alt Hacker NewsModern drug laws came about in the 1970s, at the height of hippies on psychedelics trying to overthrow the government.
People in power fear losing their power, and they saw these drugs as a threat.
The weirdest part of the whole thing to me is that they outlawed Cannabis, Psilocybin, and LSD, but kept cocaine legal with a prescription under schedule 2.
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One of Nixon's advisors:
> “You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
The initial war on drugs had nothing to do with the drugs themselves. But then successive governments had to keep running with it because letting the foot off the gas would let the opposition portray them as weak on drug abuse and crime. And then commercial interests got mixed into it too.
Research has proven that mushrooms and LSD are societally and personally the least damaging drug you can take. The top spots go to usual suspects like heroin and crack, and the subtop is alcohol and tobacco.
A family friend who was an ophthalmic surgeon once explained to me the cocaine was long the default anesthetic for eye surgery, and thus it had an accepted medical use (which was the criterion for Schedule 2). Sounds at least plausible to me.
But those modern drug laws picked up where the older drug laws petered out, and in both cases they were intended to punish their users, not protect them.
You have to understand that drugs roughly break down into two categories IMO: the touchy-feely stuff that creates empathy and kindness and healing on the one hand. On the other hand you’ve got stuff that makes people “hard-charging” — going off and doing a thing without thinking it through, with a tinge of anger, fury, unstoppable raw power. Think: cocaine, booze, caffeine and any other stimulants. These reduce empathy and create problems for people.
These two camps are pretty wildly opposed! If I had to guess, I’d bet my money on the people in power liking and using the hard charging stuff while loathing the touchy feely stuff.
All this feels a bit trite, over-simplified, and maybe even a but concocted on my part. But after a lifetime of being around these drugs, it fits well with my experience.
I’d add, too, that the book “Chasing the Scream” gives a better perspective on drug laws & their origins, which really began much earlier than the 1970s.