America, “the home of the free and the land of the brave.” The American government has enforced hundreds of laws since its establishment. However, one law that America has enforced has been an unjust law, the illegalization of marijuana.

Hemp was one of the most used plants from further than 7000 B.C.E. to the 1930’s. It has been used for clothing, food, incense, cloth, rope, medicines, and much more. Medical marijuana has been proven to be safe and effective on numerous diseases, such as: Cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, pain, glaucoma, epilepsy, and other conditions. Marijuana has several known uses.

Marijuana was illegalized due to racism, fear, protection of corporate profit, yellow journalism, corrupt legislator, and personal career advancement. The racism factor of the illegalization of marijuana was because of the Mexican freedom fighter, Pancho Villa. After the Spanish-American War the western states developed racism toward Mexican-Americans. Mexican-American’s were used as cheap workers. Since Mexican-Americans brought hemp, or weed, with them to the states and smoked it on a regular basis, the Californian Government passed the first anti-hemp law strictly out of discrimination toward Mexican workers. They believed all Mexicans were crazy because they smoked weed.

During the early 1900s there was a certain fear attributed with smoking marijuana. Once black musicians, Mexican workers, and other foreigners started to smoke reefer, white people saw it as evil due to the fact that while intoxicated by this drug they may look at a white women, or child more then one time. Another fear factor of weed was it became linked with violent behavior after the stories of assassins. Trained killers would work for large treasures and sometimes even hemp. The assassins would do their hemp and then after detoxifying, they would go out and commit their murders with loyalty to their ruler. The stories quickly rumored into the effects of marijuana forced the assassins into fulfilling their master’s wishes.

The Bureau of Narcotics next discouraged marijuana. Knowing that cocaine and opium weren’t enough to build this agency, Harry J. Anslinger attached marijuana with the corporation. He immediately publicized hemp as a Negro, Hispanic, and foreign drug. Due to this countries discrimination toward foreigners American’s associated the drug as dirty, poor, and evil.

After campaigning for a while Anslinger got additional help from William Randolph Hearst. William Randolph Hearst was the owner of a large corporation of newspapers. He studied at Harvard University and soon become a multi-millionaire with his newspaper company. William Randolph Hearst looked to help Anslinger in this campaign to destroy the spreading of hemp. The most important reason Hearst wanted to outlaw marijuana was he had heavily invested into the timber company due to his newspaper. He didn’t want to see the development of hemp paper and hemp products take money away from his investments. The second reason is that Hearst was a racist man. Hearst actually helped promote Hitler in the early raising of WWII. He became a pro-Nazi. However, he was racist toward Mexicans due to the fact that he lost 800,000 acres of timberland to Pancho Villa.

Soon Dupont Chemical Company joined Anslinger and Hearst in the battle against hemp products. Of course they only joined the battle for their own personal advantage. Dupont had just started to invest in nylon and wanted hemp removed from the tight competition. Also Pharmaceutical companies joined, only for one reason, personal advantage. People could grow their own medicines without having to purchase them.

Marijuana was unfairly prohibited due to large amounts of discriminations in our country. Even a Nazi helped prohibit marijuana due to racial ethnicity. Fear was collected through rumors of violent behavior which haven’t been proven since. Most of all marijuana was illegalized due to the fact that people wanted to get further in their careers.

If Marijuana was legalized it could help further the advancement of medicines. It would also help save the economy in America. Currently the prohibition of marijuana is costing Americans billions of dollars a year. It would reduce the amount of criminals in prison, meaning the government would be able to cut jail founding in America. As many as 60 millions Americans spend 110 billion dollars a year in total on hemp. Drug dealers make millions of dollars a year in our country. If honest Americans could grow and sell hemp it would spark new life in the economy.

I believe the prohibition of hemp should be over. This law was unjustly created to further careers, and to discriminate verse blacks, Hispanics, and other foreigners. There has been proof that marijuana could further the degree of medicines in our country. It would also save our economy. Instead of spending billions of dollars on the product, and billions of dollars to prevent the product, why not just make the product, hemp, legal to Americans? Marijuana is not a physically addictive drug. However, the U.S. believes if you do marijuana you want to do other drugs such as cocaine, and opium. Marijuana itself, however, has no effect on a person’s decision-making abilities. Therefore, why punish a product that could vastly save the economy, but punish the human race for making the wrong decisions. Hemp/Marijuana should be a legal product in America.