> > From: > Scott Loveless > Adam Maas wrote: >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> >> >>> In a message dated 5/8/2007 6:54:00 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >>> "Everything not prohibited is mandatory!" The only reason drugs >>> were made illegal in the US is because good old J Edgar Hoover >>> blackmailed them into making them illegal so he would not have to >>> disband the FBI when prohibition was ended. Orwell had no imagination. >>> >>> >>> ========== >>> Think that's it? I've often wondered by whom and when some drugs >>> were made illegal. Since many like the cocaine in coke, opium in >>> laudanum, etc. were legal for a long, long time. >>> >>> Marnie aka Doe >>> >>> >> >> The banning of Marijuana is at least indirectly related to racism (it >> was seen as a 'Negro Vice' in the first half of the 20th century). >> >> Some are still legal from prescription sources (cocaine is used >> occasionally for medicine, Morphine is actually made from opium). >> >> -Adam >> >> >> > I read somewhere (can't remember where right now) that drug laws in > the US actually got their start in California as a ban on either opium > or opium dens. The laws were designed to target Chinese immigrants. Recreational use of marijuana didn't really exist in the US until about 1910 when it was introduced by Mexicans fleeing the Mexican Revolution. Prior to that, it's only real use was hemp to make rope.
The drug prohibitions have the same roots as the alcohol prohibition; religious chauvanism. Some damn preacher got up on his high horse and decided you shouldn't do something because it was enjoyable, therefore it had to be a sin. Racism was involved too, against blacks, orientals and latinos (depending on which was the despised minority in a given location). It didn't get much traction until WWI, when abstention and prohibition was promoted as a part of the war effort. It's also tied in with Attorney General Palmer and the Red Scare of 1917 - 1920, culminating in the appointment of J. Edgar Hoover to lead the fledgling FBI (created in 1908). Drug use was the vice of anarchists, bolsheviks and other UN-American types like poor people and factory workers who thought unions might be a good idea. Marijuana gets added in during prohibition because it became a substitute for booze. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
