Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
From: [j--r--y] at [teetot.acusd.edu] (Jerry Stratton)
Subject: Re: Why Drugs Were Banned (was: Re: what would be a crime in an objectvist country...)
Date: Sat, 18 Jun 94 02:37:01 GMT

[c--l--a] at [gwis.circ.gwu.edu] (Charles Kalina) writes:
>	You didn't address my basic point, though, which was the assertion
>that drugs were originally prohibited at the turn of the century because
>there *was*, in fact, widespread abuse.

Cocaine, Heroin, and Marijuana were made illegal because people were
wanted to put down blacks, Chinese, and Mexicans.

COCAINE:

One article in the New York Times even went so
far as to say that cocaine made blacks shoot better, that it
would "increase, rather than interfere with good
marksmanship... The record of the 'cocaine nigger' near
Asheville, who dropped five men dead in their tracks, using
only one cartridge for each, offers evidence that is
sufficiently convincing."(1) A Literary Digest article claimed
that "most of the attacks upon white women of the South are
the direct result of the cocaine-crazed Negro brain."(2) When
Coca-Cola removed cocaine from their drink, it was not out of
concern for their customers' health. It was to please their
Southern market, which "feared blacks getting cocaine in any
form."(3)

The racism went beyond blacks. When "every Jew peddler in the
South carries the stuff,"(4) inciting blacks to rape white
women, what choice did we have but prohibition?


HEROIN

Labor organizations played a big role in anti-Oriental feeling. The
leader of the AFL was particularly fond of bringing up fears of Chinese
opium peddlers raping young American boys and girls:

According to Hill, "Gompers [Samuel Gompers, President of the
American Federation of Labor 1886-1924, except for one year] conjures up
a terrible picture of how the Chinese entice little white boys and girls
into becoming 'opium fiends.' Condemned to spend their days in the
back of laundry rooms, these tiny lost souls would yield up their virgin
bodies to their maniacal yellow captors. "What other crimes were
committed in those dark fetid places," Gompers writes, "when these
little innocent victims of the Chinamen's wiles were under the
influence of the drug, are almost too horrible to imagine... There are
hundreds, aye, thousands, of our American girls and boys who have
acquired this deathly habit and are doomed, hopelessly doomed, beyond
the shadow of redemption."(5)

Some of the original laws are particularly telling. In 1887, Congress
forbade *Chinese* to import opium, but not Americans. In 1890, they
extended this law to allow opium manufacture only to Americans. In 1909,
they banned *smoking* opium.(9) Smoking the drug (rather than drinking it)
was considered "Chinese".

In 1901, Congress forbade the sale of opium and alcohol "to
aboriginal tribes and uncivilized races", and later extended this to
include "uncivilized elements in America itself and in its territories,
such as Indians, Alaskans, the inhabitants of Hawaii, railroad workers,
and immigrants at ports of entry."(7)

In 1902, an American Pharmaceutical Association report said, "If the
Chinaman cannot get along without his 'dope,' we can get along without
him."(8)

In Idaho, they took a separate route towards protecting Whites from
Chinese: In their 1887 statute, they explicitly made it illegal for "any
white person" to frequent a house where opium was smoked.(10)

Oregon's legislators were quite honest: "Smoking opium is not our vice,
and therefore, it may be that this legislation proceeds more from a desire
to vex and annoy the 'Heathen Chinese' in this respect than to protect
the people from the evil habit."(12)

Harry J. Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, continued
this campaign well into the twentieth century, accusing Red China of
planning a "long range dope-and-dialectic assault on America and its
leaders".(11)


MARIJUANA

Marijuana prohibition started in the Southwest, where "the dirty
greasers grow", as sung by soldiers under General Pershing.(13)

A Texas police captain summed up the problem:  under marijuana, Mexicans became
"very violent, especially when they become angry and will attack an officer
even if a gun is drawn on him. They seem to have no fear, I have also
noted that under the influence of this weed they have enormous strength
and that it will take several men to handle one man while under ordinary
circumstances one man could handle him with ease."(14)

According to the Butte Montana Standard, in 1927, "When some beet field
peon takes a few traces of this stuff... he thinks he has just been
elected president of Mexico, so he starts out to execute all his
political enemies."(15)

The American Coalition, an anti-foreigner group, stated "Marihuana,
perhaps now the most insidious of our narcotics, is a direct by-product
of unrestricted Mexican immigration. Easily grown, it has been asserted
that it has recently been planted between rows in a California
penitentiary garden. Mexican peddlers have been caught distributing
sample marihuana cigarets to school children. Bills for our quota
against Mexico have been blocked mysteriously in every Congress since
the 1924 Quota Act. Our nation has more than enough laborers."(16)

According to the Missionary Educator Movement, "The use of marihuana is
not uncommon in the colonies of the lower class of Mexican immigrants.
This is a native drug made from what is sometimes called the 'crazy
weed.' The effects are high exhilaration and intoxication, followed
by extreme depression and broken nerves. [Police] officers and Mexicans
both ascribe many of the moral irregularities of Mexicans to the effects
of marihuana."(17)

The very name marihuana was introduced at this time to make it sound
Mexican--some interests didn't even realize that marihuana and hemp were
the same plant. Lobbyists for the birdseed industry, for example,
arrived with barely enough time to get an exemption, because they hadn't
realized that marihuana was what they were putting in their seed(18),
and Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Slang says "hemp" is a slang word for 
marijuana, since "it resembles that plant"."

>Furthermore I think your statement
>that drug use is associated with African-Americans is incorrect.  The
>*problems* associated with drug use are more pronounced among
>African-Americans because they tend to be at the bottom of the social
>ladder and therefore are more at risk from drugs' harmful effects.

Blacks are arrested for drugs far out of proportion to their drug use. Blacks,
at 12% of the U.S.  population, account for 12% of illegal drug users. They
account for 38-44% of illegal drug arrests.(5)

_______________________________
1)Dr. Edward H. Williams, "Negro Cocaine 'Fiends' Are a New Southern Menace,"
  The New York Times, Feb. 8, 1914.
2)Dr. Christopher Koch, Literary Digest, March 28, 1914, p. 687.
3)Richard Ashley, Cocaine: Its History, Uses and Effects, p. 60.
4)"The Growing Menace of the Use of Cocaine," New York Times, August 2, 1908.
5)Dr. Thomas Szasz, Our Right to Drugs, quoting a 1988 USA Today poll (38%) and
  a 1992 National Institute on Drug Abuse report (44%). Both agree on the 12%.
6)Herbert Hill, Anti-Oriental Agitation, Society, 10:43-54, 1973; p. 51
7)Andrew Sinclair, Era of Excess, p. 33
8)ibid, p. 17
9)Lawrence Kolb, Drug Addiction, pp. 145-146
10)Ronald Hamowy, ed, Dealing With Drugs, p. 12
11)ibid, Arnold S. Trebach, p. 159-161
12)Quoted in R.J. Bonnie and C.H. Whitebread, The Marihuana Conviction
   (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1974), p.  14.
13)Quoted in P. Jacobs and S. Landau, eds, To Serve the Devil (New York:
   Vintage, 1971), 1:241.
14)Quoted in Ernest L. Abel, Marihuana: The First 12,000 Years, p. 207
15)ibid, p. 208
16)ibid, p. 211
17)Quoted in J. Helmer, Drugs and Minority Oppression (New York: Seabury
   Press, 1975), p. 63
18)Abel, op. cit., p. 244