The archive / Stimulants and intoxicants
1930–1940 · USA
Marijuana turns young people into murderers!
Reefer madness
Panic meter
The verdict
Cannabis was said to cause madness and murderous rages. The risks are real but quite different – and far less dramatic.
Reality meter
What was said?
In the 1930s, Harry Anslinger, head of the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics, ran a campaign against marijuana. Newspapers wrote of murder and madness, and the film Tell Your Children (1936), later known as Reefer Madness, showed young people turning into killers after a single puff.
The campaign led to the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, which in practice banned cannabis in the United States.
The verdict: what happened next?
The claims of murderous insanity did not hold up. In the 1970s the film became a cult classic, screened at student parties precisely because it was so overblown.
But cannabis is not risk-free. Research has shown that regular use, particularly among young people, increases the risk of dependence and psychosis. So the alarm was partly justified, though on the wrong scale and for the wrong reasons.
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