However, during the 1930's, the plant's favor began to fall as petrochemical plants lobbied for the plant to become illegal in order to reduce competition (Conrow 8), and despite objections from the American Medical Association and the pharmaceutical industry, the cultivation and consumption of the plant was finally banned in 1937 by the Marijuana Tax Act. However, this is not the only reason marijuana was banned. What few people fail to realize is that this and other drugs were banned by the fault of racial intolerance. Opium laws, for instance, were only passed in the 1870's to harass Chinese immigrants who came to the United States for hopes of a better life and to work for low wages. Rumors were often spread that these immigrants would lure white women into their opium dens. Cocaine was also insignificant until Hamilton Wright brought about charges that it was "the direct incentive to the crime of rape by Negroes." Long before marijuana was even known to most of the American Society, hostility towards it became evident within the next two decades because of reports that offensive minorities were using the drug; Mexicans in the Southwest, Hindus in San Francisco, Syrians in New York, urban blacks, and jazz musicians (Berendt 21). All these reasons helped to favor the illegality of cannabis sativa. Many times people will see marijuana as an addictive drug that causes people to commit crimes of violence as well as other legal offenses. But in 1938, the New York Academy of Medicine reported marijuana as a relatively harmless drug with no physically addicting effects and that it did not help in having any effect on the crimes of violence committed by people. In 1962, a White House drug conference described the hazards of grass "exaggerated," and a 1972 presidential commission recommended decriminalization of the drug. The current Merck Manual strikes out the fears of any serious side effects of grass, stating that there is "little evidence of biological damage even among relatively heavy users," and concluding that "the chief opposition to the drug rests on a moral and political foundation, and not a toxicological foundation.