The recent call from elected officials in Colorado and elsewhere to re-criminalize cannabis products containing elevated levels of THC is simply a new page taken from an age-old playbook
For decades, marijuana legalization opponents have claimed that the marijuana of their generation is far more potent, and therefore inherently more dangerous to society, than that of the past. In the 1930s, Henry Anslinger, commissioner of the United States Bureau of Narcotics, testified to Congress that cannabis was so potent that it is entirely the monster Hyde, the harmful effect of which cannot be measured” thereby justifying the federal prohibition of the plant. In the 1960s and ’70s, public officials alleged that so-called ‘Woodstock weed’ was so uniquely powerful that smoking it would permanently damage brain cells and, therefore, its simple possession needed to be heavily criminalized in order to protect public health.