No claim was made that spirits were INVENTED due to Prohibition, but that consumption SHIFTED to more transportable forms then. My grandparents in Michigan preferred beer but during Prohibition they smuggled bottles of wine and whiskey from Canada, hidden under their car’s front seat behind Grandma’s long skirt. Barrels of beer would have been harder to hide.
Correct. Heroin was marketed as a “cure” for rampant morphine addiction such as by wounded War of Southern Treason veterans. US opioid consumption peaked in 1896 - probably with many veterans dying - but was sustained by doped-up patent medicines mostly consumed to ease “female problems”.
The Harrison Act (1914) was driven by racism. Black men snorting coke raped White women and improved their gun marksmanship. White women consorted with Chinese men in opium dens. Oh, the horror! Such were the claims. Similarly the Marihuana Tax Act (1937) was fueled by propaganda that Blacks and Mexicans “ruined” White women.
Fentanyl administered by POC hasn’t killed lots of White women so it’s taken awhile to be addressed. Male deaths from Fentanyl are associated with factory closings (shut by WASP owners?) but those boys don’t really matter, do they? :eek:
Darn edit window! I wanted to add (returning to OP) that I doubt we’ll see legalized cocaine anytime soon in the US. Not because of rational enlightenment, but new designer synthetics will likely render mere coke irrelevant. Why bother legalizing that old stuff that few want any more? New stuff will be developed faster than it can be outlawed, just watch.
As you noted, overall less alcohol was consumed, but yes, of what was consumed a higher proportion was stronger and more concentrated.
That’s because prohibition largely eliminates casual/social use, which tends to be low-level amounts of whatever substance you’re discussing, leaving those whose use is more problematic/abusive. If you outlaw something someone with genuine casual use can simply stop their consumption. The addict can not.
As I said, something like coca tea or chewing coca would probably not be toxic and could allow for social use. But something like fentanyl is so concentrated and potent I just don’t see how it could become “recreational” in use.
Legalization will increase overall usage of whatever you’re legalizing. That means more people will get into trouble (some of whom would have wound up in trouble anyway) but for something like pot more users are probably going to be casual in control. Not so sure that would be the case with some other drugs.
And that was nothing new - see Whiskey Rebellion. See rum production in the Caribbean.
You forgot about its in teething medications for infants and cough syrups of all ages. I have no doubt that it worked to numb the pain of teething, and no doubt parents used these sorts of things to quiet down children and help them sleep (much the way Benadryl is sometimes used today) but it was resulting in a LOT of problems at all levels of society.
While racism was a factor it is overly simplistic to assert that was the only reason. At the time temperance movements stemming out of a religious stance were gaining ground, there were class issues at play (poor whites were regarded as equally problematic), and the fact that addiction, even when the substance abused is legal, is enormously damaging and there were people interested in solving that problem not out of bigotry or religious fanaticism but because they wanted to come up with a solution to a very real problem.
Again, while race and class issues are at play they are not the only reason these things are a problem.
On top of that, fentanyl has a very real and useful role to play in surgical anesthesia - substances that have actual medicinal uses pose issues that those that are not used medically (like “magic mushrooms”) don’t, or that can be replaced (cocaine is very useful in facial surgeries but due to legal issues, not medical ones, is difficult obtain and use and thus has been largely replaced), do not.
Probably not… the 1986 analog act has made this much more difficult to pull off. And as long as cocaine is out there, trust me, there will be takers for it. Cocaine directly hammers on the “reward” button in the human brain. That’s a sensation that never gets old.
Someday there might be other drugs that do the same job, but nothing will ever do it better.
