re: Tues. Hearing on marijuana laws

[RainDog]

6. Someone needs to ask Grassley if this is a scientific claim

“Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice.”…….Hearst newspaper 1935

or is this the scientific evidence?

When Montana outlawed marijuana in 1927, the Butte Montana Standard reported a legislator’s comment: “When some beet field peon takes a few traces of this stuff… he thinks he has just been elected president of Mexico, so he starts out to execute all his political enemies.” In Texas, a senator said on the floor of the Senate: “All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff [marijuana] is what makes them crazy.”

What's the difference between those "scientific" statements from respected legislators and prohibitionists then and now?

Are Republicans afraid to vote for the will of the people because prohibition has been such a useful tactic for them to engage in voter suppression by the demonstrated racial bias in arrests?

Is marijuana prohibition just another iteration of Jim Crow laws?