Q: Why is pot illegal?
A: For the same reason that alcohol was, at least for a time, illegal: A combination of our Puritanical culture, social engineering, and flat out racism.
Like most banned substances and virtually every drug deemed illegal today, pot was once perfectly legal. Then came Prohibition.
But wait: Prohibition dealt with alcohol, not pot, and Prohibition was overturned!
Yes, and yes. But then there's Henry Anslinger. Anslinger was an unswerving proponent of Prohibition, and served as a Commissioner in the Bureau of Prohibition. In 1930, he was named the first Commissioner of the newly minted Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a parallel agency with the Bureau of Prohibition in the Treasury Department. When Prohibition ended in 1933, Anslinger realized that both his power and his budget would be significantly slashed, and he needed a new "enemy" to combat.
Pot smoking had been around in the U.S. since at least the mid-1800s, and though it was localized to the American Southwest, it was used elsewhere in the country. Before his appointment, Anslinger had no problem with pot. He didn't think it was a problem, that it wasn't a problem, and that it didn't incite violence, as anti-pot crusaders alleged. But Anslinger changed his views as a way to retain his power, authority, and budget, Anslinger, and he seized on pot with the exact same zeal as he condemned alcohol during prohibition.
This exact same moment saw two enormous social changes in the U.S.: The Great Migration, where over several decades, as many as 8 million rural Blacks fled the South for urban areas in the North and Midwest, in what some historians deem the largest mass migration in world history; and the large influx of Hispanic immigrants, chiefly Mexicans. This created a huge social upheaval, especially in the big cities in the North and Midwest, and, tragically yet inevitably, Blacks and Hispanics became the "new enemy" to urban progress and a perceived threat to the social order. And Blacks and Hispanics were, far and away, the largest consumers of pot. So, it became an easy task for Anslinger and his forces to demonize Blacks and Hispanics by labeling them "pot fiends," thus labeling them criminals and enemies of the social order (i.e. White social order).
And thus, the War on Pot, a wildly successful campaign to criminalize pot, a status it retains to today virtually everywhere in the U.S.
What's fascinating about the anti-pot crusade is that the reasons for its criminalization where developed after the fact, and were based on wild speculation of crusading bureaucrats, with no scientific backing whatsoever. Thus, many of the "reasons" for outlawing pot, which are believed even today, include:
* It's a gateway drug (no, there are a host of scientific studies that clearly demonstrate it's nothing of the sort).
* Even one use will lead to a lifetime of addiction (no, though studies indicate that a shockingly high number of kids have tried pot, the studies also indicate that the vast majority of them do not "try" it a second time).
* It incites violence (no, it incites lethargy, giggling, and an insuperable craving for Doritos and chocolate chip cookies).
* It causes mental diseases, brain and body damage, and insanity (no, it does nothing of the sort, but alcohol does do all of those things).