For thousands of years,
humans have smoked marijuana, used opium to treat pain, chewed coca
(cocaine) leaves for energy, and ingested substances like the peyote
cactus and psychoactive mushrooms to commune with the gods. And for
thousands of years, communities took care of the problem of drug abuse
through social and cultural pressures. The system was arguably working;
these openly drug using societies did not collapse, or even particularly
suffer for having no legal barriers to drug use. Yet, largely within
the past century, America has pursued a relatively radical model of
how to deal with intoxicating substances: The iron fist of Prohibition.
Instead
of just drug abuse (excessive, unhealthy patterns of use) being the
problem, the Americans declared that all non-medically necessary drug
use, no matter how responsible or careful, was evil and had to be opposed
by
any means
available.
The usual assumption is that the Prohibitionist answer to how a society
should deal with drug use was born purely of a noble desire to protect
users from harming themselves. The real story...is far less virtuous.
The Yellow Menace
In the 1870s in America,
large numbers of Chinese immigrants were arriving in search of better
lives. Facing severe racism, these early Chinese-Americans were often
forced to take the most brutal and low-paying jobs, such as building
the network of railroad tracks that was becoming the backbone of American
industry and expansion. Beyond their strong work ethic, many
Chinese brought something else to America: a habit of smoking opium.
(An activity introduced to the Chinese by the British, who ran a massive
and lucrative smuggling trade bringing opium from India into China
after it was outlawed in the late 1700s. When the Chinese cracked down
on the illegal trade, the British began what would become
known as the Opium Wars, eventually forcing China to re-legalize the
opium trade.)
At first, the Americans
had little interest in this use of opium (which was legal regardless),
and the Chinese tended to form insular communities which limited their
interactions with the then deeply racist white American majority. Still,
as is always the case, not everybody was content to ignore these new
Americans. Some were curious, others simply became familiar with them
by working with Chinese laborers on jobs. Eventually, the idea of smoking
opium grew within the consciousness of white America, with the more
daring visiting Chinese opium smoking parlors to indulge in this new
fad in intoxicants. At first this mixing of racial groups primarily
involved adventurous young men, and raised little objection
from the general public. Shortly, however, white women as well began
to frequent the opium parlors.
In 1890, the infamous tabloid
newspaper publisher W. R. Hearst (who would later become a staunch
supporter of the Nazis) began a series of articles about the 'Yellow
Menace', luridly describing Chinese men as seducing white women with
opium. Already harboring a deep dislike of the Chinese, who many feared
would overrun America, the public attitude towards opium continued
to harden. Early local laws in response to the 'opium menace' varied:
Sometimes opium was made illegal for Chinese while remaining legal
for white people (who could apparently be trusted), in other cases
opium was made illegal for whites to use while allowing Chinese to
continue to use.
 |
A rather sinister-looking Chinese
man brings opium to his white patrons in this 1881 illustration,
published in the magazine Harper's Weekly. |
This association with immigrants
wasn't the only thing that frightened the federal government into creating
tighter
controls on opium. Beyond the Chinese, opium-containing products
sold as cure-alls and elixirs had created an opium addict population
that would look rather alien to modern eyes, consisting predominantly
of middle and upper class white middle-aged women. These 'accidental
addicts' had mostly become addicted through the use of popular
'patent medicines', which did not normally have labels identifying
their contents. (Another concept that may seem odd to us today, when
even a candy bar comes with exhaustive labeling.)
Part of the response to
this epidemic was the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which required
labels on products identifying the presence and quantity of various
drugs
such as opium and cocaine. However, it became clear that not all users
had accidentally stumbled into the habit; a significant minority genuinely
wanted to get high. Between 1905-1919 several additional
federal laws were passed restricting opium, including banning imports.
In the meanwhile, other
forces were gathering. The Chinese government remained deeply opposed
to the opium trade, which had addicted millions of their people and
destroyed what had been a positive trade balance. The Americans, coming
around to the prohibitionist position themselves, also saw ending the
opium trade to China as a business opportunity: If China stopped buying
opium (at great expense) they would have far more money to spend on
other imports, such as American goods. In a series of international
conventions in 1909 and 1911, China, the US, UK, and other nations
agreed to restrict the opium trade.
In 1914, a watershed event
in America's race towards Prohibition occurs: The Harrison Narcotics
Act is passed, which severely restricted the sale of opiates and cocaine.
As interesting as what was restricted was how it was done. Recognizing
that it was unconstitutional for the US government to simply outlaw
drug sales/use, they employed a tactic that had been growing in popularity:
They called it a tax. Instead of outlawing the drug trade, they required
that anybody involved in it had to be registered and pay a tax. However,
the tax was not equally applied; doctors and pharmacists were required
to pay only a registration fee, while other people were required to
pay a prohibitive tax on every sale. As a result, the sale of opiates
and cocaine was effectively restricted to medical professionals "in
the course of [their] professional practice only." Others, unwilling
or unable to pay the tax, would be charged with tax evasion and fined/imprisoned
if they sold the restricted drugs. Thus, the federal government was
able to tell itself that it was acting within the constitution because
it was 'just using its power to tax', which of course they did have
a right to do. (The argument against the constitutionality of federal
prohibition at the time was primarily one of state's rights and limited
federal power; the states could outlaw drugs, the federal government
could not.)
The Black Menace
Running in parallel to
the saga of opium was the emergence of cocaine, the active component
of coca leaves, which had been extracted by the Merck pharmaceutical
company (which would later patent MDMA.) Initially hailed by Sigmund
Freud as a "non-addictive" cure-all,
cocaine saw use as a supplement in wines and was even the 'special
ingredient' that Coca-Cola draws its name from. ('Cola' refers to the
cola nut,
which gave the drink its distinctive flavor.) Freud's
use of cocaine in his psychiatric practice did have a certain logic;
a
patient
that
is depressed
or fatigued will almost certainly feel better with a liberal supply
of cocaine, although that brings its own problems.
Helped along by this apparent
medical value (medicine has traditionally focused on making people
feel better instead of cures, which early medicine could rarely provide)
cocaine also found its way into a myriad of elixirs and potions, sold
door-to-door,
from
catalogues,
traveling
medicine shows, and even grocery stores. Movie stars and public figures
used and endorsed the magical new drug, and use grew rapidly. Like
opium, cocaine became regulated on the national level by the Pure Food
and Drug Act of 1906, requiring content
labels
for products containing cocaine. Also like opium, it was included
in the Harrison Tax Act, which effectively created outright prohibition
of the drug.
In the US, cocaine abuse
was associated with black men, first in the form of laborers using
the drug to increase endurance while working long, grueling hours,
then
in the form of widespread use by Jazz musicians at scandalously racially
integrated nightclubs. In yet another echo of opium's history, the
press began to spread lurid stories of "cocaine crazed
Negroes"
attacking white women in the southern states. In response to this fear
of drug-fueled
blacks, some police departments switched to more powerful
handguns
out of concern
that their current pistols were not powerful enough to bring down such
rampaging monsters. Later, Harry Anslinger (head of what would eventually
become the DEA) called for harsher
penalties for cocaine by describing scenes of racially mixed groups
dancing together at clubs under the presumptive influence of cocaine.
The One That Got Away
There seems to be
a popular idea in America that cigarettes were only recently identified
as unhealthy. There were, in fact, powerful movements at least a century
ago to ban cigarettes. Claims of smoking's dangers sound eerily familiar
today: Smoking causes (it was said) immorality, violence, insanity
and so forth. Henry
Ford, the auto manufacturing tycoon, was so concerned about its
health risks that he banned smoking by his employees. Ironically,
the drug with perhaps the highest rate
of death
and
addiction known
was also
the
one
drug
that
has never
been prohibited in the US, in spite of the anti-smoking movement reaching
a fevered pitch during the same period as the enactment of alcohol
and other prohibitions. In spite of its legality and high
potential for addiction, tobacco is also one of the few drugs the US
has had long-term success in reducing the use of. Currently, smoking
kills over 400,000 Americans a year, far in excess of all other drugs
combined.
Tossing The Bottle
The national stirrings
against 'chemical' drugs like opium and cocaine were to some extent
merely the latest incarnation of an old and growing trend towards prohibition
of all recreational substances. Alcohol in particular had long been
recognized as a cause of violence and death, and the anti-alcohol
Temperance movement achieved its ultimate victory in 1919 with the
enactment of the Volstead Act, which amended the US constitution to
allow the national prohibition of alcohol. (Again it's telling that
they didn't believe anything short of a constitutional amendment could
give the federal government the power to regulate people's drug use.)
The results of alcohol prohibition
have become the stuff of legend and popular films: Powerful criminal
organizations sprang up, arrested offenders clogged the system and corruption
of the police and courts became rampant as a large portion of the population
simply ignored the laws. There is some evidence that during prohibition,
the average age of onset of alcohol use went down significantly, possibly
because since alcohol sale was illegal in the first place, age restrictions
on sales no longer applied. (A curious parallel can be seen today; young
people take up using marijuana in greater percentages and at a younger
age in the US than they do in the Netherlands, where marijuana is effectively
legal but regulated.)
Alcohol prohibition was
largely the work of religious conservatives who saw it as a way to
combat the growing hedonism of urban dwellers; a return to old-time
values and morality by attacking immoral lifestyles. The Protestant
majority included in this category of 'social undesirables' the Catholics,
whom they associated with alcohol use. Ironically, the passage of national
prohibition marked the start of the Roaring
Twenties,
a period of drunken excess and sexual promiscuity that would not be
equaled again until the Hippies.
Although alcohol use sharply
declined immediately after the passage of prohibition, it immediately
began an inexorable climb back up towards pre-ban usage levels. As
public sentiment turned against prohibition, it became harder and
harder to
get juries to convict offenders. Finally admitting defeat, alcohol
prohibition, America's "noble experiment", was repealed
on December 5, 1933, and an unlucky thirteen years of government intrusion
into people's
lives ended in wild drunken celebrations.
All Mexicans Are Crazy....
In the early 1900s,
Mexican and Mexican-American families began an exodus out of their
traditional homes in the far southern states, spreading out into the
US in search
of work and opportunity; the pursuit of the American Dream. The
white majority was less than happy with this development, both out
of simple bigotry and fear of competition for jobs (a concern that
would only become greater when the prosperity of the "roaring twenties"
gave way to the misery of the Great Depression.) As the Chinese had,
the Hispanic population brought its own traditions, including different
preferences in drugs: The conservative Midwest was about to be introduced
to marijuana.
As had occurred with
other drugs, the first prohibition laws were created on the state and
local level. Some of these legislative sessions produced true gems
of enlightenment, such as when a legislator in Texas expressed his
support of marijuana prohibition by declaring that "All Mexicans
are crazy and marijuana is what makes them crazy." (Although "cannabis"
was more traditional, legislators uniformly chose to call the plant
"marihuana", after the Mexican word for it.)
One of the more humorous
results of the government taking the position that smoking marijuana
caused homicidal insanity was that several murderers claimed their
use of the drug as a defense, arguing that they could not be help responsible
for what had clearly been an act committed under the insidious control
of Reefer Madness. Several offenders were actually acquitted; after
all, the government was backing their argument!
Federal marijuana prohibition
was first enacted through various versions of the Uniform Narcotic
Drug Acts (1927-1937.) In 1937, the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 clarified
and strengthened marijuana prohibition with what had by then become
a rather shameless bit of unconstitutional fraud: They required that
all marijuana be taxed and carry a tax stamp, establishing draconian
punishments for 'tax cheats'...and then refused to sell the tax stamps!
Marijuana prohibition,
beyond being remarkable for the innocuousness of the drug in question,
has been equally remarkable for the sheer extent of scientific fraud
committed in order to justify its prohibition. Eager to rationalize
this latest violation
of the constitution as a necessary evil, Dr. James C. Munch, the US
"Official Expert on Marihuana" testified that, upon testing
the effects of marijuana on himself as part of his study into its dangers,
he had
experienced being transformed into a bat and flying about his office.
Such a claim would be laughed
at today, but this early-day Ricaurtism was eagerly believed by naive
legislators.
• For more information, visit the excellent "An
Inquiry into the Legal History of American Marijuana Prohibition."
Damned Hippies! (World War II and the Rise of
Psychedelic Culture.)
Unless you've been living
in a cave, you know a little bit about World War II, a grand tale
of
good vs. evil, driving back the aggressors, etc. WW2 was more than
a memorable bit of ugliness, though; it also brought a social revolution
to America. Before the war, the US was still largely rural. Boys grew
up to be farmers, miners, and factory workers, colleges were for rich
people's kids, and women stayed home, cooking, cleaning, and raising
their 2.5 children. God, country, and Mom's apple pie: That was what
we knew, and that was just fine by us. By the end of the war, however,
a large percentage of our young men (over 16 million served in the
armed
forces) had seen a bit more of the world than they ever expected to
(or perhaps wanted to.) They had swam in the waters of tropical paradises
like Hawaii and the Philippine Islands, marched through bombed-out
wastelands in Europe and the Japanese islands, bedded prostitutes of
every conceivable
national background, partied hard, fought hard, watched friends die
by their sides, recovered from wounds in Australia and visited the
architectural masterpieces of the Old World, all powered by morphine
for their injuries, alcohol for their spirits, amphetamines
and a daily ration of cigarettes for alertness. The innocent farm boys
gathered up by the draft came back to the US far more worldly than
any
previous generation: Widely traveled, having been exposed to drugs,
sex, foreign cultures from French society to the mysteries of ancient
China, and having walked in the shadow of death, these returning veterans
brought a new perspective on the world and on life home with them.
While many men fought abroad, other
forces were at work at home. Women, who had long simply assumed
that
'a woman's place is in the home', had been called into service as a
labor force, doing everything from packing rations to building the
airplanes that would duel with German Messerschmitts and Japanese Zeros. "Free
up a man to fight!" declared propaganda posters of the day. And
so they did. Women became a vital part of American industry and commerce,
realizing (often to their own surprise) that they really could do almost
anything a man could do. Likewise, in the absence of their husbands
who had volunteered or been drafted, they were forced to run all of
the household affairs from home repairs to banking decisions to major
purchases.
They were
working full time, earning their own paychecks, and spending them as
they saw fit; the independence early feminist thinkers had begun
to accomplish on idealism, the war had achieved through hardship.
Industry as well was transformed.
During the war, the slumbering, mostly agricultural US became an industrial
superpower, supplying American and allied forces with ships, tanks,
aircraft, ammunition and almost everything else history's largest
military mobilization required. Huge factories sprang up almost
overnight, mining and manufacturing technologies were pushed to the
limits, chemistry, plastics and electronics underwent a huge surge
in development. (The Teflon coating on your frying pan was actually
developed
for the WW2 US nuclear weapons program.)
Even when the war
ended, the transformation of America was not complete. As part of
the
compensation package offered to military recruits, the US had created
'the GI College Bill'. ("GI" is short for "government
issue.") This program promised to help pay for college for any
veteran who wanted to go. Traditionally,
colleges were reserved for the elite; 'normal folk' had little use
for them, and usually couldn't afford them anyway. The GI Bill
transformed
that; college was now a very real possibility for millions of young
men, and many of them took the government up on that offer. The
factories
and new technologies developed for the war were also suddenly 'orphaned',
the crisis that had prompted their creation having passed. Transitioning
from a wartime economy, they went looking for new markets and began
churning out cars, household appliances,
electronics,
and
anything
else they
could
sell.
The net result of the war
was thus not simply a new sense of national pride from our victory:
It left the US with a lot of remarkably worldly, college educated young
men, women with a new sense of their own strength and ability, and
a
massive industrial complex just begging to mass-produce anything the
public wanted to buy. Modern America had taken root.
Reuniting young couples
and invigorating the nation with a sense of its own limitless possibilities,
WW2's end also marked the start of the Baby Boom: A
new, larger than ever generation of young Americans, being raised
by parents that were more independent, prosperous, educated, and experienced
in all manner of high culture and common debauchery than any generation
before.
Whatever the reason, children
who were raised during and after the war proved to be relatively liberal.
Perhaps inspired by tales from their parents, many wanted to see the
world,
explore new ideas, experience new things and establish their own identities
free from any cultural expectation. They gave birth to the modern civil
rights and feminist movements, experimented
with niche religions, openly expressed sexuality, and tried just about
any drug they could get their hands on. It was the age of Yogis and
birth control pills and marijuana.... "Turn on, tune in, drop
out!"
exhorted Timothy Leary, prophet of LSD. And many did.
This new movement of social
openness and experimentation was not well received by the older generations.
Instead of a new age of enlightenment (as the 'Hippies' saw themselves)
the conservatives saw debauchery, sin, godlessness, communism, excess
and indolence of the worst sorts. America, they were sure, was under
attack by these terrible young people, who seemed more interested
in pie-in-the-sky idealism than being productive solid citizens. Clearly,
something was causing young people to run amuck...something was clouding
their judgment, making them believe in awful things like racial
equality, the legitimacy of sexual pleasure, and finding your own spiritual
path. What could be responsible? Perhaps...the drugs they so openly
used?
If the intent was to look
non-threatening, the Hippies weren't helping their cause. Calls to
discover a new path to God through LSD and other psychedelic ('mind
opening') drugs terrified conservative churches, convincing them that
such things must be the work of Satan. As the Hippie movement grew,
the combined desire to crush a perceived danger to the social order
and the desire to make a statement of moral condemnation against 'those
druggies' led to our current model of prohibition: The Controlled Substances
Act of 1970, passed at the height of Hippie power.
The CSA banned virtually
everything the government could think of: LSD, peyote, DMT, psilocybin
mushrooms...all the popular psychedelics as well as the long-illegal
drugs like
marijuana,
heroin, and cocaine. For this new system of prohibition, categories
called Schedules were created. Schedule 1 contained drugs that were,
according to the government, the most dangerous and addictive drugs
known, drugs with no legitimate uses. It included heroin, marijuana...and
all of the psychedelics.
Schedule 2 was to contain less
addictive and dangerous drugs that had some medical use. Thus, morphine,
cocaine, amphetamine, and methamphetamine (among others) were placed
in S2,
having been decreed by the government to be safer, less addictive,
and of more legitimate value than things like marijuana and LSD. The
lower Schedules (III-V) contained more benign materials with relatively
modest addiction potential and recognized medical use.
Into the Darkness: The Full Flower of Prohibitionist
Corruption.
Lawmakers soon found themselves
facing an unexpected problem: The emergence of new drugs that weren't
specifically Scheduled, and were thus legal. Ban one, and it seemed
as though a
new one popped right up in its place. To counter this phenomenon,
they created the Analog Act, which allowed drugs that were only slightly
different from outlawed drugs to be prosecuted as though they were
the same as the illegal drug if the substance was sold for human consumption.
This proved to be a fairly effective solution, and many people trying
to skirt the law by selling close relatives of banned drugs on the
streets have been successfully prosecuted under the Analog Act.
The real problem, however,
proved to be the Emergency Scheduling power that was granted to the
Drug Enforcement Agency. Under this power, the DEA could declare virtually
anything illegal with a 30-day notice. In theory they then have one
year to decide what Schedule (if any) the newly banned drug belongs
in; a decision that is supposedly based on careful consideration of
all available evidence regarding the substance's medical dangers, addiction
potential, and medical uses. In practice, however, the process is quite
simple: If a drug is being used recreationally and isn't being sold
by a major pharmaceutical company that will cut the DEA's balls off
for trying to take away a source of profit, then the drug in question
will be placed in Schedule 1. Always.
Among the victims of this
mechanism was this site's main drug of interest: MDMA. The struggle
to save MDMA from Schedule 1 proved to be unsuccessful, but is
a source of insight into the process.
First, in order to be placed
in Schedule 1, a drug must have no legitimate medical use. The DEA
claimed
that
the only standard of whether or not a drug had medical value was
decided solely by whether or not the FDA had approved it to be marketed
for
a specific
illness. The medical community was probably rather surprised by this
claim, as no doubt were the thousands of mental health professionals
using MDMA in their practices. Indeed, even the FDA had rejected
that idea in the past. Every court that heard the case agreed: A drug
had medical use if any credible group of doctors believed it did,
and
MDMA met that standard.
The next requirement for
placement in Schedule 1 was that a drug had to be highly addictive.
This too proved to be a bit of a challenge, as not a single case of
MDMA addiction was known at the time. As before, the courts agreed:
MDMA was not highly addictive.
The final requirement for Schedule
1 was that a drug was so dangerous that it couldn't be used safely
under any circumstances. Beyond making the S1 status of marijuana all
the more preposterous, this requirement for S1 proved to be a bit of
a hurdle as well, since there wasn't a single known case of death
or injury
from MDMA at the time. As before, the courts agreed the MDMA was reasonably
safe, but this point of contention inspired the prohibitionists to
create and champion the theory of MDMA
neurotoxicity.)
In the end, it was the
opinion of the court that MDMA could not be legally placed higher
than
Schedule 3, and declared that MDMA was still legal while ordering the
DEA to reconsider their placement of MDMA in S1. The DEA essentially
ignored
the court's
order
and placed
it
in Schedule 1 again. Ground down by years of expensive litigation,
the private backers of the lawsuit against the DEA gave up, although
the
Scheduling
could
have
been appealed
again.
This case rather set the tone
for all future 'emergency' Schedulings: The Drug Enforcement Agency
has reinvented and ignored the law as they see fit, and nobody has
had the will or resources to fight them. Today, the same legally, constitutionally,
and morally bankrupt standard of Scheduling is used: A drug is placed
in Schedule 1 if it is used recreationally and they won't have to fight
a big corporation over it. All manner of drugs have fallen to the 'emergency'
Scheduling scythe, many of them with no history of causing addiction
or even injury. Today, the DEA has its eye on Salvia divinorum,
a rather unremarkable hallucinogen traditionally used by Mexican Indians.
The official explanation given if and when they try to Schedule it
should be
a barrel of laughs...but laughs won't stop these enemies of the Constitution.
Momma Said Knock You Out: Science comes to cut
the balls off the Prohibitionists
Yet, all the news
is not bad. Hope of competent, honest, constitutional government does
not yet stand on the brink of extinction; if anything, it stands on
the brink of triumph. Ultimately, the question of Prohibition as a
social
policy
comes down to some rather basic questions of how dangerous drugs really
are, and how we can most effectively protect people from those dangers.
These are questions that science can answer, and indeed, is answering.
On almost a weekly basis, some new study comes out finding that prohibition
has failed, or that the drugs they have demonized aren't nearly as
sinister as we've been told. In the end, the drug war is winnable,
and is being won...just not by the Prohibitionists. They lost the argument
the day science and reason turned their attention to drugs and the
drug problem and realized that the bigoted and simplistic answers the
Prohibitionists were selling were irrational and impotent. We're winning
the drug war because our
side is the scientifically correct one. The truth
favors us. All Prohibition has left is a rapidly depleting stockpile
of ignorance and fear, and we will hunt down their lies one by
one until there is nothing left for them to do but admit defeat.
Next Page: Costs of Prohibition
