How did marijuana get such a bad reputation?

I am so glad I quit! Pot made me depressed,paranoid and above all I became a miserable addict to it. That's why it has a bad reputation.

If you think about it, anything that you smoke has a bad reputation. Even cigarettes. Smoking pot is bad for your lungs in the same way that tobacco is. I think that is why it's gotten such a bad name. And anything that is mind altering or can make you do stupid things is generally frowned upon. Society is okay with people drinking beer but they frown upon getting drunk.

In the USA, It started around 1919. There was a lot of powerful economic interest in making it illegal. The government had no way to regulate it because it could be grown anywhere. It couldn't be regulated for taxes. They even went to the extreme of trying to eradicate wild hemp in a lot of states. Which wasn't even consumable. Pertaining to one of the posts above, ethnocentrism was a reason as well.

In the early 1900's marijuana was used mostly by black people. Marijuana was made illegal to give the police an excuse for arresting black men so that they could use them for forced labor. Propaganda was then created to make the marijuana laws seem reasonable.

It's well explained in a book: "The Pleasure Seekers" by Andrew Weil.

The alcohol industry was losing money and they payed off congress

See the film, "Reefer Madness"

ahahaha exactly!~