They are said to be dirty, brawlers, thieves. We are wary of these dull complexioned guys, black mustaches, eyes hidden by the brims of their big hats, of their families with swarms of kids. Between 1910 and 1920, 900,000 Mexicans crossed the Rio Grande (or Rio Bravo, according to them), fleeing misery and civil war to find refuge in the United States. In their backpacks, they carry the seeds of a herb that they smoke in cigarettes or sip in an infusion: the “mota”, that’s what they call it. The American authorities will soon give it another nickname: the “locoweed” – the “weed that drives you crazy”.
It must be conceded that formidable bandits have contributed to its reputation. Pancho Villa (1878-1923), the most emblematic of the Mexican revolutionary leaders, is himself an inveterate smoker. Its trigger-happy soldiers live in a cloud of smoke, to the furious rhythm of a popular song: La Cucaracha (“the cockroach”), a term that also refers to a joint butt. “The cockroach, the cockroach/Can’t walk anymore/Because he’s gone/Because he misses/Marijuana to smoke. »
At that time, cannabis was unknown to the American population and health authorities alike. It is at most an adjuvant incorporated in medicinal preparations used to fight against glaucoma or migraine. The Harrison Act, the first drug law of 1914, does not yet mention it. Cocaine is then the main health hazard.
The international conference in The Hague in 1912, then the two conferences on narcotics in Geneva in the winter of 1924, also attacked smoked opium and manufactured drugs. Despite the theatrical indictment of the Egyptian delegate, the ” Indian hemp “whose effects are largely unknown, remains regent in dispersed order.
“Killer of our youth”
Egypt, which attracted the first international smugglers, was a forerunner, enacting two “sublime orders”, in 1879 and 1891, prohibiting the production and consumption of cannabis. In its wake, other countries are legislating in the name of public health and safety. Thus Jamaica which, in 1913, voted its repressive Ganja Law. The British colonial empire is more lenient elsewhere. Referring to the pioneering work of the Hemp Commission (1894-1895), the English let the chenevières (plantations) grow in India. In France, the cannabis business is a state affair – the cannabis market love more precisely, the sale of which has been subject to a state monopoly since 1904, through the Régie Marocaine des Kifs et Tabacs operated by the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas (the future BNP).
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