One hundred years ago, state drug agents staged the first known “marihuana” bust in the Mexican Sonoratown neighborhood of Los Angeles (pictured left). The raid was the first in a hundred years’ war that has seen over two million Californians – many from targeted minorities – arrested for victimless marijuana crimes.
Although marijuana prohibition is commonly supposed to have begun with the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, cannabis had already been outlawed by California in 1913, during the first, Progressive Era wave of anti-narcotics legislation. The 1913 law received no public notice in the press, but was passed as an obscure technical amendment by the State Board of Pharmacy, which was then leading one of the nation's earliest and most aggressive anti-narcotics campaigns. Read more.
May 24, 2011 - With California under court order to release 30,000 prisoners, it is noteworthy that the state maintained 24,959 prisoners for inherently non-violent drug offenses, according to the most recent statistics from the Department of Corrections. (Read more)
