When Marx wrote, “Religion is the opiate of the masses,” he did not mean it is something the ruling class peddle to keep the proletariat docile. Opium was not yet quite universally considered to be a Bad Thing. Marx meant that religion is something the proles – understandably – choose for themselves to ease the pain of life.
Thank you for the cite. I had not realized that your earlier statement was particularly in reference to the US. From what I can read it seems that drug use was unregulated in the US throughout most of the 19th century until towards the end of the century and then increasingly in the 20th century regulations were introduced that limited sale and consumption of drugs. This begs the question: Why? If drug use did not cause society any problems, why introduce laws to restrict it? Other countries took the same road. Britain started regulating drugs in 1868, Australia prohibited the sale of Opium to the general populace in 1905. Apparently the free-for-all situation of the 19th century was then viewed as a problem. I am not saying that prohibition has solved the problem - it clearly has not. But supporters of the prohibition might claim that it has prevented the problem from spiralling out of control. The key question to me is, whether or not legalization would lead to a drastic increase of consumption. I do not think that history provides an answer to that.