Rodney

Actually, the jazz era is a good thing; but as I recall marijuana only became illegal on the federal level in '35 or so. In those days, the majority of smokers were actually farmworkers in the southwest (and urban blacks, to a degree), so the purity police had an easy time making it illegal: poor Latino farmworkers and black ghetto-dwellers had no clout.

If marijuana was still legal today and someone was trying to outlaw it, they'd have a much harder time now. Because it's used in all segments of society now, and many people with clout would oppose it. That might be a good subject, actually: the circumstances under which pot was originally made illegal federally, and if those circumstances would still hold true today if pot was currently legal and somebody was trying to criminalize it.