(Disclaimer: The Spanish Society has no affiliation with the pot industry.)
When you first saw the word “marijuana,” you would probably read it “marizuana” and stuff. Later when you knew it was actually pronounced “marihuana,” you might then say to yourself, “Dang. It is some Spanish right here.”
In fact, you were partially right. The pronunciation of “marijuana” is a Spanish one, but there is no such word as “marijuana” in Spanish. Got your mind blown, huh?
There were already reported uses of cannabis in the United States a few centuries ago, but nobody happened to use it for recreational purposes until Mexican refugees brought their “Mexican” into the States after the Mexican Civil War. Once called “hemp” by the Americans, Mexican people called it “mariguana.” It reads the way it happens to be, and is just a Mexican deviation of the Spanish language. On the other hand, Hispanic countries outside North and Central America were universally inclined to use “marihuana.” Until the ‘60s, “marihuana” and “mariguana” were used interchangeably in the United States where the former one was rather preferred. So, where did the word “marijuana” come from?
As you could see, although they pronounce the same, the spelling of “marijuana” sounded much more Latino than “marihuana.” You got it no less than 80% right when you just looked at “marihuana;” but without association with knowledge in the Spanish language, you could barely read “marijuana” right. As such, “marijuana” was adopted as a tool by the right-wings to attack on the recreational use of the drug through stirring up hate against the Hispanic community.
However, “marijuana” was preferred by hippies in the ‘60s. The term long existed in American English, but it never came into popular usage until the hippies’ movement. Instead of racist implications, the word was since associated with the popular culture. Further propagated by many singers then, “marijuana” gradually outplayed “marihuana,” and became the most prevalent way of describing cannabis in English.
One thing you might wanna note is “marijuana” exists only in English. The correct word for that in the Spanish world would always be “marihuana,” or “mariguana” in Mexico and its neighboring regions.