War on Drugs Part I: The Outageous History

The term "War on Drugs", coined by President Nixon in the 1970s, has stuck with us and somehow invokes positive connotations for many people. People have become victims of the propaganda that leads the public to believe that drugs are the root of all evil in today's society, and if we could just get rid of drugs, crime would decrease tremendously. I'm hoping to convince people that this is a bunch of crap.

First of all, most of the violent drug crimes committed today are committed because of the prohibition of drugs, not because of the existence of drugs. The black market for illegal drugs is huge, and violence results from drug deals gone wrong etc. This is because there is no government regulation, only prohibition and incarceration for offenses. If narcotics were sold in stores, there would be no need to meet a dealer in a back alley.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. So here is some interesting history. I found some fascinating information on the website druglibrary.org about the origins of anti-drug laws. It turns out that most of the reasoning behind prohibiting drugs were based on ridiculous claims that one could never get away with today. For example, the first measure to ban opium occurred in San Francisco in 1875. The reasoning behind the ban? Chinese men use opium to seduce white women, therefore it should be illegal. This first ordinance banning opiates was passed around the time some other discriminatory laws against Chinese people were passed, such as the law prohibiting the pigtails hairstyle. This passed because some Chinese men wore their hair in pigtails. During the period that opiates and pigtails were outlawed in San Francisco and other states, there was no evidence of drug related crime. I'm almost certain that the measure against wearing pigtails has since been revoked, so maybe opiates will become legal again. If only.

Prejudice against Chinese men wasn’t the only prejudice that fueled the prohibition of drugs. In 1914 Utah made marijuana illegal in a series of laws aimed to discriminate against Mormons. Mormons who had moved to Mexico to escape anti-polygamy laws returned with a new habit: pot. The government banned pot in an effort to piss off Mormons. Sounds legit to me.

Then there was the broadened banning of marijuana by 30 states by 1930. The main reasoning for the ban in southwestern states was that pot made the Spanish-speaking people crazy. Latinos were unintelligent to begin with, according to some politicians, and adding marijuana to the mix just makes them plain crazy, so it should be outlawed.

I think the validity of some of these bannings should be reevaluated due to the reasoning used to pass them. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me who thinks banning pigtails and opiates in response to hatred for Chinese men is kind of out there.