Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico's War on Drugs

by Isaac Campos

Overview

Historian Isaac Campos combines wide-ranging archival research with the latest scholarship on the social and cultural dimensions of drug-related behavior in this telling of marijuana's remarkable history in Mexico. Introduced in the sixteenth century by the Spanish, cannabis came to Mexico as an industrial fiber and symbol of European empire. But, Campos demonstrates, as it gradually spread to indigenous pharmacopoeias, then prisons and soldiers' barracks, it took on both a Mexican name--marijuana--and identity as a quintessentially "Mexican" drug. A century ago, Mexicans believed that marijuana could instantly trigger madness and violence in its users, and the drug was outlawed nationwide in 1920.

Home Grown thus traces the deep roots of the antidrug ideology and prohibitionist policies that anchor the drug-war violence that engulfs Mexico today. Campos also counters the standard narrative of modern drug wars, which casts global drug prohibition as a sort of informal American cultural colonization. Instead, he argues, Mexican ideas were the foundation for notions of "reefer madness" in the United States. This book is an indispensable guide for anyone who hopes to understand the deep and complex origins of marijuana's controversial place in North American history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807882689
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	04/23/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	344
Sales rank:	990,200
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Isaac Campos is assistant professor of history at the University of Cincinnati.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 Cannabis and the Psychoactive Riddle 7

2 Cannabis and the Colonial Milieu 39

3 The Discovery of Marijuana in Mexico 67

4 The Place of Marijuana in Mexico, 1846-1920 81

5 Explaining the Missing Counterdiscourse I: The Science of Drugs and Madness 103

6 Explaining the Missing Counterdiscourse II: People, Environments, and Degeneration 123

7 Did Marijuana Really Cause "Madness" and Violence in Mexico? 155

8 National Legislation and the Birth of Mexico's War on Drugs 181

9 Postscript: Mexican Ideas Move North 203

Conclusion 225

Appendix: Newspaper Analysis 233

Notes 241

Bibliography 291

Index 315

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Isaac Campos is, for my money, the best historian at work today on the history of marijuana, and he has written the best book that anyone could read on that topic.—John Charles Chasteen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill



This book is erudite, engaging and extremely relevant. A multidimensional history of marijuana, it examines the drug as an ancient commodity (both 'Oriental' and deeply Mexican), the beliefs about its effects through violent madness, and the prohibitionist obsession that, as Campos argues, Mexico also exported to the United States.—Pablo Piccato, Columbia University



Rigorous, learned, and accessible, Home Grown offers the richest account yet of marijuana's early history in Mexico. It is cultural history at its best—interdisciplinary, materially grounded, deeply researched, and full of discoveries.—Emilio Kouri, University of Chicago

Editorial Reviews

A most welcome and important contribution to the history of marijuana prohibition. It has broadened our understanding of how we got to this place, and it belongs on the book shelf of every serious student of the topic.—Drug War Chronicle



Recommended. All levels/libraries.—Choice



Home Grown is a must read for historians, criminologists, analysts, and policy-makers, alike, especially those interested in understanding the origins of Mexico's current political and social unrest, the cultural underpinnings for marijuana prohibition, or the broader 'War on Drugs.'—Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Book Review



Campos remedies the scarcity of historical work on the origins of drug prohibition in Latin America while pointing out the need to better understand the causes and consequences of these prohibitions if we are to grasp the current 'War on Drugs.' . . . [This] book is a call to arms.—American Historical Review



You don't have to be a 'pothead' to enjoy and learn from Isaac Campos's pioneering and carefully researched inquiry into the special plant-commodity identified botanically as cannabis. . . . Campos's study comprehensively examines the ecological, sociocultural, and political dimensions of the history of human interaction with a plant.—Southwestern Historical Quarterly



Campos has reconfigured our understanding of the flow of ideas about marijuana.—Hispanic American Historical Review



An engaging work of sociocultural history. . . . It deserves a wide reading.—The Americas



Home Grown is a necessary resource for any scholar of drug cultures, drug prohibition, or Mexican studies.—Journal of Historical Geography



A notable contribution.—The Historian



Campos has dug deeply into the digital and paper archives of Mexican popular media (newspapers and broadsides), government agencies, and medical and botanic sciences, from the age of conquistadors to the twentieth century. . . . Worthy of praise.—World Medical and Health Policy

From the Publisher