The Unhappy 100 Year Anniversary of American Drug Prohibition

This week marks the centennial of a fateful landmark in U.S. history, the nation’s first drug prohibition law.  On February 9, 1909, Congress passed the Opium Exclusion Act, barring the importation of opium for smoking as of April 1.  Thus began a hundred-year crusade that has unleashed unprecedented crime, violence and corruption around the world —a war with no victory in sight.

Long accustomed to federal drug control, most Americans are unaware that there was once a time when people were free to buy any drug, including opium, cocaine, and cannabis, at the pharmacy.  In that bygone era, drug-related crime and violence were largely unknown, and drug use was not a major public concern.

via Dale Gieringer: The Opium Exclusion Act of 1909 .

Of course, the ban on opium came about because of the tendency of white women to be getting high in Chinese opium dens.  Nobody had any issue with opiates back then – laudanum was quite popular for many ills – until they became associated with the Chinese.  Same goes for cocaine – it would give the “negroes” superhuman strength, disrespect for The Man, and a lust for the white women.  Then those devil reefers, those were smoked by the Mexicans who were “comin’ to git our jobs’, and they probably looked twice at a white woman somewhere along the way.

I’ve often thought about how drug prohibition is a tool of oppression of the poor and powerless, but recently I’ve begun to think of it in terms of controlling sexuality.  Oh, but for the virtue of white women, we may never have prohibited drugs in the first place!