Rense: When Drugs Were Legal- No Drug Problem

[Guest guest]

I don't know if I want to say that I think they should be sold

legally again, but it is interesting to see who was selling what

when and what happened in relationship to it...

 

Comments?

Misty L. Trepke

http://www..com

 

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2005/040205drugsproblem.

htm

 

When All Drugs Were Legal....There Wasn't a Drugs Problem

 

Few people are aware that before World War I, a 9-year-old girl

could walk into a drug store and buy heroin.

 

That's right – heroin. She didn't need a doctor's prescription or a

note from her parents. She could buy it right off the shelf. Bayer

and other large drug companies sold heroin as a pain-reliever and

sedative in measured doses – just the way aspirin is sold today.

Cocaine, opium, and marijuana were readily available as well. No

Drug Enforcement Agency, no undercover cops, no " Parents – the Anti-

Drug " commercials. Just people going about their own business is

whatever way they chose.

 

Seeing today's never-ending crisis of teenagers using drugs, you can

imagine how bad it must have been when there were no laws to stop

children – or adults – from using drugs. But, in fact, there was no

drug crisis at all. A few people were addicted to heroin or cocaine,

just as a few people today are addicted to sleeping pills or Big

Macs, but there was no national uproar about it. Such people, if

they wanted to break their habits, could freely consult doctors

without fear of being sent to prison.

 

There were no black-market drug dealers preying on school children.

There were no gang wars over drug profits, because there were no

drug gangs. After all, who would buy dangerous drugs from a gangster

at outrageous prices when he could buy safe drugs made by a

reputable drug company at modest prices?

 

Americans got a taste of what a Drug War might be like when they

endorsed the 18th Amendment invoking alcohol Prohibition in 1919.

The result was gang warfare, people dying from drinking bathtub gin,

corruption in police departments, and non-violent citizens sent to

prison for indulging in a vice that was strictly personal. Most

Americans rejoiced when Prohibition was repealed in 1933. The

chances of them supporting another such Constitutional amendment

within the next 50 years were slim to none.

 

So the federal government didn't dare try amending the Constitution

when politicians and bureaucrats decided to reinstate all the

trappings of Prohibition in a new Drug War. This War That Will Never

End was begun in stages – probably starting with the rarely-enforced

Harrison Act of 1914. In my recollection, the Drug War as we know it

today began during the 1960s, moved into second and third gears

during the Nixon administration of 1969–1974, and shifted into

overdrive during the Reagan administration of 1981–1989.

 

The Drug War has been easily the greatest cause of violent crime in

American history: Gangs fighting over monopoly territories, children

killed in drive-by shootings, families in the inner city living with

the constant sound of gunfire outside their doors, police killing

innocent people in misguided drug raids, crooked cops helping to

spread poisonous drugs, non-violent citizens sent to prison to be

terrorized by violent prisoners – none of which would exist in the

absence of the federal drug laws.

 

There is nothing that could make our cities safer than repealing the

drug laws – all of them.

 

Does the idea of heroin, cocaine, and opium being sold over the

counter sound too ludicrous to be true? You can check it out for

yourself. A marvelous website, maintained by the University of

Buffalo's Addiction Research Unit, shows the actual labels and ads

from patent medicines of the 19th and early-20th centuries. You can

see the claims made, the ingredients used, and the acceptance of

what so many Americans fear today.

 

That era of innocence didn't end because America was threatened by a

drug crisis. It was ended in the traditional way – by politicians

looking for new worlds to conquer, politicians who have no interest

in examining dispassionately the chaos they cause, and who will

never face a single personal consequence for the lives they have

ruined.