Throughout the 1800's, cannabis was used by writers and others artists to guide their imagination and fire their motivation to create. "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the looking glass" for example, written by Lewis Carroll while he used cannabis. Alexandre Dumas, writer of "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "The three Musketeers" also used cannabis.

By the end of the 1800's, smoking cannabis was so common in Europe and America that smoking parlours sprouted in every major city; World fairs demonstrated the exotic smoking methods used by Turks and Middle Eastern cultures as a family experience! Doctors did not consider it a habit forming substance or a danger to the user's health, but in the space of fourty years all that would change.

This began at the turn of the century during the Spanish - American conflict in Mexico. Creating support for America and inspiring opposition to Mexico was important to the U.S government. Once they discovered that some Mexican soldiers were smoking cannabis socially they began a national propaganda campaign; one which portrayed the effects of smoking cannabis as making the user, anything from a mindless zombie to a wild, raging animal.
By using the Mexican slang for cannabis, 'Marijuana', the U.S propaganda machine managed to prevent the American public from making the connection between Marijuana, the drug and Hemp, the industrial resource.
People thought that Hemp and marijuana were two completely separate things!

This form of propaganda/misinformation continued into the 1930's at which time there was a rise in popularity of black musicians. It was their high profile use of 'Marijuana' (Cannabis) and the fanatical obsession of the Head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, Henry Anslinger, that led to the 'Marijuana Tax act'; which effectively ended the domestic cannabis industry by making it far too expensive for people to possess or trade cannabis in all its forms, from the medicinal to even owning a cloth made from hemp.
The freedom to possess the plant in any shape or form had now been snatched from the American public by a man who was openly racist; who stood before congress and told stories about "coloureds with big lips, luring white women with Jazz music and Marijuana".