lower-class social origins

“I anticipated some time ago that in [the] event of our securing Federal control of the sale and distribution of morphine and cocaine, the fiends would turn to Indian hemp, and for that reason incorporated that drug in the proposed act for the control of the interstate traffic in narcotics.”

Cannabis is rather an unimportant drug and that we have given undue attention to the whole subject of Cannabis

n the US, cannabis was initially seen as a potentially effective medicine, psychiatric tool, and stimulant for extraordinary visions and experiences.

The drug's reputation as a "killer weed" was likely influenced by Mexican ideas about marijuana, which associated it with violence, madness, and crime.

anti-marijuana laws followed this pattern, state by state, as a result of anti-Mexican sentiment.

stereotype of the marijuana user in Mexico was that of a dangerous, unpredictable madman,

"Mexican hypothesis" suggests that Mexican migrant workers brought marijuana to the US in the early 20th century, leading to its prohibition due to racial prejudice

In Mexico, the war on drugs was closely tied to US-Mexican relations, with the US exerting significant influence over Mexican drug policy. The Mexican government's efforts to prohibit drugs were often unsuccessful, and the country's drug trade continued to thrive

The United States, driven by domestic and foreign policy considerations, led the movement to codify international standards. The US experience in the Philippines and the lessons learned from the Chinese opium story led to the conclusion that only a system that restricted both supply and demand could be effective. The Hague Convention's Article 13 allowed the US to exert pressure on Latin American countries to adhere to international drug control standards, which ironically became a tool of imperialism.

This led to the emergence of a larger hemispheric network that linked Andean coca peasants to chemists, smugglers, and users in the United States and elsewhere. By the 1960s, agents of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics reported on recipes for coca paste, cocaine sulfates, and crude cocaine, which were refined in labs in Havana and later Colombia.