More Dangerous than an H Bomb

Does anyone remember this Ronald Reagan quote?  

“I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast."

Much has been written about the origin and evolution of the War on Drugs in this country. 

Most people don't realize that the War on Drugs actually dates back to the nineteenth century, when states enacted broad measures to protect consumers from dangerous medicines and poisons. However, there is a theory that racism was often at the heart of the motivation to criminalize these substances.

Heroin was the first pharmaceutical to fall from favor.  Chinese immigrants came to the United States for jobs in railroads and mines.  These immigrants brought a tradition of smoking opium-based products (such as heroin) in the evenings to relax.  Settlers accused the Chinese of stealing their jobs and the resentment evolved into false claims that Chinese men were luring white women into opium dens and causing them to become addicted to heroin. Rumors evolved to hysteria, which gave the politicians a motivation to react. In 1875, California passed the first anti-opium law, and enforced the law by raiding Chinese opium dens.  Other states soon followed. 

Cocaine followed a similar path towards punishing black Americans.  After blacks gained economic standing following the civil war, white southerners believed that freed slaves had overstepped their bounds and "forgotten their place" in society.  Rumors started about a drug that black men were smoking that supposedly incited violence.  In the early 1900s, New Orleans became the first city to enact laws against cocaine with many other cities following.  

There are many historians who believe that federal marijuana prohibition in 1937 was based not on facts, but on overt xenophobia fueled by rumor and false information.  The theories suggest that Narcotics Bureau head Harry J. Anslinger, pushed a campaign of "reefer madness" that linked marijuana to maligned minority groups (Blacks, Mexicans, and Anti-War Hippies) and falsely accused the drug of triggering heinous crimes. Anslinger referred to marijuana as “the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.”

This brief history is meant to illustrate that drug policy has historically had little to do with relative risk or danger and more to do with a desire to punish or stymie progress of particular groups that pose a threat to the establishment.  While all of these drugs certainly have potential to be dangerous and harmful, I believe it's important to understand that the policy and propaganda was not motivated by the actual risks. 

The modern War on Drugs is commonly associated with Richard Nixon, who declared that drugs were America’s number one enemy as his administration officially launched what would be known as the U.S. ‘War on Drugs’.  After Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter continued the focus on drugs, albeit with a focus more on harm reduction than punishment.  However, when Jimmy Carter left office, drug use in the U.S. had peaked at 53% among 18-year olds.

Today, we are in the midst of a catastrophic opioid crisis coinciding with strong state-level momentum towards decriminalization and legalization of cannabis.  This contrast paints a stark picture of the failure of the War on Drugs.  I believe that this failure can be traced back to the xenophobic roots of drug policy and the interests of the private prison industry.  However, this failure also offers an excellent starting point for exploring the past, present, and future of drug control in the United States.

The current state-level progress for marijuana has taken place while marijuana remains expressly prohibited under federal law. As a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act, marijuana is "considered among the most dangerous drugs" with "potentially severe psychological or physical dependence" and "no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse." To emphasize the severity of this classification, it is useful to note that cocaine and methamphetamine are schedule 2 - supposedly less addictive and dangerous than marijuana.  This classification fuels a large part of the debate, as marijuana advocates argue that at the very least it is time to recognize marijuana's potential medical benefits by removing federal red tape on research. Other marijuana advocates contend that recreational marijuana use is safer than legal alternatives such as alcohol and tobacco, and therefore should be similarly regulated.

This post was intended mostly to describe the history of the War on Drugs in the U.S. However, I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention the following:

 My generation vividly remembers the D.A.R.E (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) officers speaking to us at school, and the "this is your brain on drugs" commercials on TV.  

My costume for a 2016 80's Theme Party

In fact, DARE segments were where many of us learned about cannabis and other drugs in the first place.  There was never any mention, asterisk, or footnote about the possible medicinal benefits of cannabis, just the simple direct message that it was one of the many drugs that would kill brain cells.  Whether or not that is true, I take exception to the premise that cannabis was viewed in the same light as other toxic, highly addictive drugs, without any mention of the potential curative properties of the drug.  We know that opioid addiction and fatal overdoses pose a huge threat to this country, and cannabis simply does not pose the same level of danger.