WA House COG - Committee Meeting
(January 22, 2021) - HB 1210 - Public Hearing

Marihuana - Poster - Excerpt
[ Event Details ]

The committee heard a bill intended to remove the term ‘marijuana’ from use in state law due to its background as a way to imbue cannabis prohibition with racial and social bias.

Here are some observations from the Friday January 22nd Washington State House Commerce and Gaming Committee (WA House COG) meeting.

My top 2 takeaways:

  • After a staff briefing on the legislation, Representative Melanie Morgan---a committee member and the prime sponsor of the bill---explained the racially charged history of use of the slang term ‘marijuana’ instead of the plant genus name, ‘Cannabis,’ at the root of the nation’s drug laws.
    • Committee Research Analyst Kyle Raymond briefed on the bill’s technical revisions, saying HB 1210 would modify “certain terminology throughout the Revised Code of Washington (RCW), specifically...replaces the term ‘marijuana,’ currently found in statute, with the term ‘cannabis.’” He said that the intent in section one “indicates that the act is technical in nature and no substantive legal changes are intended or implied from the changes made throughout the bill” (audio - 1m, video). 
    • Morgan talked about the racist background of the word marijuana in American cannabis prohibition and policymaking, a term “historically associated with racism” as contrasted with the “scientific name of Cannabis” (audio - 5m, video).
      • She explained that cannabis “refers to a group of plants with psychoactive properties known as Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica” which originated in “central Asia and its Indian sub-continent.” Morgan noted early uses for the plant in “the Neolithic Age in China and Japan.”
      • Looking at the word's etymology, Morgan cited the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) commenting that it may derive from the Nahuatl mallihuan, meaning "prisoner." The word, also frequently spelled ‘marihuana’ in the early 20th century, had been studied with no agreed upon origin determined.
        • The National Public Radio series Code Switch looked at the word’s history, reporting that “We know that the Spanish brought cannabis to Mexico to cultivate it for hemp, but it's unlikely the Spanish indulged in any significant fashion in the plant's psychoactive properties. One theory holds that Chinese immigrants to western Mexico lent the plant its name; a theoretical combination of syllables that could plausibly have referred to the plant in Chinese (ma ren hua) might have just become Spanishized into "marijuana." Or perhaps it came from a colloquial Spanish way of saying "Chinese oregano" — mejorana (chino). Or maybe Angolan slaves brought to Brazil by the Portuguese carried with them the Bantu word for cannabis: ma-kaña. Maybe the term simply originated in South America itself, as a portmanteau of the Spanish girl's names Maria and Juana.”
        • OED had long tracked cannabis slang, adding ‘Mary Jane’ as an alternate name for the drug in 1928, including ‘420’ for the first time in March 2017, and creating a series of cannabis industry and product terms in March 2019.
    • Morgan said that “cannabis was not unfamiliar to Americans as it was frequently used in medicinal products and textiles.” However, “the term marijuana itself is pejorative and racist, based on a long-standing theory that narcotics agents in the 1930s chose that word, over the more scientific ‘cannabis,’ when crafting drug laws,” she noted.
      • As cannabis consumption became popular in the U.S., Morgan described how “it was negatively associated with Mexican Immigrants” but in time “the use of marijuana was attributed to Black African Americans, jazz musicians, prostitutes, and lower-class Whites.” Moreover, “poverty and unemployment during the Great Depression furthered the resentment and fear of immigrants and Black African Americans,” she said, and “anti-marijuana propaganda fueled the hysteria around the use of cannabis in communities of color to highlight the danger around those that used it.”
      • Morgan pointed to Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the defunct U.S. Treasury Department Federal Bureau of Narcotics, stating that he had claimed “marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.” She also asserted he claimed “most marijuana users are Negroes, Hispanics, Carribeans, and entertainers” and their “Satanic music, jazz and swing, results from marijuana usage.” Morgan said Anslinger leveraged “racist stories'' slandering cannabis consumers as an “inferior race” prone to “promiscuity and violence” as a way to intentionally conflate cannabis with “communities of color and fictitious side effects.”
      • Morgan indicated passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 further criminalized cannabis, and throughout “the Reefer Madness of the 1930s, and the War on Drugs of the 1980s, to the medical marijuana dispensaries of today, the word marijuana is a reminder of the history of racism and persecution.” The impacts from racist provocations “are still being felt,” Morgan said, pointing to Brookings Institute research showing nationwide cannabis use rates by Black Americans were close to their White counterparts but Black Americans were still arrested at a “four to one” rate.
      • Find out more about the policy background for drug prohibition as a method of social control not confined to cannabis. The criminalization of smoked opium used by Asian immigrants exemplified that practice as laudanum, a tincture of opium and alcohol popular among White Americans, wasn’t targeted by prohibition laws.
    • Morgan concluded that since 2012 “the data shows that Black and Brown people have not been able to fairly and equitably participate in the lucrative industry of legalized cannabis.” She noted the Washington State Legislative Task Force on Social Equity in Cannabis (WA Task Force on Social Equity in Cannabis) which she co-chaired was an effort “to bring pairity to the industry” and asked for support for removing “‘marijuana’ from all Washington State statutes and replace with the proper scientific name of ‘cannabis.’”
      • Representative Steve Kirby commented on his age when first viewing Reefer Madness (audio - 1m, video).
      • Vice Chair Emily Wicks said “although we call it a, you know, a technical fix I think it does a lot to...correct, in some efforts, some serious harms around this language.” She observed that the “thick bill” would be part of “changing the conversation” around cannabis (audio - 1m, video).
      • Committee Chair Shelley Kloba called the issue a “personal quest” as she still worked to remember to use the term cannabis. “And there have been some bills that I’ve had where I’ve tried to use the word ‘cannabis’” she said, but encountered reservations that her actions “would have an unforeseen consequence” (audio - 1m, video).
      • Learn more from the WA Task Force on Social Equity in Cannabis December 2020 presentation, “History of Racism in Cannabis Policy and Enforcement” and discussions during the group’s January 25th meeting.
      • You can also read selected transcripts of Congressional hearings involving Anslinger and the Marihuana Tax Act.
  • Two commenters supported the bill. One suggested additional legislation matching the cannabis possession offense severity for incarcerated individuals to those for adults, and the other offered a “friendly amendment” to require WSLCB to expeditiously change ‘marijuana’ references to ‘cannabis’ in the Washington Administrative Code (WAC).
    • Don Skakie, a concerned citizen from Renton, was grateful for the bill, calling it “an opportunity for the Legislature to lead the state of Washington into a more enlightened time.” He drew attention to “section three regarding felony charges for prisoners” and asked for amended language “to mirror the penalties in public under those circumstances in incarceration.” Skakie told the committee that “it shouldn’t be a felony to possess less than an ounce [of cannabis] when it’s not even an infraction out in the public.” Even with a “need to keep order” in prison, he believed that penalties for prisoners similar to what the public faced “would bring some equity into the prison system” (audio - 2m, video).
    • WSLCB Director of Legislative Relations Chris Thompson backed the bill and suggested a “potential friendly amendment” to broaden its effect. He testified that the legislative effort needed “to go beyond the RCWs” and change WAC as well, since “lots of regulations” already referenced ‘marijuana’ and “need the same change.” HB 1210 had the potential to “be a really big assist in that regard,” Thompson said, by using the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) to “conduct what’s called expedited rulemaking” provided the “rule change is explicitly and specifically dictated by statute.” He advised making the bill “one paragraph longer [by directing] our agency to do that with our rules then that would help us make this change across the board” (audio - 3m, video).
      • Kirby asked rhetorically about the title of the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board defined in RCW 66.08.012, which was changed from “Liquor Control Board” to encompass the agency’s cannabis jurisdiction in 2015 as part of SB 5052 (audio - 1m, video).
    • Wicks reviewed those who signed in supporting the bill, but not wishing to testify before the hearing concluded (audio - 1m, video).

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