The Debate To Legalize Marijuana Began With Big Tobacco Nearly Fifty Years Ago
Thursday, February 20, 2025, 8:00 A.M. ET. 3 Minute Read
MANHATTAN, NY.- Can you imagine a time when you will walk into a local store and say to the store clerk, “One pack of Acapulco Gold, please”? Well, that time will come to a store near you soon. The idea of over-the-counter Marijuana cigarettes is not a new idea. Until the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, it was entirely possible. The urban legend rumor that big tobacco was copyrighting marijuana brand names like Acapulco Gold and that they were involved in testing and producing marijuana cigarettes for the Government was circulating in the 1960s.
The War on Drugs Begins
When I was a young boy in the early 1970s, my elderly Aunt would send me to the store to purchase a pack of cigarettes. Naturally, I could “keep the change,” but little did I know that a war was brewing over Cannabis cigarettes. It has been over 50 years since the “war on drugs” was introduced by President Nixon and the Controlled Substances Act was introduced. Marijuana was placed on schedule 1 drugs. Any reality to that rumor and myth was extinguished after the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which officially outlawed its study, possession, or use. But was it so bad?
The Tobacco Industry Players
The tobacco industry’s willingness to enter legalized marijuana markets was exposed as a result of litigation against the tobacco industry, where more than 80 million pages of internal company documents became available at the University of California San Francisco’s legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL) https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/about/overview/). The documents show the involvement of the tobacco industry and its willingness to enter the legalized marijuana market and disclose meetings between the DOJ and major tobacco manufacturers that were anxious to have the smoke from Cannabis sativa analyzed. Thanks to an archive of documents from the University of California, San Francisco Library, we can see actual company documents.
Ref: https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/docs/#id=hrmx0119
Ref: https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/docs/#id=fjfn0124
Ref: https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/docs/#id=fjfn0124
The Debate of Cannabis Cigarettes
Under a project referenced in LTDL, a 65-page literature survey on marijuana was conducted, and another major tobacco manufacturer alludes to the fact that reasonable assumption that some cigarette manufacturers are making them for the US Government. However, the documents do not indicate whether they completed the project. Big tobacco companies had considered the manufacturing of cigarettes containing cannabis despite fervent denials from all the major tobacco companies. One major Tobacco company rationalized that “We are in the business of relaxing people who are tense and providing a pickup for people bored and depressed” and the fact that “Many regard Marijuana as an alternative and perhaps superior, method of satisfying the needs that cigarette smoking satisfied”
Ref: https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/docs/#id=nypy0002
Ref: https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/docs/#id=snjl0075
Conclusion:
After decades of debate on the legality and usefulness of Marijuana and the many health benefits that it may contain has been realized by not only the Government but also the newly formed “Cannabis Industry” about ready to launch when Marijuana is removed from the Controlled Substances Act. What will happen next, no one knows, but Marijuana is making a comeback and could be in a store near you soon.
The above picture is the missing smoking gun discussed in those secret meetings. This Polaroid is on the original date-stamped 1969 stock. The photograph was discovered at an auction in 2005 and indicates someone test marketed Marijuana cigarettes prior to the Controlled Substances Act’s passage. The only photograph known to have survived stands to show that the moral and legalization issues of cannabis that the tobacco companies were exploring back then are even more realized today.
