The Word on Weed #2: Anslinger's War

 Marijuana has been in an “official” state of prohibition since 1937-s Marijuana Tax Act (in the United States). Because, among other reasons, it made supposedly white women desire black men.

Maia Szalavitz has a great takedowen of pundits like Tina Brown and David Brooks, who recently made specious claims that marijuana makes you stupider. Brown actually said Americans who smoke pot won't be able to "compete" with the Chinese. Her moment of xenophobia wasn't out of keeping with the history of anti-pot rhetoric.

Writes Szalavitz:

The truth is that our perceptions of marijuana—and in fact all of our drug laws—are based on early 20th century racism and "science" circa the Jim Crow era. In the early decades of the 20th century, the drug was linked to Mexican immigrants and black jazzmen, who were seen as potentially dangerous.

Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (an early predecessor of the DEA), was one of the driving forces behind pot prohibition. He pushed it for explicitly racist reasons, saying, "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men," and:

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."

The main reason to prohibit marijuana, he said was "its effect on the degenerate races." (And god forbid women should sleep with entertainers!)

Although it sounds absurd now, it was this type of propaganda that caused the drug to be outlawed in 1937—along with support from the Hearst newspapers, which ran ads calling marijuana "the assassin of youth" and published stories about how it led to violence and insanity. Anslinger remained as head of federal narcotics efforts as late as 1962, whereafter he spread his poisonous message to the world as the American representative to the U.N. for drug policy for a further two years.

Before marijuana was made illegal, the American Medical Association'sopposition to prohibition was ignored, as was an earlier report on marijuana in India by the British government, which did not find marijuana to be particularly addictive or dangerous. That "Indian Hemp Drugs Committee" reporthad concluded way back in 1894 that, "The moderate use of hemp drugs is practically attended by no evil results at all."

Poetry: Rankine's "Lyric" gets a UK Forward

 Claudia Rankine. Photograph: John Lucas/Graywolf Press

A book described by one critic as eavesdropping “on America and a racism that has never gone away” has won the top award at the 2015 Forward prizes for poetry.

Claudia Rankine has already won the National Book Critics Circle award in the US for Citizen: An American Lyric. On Monday night at a ceremony in London she was named winner of the Forward prize for best collection.

Citizen was described by the jury as a “powerful book for our time”. The chair of judges, AL Kennedy, added: “This is writing we can recommend with real urgency and joy. It’s a stylistically daring poetic project about the dehumanisation of those deemed outsiders ‐ we found it exhilarating and genuinely transformative.”

Kennedy said she and other judges had individually “pressed this book on others with real fervour. It will, we know, raise questions about the nature, purpose and importance of poetry.” Citizen is published as poetry but some have described as more of a lyric essay.

Kate Kellaway, reviewing in the Observer, wrote: “[Rankine’s] achievement is to have created a bold work that occupies its own space powerfully, an unsettled hybrid – her writing on the hard shoulder of prose. She eavesdrops on America and a racism that has never gone away.”

Citizen includes extracts from documentary film scripts, screengrabs of Zinedine Zidane headbutting Marco Materazzi at the 2006 World Cup, JMW Turner’s painting The Slave Ship and an essay on Venus Williams.

Rankine, who was born in Jamaica and now lives in California, teaching at the University of Southern California, wins £10,000.

Two other winners at the awards, now in their 24th year, were Mona Arshi, who won the £5,000 Felix Dennis prize for best first collection, and Clare Harman, who won the £1,000 prize for best single poem.

Arshi drew on her 10 years as a human rights lawyer – including her representation of the right-to-die campaigner Diane Pretty – for her debut collection Small Hands. The jury praised the collection for its “imagination, sensuality and beguiling playfulness”.

Harman won for a poem first published in the TLS, The Mighty Hudson, a biographical sketch of a strongman who overreaches himself.