I'm watching Ron Mann's 1999 Grass, narrated by Woody Harrelson. Some of the propaganda films depicted are astonishing - did people really believe that stuff? I don't want to hear anyone ever say again that modern America is an immature society.
And here is something I didn't know - the artful way in which marijuana possession was made a federal crime:
The Marijuana Tax Act was signed into law by President Roosevelt in 1937. The act prohibited possession of marijuana anywhere in the United States without a special tax stamp from the Treasury Department, and the Treasury Department didn't give out any stamps, effectively making marijuana illegal.
Genius. It is also telling how that such an elaborate arrangement had to be dreamt up to achieve criminalisation of marijuana: the power to ban a product was a new-found one.
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