lon, the Secretary of Treasury and Anslinger's immediate superior. [1] Anslinger passed the original hempball, but newspapers all over the country began damning marijuana, as well. William Randolph Hearst's newspapers played a large role, perhaps the most vital, in disseminating much of this adverse propaganda. They finally succeeded, in 1937, in getting marijuana prohibition laws passed. [1] However, American soldiers were regularly smoking marijuana in the Panama Canal Zone in 1925, and a report issued at that time by the Army stated that no action should be taken to prevent its use or sale. It went on to state that the drug was not habit-forming or dangerous. These findings were reaffirmed eight years later, in a second United States Army report. [2] Throughout the 1980's, marijuana use declined among college and high school students. Conversely, marijuana cultivation has been on the rise in America in recent years. New growing practices have increased the potency by five fold or more. It's a matter of concern among drug abuse experts as to how these higher doses of THC might adversely affect users. [1] Reefer Madness [2] The Encyclopedia Of Psychoactive Drugs: Marijuana In the sample year of 1990, out of all drug arrests within the United States, 6.1% of those arrests involved the sale of marijuana, and 23.9% involved its possession. Here, in the Northeast, a total of 4.7% of all drug arrests were for the sale of marijuana, and 21.4% were for the possession of it. This represents the lowest figure in the nation for distribution, and only the West ranked lower in arrests for possession. [1] In 1968, the possession of THC, other than for research, was made illegal. Then, in 1970, the US Congress passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, after which most states followed suit with their own variation of the Act's contents. The Control Substances Act, as it is also known, distinguishes between different classificati...
