In this fascinating post, our friends at NORML look back at almost a century of  crop destruction, arrests, jail terms, and worse – all for growing a plant whose benefits are legendary. We’ve excerpted a portion of their story below.

After Nearly Nine Decades of Lies, Enough Is Enough!

Today, August 2, 2025, marks the 88th anniversary of the signing of the Marihuana Tax Act, the first federal marijuana prohibition law. Since its inception, cannabis prohibition has been predicated on deception, stigmatization, and outright lies. The Marihuana Tax Act was passed in 1937 following almost no legislative debate and over the staunch objections of the American Medical Association, which disputed the government’s false claims that cannabis use invariably induced violence, insanity, and death.

Over the ensuing decades, we’ve witnessed first-hand the tragic consequences of this failed policy — including the denial of medical cannabis access to those who need it and the arrest of over 30 million Americans for violating marijuana laws. The failures of marijuana prohibition are no longer a matter of public debate, which is why nearly nine in ten Americans no longer support the federal government’s blanket criminalization of cannabis, and why 70 percent of adults now say that marijuana should be legal.

Click HERE to read the rest of this story on the NORML website. And don’t forget to subscribe to the NORML newsletter. No matter what part of the cannabis industry you’re in, you’ll find this newsletter useful. These people have been fearless leaders of this struggle for over 50 years.