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The Water Cooler
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<blockquote data-quote="Ethan N" data-source="post: 3232349" data-attributes="member: 29267"><p>The first drug prohibition law passed by Congress was the Smoking Opium Exclusion Act of 1909. At the time, drug-related crime was largely unheard of and the use of opium in the US had been steadily declining for over a decade. It was relatively common for people to use opium, cocaine, heroin, etc. (which were freely available OTC from a pharmacy, or by mail order from Sears) privately without causing trouble and it wasn’t any sort of major public concern. The motivation for the new law had nothing to do with protecting people from the harmful effects of drugs or drug-related violence. This first American drug law was simultaneously a convoluted attempt to beat the UK in trade with China (where most smoking opium was imported from) and a racist attack on Chinese immigrants (the law applied to opium commonly used for smoking by Chinese, but not to the more processed form of opium used recreationally and medicinally by white people). After short-term shortages of smoking opium, black markets emerged, set up by existing criminal entrepreneurs, who brought their criminality and violence into the drug trade.</p><p></p><p>The criminal tendencies of the people facilitating the black market gave government the excuse it needed to continuously escalate penalties and enforcement until the legal risks of opium use drove people to harder drugs like morphine and cocaine, which were still legal. The government followed them and made those drugs illegal too. This continued to escalate throughout the 20th century, including the passing of the Controlled Substances Act in 1970.</p><p></p><p>These laws have not prevented an explosion of drug use in America beginning in the 1960s, but have made buying and using drugs more dangerous and have funded massive international criminal enterprises as well as the street dealers that are largely responsible for the criminal activity that people blame on drugs. If we legalize drugs, we would cut off funding to the people responsible for much of the non-drug crime associated with drugs.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ethan N, post: 3232349, member: 29267"] The first drug prohibition law passed by Congress was the Smoking Opium Exclusion Act of 1909. At the time, drug-related crime was largely unheard of and the use of opium in the US had been steadily declining for over a decade. It was relatively common for people to use opium, cocaine, heroin, etc. (which were freely available OTC from a pharmacy, or by mail order from Sears) privately without causing trouble and it wasn’t any sort of major public concern. The motivation for the new law had nothing to do with protecting people from the harmful effects of drugs or drug-related violence. This first American drug law was simultaneously a convoluted attempt to beat the UK in trade with China (where most smoking opium was imported from) and a racist attack on Chinese immigrants (the law applied to opium commonly used for smoking by Chinese, but not to the more processed form of opium used recreationally and medicinally by white people). After short-term shortages of smoking opium, black markets emerged, set up by existing criminal entrepreneurs, who brought their criminality and violence into the drug trade. The criminal tendencies of the people facilitating the black market gave government the excuse it needed to continuously escalate penalties and enforcement until the legal risks of opium use drove people to harder drugs like morphine and cocaine, which were still legal. The government followed them and made those drugs illegal too. This continued to escalate throughout the 20th century, including the passing of the Controlled Substances Act in 1970. These laws have not prevented an explosion of drug use in America beginning in the 1960s, but have made buying and using drugs more dangerous and have funded massive international criminal enterprises as well as the street dealers that are largely responsible for the criminal activity that people blame on drugs. If we legalize drugs, we would cut off funding to the people responsible for much of the non-drug crime associated with drugs. [/QUOTE]
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