Title: Marijuana - Cannabis Society & Culture Website
Headings: 
Marijuana
Why is Marijuana Illegal?
Is Marijuana Dangerous?

Content: Marijuana is generally associated with the latter category, which is why it can be convincingly portrayed as a “gateway drug.” 4. It is associated with unfashionable lifestyles. Marijuana is often thought of as a drug for hippies and losers. Since it’s hard to feel enthusiastic about the prospects of enabling people to become hippies and losers, imposing criminal sanctions for marijuana possession functions as a form of communal “tough love.” 5. It was once associated with oppressed ethnic groups. The intense anti-marijuana movement of the 1930s dovetailed nicely with the intense anti-Chicano movement of the 1930s. Marijuana was associated with Mexican Americans, and a ban on marijuana was seen as a way of discouraging Mexican-American subcultures from developing. Today, thanks in large part to the very public popularity of marijuana among whites during the 1960s and 1970s, marijuana is no longer seen as what one might call an ethnic drug–but the groundwork for the anti-marijuana movement was laid down at a time when marijuana was seen as an encroachment on the U.S. majority-white culture.