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The History of Drug Prohibition Essays

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Drug prohibition was not always accepted as it is today. Indeed, until the early twentieth century, there were few drug laws at all in the United States. Before the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, one could buy heroin at the corner drugstore; even Coca-Cola contained small amounts of cocaine until 1903 (Vallance 4). Some of the most proscribed drugs today were sold like candy and (quite literally) soda pop. What caused the sudden shift to prohibition? Prohibitionists often point out that legal drugs at the turn of the century led to an enormous "drug problem," yet they never give any evidence that any public menace due to drugs actually existed, other than showing that the public demanded drug laws (Trebach 45). This argument…show more content…
Still, even after the Harrison Act of 1914 drugs were seen as a primarily medical problem. Over time, the perception of drugs changed from objects of medical addiction to articles of immorality, until they were seen primarily as a "criminal" problem in the 1930's (Vallance 5). Much of this may have resulted from alcohol Prohibition, which accustomed the American public to substance regulation. At the same time, the typical drug user changed. Before 1914, the average user was typified by the heroin addict Mrs. Dubose in Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird: white, middle-class, middle-aged, and female. David Courtwright notes that "although fictitious, Mrs. Dubose personifies the American addict of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries…her sex, age of addiction, race, nationality, region, class, and occupation…[are] typical" (qtd. in Trebach 56). As increasingly large numbers of males, minorities, and the poor began using drugs, people's attitudes towards drugs changed. Duster notes that "middle America's moral hostility comes faster and easier when directed toward a young, lower-class Negro male, than toward a middle-aged, middle-class white female" (21). Indeed, even drug law crusader James Inciardi concedes that many early drug laws gained support because of racism and xenophobia (Trebach 47). Thus, a demographic shift
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