According to the Drug Policy website, the history behind the cause of the criminalization of marijuana in the United States is significantly more profound than most might think. It all started in the early 1900s following the Mexican Revolution, where there was an increase in immigrants coming from Mexico to bordering states such as Texas as well as Louisiana. For obvious reasons, these immigrants had brought with them part of their culture, which included using “cannabis as a medicine and relaxant.” Cannabis was the term Americans used whereas the Mexicans called the substance “marijuana”, and so this caused a slight hatred towards the immigrants as this “foreign term” was ignored to be already used by many American citizens (Drug Policy).
