I've never seen any evidence that this is true. My understanding is that the Prohibition enforcement people, at risk of losing their jobs on account of Prohibition ending, moved to criminalize other drugs, ultimately settling on cannabis because basically only Black and Mexican people used it at the time. That made it easy to convince white people to ban it with heavy-handed propaganda like Reefer Madness.
The source is probably going to be that book The Emperor Wears No Clothes, by Jack Herer. I am aware of no academic sources which agree with that book, however, and as a cannabis enthusiast myself, I've always been annoyed at the extensive misinformation passed along in the weed community.
I've never seen any evidence that this is true. My understanding is that the Prohibition enforcement people, at risk of losing their jobs on account of Prohibition ending, moved to criminalize other drugs, ultimately settling on cannabis because basically only Black and Mexican people used it at the time. That made it easy to convince white people to ban it with heavy-handed propaganda like Reefer Madness.
I learned this from NORML.org.
The source is probably going to be that book The Emperor Wears No Clothes, by Jack Herer. I am aware of no academic sources which agree with that book, however, and as a cannabis enthusiast myself, I've always been annoyed at the extensive misinformation passed along in the weed community.