Up until five years ago, I wasn’t aware of the xenophobic and racist connotations of the word “marijuana.” I’ve always just referred to it as “weed” or “cannabis,” and never thought about the etymology of marijuana.
The scientific name is Cannabis Sativa, and the popular theory is that the genus of this flowering plant originates from Asia.
At the start of the 20th century, big pharma companies such as Bristol-Myers Squib and Eli Lilly included cannabis and cannabis extracts in the medicines they produced.
Dumas is arguably the most well-known French writer in history, although his maternal family was originally from Haiti.
When over 890,000 Mexicans legally immigrated into the United States to find safety from the civil war destroying their lives.
It’s widely believed that El Paso, Texas, was the first American city to prohibit sale or possession in 1914.
With the influx of immigrants in the south and the rise of jazz, white America’s love affair with cannabis ended.
An outspoken man, he used the new creation of movie theatres to spread the hateful message that racialized the plant further for white America.