CANNABIS

A graphic history of marijuana and how bad science and bad laws resulted in demonizing a substance that the author feels offers far greater benefits than its minimal risks of harm.

An artist who analyzes with the same broad strokes that mark his drawings, Brown (Is This Guy for Real?: The Unbelievable Andy Kaufman, 2018, etc.) takes readers on a journey mixing myth and history, from Vishnu and Shiva and the introduction of the cannabis plant to India through the spreading of hemp all over the globe to the racial and ethnic biases that fueled the criminalization of “Satan’s Seed” in America. Though legitimate science and medicine failed to find any significant danger in the use of the drug, repressive forces—the law, the church, the press—succeeded in the public opinion campaigns, depicting it as a scourge that contaminated society. Claimed one study based on spurious science titled “Marihuana Menace,” “the dominant race, whites, are at the height of culture and those countries that consume marijuana have deteriorated.” “Those countries included Mexico, where the plant proliferated and consumption crossed the border into Texas, as El Paso enacted the first law making cannabis illegal a century ago. The statute served as an anti-immigration weapon, and marijuana became associated with minorities as well as jazz musicians and those who enjoyed the music. The rest is history, as both the use of marijuana and the criminal penalties escalated exponentially, and the conservative presidencies of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan sustained a war on drugs. “At the dawn of the 1980s over 400,000 people per year were being arrested for cannabis,” writes the author, “with blacks and other minority groups being arrested in far greater numbers than whites.” The pendulum has since swung toward decriminalization and legalization, making much of what is recounted here seem like reefer madness in retrospect.

Not as engaging as the author’s bio of Andre the Giant, but his uncluttered drawings suit his straightforward argument.