure is on for
anslinger to use the power of the
federal government to control
marijuana ever the bureaucrat anslinger
changes his position and becomes a
leading Warrior against
marijuana the treasury Department
intends to pursue a Relentless Warfare
against the Despicable dop pedling
vulture who prays on the weakness of his
fellow man his chief weapons are movies
that Express exaggerated dangers of the
drug the truth is that every Reaper is
loaded with immorality and beastial
perversions brutality murder sex crimes
insanity or suicide while a propaganda
war against marijuana is underway
anslinger begins working to draft a law
law but what kind of law like all
federal drug Prohibition in the early
20th century the Constitution stands in
the way he finds a way around that in a
new law passed to ban machine
guns a law was passed called the
National Firearms Act and which said
that you could not give borrow transfer
a machine gun to anyone without a
machine gun transfer stamp and it turns
out they aren't the government would not
make any machine gun transfer stamps so
this went up to the Supreme Court on the
grounds that this couldn't be legitimate
uh taxing measure because they weren't
doing anything to get the taxes it was
actually just a way to stop machine guns
being distributed the Supreme Court
ruled the National Firearms Act was
legal and its use of stamps even though
purposely not available was legitimate
anslinger now has a model for a national
ban against marijuana anslinger told me
that the general councel of the Treasury
Department came into his office holding
this decision by the uh Supreme Court
saying look we finally we have a way to
go after marijuana an Slinger's idea to
make marijuana illegal is simple anyone
involved in its use distribution sale or
transfer will be required to get from
the government a marijuana tax stamp but
the catch is the government will only
make a token number of tax stamps
available but can he convince Congress
gun the next tragedy may be that of your
daughter or your son or yours or
yours the History Channel now returns to
hook illegal drugs and how they got that
way on April 27th 1937 hearings begin
before Congress on the first federal law
marijuana anslinger hopes to convince
Congress that marijuana is dangerous and
that they will enact a law like the one
that banned machine
guns I think his attitude toward
marijuana uh
was that it was not as serious as
cocaine and heroin but you wouldn't know
that publicly because one of the
strategies against marijuana was to
describe it in so horrible and
disgusting a way that no one would be
tempted to try it once matter with you
son anslinger tells Congress the drug
makes the user insane or Worse nuts I
didn't do it on purpose of course she
did but rather than argue with them the
mother Stoops to pick it up and when she
does Elvin takes that heavy fying fans
in the stove and kills his mother with
it this is exactly what happened and how
it happened in fact he said anslinger
also tells Congress marijuana is the
stepping stone or gateway to heroin and
cocaine one more I'll be
floating I want something stronger how
got he adds that it is the Assassin of Youth
Youth [Music]
[Music]
one of the cases that he was was uh
constantly presenting in these
Congressional hearings was uh the case
of Victor Lata who was a young boy in
Florida who cut up his family with an
axe and uh according to Harry anslinger
he did this after smoking a marijuana
joint he then went out and and chopped
up his mother and father but what ansing
omitted in his testimony as was uh
published uh several days later in the
Tampa newspaper that Lata uh was
probably schizophrenic and there's very
little probability that marijuana was
the cause and effect of of the terrible
crime he committed not a very nice thing
to look at but this is marijuana and
there's nothing beautiful about
marijuana well the officer drew his gun
reached for the closet door and pulled out
out [Applause]
[Applause]
Victor anslinger tells Congress that
school children are using marijuana that
assertion results in the only testimony
against the
law Dr William Woodward of the American
Medical Association testifies that for
all the complaints about marijuana's
danger to school children there was no
evidence to back it up Congress
disregards his
testimony they just attacked him
viciously they said how can you come
down here trying to interrupt us when
we're trying to do something good for
the American people and so forth well it
turns out their argument with him had
nothing to do with marijuana they just
chopped him into pieces and verbally
excoriated him in front of this
Congressional hearing and then lied
about what he said H follows the
hearings adding extra newspaper runs to
cover the news in Washington and
headlining the evils of
marijuana Across America independent
movies add to the propaganda bombarding
the public the most famous Reefer
Madness warns of The Perils of smoking
marijuana as stated by anslinger and
didn't come from the feder narcotics but
ANS Slinger's Bureau did endorse it he
did support it in fact in the opening
scene when uh the high school principal
is talking to an audience of parents he
refers to the Bureau of Narcotics uh
several times on Capitol Hill anslinger
wins Congress passes the marijuana tax
act the first federal law against the
drug the Southwest gets the federal law they
they
wanted after five days of hearings the
marijuana tax law goes to Congress for a
vote it's passed within weeks by roll
call vote President Roosevelt signs the
bill on August 2nd it takes effect
October 1st perhaps one of an's most
significant contributions to fighting
drugs is that he more than any other
individual demonized drugs I don't know
that anslinger lied to Congress but he
was an effective propagandist we might
say the law requires that anyone wishing
to buy sell distribute or transfer
marijuana must pay a tax and have a
stamp the penalty for failure to do so
is 5 years in jail a $2,000 fine or both
but like the machine gun law the
government doesn't make the marijuana
stamps available there was another
problem too and that was that in order
to get the license you had to have the
marijuana in hand but if you had the
marijuana in hand without the license
you had already violated the law 2 days
after the law goes into effect the first
offender of the marijuana tax act Samuel
calwell is arrested in Colorado 4 days
later he is convicted and sentenced to 4
years in jail and a $1,000 fine
anslinger flies in from Washington to
see Justice done so Begins the federal
government's effort to punish marijuana
users one year after its ban anslinger
law runs into a powerful critic it was
none other than the mayor of America's
biggest Metropolitan city mayor felo
LaGuardia of New York LaGuardia
commissions a group of medical
professionals from the New York Academy
of Medicine to study his City's
marijuana problem this Blue Ribbon panel
visits schoolyards interviews principles
even tests the effects of the drug on
adults after four years of study the
following conclusions are drawn smoking
marijuana does not lead to addiction
marijuana smoking is not WI WID spread
among school children marijuana is not a
determining factor in Major Crimes
publicity concerning the catastrophic
effects of marijuana use in New York
City is unfounded ironically LaGuardia
obtained the pot used in his study from
anslinger and then when the lardi report
came out anslinger felt betrayed that
was the end of scientific research in
marijuana as far as he was concerned no
matter what the scientific basis for
laguardia's study he is pressured to tow
the party line in the Big Apple
drug through World War II marijuana
arrests drop but ever wise to the power
of the press anslinger begins targeting
celebrities and musicians to grab
headlines he arrests Jazz drummer Jean
Kupa for possessing marijuana who spends
jail actor Robert Mitchum is busted and
his career is almost shattered after
he's arrested at a pot [Music]
[Music]
party but there will be new drugs to
combat one other legal for the time
being is making history on the
battlefields of World War
II The History Channel now returns to
way of all the new technologies Germany
uses in the Second World War one touches
the common Soldier and the furer alike
it is the synthetic chemical amphetamine
more commonly known as speed the blitz
cre could just as easily have been
called speed C everybody was amazed uh
how fast the German Panza troops rushed
across Europe Westward towards the
lowlands couldn't believe they could
just keep going night and day and so
forth and it was they to learn that they
were dispensing uh large amounts of
troops Hitler is injected as many as
five times a day with methamphetamine a
supercharged amphetamine Scholars claim
Hitler's mad Rants and blunders were the
result of his addiction to the drug it
is also used in the Japanese war effort
given to the Imperial ground forces and
kamakazi Pilots the drug of the axis War
Machine is a stimulant it affects the
sympathetic nervous system to increase
alertness and decrease fatigue
amphetamine stimulate the adrenal gland
to increase spontaneity initiative
confidence and a sense of well-being
amphetamines are commonly associated
with appetite suppression but the drug
was first introduced as a lung
decongestant the benzidine inhaler
nicknamed Benny in Germany in 1932 it
would clear up your sinuses and and and
and do a lot of other things it wasn't
long before people discovered that if
you break the inhaler and take the
cotton swab the little cotton
swab uh which holds all of the uh
amphetamine some people just swallowed
at whole other people dissolved it in
coffee or what have you well I was just
wondering about those bennes and things
we've been fooling around with a Benny a
Benny you mean a vadine tablet this
method of ingestion is commonly called
Popp and Benny's at the time no one knew
how highly addictive and Powerful a
stimulant amphetamines
were it it was quite euphorigenic it uh
gave people a sense of confidence uh
life seemed brighter uh you didn't have
to sleep as much you could overcome uh
fatigue it made doing boring things uh
more interesting and of course weight loss
loss [Music]
[Music]
1946 amphetamines find their way into
post-war Society in Japan the market is
flooded with vast amounts of the drug in
America Housewives take speed to feel
better amphetamines are to the 50s what
opiates were in the past truck drivers
take them to stay up for days like Dock
Workers who once used cocaine to work
through the night and artists and
writers who used Lum a century ago now
pop Benny for kicks and inspiration like
author Jack kowak while popping benad
dream he writes on the road in 20 days in
in
1955 meth's the All-American drug meth
was invented for
Americans it it it it really embodies
all of the values that that we hold dear
industriousness um hard work um uh um
basically um enthusiasm for
accomplishing tasks it was the most
history the appeal of amphetamines cuts
across all walks of life one of the most
famous users is the newly drafted Elvis
Aaron Presley in October 1958 Presley
begins a tour of Duty in West
Germany as an army GI a sergeant
introduces him to speed from this point
on the king of rock and roll is hooked
for the rest of his life drugs must be
prescribed by a doctor and prepared by a
licensed pharmacist and Physicians were
the real pushers of this drug uh you're
a little depressed here let me let me
prescribe some form of amphetamine you
want to lose weight here let me
prescribe some
amphetamine uh you say you don't have
enough energy I mean the the reasons
were Le Legion in
1946 a physician by the name of
WRB uh published a paper in which he
claimed there were 39 medical reasons
for prescribing
amphetamines and they were everything
from hiccups to
schizophrenia by the 1960s amphetamine
use was a hidden epidemic on the other
hand marijuana once kept behind closed
used unlike methamphetamine a legal drug
marijuana has been outlawed by the
marijuana Stamp Act of
1937 users face fines and jail sentences
under federal law but it is the latest
drug fad the favorite of baby boomers
despite these potentially harsh penalties
marijuana is kind of a of a hybrid it
has some features that are that are like
LSD it also doesn't produce physical
dependence and it doesn't produce
overdose deaths and and the fact that it
doesn't do those two things makes it
seem like it's not quote an addictive
drug it has an appeal to people who are
uh smart uh and who are interested in uh
going beyond the conventional uh
boundaries and of their behavior 33
years after the marijuana tax act its
constitutionality was questioned in the
Supreme Court the man who led the charge
to change the law was the man who told a
generation to tune in turn on and drop
out Tim lry Timothy lirry the LSD Guru
argued that in order to get the license
one had to break the law in other words
one had to have the marijuana before you
got the license and therefore you were
already in violation of the law and
therefore getting the license was simply
self-incrimination the Supreme Court
agreed with him and overturned the law
in the slam of a gavl the federal law
that banned marijuana vanished until
1914 most people belied the Constitution
upheld one's right to ingest any
substance one wanted besides a drug that
made you feel better was perceived as
good but by 1970 recreational drug use
was perceived as bad and Congress didn't
consider the right to use drugs a right
protected by the Constitution and banned
marijuana in the controlled substance
1970 a lot of people became concerned
with drugs for the the first time in the
60s because the young people were using
them with
such uh seeming uh freedom and uh and
recklessness um they were particularly
concerned about marijuana the new
federal law is on firm constitutional
ground unlike the self-incriminating tax of
of
1937 but still marijuana use does not
end it just becomes illegal and finds a
place in a subculture of its own that
includes a comedy troop and a magazine
unlike pot methamphetamine is not
completely illegal it can still be
prescribed by doctors but illegal
non-medicinal use is at an all-time high
it's estimated that by
1971 so many amphetamine pills were
produced illicitly that there
were if you gave them to every man woman
and child in the country you would would
give them 50 a piece methamphetamine is
banned for non-medicinal use still it is
manufactured illegally in all 50 states
Missouri and Utah can claim the dubious
prize as meth lab capitals of the US
naively and innocently put on the market
as the benzidine inhaler almost 70 years
ago no one could predict amphetamines
damage people who used a lot of
amphetamines tended to be triger happy
about violence first of all they were
become a little paranoid and they
misinterpret something and think that
that person is out to do him harm and
they uh you know give him a punch or or
Worse amphetamines are also the
preferred drug of the Sports World pro
football horse racing and bicycle racing
are breeding grounds for Speed abuse
while racing the tour to France Tommy
Simpson collapses and dies under the
influence of methamphetamine speed kills
by blowing your heart up uh it actually
can blow your heart up I mean you the
heart muscle you'll get it to rip a hole
in itself you'll uh it the messages that
are being sent by the brain
are uh just completely out of whack
recreational use of this addictive drug
ruins thousands of lives despite its
dangers its powers of addiction claim
new addicts every
day that first shot of speed was like
having an orgasm I didn't have to have a
man I didn't have to have anybody I just
stood there and backed up and sat down
on the couch and it was it was
unbelievable and it was a rush a high
that um I knew I had found what I was
looking for my own
life and I was off and
running while amphetamines have long
been prescribed by doctors medicinal
marijuana has only gained Acceptance in
the '90s
today it is used by AIDS and cancer
patients to stimulate appetite and
reduce the nausea from chemotherapy it's
also a treatment for glaucoma the
attitude of the American public towards
marijuana is most fickle once the
federal government was opposed to a
national marijuana law but enacted one
anyway in
1937 only to see it overturned 30 Years
Later by the Supreme Court in 1970 a new
federal law banned marijuana again
citing it was of no medicinal use but
today marijuana is used legally for that
very reason now at the turn of the 21st
century 11 states have decriminalized
possession of small amounts of marijuana
judging the legal side effects to be
[Music]
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Atlantis an all new season kicks off as
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