The Early Stages of Drug Prohibition
Some drugs are legal today, other drugs are not.
In the USA where the War On Drugs originated from the first anti-opium laws were introduced in the 1870s. These laws were directed at Chinese immigrants.
The first anti-cocaine laws, were introduced in the South in the early 1900s, they were targeted at black men mainly.
The first anti-marijuana laws were introduced in the Midwest and the South-west in the 1910s and 20s, they were mainly directed at Mexican migrants and Mexican Americans.
Today, Latino and especially black communities are still the target of disproportionate drug enforcement and prison sentences in America.
In the 1960s, drugs and drug use became a symbol of rebellion against the government for the younger generation, use of psychedelic drugs such as LSD soared. The US government halted scientific research to evaluate their medical safety and efficacy although the military conducted secret research into LSD in mind control experiments in the now declassified mind control research programme MKUltra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
In June 1971, President Nixon declared a “war on drugs.” Federal drug control agencies became more heavily funded and increased in size, mandatory sentencing and "no knock search warrants were introduced, the drug war was now impinging on the public’s civil liberties. Nixon temporarily placed marijuana in Schedule One, the most restrictive category of drugs. In 1972, a commission unanimously recommended decriminalizing the possession and distribution of marijuana for personal use. Nixon ignored the report and rejected its recommendations.
Between 1973 and 1977, however, eleven states decriminalized marijuana possession. In January 1977, President Jimmy Carter was inaugurated on a campaign platform that included marijuana decriminalization. In October 1977, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana for personal use.
Decriminalisation was eventually abandoned after just a few years due to widespread public fears of marijuana induced harms.
The presidency of Ronald Reagan marked sky rocketing rates of imprisonment, thanks to his unprecedented expansion of the drug war. The number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug law offences increased from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997.
Scaremongering and wildly exaggerated claims of drug dangers continued into the 1980s, largely due wild media reports about the smokeable form of cocaine dubbed “crack.” Shortly after Reagan took office in 1981, his wife, Nancy , began a highly-publicized anti-drug campaign, coining the slogan "Just Say No."
Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates, who believed that “casual drug users should be taken out and shot,” founded the DARE drug education program, which was quickly adopted nationwide despite the lack of evidence of its effectiveness. The increasingly draconian drug policies also blocked syringe access programs among other harm reduction policies to reduce the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS.
In the late 1980s, a political hysteria about drugs led to the passage of draconian penalties in Congress and state legislatures that rapidly increased the prison population. Within less than a year, however, the media lost interest in the drug war story. The draconian policies enacted during the hysteria remained, however, and continued to result in escalating levels of arrests and incarceration.
Although Bill Clinton advocated for treatment instead of incarceration during his 1992 presidential campaign, after his first few months in the White House he reverted to the drug war strategies of his Republican predecessors by continuing to escalate the drug war.
A month before leaving office, Bill Clinton stated in a Rolling Stone Magazine interview that "we really need a re-examination of our entire policy on imprisonment" of people who use drugs, and said that marijuana use "should be decriminalized."
During the peak of the drug war hysteria in the late 1980s and early 1990s, an organisation was formed seeking a new approach to drug policy. In 1987, Arnold Trebach and Kevin Zeese founded the Drug Policy Foundation – describing it as the “loyal opposition to the war on drugs.”
Many other countries around the world followed Americas lead and launched drug wars of their own. Until recently marijuana was illegal in most countries around the world with the exception of Amsterdam in Holland and ACT State in Australia.
In the last year States in America have begun legalising marijuana possession and sales and have begun reaping huge amounts of tax from the sale of the drug.
Portugal legalised all drugs.
Research into the use of psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin from "magic mushrooms" has recently been approved for universities in America and the UK for treatment of depression, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and anxiety disorders with some remarkable results being published in medical journals.
