Throughout the 19th century, news reports and medical journal articles almost always use the plant’s formal name, cannabis. Numerous accounts say that “marijuana” came into popular usage in the U.S. in the early 20th century because anti-cannabis factions wanted to underscore the drug’s “Mexican-ness.” It was meant to play off of anti-immigrant sentiments.
I mean historically Filipinos who migrated to the United States were also one of the wide users of marijuana along with Hispanics. And among those communities, the cannabis/marijuana did not have had any negative connotation until the war on drugs.