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| The exotic-sounding Mexican Spanish word “marihuana” was used as part of the 1930s scare tactics which led to the plant being declared illegal in 1937. But should that mean we can never use the word again? Not unless we’re willing to forget the counterculture of the 1960s. |
I love the cannabis community. Most of the people working in it have the best intentions and laudable goals. And the challenge facing those who wish to re-legalize cannabis is difficult and daunting enough without those in the movement inadvertently placing additional roadblocks in our own path.
One of those roadblocks seems to happen more and more often — and that’s arguing over word etymology and usage, of all things, rather than working to legalize the plant.
Yes, I’m talking about the great “marijuana/cannabis” controversy. Some activists get quite worked up about it, but any pejorative baggage surrounding the term “marijuana” is, at this point, really nothing more than an increasingly irrelevant historical footnote from the distant past.
There are those within the cannabis movement who will tell you with a straight face that the reason the plant is still illegal is because it is called “marijuana.” That’s overreaching wildly.
