Marijuana Ban Never Passes

Is it possible? What if the war on drugs never happened? Is it possible to butterfly that out of existence? Or does this basically require a Socialist Revolution to occur?:p
 
Actually the modern prohibition on Marijuana started in the 30's, By racist white elites like Hearst who drove a unwarranted fear of a harmless drug used by mostly minorities , And threatening other textile/paper interests. Not even mentioning the facts of said prohibition which is a crime all its own. It worked like this In order to purchase Marijuana you required a tax stamp that you could only purchase if you already had the Marijuana in your possession in violation of the law. heres a nice link detailing the history of US marijuana laws

http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/why-is-marijuana-illegal/

May Anslinger burn in hell forever
 
It's not that hard. At the turn of the century in Australia almost half the ciggarettes you could buy off the street in Australia contained cannibis. It was jsut a series of unfortunate (IMO) circumstances that led to it being banned by most governemnts. But i would also help if you can somehow make cannibis as accepted in western culture as alcohol, for which you will need an earlier POD.

BTW, the War on Drugs is, by definition, a socialist policy and all socialist/communsit countires OTL had harsh anti-drug laws, so i don't see why a socialsit revolution is going to cause cannibis to be legalised on a large scale.
 
Hmm. Well, I'm okay with pretty much any time. I'm pretty much pondering any time that would allow it to be completely swept away.
 
Actually the modern prohibition on Marijuana started in the 30's, By racist white elites like Hearst who drove a unwarranted fear of a harmless drug used by mostly minorities , And threatening other textile/paper interests. Not even mentioning the facts of said prohibition which is a crime all its own. It worked like this In order to purchase Marijuana you required a tax stamp that you could only purchase if you already had the Marijuana in your possession in violation of the law. heres a nice link detailing the history of US marijuana laws

http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/why-is-marijuana-illegal/

May Anslinger burn in hell forever

The first anti Marijuana laws were anti poison laws in New York State passed in 1860.
 
Actually the modern prohibition on Marijuana started in the 30's, By racist white elites like Hearst who drove a unwarranted fear of a harmless drug used by mostly minorities , And threatening other textile/paper interests. Not even mentioning the facts of said prohibition which is a crime all its own. It worked like this In order to purchase Marijuana you required a tax stamp that you could only purchase if you already had the Marijuana in your possession in violation of the law. heres a nice link detailing the history of US marijuana laws

http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/why-is-marijuana-illegal/

May Anslinger burn in hell forever

Hello paid drug legalization advocate :p (though I don't know why you're lobbying the Alternate History vote :D).

I would suggest picking up an article from a site that doesn't have quite so much of an in-your-face agenda, I would say this just as much for anti-legalization advocates as I would for those in favor of it, I'm just saying, sites like this exist entirely to twist the facts to fit the agenda, not the other way around.

Marijuana legalization did actually begin in the mid-19th century in the United States, mostly out of fears stemming from "snake oil" salesmen who peddled bum medicines that often contained narcotics, sham artists essentially. The medicine generally did nothing and (unbeknownst to the salesmen, but very, very good for their profit margins) tended to get people hooked on addictive substances of which marijuana was a lesser part compared to say... opium.

And yeah... for the 30's... Hearst added a new spin to a social sentiment that was already largely in favor of prohibiting alcohol and cannabis. Though alcohol prohibition and marijuana prohibition are not the same if you look at how many Americans drink versus how many smoke marijuana.
 
Hmm, would a muckraker perhaps uncovering some issues related to the ban of marijuana cause its banning to become... problamatic at least?
 
Considering how few American voters there really are here shilling for the Legalization vote would be rather dumb. As for pre 1936 Drug laws considering Morphine was order-able thru the Sears catalog until the early 30's how serious were they really,This included NY btw.

Considering thry didn't listen to the AMA what makes you think they would care what a journalist wrote, Not forgetting most of the muckraker press actually worked towards the prohibition as they worked for Hearst
 
Last edited:
While I sit on the prohibition side of the fence, I think that it is nevertheless interesting to try and think what the consequences of not banning cannabis would have been.

I somehow have a feeling that the drug would not have had the "coolness" factor it enjoyed from the sixties onwards, partly because of its prohibited status and the extensive tolerance of cannabis smoking by singers and celebrities which led others to do as they did.

Consequently, the drug may have stayed on the margins of society, though the opposite may have happened as well.
 
Would this lead to softer drug laws in general? Or at least some kind of vetting process to sign off on recreational drugs, like a version of the FDA? Obviously a few legacy drugs grandfather their way through, but maybe new things like LSD and MDMA pass muster.

Either way, prison populations are going to be just over half what we have now, and the black market will be some degree less, with all the knock-on effects that might have.

Perhaps the prohibition we got would now be a general prohibition on every recreational drug, specifically mentioning some of the common ones from morphine down though marijuana and down to alcohol and nicotine. So when this is repealed, the backlash against such measures now sticks to all drugs, not just alcohol. This would make any future attempt to ban anything mean instantly conjuring up memories of the prohibition era, by then immortalised and dramatised in film. Just as suggesting a return to alcohol prohibition is seen as an issue of personal liberty rather than public morality or health, so too would all drugs ITTL.

And if, as others have noted, this timeline has America versus the commies, well, since they'd likely have strict restrictions on recreational drugs as they did in OTL. So it would be another chip in the liberty pot, a propaganda point that shows how much freer we are than they.
 
It could become just as commonplace as alcohol, people going to cannabis tasting events and trying different strains. Maybe adults smoking before dinner at office parties to make the meal taste better.
 
You're thinking of yellow journalists, not muck rakers Comablack. Muckrakers uncover the grimy parts of society, including the racist parts. They would bust him if anything.

But anyway, okay, for some reason the alcohol prohibition gets included with it all recreational drugs,(perhaps some sort of combination event,) which leads to when it's repealed a constitutional amendment that makes it against the constitution to ban said drugs, or at least on a federal level. Now, the question is why said amendment would be passed that way.
 
Top