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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Nadelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the

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Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any

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Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media,

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Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heat as

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Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not

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Speaker 1: even represent my own. And nothing contained in this show

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Speaker 1: should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use

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Speaker 1: any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners, So today I

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Speaker 1: have a bonus episode for you. One of my guests

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Speaker 1: coming up is Ellen Scanlon, who hosts the podcast How

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Speaker 1: to Do the Pot about women and cannabis. Their experiences,

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Speaker 1: the advice, the joys, the worries, they all have really

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Speaker 1: focused on women and marijuana. Uh that she'll be my

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Speaker 1: guest in one of the upcoming episodes and Psychoactive. But

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Speaker 1: today we bring you a special episode of her podcast.

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Speaker 1: It's called Weed Words. This podcast discusses cannabis and is

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Speaker 1: intended for audiences twenty one and over. Welcome to How

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Speaker 1: to Do the Pot, a podcast demystifying Cannabis for Women.

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Speaker 1: I'm Ellen Scanlon. Today's episode is part of our series

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Speaker 1: called weed Words, where we pick a tricky, telling or

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Speaker 1: thought provoking term, or sometimes it's a funny, fictitious or

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Speaker 1: factual phrase, and we explore all the ins and outs

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Speaker 1: of that weed word so that you can do the

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Speaker 1: pot with confidence. You've heard this plant called a lot

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Speaker 1: of names, weed, cannabis, pot, grass, or Mary Jane, and

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Speaker 1: you've probably heard these words in association with four twenty,

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Speaker 1: the high holiday that takes place every year on April.

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Speaker 1: The term four twenty was coined in the nineteen seventies

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Speaker 1: and has grown into a worldwide celebration of cannabis culture.

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Speaker 1: But it's hard to talk about for twenty without recognizing

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Speaker 1: that forty thousand people are still in prison in the

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Speaker 1: US for cannabis crimes. And did you know that while

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Speaker 1: black and white people consume cannabis at the same rates,

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Speaker 1: black people are nearly four times more likely to be

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Speaker 1: arrested for cannabis. So today, in honor of all the

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Speaker 1: cannabis advocates who have worked so hard for legalization and

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Speaker 1: an equitable industry, we are going to talk about a

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Speaker 1: word that may surprise you with its history. Today's weed

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Speaker 1: word marijuana. It's a word so synonymous with cannabis, and

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Speaker 1: sometimes it's used interchangeably, but as we'll learn today, it's

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Speaker 1: a complicated term with a pretty sordid past. Alyssa Yeoman

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Speaker 1: is a marketing manager at Leafley, the world's largest cannabis

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Speaker 1: information resource, and a co host of Leafley's podcast, The

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Speaker 1: roll Up. I asked her about the word marijuana and

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Speaker 1: why she thinks it's so mainstream. I think it's because

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Speaker 1: the government has an impact on how we talk about things,

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Speaker 1: in the language you use for things. In my opinion,

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Speaker 1: marijuana is someone who's maybe not yet interacting with the

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Speaker 1: plant regularly, or maybe hasn't interacted with the plant, which

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Speaker 1: I think is why we can know it's still search

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Speaker 1: so much, because people are trying to discover what it's about.

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Speaker 1: And I think once you're deeper into that discovery, then

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Speaker 1: you'll start using terms like cannabis or weed in marijuana,

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Speaker 1: and it kind of would drop out of your vocabulary

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Speaker 1: at that point. The origins of marijuana, the word itself

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Speaker 1: is comes from oppressive and a racist place, although it's

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Speaker 1: lost some of its bite because we often don't think

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Speaker 1: about the history of the word. It's still a racist word.

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Speaker 1: Just basically, all pocs were kind of lumped into these

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Speaker 1: marijuana users, so that's who it's racist against. To fully

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Speaker 1: understand this, let's talk about what to most people is

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Speaker 1: a secret history about cannabis. So to the time machine,

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Speaker 1: cannabis has been consumed for thousands of years all across

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Speaker 1: the world. A few notable and very old examples include

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Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians, who use cannabis as a holy anointing oil,

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Speaker 1: the ancient Chinese, who detailed over a hundred different medicinal

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Speaker 1: uses for the plant, and in India, the Hindu god

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Speaker 1: Shiva is fable to have rested under a cannabis plant

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Speaker 1: and eaten its leaves. The ancient Greek, and Roman and

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Speaker 1: Arabic cultures all have records using the plant. But how

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Speaker 1: do we get from this ancient past to today's use

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Speaker 1: of the word marijuana. For that, we need to travel

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Speaker 1: to the America's, specifically the United States. Back in the

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Speaker 1: early sixteen hundreds, hemp was grown in the US like

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Speaker 1: any other crop. Ropes, sales, and textiles were all made

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Speaker 1: from it. By the seventeen hundreds, it was common and

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Speaker 1: President George Washington even explored the possibility of using cannabis

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Speaker 1: medicinally in his journals. By the eighteen hundreds, cannabis was

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Speaker 1: widely accepted as medicine and was in many mainstream products.

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Speaker 1: It was added to the U S Pharmacopeia, which contained

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Speaker 1: recipes for the formulation of popular medicines, and was listed

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Speaker 1: as a treatment for opioid withdrawal, appetite stimulation, pain, and

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Speaker 1: as an anti nausea medicine. To show you how mainstream

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Speaker 1: it was. By the late eighteen hundreds, Vanity Fair magazine

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Speaker 1: even advertised for a hashish candy that was quote a

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Speaker 1: pleasurable and harmless stimulant that could cure melancholy and nervousness.

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Speaker 1: Hashish was glamorized by celebrities and enjoyed by the wealthy,

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Speaker 1: and the ad wasn't considered radical. By nineteen hundred, cannabis

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Speaker 1: was a widely used ingredient in many different American made medications.

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Speaker 1: So what happened the US was introduced to the word marijuana.

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Speaker 1: Cannabis had been here for hundreds of years, but it

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Speaker 1: wasn't until nineteen ten when the word marijuana first appeared.

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Speaker 1: Up until that point, the plant was just cannabis. What's

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Speaker 1: significant about nineteen ten. From then until nineteen twenty, nearly

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Speaker 1: a million Mexican immigrants legally immigrated to the United States

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Speaker 1: to escape the Mexican Revolution. These immigrants consumed cannabis differently.

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Speaker 1: They smoked it recreationally, a method that really hadn't been

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Speaker 1: widely adopted by people in the US. Cannabis had been

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Speaker 1: consumed for its intoxicating effects in hashish candies and medicines

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Speaker 1: like tinctures, but now a different culture was bringing its

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Speaker 1: love of cannabis to the States. Essentially, prior to nineteen ten,

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Speaker 1: the word marijuana wasn't even in the American vocabulary. Marijuana

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Speaker 1: is a Mexican Spanish term. Maybe if you've seen it

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Speaker 1: spelled with an age, that's where that comes from. And

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Speaker 1: so when that started to happen and people came over,

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Speaker 1: that's when they started calling it local weed. It became

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Speaker 1: known as the Mexican menace. Anti drug advocates and anti

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Speaker 1: Mexican immigrant advocates began to rebrand the plant. They worked

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Speaker 1: to ensure that cannabis was no longer thought of as

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Speaker 1: a medicinal herb enjoyed for thousands of years, it became

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Speaker 1: a degraded, immoral activity that was negatively associated with Mexican immigrants.

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Speaker 1: People started calling it local weed loco, a Spanish word

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Speaker 1: for crazy, and marijuana spelled with an H instead of

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Speaker 1: a J, so that English speaking Americans would recognize the

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Speaker 1: pronunciation of the word. By nineteen thirteen, the first bill

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Speaker 1: banning local weed passed in California. Within the next decade,

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Speaker 1: twenty five other states past laws banning cannabis without any

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Speaker 1: public outcry or much political debate. Anti cannabis propaganda was

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Speaker 1: in all the headlines, usually with marijuana spelled with an H,

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Speaker 1: and things only got worse for the plant from there.

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Speaker 1: By the nineteen thirties, the Great Depression began to affect

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Speaker 1: millions of Americans. Unemployment was widespread, and those that didn't

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Speaker 1: lose their jobs faced pay cuts. The previous influx of

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Speaker 1: Mexican immigrants meant that there was a surplus in the

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Speaker 1: labor force, and the added competition for work meant that

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Speaker 1: the disdain for Mexican Americans only grew to A guy

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Speaker 1: named Harry Ann Slinger, he is like all about reefer madness,

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Speaker 1: is ready to direct this newly created Federal Brewer of

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Speaker 1: narcotics and comes out saying like marijuana is the most

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Speaker 1: violence causing drug and at the time, while as jazz

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Speaker 1: and stuff was on the Upswing used that to say, Hey, Mary,

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Speaker 1: juana is only used by these dark skinned people to

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Speaker 1: make them feel like they are as good as white people. Um. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that was essentially one of the quotes that he said,

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Speaker 1: and he used this kind of went on his own

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Speaker 1: little like marijuana tour created Reefer Madness, and then that

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Speaker 1: led to that Marijuana Tacks Act of ninety seven where

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Speaker 1: it became federally criminalized in the US. You might remember

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Speaker 1: hearing about Harry Anslinger in our Paranoia Weed Words episode.

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Speaker 1: He was the first director of the Federal Bureau of

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Speaker 1: Narcotics and the godfather of Reefer Madness, the propaganda movement

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Speaker 1: and film responsible for stirring up a lot of the

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Speaker 1: fear and paranoia around cannabis that still exists today. In

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Speaker 1: case you haven't seen this now cult classic film, here's

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Speaker 1: a clip from the Refer Madness trailer. These high school

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Speaker 1: boys and girls are having a hop at the local

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Speaker 1: soda fountain. Innocently they dance, innocent of a new and

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Speaker 1: deadly menace lurking behind closed doors. Marijuana the burning weed

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Speaker 1: with its roots in hell. For more on refer madness,

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Speaker 1: check out our paranoia episode. Before this and before the

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Speaker 1: nineteen ten people were using it pretty much unanimously as

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Speaker 1: medicine and in the home. But with that coming in

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Speaker 1: and people looking for someone to blame during the Great

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Speaker 1: Depression and refer madness kind of all coinciding. That's where

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Speaker 1: we have the term marijuana come into play. In The

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Speaker 1: Marijuana Tax Act was passed, marijuana again being spelled with

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Speaker 1: an H instead of a J. This tax made the

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Speaker 1: plant expensive and only wealthy, primarily white people, could access cannabis.

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Speaker 1: It's not a big leap to surmise. This was an

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Speaker 1: effort to prevent people of color from consuming cannabis while

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Speaker 1: still allowing richer white Americans an opportunity to enjoy the plant.

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Speaker 1: By the early nineteen forties, cannabis was removed from the

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Speaker 1: U S Pharmacopeia and discredited, and in the early nineteen fifties,

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Speaker 1: the Bogs Act passed strict mandatory punishments for cannabis consumers.

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Speaker 1: Then came the nineteen sixties and the counterculture movement started

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Speaker 1: to question this narrative. President John F. Kennedy and Vice

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Speaker 1: President Lyndon Johnson commissioned reports that found that cannabis did

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Speaker 1: not lead to more dangerous drugs or induce violence. And

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Speaker 1: then we get to the part where we'd than war

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Speaker 1: on drugs. So this is from we fast forward from

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirties to nine eighty. Um, people are still scared

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Speaker 1: of marijuana, still associating it with people of color who

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Speaker 1: are bringing darkness and all of these bad things quote unquote,

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Speaker 1: and Reagan decides to use the term marijuana when doing

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Speaker 1: the War on drugs, and so marijuana becomes the term

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Speaker 1: that lawmakers are using and that they're using to demonize people.

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Speaker 1: This was the era that gave us former First Lady

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Speaker 1: Nancy Reagan's Just Say No campaign and President Reagan's Anti

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Speaker 1: Drug Abuse Act, which equated marijuana with heroin. As alyssa

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Speaker 1: woman just said, it was really used to demonize people,

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Speaker 1: especially people of color, and a lot of the effects

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Speaker 1: of this history are still felt heavily today. Christine de

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Speaker 1: la Rosa, the co founder and CEO of the People's Ecosystem,

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Speaker 1: shares what it was like to tell her traditional Mexican

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Speaker 1: parents about consuming cannabis to help with the symptoms of

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Speaker 1: the autoimmune disease lupus. And so I said, you know,

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Speaker 1: I came out because I really wanted to talk to

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Speaker 1: you about something. And they're like, okay, you know, what

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Speaker 1: do you want to talk about? And I said, well,

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Speaker 1: I said, the reason I look this way, the reason

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Speaker 1: I feel this way, the reason I was able to

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Speaker 1: get on a plane, the reason my doctor's cleared me

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Speaker 1: for the plane is because I have been using cannabis,

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Speaker 1: you know, to help me with my lupus, and it's

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Speaker 1: been very transformative. And I remember my mother. My dad's

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Speaker 1: looking down. My mother's like trying to compute what I'm saying.

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Speaker 1: And I said, you know, Mom, you told me when

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Speaker 1: I was growing up, like, don't smoke marijuana because they're

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Speaker 1: going to think you're a lazy Mexican. I said, And

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Speaker 1: when I realized that this propaganda that we were sold

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Speaker 1: as people of color has kept us from being able

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Speaker 1: to heal holistically, I said, so I've decided to go

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Speaker 1: into the cannabis business. I didn't even finish this sentence,

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Speaker 1: and my mother said in Spanish, um, I'll translate for you.

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Speaker 1: She was like, why are you always shaving the family

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Speaker 1: it's just like, I'm not shaming the family. It was

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Speaker 1: comical now, but I remember just feeling so, you know, like,

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Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm crushing my mother. And then I

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Speaker 1: said to her, I said, Mom, I said, you were

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Speaker 1: there with me when I was on the floor and

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Speaker 1: telling you I was dying and my house was like

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Speaker 1: a hot mess. I said, do you see me now,

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Speaker 1: I'm not walking with a cane. I was able to

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Speaker 1: get on a plane. I said, do you see my

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Speaker 1: eyes are brighter and my skin looks healthier, And She's

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Speaker 1: like yes, And I said I would not be here today.

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Speaker 1: I said, imagine all of the people in the US

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Speaker 1: and around the world that are in that same place

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Speaker 1: right now. And it's important that there's people of color

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Speaker 1: that own in the industry because other people of color

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Speaker 1: will see that, and all of the propaganda that they've

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Speaker 1: been sold about being lazy Mexicans if they smoke marijuana,

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Speaker 1: being drug lords, being cartel people is dispelled when they

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Speaker 1: see themselves reflected in the industry that's legal. And so

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Speaker 1: what I would tell other people that come from deeply

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Speaker 1: religious backgrounds, that come from deeply conservative areas is to

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Speaker 1: really just talk honestly with your people, whether it's your

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Speaker 1: family or your friends, and explain to them why you're

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Speaker 1: using it. And you know, if you say I want

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Speaker 1: to use it because I'm a recreational pot smoker, you'll

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Speaker 1: also tell them that, like, there's nothing wrong with this.

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Speaker 1: We've been told that there was something wrong. There was

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Speaker 1: a set of propaganda that was put forth to say

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Speaker 1: it's wrong, But it's actually not wrong. It's a plant.

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you what's wrong. What's wrong is parmaceutical

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Speaker 1: company making billions of dollars creating oxycotton. That's wrong. Christine's

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Speaker 1: story is a powerful reminder of the lingering effects of

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Speaker 1: the decades of anti marijuana propaganda that flooded the media

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Speaker 1: and deeply affected people of color, especially the Mexican American community.

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Speaker 1: And while there is still a lot of work to

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Speaker 1: be done, I believe that speaking about the plant without

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Speaker 1: the added weight of a history of exclusion and prejudice

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Speaker 1: definitely helps, especially when we talk about it in English

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Speaker 1: in the United States. And yet, for many of us,

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Speaker 1: the choice to use or not use the word marijuana

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Speaker 1: isn't steeped in social justice or political knowledge. It's a

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Speaker 1: regurgitation of a term we've heard for decades, probably without

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Speaker 1: thinking much about it. But is marijuana an appropriate word

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Speaker 1: to use? Alyssa woman shares her thoughts. That's a great question.

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Speaker 1: I think cannabis is the appropriate term to use. It's

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Speaker 1: the Latin term for it, it's the the plant name.

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Speaker 1: It was the term that people were using for it

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Speaker 1: before they started using it to oppress other people. That's

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Speaker 1: when the switch happened. I think when it comes to

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Speaker 1: talking about cannabis and marijuana and the history of both

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Speaker 1: the term marijuana, and I think you really can't talk

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Speaker 1: about cannabis without talking about the War on drugs. I

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Speaker 1: think the best thing you can always do is remain open,

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Speaker 1: and I think people are often scared to approach conversations

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Speaker 1: with those who are already very enthusiastic about cannabis because

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Speaker 1: we have all this knowledge, we are keeping up with

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Speaker 1: the latest. But I think that can come off as

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Speaker 1: almost the latest in a way where there is the

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Speaker 1: gate keeping and there's all this information that someone new

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Speaker 1: coming into it isn't going to know, and then immediately

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Speaker 1: will feel like dumb for not knowing something. I found

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Speaker 1: out through education myself that marijuana was a Mexican Spanish word, right, like,

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't have known that before, and now when I

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Speaker 1: think about it and I hear it, I hear how Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this isn't a word that came from the English language.

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Speaker 1: But anytime you have these conversations, I think just going

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Speaker 1: in open, non judgmental, and just prepared to be patient

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Speaker 1: with people, knowing that many people are still scared of marijuana,

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Speaker 1: whether that because of stigma, family upbringing, or because of

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Speaker 1: a bad experience that they had when they first tried

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Speaker 1: it with someone who wasn't necessarily looking out for the

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Speaker 1: best interest. The words you use are of course up

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Speaker 1: to you, and I hope explaining why this particular weed

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Speaker 1: word isn't our favorite gives you a better understanding of

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Speaker 1: the deep history of cannabis in our culture. For lots

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Speaker 1: more information and past episodes, visit do the Pot dot

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Speaker 1: com and that's also where you can sign up for

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Speaker 1: our newsletter for sneak peaks behind the scenes. Please follow

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Speaker 1: us on socials at Do the Pot, and if you

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Speaker 1: like how to Do the Pot, please rate and review

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Speaker 1: us on Apple Podcasts. It really helps more people find

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Speaker 1: the show. Thanks to our writer Malia Grasca and our

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Speaker 1: producers Maddie Fair and Nick Patrie. I'm Ellen Scanlon, and

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Speaker 1: thanks for listening to How to Do the Pot. The