Chapter 2 - The Reality of the Health and Safety Issues
Chapter 3 - Moral Deviance and Prohibition Histories
Chapter 4 - Analysis and Conclusion
Caffeine, alcohol, cannabis (commonly known as marijuana) and cocaine are all mind altering drugs. Caffeine and alcohol are legal, although alcohol is regulated by the federal government. Adults over the age of 21 can purchase and consume alcoholic beverages, but it is illegal to operate a motor vehicle after drinking alcohol. Cannabis and cocaine, on the other hand, are both illegal. The possession and sale of cannabis is strictly prohibited in the United States of America, as well as in most other countries today. Cocaine is allowed as a medicine, but not for recreational use. It has proven to be effective as a topical analgesic, and is most often used by ophthalmologists (Meier 1994:23).
When one looks at these facts, they seem somewhat arbitrary. Four substances, which ostensibly do the same thing, alter the mind and the user's state of consciousness, have widely varying legal and social acceptances. This paper will investigate why the current situation exists where some drugs are legal and some aren't. It will also look into how, and especially why, the whole system of drug prohibition began in the first place. There must have been certain conditions existing in society which led to prohibition. The Constitution does not make reference to the banning of mind-altering substances, so we know that the laws have been put in place more recently. Why was it that people felt that drug use needed to be regulated? Was it a health and public safety issue, or something else? Who spearheaded the campaigns, and what was their motivation? Was this action the will of the people, or was it a vocal minority who led the rush to prohibition? These are some of the central issues with which this paper will deal. Additionally, these laws will be tied into other events and legislation that occurred during the same time period. It is my belief that the drug laws, the anti-immigrant laws and sentiments, and American isolationism are intrinsically related. Hopefully, enough evidence will be provided to convince the reader that a bout of American xenophobia altered the course of history in more ways than one would have initially thought possible.
In order to explain the causes of drug prohibition, one must first show that illegal drugs are not necessarily more harmful than legal drugs. If there is a demonstrable difference in toxicity between all legal drugs and all illegal drugs, then health factors are clearly a sufficient explanation. However, this will not be the case once the evidence is thoroughly examined. In fact, it will become obvious to the reader that some of the drugs chosen for prohibition are in fact safer than others which are still legal, and have positive uses which could lead to far reaching benefits for society. This argument will compose the first section of the paper.
The second section will examine several things. First, the concepts of deviant behavior and moral laws will be explored. Second, there will be discussion concerning exactly when it was in history that using some drugs became labeled as deviant behavior. Perhaps surprisingly, this has not always been the case. Drug use has had its place in religious and other rituals for several thousand years. Additionally, the daily use of several drugs, sometimes under the guise of medicine, and sometimes just for pleasure, was commonplace up until the early twentieth century. The most important question though, is how drug use became labeled as deviant. What steps were taken to give a bad name to certain drugs, and especially to the people who use them. This section will also include a history of the prohibition movements in America for each drug.
The third section will comprise the major analysis portion of the paper. Each drug will be revisited, giving final data to illustrate the links between race stereotyping and drug prohibition. Using both ideological and material analyses, I will show how drugs, neutrality, and immigrants are related, and how the work of a few select groups has affected political policy for almost one hundred years. Additionally, it will become clear how the changing nature of American society at the turn of the century was the true force behind the drug laws. As a reaction to the flood of immigrants and the first challenges to the leadership of the Protestant elite, laws were put in place to control the underclasses and ensure the power remained in the hands of the Protestants.
At this point, I would like to address the selection of drugs used in this paper. I am aware that there are other drugs which could have been used. For example, opium is an excellent example of a drug that has been linked to minorities. Opium was first introduced to America through the Chinese immigrants of the late nineteenth century. I did not choose opium because it has never had a significant revival in the past three decades. It has remained a relatively obscure drug, even with the passing of the hippie generation and the correlated increase in drug use nationwide. Another drug that could have been included is tobacco. Tobacco is a highly additive drug, and it causes the majority of lung cancer cases worldwide. Tobacco is legal for adults over the age of eighteen, and is sold in every convenience store in America. I chose not to include tobacco because there is very little physiological effect. While a first time smoker will feel a sort of high, someone who has been smoking for years only continues to do so in order to avoid cravings for nicotine, the active ingredient in tobacco.
Alcohol, caffeine, cannabis and cocaine affect the central nervous system, albeit in radically different ways. The easiest way to study these drugs, and their careers in medicine and law, is to look at each one separately. Proceeding in alphabetical order, we begin with alcohol, one of the most widely available and heavily consumed drugs in world history.
There are many ways in which one can consume alcohol. Although all are beverages, they vary greatly in type. Among the two oldest forms are beer, made from fermented wheat or barley, and wine, made from fermented fruit, usually grapes. There is evidence of beer brewing for around 5000 years, with the existence of Egyptian statues showing someone making beer. "The earliest known book, the Ebers Papyrus, probably written about 1500 B.C., contains many references to beer and wine ... Hippocrates included wine in a list of therapeutics and used it as a wet dressing for ulcers" (McCarthy 1959:1). This history of alcoholic beverages covers nearly every part of the world, with ancient use documented in nearly all of Europe, Central and South America, India, China, Russia, and parts of North America (McCarthy 1959:vii-viii).
Just as there is extensive documented use of alcohol, efforts to keep people from drinking are just as prevalent. "In China during the Chou Dynasty (1134-256 B.C.) and the reign of the fourth emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, about 1312 A.D., laws against the manufacture, sale, and consumption of wine were established and repealed no less than forty-one times" (McCarthy 1959:39-40). In India, the people "made a fermented drink called tari from the sap of a palm tree; the government at one time ordered the trees cut down in an effort to reduce drunkenness" (McCarthy 1959:40). For the most part, however, these attempts to outlaw alcoholic beverages have failed. Most of the world today allows drinking, although most countries have a minimum age for consumption. The only nations which completely outlaw alcohol do so for religious reasons.
If alcohol is not banned by religions, then it is overwhelmingly embraced by them. Entire books have been written about the ritualized use of intoxicating spirits, so only one example will be given here for the sake of brevity. In the deserts of the Southwestern United States, there lives a group of people know as the Tohono O’odham. Like other Puebloan cultures, they were agriculturally based, and relied on about five inches of rainfall a year to sustain them. They have a ritual that takes place once a year, and is meant to ensure prosperity by bringing plentiful rain. "Thus it is held, did the [Tohono O’odham] learn to make wine from the fruit of the saguaro [a local cactus]; and thus, too, did they come to learn that by drinking this wine in annual religious ceremony they achieved the power to "pull down the clouds," thereby insuring their survival for yet another year" (MacAndrew 1969:37-38).
Physiologically, alcohol is a very dangerous drug. The most pronounced effects are on the brain. Slight intoxication (less than .1 percent concentration in the blood) results in disturbances of the uppermost level of the brain, manifested in a dulling of the senses and a loss of inhibitions. Higher concentrations (.2 to .3 percent) in the blood lead to impairment of the lower motor area of the brain, causing slurred speech and loss of coordination. Severe intoxication (.7 percent) affects the breathing center and can easily cause coma and death. Thus, the fatal dose of alcohol is less than ten times the amount needed to become slightly intoxicated. Alcohol also causes permanent damage to the liver, making cirrhosis of the liver a common disease among chronic drinkers. Additionally, alcohol is very addictive, and the name "alcoholic" has been coined to describe compulsive drinkers (Greenberg 1959:13).
In modern America, alcohol has had a very controversial career. Ignoring for now all of the moral arguments, as these will be dealt with later, we see that widespread movements towards prohibition began in the middle of the 19th century on the small scale. With the formation of the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement, as well as the Order of the Good Templars, two of the most vocal and well organized nation-wide prohibition advocate groups, the end of the 19th century saw a push for the outlawing of alcohol. In 1915, the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution was rejected by congress. Two years later it was reintroduced and passed. The amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919, and went into effect one year to the day later. But as we all know, this legislation did not last very long. The twenty-first amendment, repealing the eighteenth, was brought into law on December 5, 1933. Since this time, alcohol has been legal but regulated and taxed heavily (McCarthy and Douglass 1959:370-380).
Caffeine is a stimulant that works directly on the central nervous system, the heart, and the respiratory system. Because of these effects, many people use caffeine to stay awake, as is evidenced by the fact a coffee maker can be found in nearly every office building in the country. Caffeine is highly addictive, although it appears to be safe over the long term. It is, however, possible to overdose on caffeine. A single cup of coffee contains approximately 80mg of caffeine. Acute overdose is listed at beginning with ingestion of 250mg in a short period of time, which can be accomplished by drinking just over three cups of coffee in succession. Symptoms of acute overdose include restlessness, vomiting and cardiac disturbances. In order to take a lethal dose of caffeine, one would have to consume approximately ten grams of caffeine, which is about 125 cups of coffee (Lopez-Ortiz 1998).
As far as society, caffeine is completely accepted. It is completely unregulated, anyone can drink Coca-Cola or coffee. There has never been a widespread campaign to make caffeine illegal, and the mere thought sounds rather preposterous to most people. It is even possible for anyone to walk into a drug store and purchase Vivarin, tablets containing 200mg of pure caffeine each. Overall, one would have to conclude that society is completely content to allow caffeine to be freely available. There are no religious associations with caffeine, although it is certainly used ritually. I know several people who wake up in the morning, brew a pot of coffee, start drinking it and then begin their day. To serve people like them, it is possible to buy automatic coffee makers that begin brewing at the same time every day. That way, one can just crawl out of bed and have caffeine waiting for them.
Cannabis Sativa has been known for centuries, as not just as a psychoactive drug. The primary uses throughout history were actually quite different. Cannabis has been used for fiber, textiles, food, paint and medicine. "From more than 1,000 years before the time of Christ until 1883 AD, cannabis hemp was our planet’s largest agricultural crop and most important industry for thousands of products and enterprises" (Herer 1995:2). There are several things that make the Cannabis plant useful. The stalks of the plant, which grow to about fifteen feet in less than four months, produce the necessary ingredients for paper or rope. The seeds are high in protein and make an excellent food source. It is only the flower tops of the female plant that produce sufficient quantities of the psychoactive drug, 9-delta tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), to produce a "high." The 1850 US census found that over 8,300 hemp (another name for Cannabis) plantations of greater than 2,000 acres existed in the country. Most were in the South, where they made use of slave labor, as extracting the useful parts of hemp was extremely labor intensive (Herer 1995:1-11). As a February 1938 article in Popular Mechanics extolled: "Hemp is the standard fiber of the world. It has great tensile strength and durability. It is used to produce more than 5,000 textile products, ranging from rope to fine laces, and the woody "hurds" remaining after the fiber has been removed contain more than seventy-seven percent cellulose, and can be used to produce more than 25,000 products, ranging from dynamite to Cellophane" (article reprinted in Herer 1995:16-18). This article was touting the invention of a harvesting machine that could automatically separate the various parts of the plant for commercial use, reducing the need for manual labor. Other products, such as cotton and flax, although inferior in quality, could be separated with automated machinery, and were thus cheaper to use. Because hemp separation was labor intensive, it was losing market share by the 1930’s, and this invention could have revitalized the industry. Unfortunately, it was already illegal to grow industrial hemp by 1938, so there was never an opportunity for the market to regain its lost ground.
In addition to these other uses, the fact remains that one can produce a drug from the Cannabis Sativa plant (although it must be cultivated differently from commercially useful Cannabis, so the same plant cannot make the drug as well as rope). This drug is commonly known as marijuana, a name given to separate it from the well known and used hemp plant, and also a name that identified it as being "very Mexican" (Himmelstein 1983:50). Marijuana is listed as a Schedule I drug by the Federal Government, meaning that it is dangerous and contains no known medical benefit. The abundant literature on the subject is varied; some studies claim to show it is dangerous, while others claim it to be harmless and medically sound.
Physiologically, "marijuana provides subjective pain relief, mood regulation, relaxation, suppresses nausea, shows bronchodilator and anti-asthmatic effects, produces bloodshot or half-closed eyes (conjunctival injection), may dilate the pupils, reduces intraocular pressure, reduces salivation, increases the heart rate, respiration, pulse rate, and systolic blood pressure, and may increase appetite" (Sussman 1996). On the negative side, the smoke of "1 joint is approximately equivalent to 5 cigarettes in terms of amount of carbon monoxide intake, 1 joint equals 4 cigarettes in terms of amount of tar intake, 1 joint equals 10 cigarettes in terms of amount of microscopic damage to cells lining the airways, and 1 joint per day smoked for several years may yield a higher probability of lung damage than regular cigarette smoking" (Sussman 1996). There are numerous other things named as possible negative consequences of smoking, such as immune suppressency, amotivational syndrome, and increased use of other drugs such as heroin and cocaine. Unfortunately, there has been no conclusive evidence presented on any effect other than the lung damage. "There have not been any reports of deaths from overdoses. The estimate of lethal to effective dose is 1000 to 1" (Sussman 1996) meaning that someone would have to smoke 1000 times what it takes to get high in order to overdose. Additionally, clinical studies have failed to show any sort of physical addiction to marijuana, although psychological dependence is a well documented phenomenon (McGlothin 1973:134).
Socially, marijuana has had varied acceptance over the years. The first legal controls over marijuana were put in place in El Paso, Texas in 1914, banning its sale and possession. At the Federal level, the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 prohibited the growing, possession, sale, or importation of any type of Cannabis Sativa, immediately putting a legal end to the drug and the commercial crop (Himmelstein 1983:23). Public involvement, however, appears to have been minimal. There was very little open discourse about drugs during the early part of the twentieth century, and what conversations did exist focused on heroin and morphine, as it is estimated that between two and four percent of the adult population were addicted to these drugs (which were both legally available over the counter or in prescriptions). "Most addicts in the latter half of the [nineteenth] century were middle or upper class, with women outnumbering men" (Bertram 1996:61). Marijuana did not reach the spotlight until the 1930’s, culminating with the Marijuana Tax Act. This coincided with a major change in the way drug addiction was being handled politically. Prior to the 1930’s, it was generally handled as a disease, and addicted were treated by doctors. This attitude eventually gave way to the treatment of addicts as criminals. "It took the institutionalization of the drug war [with the formation of the Federal Narcotics Bureau in 1930] in an expanded drug bureaucracy to further consolidate the punitive assumptions of the paradigm ... In the process, they helped forge a central tenet of the current punitive paradigm: drugs cause crime" (Bertram 1996:78). By instilling the belief in people that drugs cause crime, the users become criminals. This, along with a calculated attack on drugs and minorities, was enough to have marijuana branded as dangerous and outlawed.
Cocaine, the final drug to be examined in this paper, has a long history of social acceptance in the United States. Last century it was one of the middle class drugs of choice, along with opiates. Cocaine is a stimulant, which acts directly on the central nervous system. Someone who is high on cocaine will have lots of energy and appear more alert. They may show signs of slight tremors, the result of an increased heart rate and blood pressure. Psychologically, a user will feel an intense euphoria, along with decreased anxiety and social inhibitions. Cocaine overdose is responsible for about 200 deaths per year in the United States (Meier 1994:viii). Cocaine, like marijuana, is not physically addictive. Long term users will not have physical withdrawal symptoms, but will have psychological based cravings for the drug which can be debilitating at the most severe levels.
Socially, cocaine was really an accepted part of society for quite a long time. Until 1903, cocaine was an ingredient in Coca-Cola, as well as in medicine and wines. Parke Davis, a pharmaceutical company, "sold coca-leaf cigarettes and coca [cigars] to accompany their other products, which provided cocaine in a variety of media such as a liqueur-like alcohol mixture called Coca Cordial, tablets, hypodermic injections, ointment, and sprays" (Bertram 1996:61). Cocaine was banned in 1914 with the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act, the first large scale national drug legislation. This law, however, only prohibited street use of drugs, keeping legal prescriptions by physicians who make them in "good faith" (Bertram 1996:68). Full prohibition came gradually as the Harrison Act was amended and reinforced to effectively dry up all legal channels of obtaining drugs. Cocaine had never been one of the most discussed drugs in public, until the mid-1980’s. Perceptions about the drug changed forever on June 19, 1986, when University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose. He had been selected in the first round of the NBA draft by the Boston Celtics the day before he died. This tragedy shook up America, and helped bring cocaine into national prominence (Harriston 1996).
One of the main reasons cocaine has never been prominent in the public eye is that it is one of the most expensive drugs around, meaning the clientele tended to be wealthy, and white. The street price of cocaine in 1980 was about $700 per gram, while the price for marijuana was about $50 per ounce. In the last ten years or so, this trend has changed with the invention of crack cocaine, a diluted version which requires very little pure cocaine to produce a lot of smokable product. This has dropped the price to well under $10 per dose, making it much more accessible to a mass audience (Bertram 1996:266-267). Since this time, cocaine has become much more prevalent in the news. There was a huge (month-long) expose in the San Jose Mercury News in 1996 which implicated the CIA in drug smuggling and pushing crack in inner city Los Angeles. That investigation, however, led only to the embarrassment of a reputable newspaper, and the ruining of one reporter’s career. What it did accomplish, however, was bringing cocaine to the forefront of public discourse once again (Knight 1996).
To conclude, evidence has been presented on four drugs, alcohol, caffeine, cannabis, and cocaine. What should be apparent to the reader is that there is no relation between the relative safety of a drug and its legal status. Marijuana has been called "one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man" (Herer 1985:35) by Francis Young, an administrative law judge with the Drug Enforcement Agency. Despite that, it is still listed as schedule I by the federal government. Alcohol, on the other hand, is toxic in moderate doses, and is responsible for 150,000 deaths per year (Meier 1994:xiii), yet it remains legal for adults over the age of 21 to consume. At this point there is no way around the fact that health factors alone cannot be what is dictating federal drug policy. There must be something else that has influenced the formation of the policy over the years. This is the question that will be dealt with in the following section. When and why did prohibition legislation come about, and what were those other factors that influenced the different standards for the different drugs?
Since it has been established that the drug laws were not created specifically for the health and safety of the people, they are in no way absolute laws, such as laws against theft, rape or murder. Thus, they must fall under the category of moral laws. They are, in no uncertain terms, written to hold society to the moral beliefs of one group. We shall now take a brief look at what moral laws are, and how they come about in the first place.
Moral laws, and all laws for that matter, are constructed to differentiate two types of behavior, moral and deviant. Moral behavior refers to the actions that are expected of people on a daily basis, while deviant behavior is any action that strays from the moral expectations of society. When politics is applied, the result is the banning of deviant behavior. This creation of a crime is an essential part of society, according to Emile Durkheim. "Let us make no mistake. To classify crime among the phenomena of normal sociology is not to say merely that it is an inevitable, although regrettable phenomenon, due to the incorrigible wickedness of men; it is to affirm that it is a factor in public health, an integral part of all healthy societies." The reason is that "crime ... consists of an act that offends certain very strong collective sentiments" (Durkheim 1938: 67).
One thing that is important to understand from the beginning is how deviance is socially constructed. While there are some behaviors, like those mentioned previously, whose treatment is absolute or near-absolute in nature, many others are dealt with more fluidly. Drug use, prostitution, disobeying one’s husband, or swearing in public have all been subject to legal punishment in various times and places. However, they are by no means universal. The Neolithic revolution, for example, took place beginning about 5000BCE. This was the first time that societies arose which included complex social organizations and laws. Thus, laws have been in existence in some form for about seven thousand years. Drugs, then, have been legal for about 6900 of the last 7000 years. It is only the particular circumstances of the past one hundred years that have led to prohibition throughout much of the world. Actually, America has led the struggles against drugs, while other countries just followed suit, partially to keep in good favor with America. "A series of International Conferences on Opium took place, largely at the urging of the United States Government ... In 1914, 44 nations attending the Third Hague Conference signed The Hague Opium Convention providing for strict restraints on the production, manufacture, and distribution of opiates and cocaine" (Grinspoon 1976:43). The policy was later adopted in the Versailles Treaty.
While it is certainly not the case that drugs were completely legal in all places and all times before the twentieth century, that has primarily been the case. Until America began the movement to prohibit drugs, there had been no large scale efforts. The closest thing comes from religious proscriptions, such as is found in Islam or Mormonism. However, these have always been localized movements, and were never carried out on a world-wide scale.
So how does behavior become labeled deviant? "A successful, and enforceable, social construction of a particular label of deviance depends on the ability of one, or more, groups to use (or generate) enough power so as to enforce their [emphasis original] definition and version of morality on others" (Ben-Yehuda 1990:6). Examining this statement, the most important part is the concept of power. One group must be able to wield enough power to meld the society as a whole to their beliefs. Aside from any moral or religious aspects, this is, without question, a political issue. "The analysis so far points out that every deviance has a political nature because, basically, power and morality determine who would deviantize whom" (Ben-Yehuda 1990:56).
In order to gain power within a group, there must first be defined boundaries to the society. "People who live together in communities cannot relate to one another in any coherent way ... unless they learn something about the boundaries of the territory they occupy in social space" (Erickson 1975:15). There must be some transmission mechanism that can teach people both whether they are members of a society and what the rules are by which they will be governed. This cultural indoctrination comes in a number of different forms. There are ceremonies filled with ritual and symbolism, as well as other traditional pageantry to delineate the differences between "us" and "them." More important, however, is the use of enforcement tactics to mark boundaries. "Members of a community inform one another about the placement of their boundaries by participating in the confrontations which occur when persons who venture out to the edges of the group are met by policing agents whose special business it is to guard the cultural integrity of the community ... they [the confrontations] act as boundary-maintaining devices in the sense that they demonstrate to whatever audience is concerned where the line is drawn between behavior that belongs in the special universe of the group and behavior which does not" (Erickson 1975:16). By using policing mechanisms, especially state controlled legal bodies (which are allowed the legitimate use of force against the populace), a group can effectively legislate their moral agenda by defining moral actions to follow their belief systems, and labeling all other behavior as deviant.
Once the society is marked off from outsiders, and crime has been defined, there still remains one question: why is crime an integral part of society? What is it that requires a society to manufacture moral legislation? For an answer, Randall Collins provides sufficient information in his analysis of Durkheim’s theories. A large part of the answer comes in looking at the punishment mechanisms, and the rituals associated with them. These rituals, such as the criminal trials, help to reaffirm "belief in the laws, and ... create the emotional bonds that tie the members of society together again" (Collins 1992:111). By staging a spectacle that the public can feel good about, the collective sentiments of the society are reinforced and reaffirmed. The criminal justice system, and the laws it enforces, make more sense "once we realize that all the social pressure falls upon dramatizing the initiation of punishment, and that this is done to convince society at large of the validity of the rules" (Collins 1992:112). Moreover, "the moral sentiments that are aroused when the members of society feel a common outrage against some heinous violation would no longer be felt [if there were no punishment rituals]. If a society went too long without crimes and punishments, its own bonds would fade away and the group would fall apart" (Collins 1992:112).
By creating the crimes, and the punishments to go along with them, a society is ensuring its survival. There still needs to be a concrete way, however, to stir up the moral outrage of the citizens. We know that the crimes and deviant behavior are socially constructed, but there must be some impetus, some way to start the moral outrage over some idea or practice. Perhaps the best way to enact moral legislation is to create a moral panic. This happens when some action is given an incredible amount of attention in a short amount of time. In order to do this, however, there must be some mechanism to transmit information effectively. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, with the rise of the popular media, this has been very easy to accomplish. By delivering a moral panic to the people, a moral crusader can bring about swift change to the laws. This will prove to be the case with both alcohol and cannabis, where a single person (or a few groups) were able to divert the public’s attention and gain widespread support for their ideas. Conversely, a moral crusader can also ensure the status quo remains intact, depending upon which way they are exposing an issue. "What is usually at stake in a moral panic are the definitions and redefinitions of moral boundaries of symbolic-moral universes. Thus, moral panics are deliberately created either to reaffirm older moral boundaries or to challenge those boundaries in order to define and legitimize a new symbolic-moral universe" (Ben-Yehuda 1990:98-99).
Now that we can understand how the rules of a society are set down, namely by official enforcement, the task at hand is to determine how the specific examples of drug use have been labeled deviant. This will begin by examining the history of the prohibition movements. Once again, the examples will begin with alcohol. In this case, it is primarily religious groups that were doing the lobbying for prohibition. Religious groups are excellent at originating moral politics because within a given church, all of the members are going to have roughly the same belief system. If the church as an institution comes out against alcohol, chances are most of the members will follow suit. Churches also provide an excellent organizational base, and can mobilize people very effectively. "The General Conference of the Methodist church had imposed strict limitations on the use of distilled liquor as early as 1790, although it did not urge total abstinence until 1832" (Bordin 1990:4). The Anti-Saloon League, a large organization which spearheaded the national drive for prohibition, was closely aligned with Protestant churches. Indeed, three fifths of the paid staff of the ASL were members of the clergy. The ASL was made up of over 300,000 members by the year 1919, and had a budget of over $2.5 million. It was unique for the time, in that they were dedicated to only one issue, prohibition. They were not an independent political party, but endorsed candidates of any party who supported their agenda. It was, in fact, the leaders of the ASL who authored the 18th amendment (Meier 1994:137).
The link between Protestant churches and the ASL is very important. Saloons were places where men got together and drank, and most of them were located in the urban areas of America, where the population tended to be poor and Catholic. "The saloon, as an institution, distinctly drew the social boundaries between middle-class, Protestant, rural Americans and immigrant, working-class, Catholic, urban Americans" (Meier 1994:136). Protestants, were, for the most part, the group in power in America. At the time of prohibition, there had never been a Catholic president in America. Mainstream Protestants formed the majority of the ruling elite, and were able to create moral legislation that followed their beliefs. As we can begin to see, the ethnic cleavages in America provided a surprising amount of pull when it comes to enacting moral legislation.
The other major organization that pushed for prohibition was the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. The WCTU pre-dates the ASL by quite a bit, but was less effective in passing legislation because women held very little political sway at the end of the nineteenth century. In fact, the reason for the formation of the WCTU was to bring attention to women’s issues. Alcohol abuse and alcoholism were considered more important for women than men. Despite the fact that men did most of the drinking in America (middle and upper class women tended to be addicted to opium rather than alcohol, as the reader may recall), and men made up the majority of alcoholics, women considered drinking to be their problem. "The nineteenth-century drunkard’s reputation as a wife beater, child abuser, and sodden, irresponsible non provider was not undeserved. Susan B. Anthony, addressing the National American Woman Suffrage Association at its meeting in Chicago in 1875, emphasized that women were the greatest sufferers from drunkenness, and graphically pictured the virtuous woman in legal subjection to a drunken husband" (Bordin 1990:7). So the women, as the protectors of the home, sought out to erase drunkenness by ridding the country of alcohol. And as the name of the organization implies, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was quite Christian. Actually, it was wholly Protestant. "The missionary societies of the several Protestant denominations, as well as the churches themselves, provided already functioning female networks that could be converted into WCTU chapters ... The WCTU was certainly church-oriented, and almost all of its members were church going Protestants" (Bordin 1990:9).
It is now well established that the churches, specifically Protestant churches, were highly involved in the movement against alcohol consumption. There is, however, one major link missing. Why are strict Protestants against alcohol? The Bible does not make reference to abstaining, and alcohol is used (in moderation) in Catholic and Jewish rituals, both of which are precursors to Protestantism. For ideological based answers, explanations come from Max Weber and Thorstein Veblen. In Weber’s work on religion and capitalism, he sees the tendencies among Protestant sects for asceticism. An ascetic group will tend to turn away from hedonistic, worldly pursuits. They will focus on prayer, simplistic life, and delaying gratification until the after-life, choosing to pursue a calling. "The [Protestant] ethic also holds that a man’s life in his calling is an exercise in ascetic virtue, a proof of his state of grace through his conscientiousness, which is expressed in the care and method with which he pursues his calling" (Weber 1996:161). Alcohol, however, is the antithesis of a calling, as it does not allow one to fully concentrate on productive work. When one imbibes, they become too preoccupied by the intoxication to pursue other activities. "It is true that the usefulness of a calling, and thus its favour in the sight of God, is measured primarily in moral terms" (Weber 1996:162). Because of this, drinking becomes immoral, the churches turn against it, and organized prohibition efforts begin.
For the women in particular, another way to look at the situation is from the view of Veblen, under the theories of conspicuous consumption. If intoxicating beverages "are costly, they are felt to be noble and honorific. Therefore the base classes, primarily the women, practice an enforced continence with respect to these stimulants ... From archaic times down through all the length of the patriarchal régime it has been the office of the women to prepare and administer these luxuries, and it has been the prerequisite of the men of gentle birth and breeding to consume them. Drunkenness ... [tends to become] honorific, as being a mark, at the second remove, of the superior status of those who are able to afford the indulgence" (Veblen 1994:70). Considering that women were trying to gain equal rights, and especially voting rights, during this era, the possible elimination of alcohol would well serve their purpose. By outlawing drinking, they were removing one more way in which men dominate women. Since it was not proper for women to drink, they had the choice of either taking up drinking or getting rid of it altogether. Clearly, a dutiful ascetic homemaker would not want to be identified with the saloon culture, so outlawing alcohol was the most logical way to proceed.
While these ideological arguments are certainly compelling, they do not sufficiently explain the causes behind prohibition. I do believe, however, that they are a necessary part of the complete picture. The other half comes from a materialist perspective. In his book, Symbolic Crusade, Joseph Gusfield discusses the symbolic aspects of the prohibition movement. "Issues like ... Temperance may seem to generate "irrational" emotions and excessive zeal if we fail to recognize them as symbolic rather than instrumental, pragmatic issues" (Gusfield 1972:11). What he is proposing is that the movement to prohibit alcohol was actually a movement of social status, rather than one of ideology. "If we conceive of status as somehow an unfit issue for political controversy, we are simply ignoring a clash of interests which generate a high order of emotion and political action in the United States. When a society experiences profound changes, the fortunes and the respect of people undergo loss or gain. We have always understood the desire to defend fortune. We should also understand the desire to defend respect" (Gusfield 1972:11).
Gusfield’s theory is basically built upon a standard conflict model. Different groups are competing against each other for control of the social, political and economic institutions in society. In this case, the Protestant elite has held the power in America since colonial days. There were very few threats to this power in the past. Protestants made up the majority of the population, and the rest were black slaves (and later, black former slaves). But this started changing at the end of the nineteenth century, when immigration began to increase from non-Protestant areas of the world. Faced with new competition, the Protestants were put in conflict with the immigrants.
In the case of prohibition, this was manifested as a battle between the Protestants and Catholics. The battle over prohibition, then, was merely symbolic of the larger structural battles between these two groups. The Protestant churches never specifically forbade drinking, and in fact, they really encouraged moderation rather than complete abstention. As a way to help their struggle against the Catholic immigrants, the Protestants seized upon something that was heavily identified with the Catholics: drinking. By demonizing drinking, and Catholics along with it, the Protestants helped ensure their victory in the cultural war being fought in America.
The central issue, in actuality, is not status but is prestige. Because this was a cultural war, the way to win was to be the group with the highest prestige. "The crucial idea is that political action can, and often has, influenced the distribution of prestige. Status politics is an effort to control the status of a group by acts which function to raise, lower, or maintain the social status of the acting group vis-á-vis others in the society. Conflicts of status in society are fought out in public arenas as are conflicts of class" (Gusfield 1972:19). By making drinking a practice of low prestige, the Protestants were able to cast themselves in a higher prestige image, and greatly help their cause.
Overall, I think the analyses of Weber, Veblen and Gusfield complement each other well, and provide the most accurate explanation for prohibition. I do not believe that only looking at the prestige factor is a sufficient explanation for prohibition. There are other things that could have been used instead of alcohol, like their Catholic practices, blond hair, or their city dwelling tendencies. Clearly, the fact that the nation was changing was a huge impetus for prohibition, but I think that there had to be some dislike of alcohol on a more basic level. The analysis provided by Veblen’s theories, when applied to the women’s temperance movement’s, illustrates this fact quite well.
Having an understanding of the general forces behind prohibition, a more detailed timeline will be established in order to put the movement into better historical perspective. The first laws against alcohol in America actually came during the Colonial era. These laws targeted two groups, Indians and blacks. The very first laws came in the late 1600’s. "Because of their concerns over Indian violence, all the colonies enacted codes regulating the sale of liquor to the tribes. In 1682, for example, Pennsylvania ordered all sales halted on a pain of a £5 fine, calling the practice "an heinous offence to God and a reproach to the blessed name of Christ and his holy religion"" (Lender 1982:24). We see, then, that from the very beginning organized religion was involved in prohibition, although in this case it is more indirectly than in the future. Similar to the case of the Indians, blacks were also singled out for drinking laws. In the early 1700’s, many colonies enacted laws banning the selling of liquor to blacks, free or slave. "A Connecticut statute of 1703, typical of New England policy, called for the flogging of slaves ... caught in taverns without their masters’ permission" (Lender 1982:27). These laws "represented further testimony that if alcohol was all right for the white community, others could only drink by permission. Social control and societal stability remained the preeminent values among free whites attempting to conquer the North American continent" (Lender 1982:29).
Jumping ahead to the first half of the 19th century, there were widespread changes in America regarding common attitudes towards alcohol. From the beginning of colonial times all the way up until the Civil War, alcohol was looked at as a beneficial drink. Nearly everyone drank beer, cider, rum or whiskey. "Ardent spirits were a basic part of the diet - most people thought that whiskey was as essential as bread" (Lender 1982:47). Only in the mid 1800’s was there any change in the public’s perceptions of drinking. One of the main reasons appears to be a reaction to mass immigration in the early 1800’s. Specifically, Irish immigration provided a strain on race relations, and alcohol became identified with the new Americans. "The Irish were the largest single group of pre-Civil War immigrants ... In addition to being poor, the newcomers were almost invariably Roman Catholic ... For many Americans, this was enough to label the Irish as unacceptable aliens" (Lender 1982:58). Anti-Catholics sentiment, apart from their drinking habits, was bad enough to cause rioting in Philadelphia, Massachusetts, and Charlestown, among other locales. "Faced with an openly hostile environment, and both unable and unwilling to Americanize, the immigrants seized upon drinking as a major symbol of ethnic loyalty. That is, they drank hard to assert their Irishness; the harder they drank, the more Irish they supposedly became" (Lender 1982:60). This connection between the Irish and alcohol became widespread. Anyone who wanted to strike out at the Irish, then, could do so by restricting access to alcohol.
Through the heavy efforts of the Protestant churches, the first prohibitive law at the state-wide level was enacted in 1851 in Maine. Within four years, twelve more states had laws against drinking on the books. Due to either repeal or being found unconstitutional, all except the Maine Law were off the books by 1858. These failures sparked a second wave of prohibition campaigning, this time led by dedicated groups. The Prohibition Party was formed in 1869, and the WCTU in 1874. For the next twenty years, these groups attempted to bring about prohibition by electing people to state legislatures and the congress. These efforts, for the most part, failed, and the focus of the prohibition groups charged toward more feasible, and more subtle goals. In 1893, the Anti-Saloon League was formed. As we already know, the saloon was identified with Catholic, urban, poor America, and the support for the ASL came from the middle-class Protestants. In 1903, the ASL began direct lobbying in Washington, and got the sale of liquor banned in some Pacific Islands, immigration stations, army premises, and around the Capitol building. Similar small gains were made over the next decade and a half. By early 1919, about half of the population of America lived under some form of prohibitionary law. Finally, after much ado (which would eventually be for nothing), the 18th Amendment was passed through Congress in December of 1917. It was ratified in January 1919 and took effect one year later (Cashman 1981:243-250).
The next place to turn is the history of prohibition movements aimed at caffeine. In America, however, there never has been one. Caffeine has found constant acceptance in nearly all circles of America. The only native form of caffeine found in America is cassina, also known as the North American tea plant. It was commonly used by Indians from Virginia to Florida and west along the Gulf coast to the Rio Grande. All other forms of caffeine, such as coffee (South America) and tea (China) had to be imported from other countries. The only group in America that does not use caffeine is the Mormon Church. Mormons strictly adhere to laws that forbid all drugs, and rightly include caffeine among forbidden substances. There have not, however, been any Mormon led efforts to outlaw caffeine, as it is kept to personal observance. I have even been unsuccessful at locating any attempts to ban caffeine in Utah, a state that is dominated by Mormons (Brecher 1972).
Much like the Mormons, Muslims are prohibited from consuming drugs by their holy text, the Koran. This has, in some cases, carried over to the control of caffeine. The introduction of caffeine to Egypt and Arabia (now Saudi Arabia and Jordan) was met with hostilities. The sale of coffee was banned, the ships that imported it were destroyed, and the people who traded in it were severely punished for breaking religious law. However, this did not last long, and coffee drinking caught on quite extensively in the Muslim world, as did tea in the Arab world. Today, Arabic coffee is often found in specialty coffee shops (like Starbucks), and Turkish coffee (strong flavor with the grounds in the cup) is a staple in the Middle East (Brecher 1972).
Moving on from the mundane history of caffeine, a quick look at cocaine tells a much different story. Initially, cocaine was not a major issue in America. The active ingredient in the coca plant, cocaine, was isolated sometime in the late 1850’s by either Friedrich Gaedecke or Albert Niemann in Germany. It was hailed as a wonder drug by the medical community and was used to treat anything and everything. Cocaine reached widespread attention worldwide in 1883 when a German doctor, Theodor Aschenbrandt, administered it to Bavarian soldiers in order to increase their alertness and endurance. His published report was read by a young doctor, Sigmund Freud, who quickly became one of the drug’s major proponents. Freud used the drug extensively both in his practice and personally. He also was one of the first people to realize the euphoric content, as well as the chances for cocaine induced psychosis, and warned adamantly against its misuse (Flynn 1991:21-23).
In America, cocaine had found its niche. By the early part of the twentieth century cocaine was an ingredient in everything from cola to candy. The first restrictive law against cocaine was enacted in Oregon in 1887, requiring that it be available only by prescription. "By 1914, 46 states had laws controlling the sale of cocaine and only 29 had laws controlling the sale of opiates; often the penalties for cocaine were harsher" (Grinspoon 1976:40). This is a very interesting fact, considering that cocaine had been used, with some success, to treat morphine addiction. Unfortunately, some of the patients ended up addicted to cocaine instead of the morphine, so that type of treatment was stopped after only two or three years (Grinspoon 1976:40). The probable reason for the belief that cocaine was more dangerous than morphine was that several newspaper articles cited cocaine as a major scourge on the public.
Not surprisingly, many of the articles were racially biased, linking cocaine use and crime to the black segment of the population. After all, cocaine was readily available and "popular among Negroes in the South, where "Jew peddlers" sold it to them." Many whites also believe that "cocaine made blacks invulnerable to bullets," and of course "every colored prostitute is addicted to cocaine." Naturally, "the Negroes, the lower and criminal classes, are ... [the] most readily influenced" by cocaine. Hyperbole aside, the reality of the situation was that "the [most well] - documented (if not the most severe) cases of cocaine abuse were white professional men, especially physicians" that were using the drug for more than medical research (Grinspoon 1976:38-40).
On the federal level, the first law that affected cocaine was the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. All that law stipulated was that any medicine containing cocaine (as well as all active ingredients, it did not single out cocaine) had to be properly labeled. It also prohibited interstate transfer of foods containing cocaine and other narcotics. The Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914 was the next step. "It stipulated that anyone producing or distributing opiates or cocaine must register with the federal government and keep records of all transactions" (Grinspoon 1976:41). Anyone who was not registered could only obtain cocaine with a prescription, and all other possession was deemed illegal. The Harrison act was the primary law for the next several decades. In 1970, however, the federal government passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, which created the new terminology for dealing with drugs, and classified cocaine as Schedule 2, meaning that it has high abuse potential but also known medical uses. Along with the CDAPCA, most states increased their minimum penalties for illegal possession to a fine of $1,000 and up to one year in jail. Some states however varied the punishments. "Simple possession of cocaine is only a misdemeanor in Idaho, but in Missouri sale to a minor may carry the death penalty" (Grinspoon 1976:41).
As one can see, the treatment of cocaine was never anything notable until the 1970’s. It pretty much followed the penalties for other drugs in its "class," like opium or morphine. Unlike alcohol and marijuana, cocaine did not really receive much attention, other than the flurry of articles in the early part of this century that are mentioned previously. It essentially "snuck into" the drug laws with opiates. There was never an organized effort, no societies or political interests trying to outlaw it, just a group of physicians who were using it (and many abusing it) and who recognized that it was a dangerous drug, and thus worthy of legal control.
All of this started changing, however, in the 1970’s, with the resurgence of the drug culture. Cocaine was never a drug of choice among hippies, although it did gain notoriety with musicians like the Grateful Dead, who consumed it heavily and included references to it in their songs. "What in the world ever became of sweet Jane? She lost her sparkle/you know she isn't the same/Living on reds, vitamin C and cocaine/all a friend can say is "ain't it a shame"" (Hunter 1996). Perhaps because of these lyrics, one of the members of the Grateful Dead was arrested for cocaine possession in 1973. At this time, though, the drug was still primarily used by the wealthy, as a drug of prestige. "Cocaine is still largely restricted to groups that are privileged or socially marginal or both. ... Snob appeal is important in the spread of cocaine use. It may be inducing people to pay $100 a gram for a substance that is often largely sugar. The high cost of cocaine and its powerful reputation an elite drug tend to persuade people that it is desirable" (Grinspoon 1976:61).
By the mid-1980’s, the public perceptions as well as the use patterns had changed significantly. The primary catalyst for this change was the invention of "crack" cocaine. Crack is a drug that is made by mixing pure cocaine with baking soda, ether, and other commonly available ingredients to form a rock-like crystal that creates nearly the same euphoric high at a fraction of the price. This allowed cocaine to proliferate in the inner cities of America, and it is most closely identified with African-American street gangs. "The first public notice of crack in New York City appeared in a New York Times story on November 29, 1985, about adolescents seeking treatment ... after having used crack" (Belenko 1993:6). Very quickly, however, word of crack spread around the country, with the link to minorities and crime being exploited as much as possible. "Lurid accounts of crimes committed by persons high on crack dominated the news media in 1986, and politicians tried to outdo each other with tales of the horrors of crack and the need for swift and Draconian measures to control its spread" (Belenko 1993:10).
Unfortunately for drug users, the story on crack broke during a national election year. It was the mid-term election of Ronald Reagan’s second term as president. This made crack, and drug control in general, a key political issue. "In the political climate of 1986, silence about the issue would too readily be interpreted as being "soft" on drugs. In this way, the political debate over crack quickly deteriorated into demonstrations of "toughness" against drug abuse - there became little opportunity for competing approaches to drug policy" (Belenko 1993:9). Because of the political primacy of drug control, the opportunity for rehabilitation centered approaches, or even a chance to understand what the crack epidemic was really about, could never materialize. At this point, the drug was only about a year old, and not much pharmacological research had been initiated, let alone published. The perceptions that people had about crack were based on politicians’ trump speeches and biased news reports.
With all of the negative attention given to crack at this time, the most interesting fact is that it was the least used illegal drug in the country. From 1986 to 1990, according to the National Institute for Drug Abuse Household survey, "only 0.2% of respondents had used crack during the previous month" and at most two percent of the population had ever tried it (Belenko 1993:13). Needless to say, this little fact did not stop the politicians from rushing more anti-drug legislation through the federal government. The year culminated with the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which became the official federal strategy for drug control. The act called for increased penalties all around for drug users and dealers, the elimination of parole for drug offenders, and it declared that drugs were a "national security problem." In all, it allotted $1.7 billion extra for drug control, in addition to the previously appropriated $2.2 billion. Of this amount, only $231 million (roughly 14%) "was allocated for treatment, education, and prevention efforts" (Belenko 1993:13). The effect of this legislation is still being felt today with overcrowded prisons and a legal system that is completely bogged down in drug possession and distribution cases.
By 1991, however, the national attention focused on crack had died down considerably. "Not once in the 1991 [National Drug Control Strategy] is crack referred to as a particularly dangerous drug or a threat to American society" (Belenko 1993:20). NIDA data from the late 1980’s shows that use of crack declined in America, especially among the middle class. "Thus, now that the threat of the spread of crack to white middle class America failed to occur, and the drug seemed to be safely confined to the urban poor, it became much less of specific concern" (Belenko 1993:21) to politicians.
Overall, it is fairly easy to see that the history of cocaine prohibition depends solely on who the perceived users are. When, in the early history of its use, the clientele were prominent white citizens, the enforcement reflected genuine concerns for the well being of the people. On the other hand, when the drug became affordable enough to reach the masses, and especially the black masses, a national hysteria ensued that labeled the drug as one of the worst scourges ever seen in this country. While there are no doubt serious health consequences from using cocaine in either powder or crack form, there can be no justification for the drug policy of the past thirty years as being solely for the best interest of the people.
Unlike cocaine, marijuana has been singled out for special treatment several times in the last ninety years as a menace to society, and mostly unfairly. As was shown in the first section of this paper, there are few known health risks from consuming marijuana, and it is impossible to die from an overdose. The main problem with marijuana is its association with minority cultures. The name alone, having nothing to do with its scientific name, Cannabis Sativa, or its industrial name, hemp, was chosen specifically to link it with Mexicans. As the reader may have noticed, the drug was referred to as cannabis in the first section of this paper, when discussion covered the plant’s many uses. Now, the word marijuana is employed, as it refers only to the psychoactive portion of the plant, and has a negative connotation as well.
The prohibition of marijuana really centers around one man, Harry J. Anslinger. Anslinger worked in the Prohibition Unit of the Treasury Department, enforcing the 18th Amendment, while it still existed. It is reported that his interest in eliminating drugs from America began as a young man after a friend died from smoking opium. From that time on, he made it a personal moral crusade to rid the nation of drugs. He believed that firm penalties were the key to a successful law, and a successful policy. Concerning the enforcement of the prohibition of alcohol, "for a first time conviction he thought that a jail term of not less than six months and a fine of not less than $1000 was appropriate" (Abel 1980:238).
In 1930, Anslinger was promoted to the head of the newly formed Bureau of Narcotics, which was separated from a scandal torn Prohibition Unit at the failing end of the Prohibition era. Anslinger however, recognized that the limited enforcement scope of the 18th Amendment left prohibition bound to fail, and in order to create a successful effort, the laws, backed by consistent public support, would need to be stronger. If there was no way to motivate the masses against a new drug scourge, the possibility existed that the government would shut down the Bureau of Narcotics, as the country was in the throes of the Great Depression, and the federal budget could not sustain extraneous endeavors. Anslinger took it upon himself to create the moral panic for marijuana.
Until Anslinger’s efforts, marijuana had received little press. In the wake of the Harrison Narcotics Act, some states began outlawing the possession and sale of marijuana, although in most cases it was out of ignorance. "To the legislators of Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York, a narcotic was a narcotic, whatever its name. Cannabis was considered a narcotic and therefore was accorded the same status as opium, morphine, heroin, and codeine, all of which were proscribed" (Abel 1980:203). Marijuana, for the most part, was not given individual attention until the time of Anslinger. The exceptions to this, however, were probably the inspiration for Anslinger to create the national moral panic. In the Southwest, where marijuana was more prevalent, there was a definite hint of racism in the anti-marijuana discussions. Much of the reason for the increased racism was due to the swell in immigration from Mexico, beginning in 1910 with the Mexican Revolution. Fighting extended at times beyond the Mexico border, to the north of the Rio Grande, putting Americans in the way of violence caused by Mexicans. "In the Southwest and New Orleans, however, ... a unifying image - tying together marihuana, violence, and Mexican laborers ... had existed from the early 1910’s" (Himmelstein 1983:51). "The fact that the Mexicans were Catholics made their situation even more touchy since Protestant America considered Catholicism a religion of dark superstition and ignorance" (Abel 1980:201).
Anslinger understood quite well the necessity of the press in creating a situation favorable to prohibition. "He began to supply information to organizations like the WCTU, community service clubs, and the popular press concerning alleged atrocities committed by people under the influence of marijuana ... Among the titles appearing on the newsstands were: "Youth Gone Loco" (Christian Century), "Marijuana: Assassin of Youth" (American Magazine), "Uncle Sam Fights a New Drug Menace - Marijuana" (Popular Science Monthly), "One More Peril For Youth" (Forum), "Sex Crazing Drug Menace" (Physical Culture), "The Menace of Marijuana" (American Mercury), "Tea for a Viper" (New Yorker), and "Exposing the Marihuana Drug Evil in Swing Bands" (Radio Stars)" (Abel 1980:240-241). With titles like these, it is pretty easy to figure out that the point of the articles was to shock the readers, rather than to inform them. These stories were filled with the details of crimes supposedly attributed to marijuana intoxication. "Anslinger kept a "Gore File," culled mostly from ... sensational tabloids - e.g., stories of axe murders, where one of the participants reportedly smoked a joint four days before committing the crime" (Herer 1995:29).
With stories such as these, it is no wonder the federal government took up the issue of prohibiting marijuana, at the behest of Anslinger, in 1935, although the efforts were kept secret until 1937. The story of the actual congressional process is an embarrassing blight on the history of America. Rarely has such an unfair, undemocratic process resulted in major legal changes (or so I hope). What follows is an example from the transcripts of the Senate hearings on the Marijuana Tax Act: "Senator Davis: How many cigarettes would you have to smoke before you got this vicious mental attitude towards your neighbor? Mr. Anslinger: I believe in some cases one cigarette might develop a homicidal mania, probably to kill his brother. ... Probably some people could smoke five before it would take effect, but all the experts agree that the continued use leads to insanity. There are many cases of insanity" (reprinted in Herer 1995:178).
When Dr. William Woodward went to the House Ways and Means Committee on behalf of the American Medical Association, he was treated as though he were on trial. "Woodward: We cannot understand yet, Mr. Chairman, why this bill should have been prepared in secret for two years without any intimation, even, to the profession, that it was being prepared. Chairman: Is not the fact that you were not consulted your real objection to this bill? Woodward: Not at all. Chairman: Just because you were not consulted? Woodward: Not at all. ... Dingell: We know that it is a habit that is spreading, particularly among youngsters. We learn that from the pages of the newspapers ... The number of victims is increasing each year. Woodward: There is no evidence of that. Dingell: I have not been impressed by your testimony here as reflecting the sentiment of the high-class members of the medical profession" (reprinted in Herer 1995:175). This sort of testimony makes up the majority of the debate about the Marijuana Tax Act. The fact remains that the bill was prepared for two years in high secrecy without anyone consulting the AMA, or any industries using industrial hemp, until it was already up for debate in the House. By the time people found out what was happening, it was too late to stop the process.
In December 1937, the Marijuana Tax Act was passed, and the possession of marijuana came under the control of the federal government. Since that time, there has been a wide range of responses to marijuana prohibition. With the arrival and passing of the 1960’s, marijuana use skyrocketed. It became a symbol of the youth rebellion, and states either decriminalized possession or stiffened the penalties. This dichotomy still exists today. States in the west, like Arizona, California and Alaska, have legalized medicinal use and/or possession of small amounts for personal use. Other states, most of the south, for example, have not budged on their hard line stances towards marijuana, despite the fact that an estimated 50% of high school seniors had tried the drug in the early 1990’s. The primary reason for this attitude shift is that the majority of users of marijuana today are white. If the surge in use came among the poor black community, there would never have been efforts to de-criminalize. On the contrary, one only needs to look at the case of crack cocaine to see what will happen if drug use is centered amongst the urban poor (Meier 1994:56).
Overall, there is much more evidence about the history of marijuana prohibition that could be examined. Much of it focuses on the impact of racial discrimination and is more relevant for the final section, and will appear then. The most important points however, that Anslinger spearheaded the drive towards prohibition with a media blitz, and that the congressional hearings were unfair, have been discussed in sufficient detail.
This discussion makes clear the forces behind moral politics in general. From the creation of a moral panic to the social labeling of a certain behavior as deviant, the reader should have a deeper appreciation of what sociological forces are required to undertake a political movement like prohibition. Additionally, one should begin to understand, by reading the examples of the four drugs and their legal histories, what greater forces are at work in these examples of moral political movements. These concepts will be built upon in greater detail in the final section, and will be tied to larger trends in American society over the past one hundred years.
The first three decades of this century were a time of unparalleled changes in American society, both technological and social. "In 1900 America was already the world’s mightiest manufacturing nation ... The electrical age had begun, but only the most affluent families had electric lights at home ... Although the urban middle class was expanding, the majority of Americans still lived in the country." But a mere thirty years later, "nearly all city homes - where the majority of Americans now lived - had electric lights and electrical appliances ... And even working-class families had automobiles" (Schiffer 1994:3-4). We see that in a very short time, radical changes occurred on the American landscape. People had moved to cities in order to find work in the expanding manufacturing industry rather than live in the small communities of the past. With the acquisition of cars by the middle and working classes, there was a new level of democratization sweeping the country.
The popularization of electricity and the automobile were two of the most significant developments in modern history. Electricity allowed for many other things to be developed, including radio. The radio was the first source that existed for dispensing information to the masses. Unlike newspapers, one did not have to be literate to listen to the radio. This allowed all Americans, rich or poor, to become more aware and more involved, and was yet another way of leveling the playing field. What this all led to was, for the first time, the chance of equal opportunities amongst all Americans. The upper end of the working classes, whether they were white, black, Hispanic, or anything else, were able to make a livable wage, buy a house or rent an apartment, and buy a car if necessary. Additionally, these changes made it much easier to create a moral panic, since information could be disseminated with record speed.
In the first thirty years of this century, the upper classes felt, for the first time, pressures from below. In Russia, the Bolsheviks were gaining force and taking over to institute Communist rule, and there was a definite fear that the same thing could happen in America. One of the reasons for this fear was the organization of labor. "In 1900 the total trade union membership came to 868,500; of these, the unions in the American Federation of Labor claimed 548,321" (Allen 1965:46) a mere one-sixth of what it was at its peak during the First World War (Malin 1930:211). At the time when Russia was turning towards Communism, organized labor was starting to gain legal muscle in America. The Labor Department was established in 1913, and the Clayton Act was passed in 1914, which "at least theoretically gave legal standing to collective bargaining" (Allen 1965:91). Clearly, the higher classes were feeling some pressure, and knew that there was a serious threat of major social change in America. "Furthermore during these very years the Socialist party - which was committed to an eventual total change in the management of American industry - continued to gain, until in the 1912 election its candidate, Eugene Debs, piled up no less than 897,000 votes" versus 6 million for Wilson, 4 million for Roosevelt and 3.5 million for Taft. (Allen 1965:91,93).
At the same time as labor trends were changing, there was another force in American that was gaining popularity: xenophobia. This was manifested in several ways, from laws against immigration to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan. Obviously, prejudice in America was nothing new, it just took on a new urgency with the turn of the 20th century. Because a black, Asian, or Hispanic family could make the same living as a white family in some parts of the country, there was resentment as immigrants began to take jobs away from native born white Protestant Americans. The Klan, founded in 1916, grew to over 5 million members within a decade, and pushed an agenda of "opposition to immigrants, radicalism, cosmopolitanism, liberalism, Jews, Catholics, urbanism, and, in general, all of the currents of the time that could be included under the label of "modernism;" the Klan defended ... old-stock Americanism, white supremacy, and Protestantism" (Baritz 1970:85).
From the end of the nineteenth century all the way through World War I, the issue of immigration was central to American politics. One of the main reasons was that the immigrants’ origins had shifted. From the colonial days until the late 1800’s, the majority of immigrants hailed from Northern and Western Europe. But starting around 1880, people began coming from Asia, Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Many of the people moving to America were not white, and almost all of them were non-Protestants. For the first time, there was a large influx of people who were not white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, and a pluralism that had never existed now had to be addressed. The federal government acted several times to severely limit immigration in the early part of this century. Congress passed literacy test laws four times, in 1897, 1913, 1915 and 1917, and all but the final one were vetoed (actually, the last one was vetoed and overridden). With this law, in order to vote, one had to pass a test in written literacy. This measure was not enough to please the anti-immigration sentiment, and so more drastic measures went into effect, based on a quota system. On May 26, 1924, an act was signed into law that allowed immigration based on the 1890 census (which is right when the flood of immigrants began to enter America). Under this law, all countries were only allowed to send over a number of immigrants not exceeding two percent of that nationality’s number that had been living in the United States in 1890. Under this law, Northern European immigration was limited to 141,099 per year and Southeastern European immigration (including Turkey) was limited to 20,477 people (Malin 1930:225-226).
While it can be very easy to focus on the facts of the anti-immigration laws, the actions of the Ku Klux Klan, or on any other racially biased xenophobic action of this time, the fact remains that these are all mere symptoms of a larger problem. This problem is one that was caused by two different forces, one internal, and one external. Inside America, the first thirty years of this century were full of rapid changes. As people moved to the cities from the rural farms, learned how to read, and began to drive cars, many of the barriers separating the upper from the lower classes began to crumble. Those who sat on top of the cultural food chain found that their old ways of life were no longer sufficient or sought after. As a result, members of the elite, who tended to be white Protestants, looked to their personal values as a way to survive the onslaught of the masses. Part of the solution was to begin organizing and mobilizing the Protestants to keep the status quo, and moral legislation was a large part of the result. Laws covering drugs and alcohol, as we have already seen, fall into the category of moral legislation, and so we can now see how the pressures being put on the dominant classes were a part of the cause of prohibition. Because they felt threatened, the Protestants began outlawing the things with which they did not agree.
From an external perspective, the same type of pressure was being applied, only in different ways. Immigrants were flooding the nation, attempting to escape the poor living conditions in Europe, the famines in Ireland, or oppressive tyrannies in Russia and Mexico. Unfortunately for the immigrants, they were attempting to enter an America that did not want them. The country was already struggling with its identity, as a powerful nation for the first time, and the people who were in control did not want to relinquish that power under any circumstances. Those who built up the country felt that it was rightfully theirs, and that the doors should be slammed shut on those who did not fit their image of an American: a white Protestant. After all, the early twentieth century was the time of nationalistic pride across the globe.
The rise of nationalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was noticeable nearly everywhere in the world. Composers like Jean Sibelius wrote patriotic Finnish music while Richard Wagner was a champion of the German cause. In the Middle East, young men and women flocked to Palestine to build a Jewish homeland out of desert and malarial swamps, while at the same time the indigenous Arab inhabitants awoke to their national pride. In America, the case was no different. The elite white Protestants had a national awakening, and considered that they were the prototypical Americans. As a result, anyone who did not fit their ideal type was to be excluded. So once again, the people turned to the law to solve their problems, and immigration was drastically reduced to allow America to remain the home of white Protestants. Additionally, America turned isolationist, and was reluctant to enter into any world affairs.
What should be apparent to the reader by now is how the Protestant upper and middle classes forced their morality and worldview on the rest of the population. Responding to both internal and external pressures, they did everything possible to shape the future of America to their liking. One of their methods was to use moral politics, and to enact laws that forced the rest of society to live by their ideologies. Concerning drugs and alcohol, there should not be a doubt as to the fact that this is the case. While I am not trying to push forward the hypothesis that this was the sole reason these laws were enacted, there has been sufficient evidence provided to show that it was definitely a significant cause.
Returning to the examples from the second section of this paper, there is considerable evidence not only that racial and ethnic factors played a role in the creation of the drug laws, but that they still play a role in their continued existence today (with the notable exception of alcohol, since the prohibition laws were repealed). Regarding alcohol, the majority of the ethnic bias focused on the Catholic/Protestant cleavages. As was shown earlier in this paper, the Irish were stereotyped as drunks and demeaned because of their habits. Groups such as the WCTU became active at the time when the Irish immigration was at its peak, as a response to their public drinking habits. It was not as if the Protestants did not drink at all, they merely confined their imbibing to family and the household, and did not drink to the point of drunkenness, like the Irish did. In effect, it was not a difference of kind, but a difference of attitude that doomed the Irish Catholics to second-rate citizenry. "Faced with an openly hostile environment, and both unable and unwilling to Americanize, the immigrants seized upon drinking as a major symbol of ethnic loyalty" (Lender 1982:60). This was, most likely, the worst thing that the Irish could have done. By using drinking to distinguish themselves from the Protestant elite, they made it considerably easier for the elite to discriminate against them. One of the easiest ways, it seems, would be to outlaw drinking, which would strip the Irish of their unifying symbol, as well as a source of pleasure.
As we know, prohibition failed. There was little, if any, decrease in the amount of alcohol consumed in America during the thirteen years that it was illegal. There were practical reasons why prohibition failed. The enforcement mechanism was not nearly strong enough to wipe out the trade in alcohol. On another level though, wiping out something as prevalent as drinking would have required house to house searches on a regular basis, and there was no possibility of the government funding an agency with those kinds of manpower needs. Beyond the practical reasons, however, there were ideological reasons why prohibition failed. While the temperance movement was successful in identifying the problems with drinking, they were not able to demonize it to the degree necessary to make a huge dent in consumption. In identifying drinking with Catholics, they chose a group that really could blend into the American landscape if they wished. Irish Catholics are white, and predominantly speak English. With a little effort and a few years (or even a generation), it would be impossible to pick them out of a crowd, except on Sunday when they’re going to church. In order to successfully demonize alcohol, the Protestants would have needed to pick a more visible target, like blacks.
In the case of cocaine, the white majority was able to successfully demonize users by associating the drug with the black underclass. In the beginning, there was very limited association of cocaine use with blacks, mainly because most blacks could not afford the steep costs associated with cocaine use. At that time, however, there was little need to demonize the users because cocaine was widely known to be dangerous. There was a legitimate need to control the usage of the drug (if you believe that it’s the role of the government to regulate such things), although throwing in negative racial stereotypes certainly didn’t hurt one’s cause in the early twentieth century. White people thought that cocaine "increased the cunning and strength of blacks and enhanced their tendency toward violence - especially, of course, sexual violence against white women" (Grinspoon 1976:39). This is an example that carries through nearly all drug prohibition movements - the threat of minority men raping white women. Newspapers ran stories about the black "cocaine fiend" "and claimed that the drug would make black men insane, vicious, and sexually aroused ... It was thought that cocaine increased the blacks’ physical and sexual power, making them sex-crazed and wanton rapists. The fear of blacks raping white women became an increasing part of the white rhetoric against blacks. While racist officials and newspapers professed the need to take all necessary steps to protect white women against the "over-sexed black man"" (Cloyd 1982:36).
The only case where it was not applicable was the alcohol prohibition movement. It is true, however, that the WCTU made women’s issues central to the cause, but it was very difficult to make the violence link when the singled out group was also white. Irish men would most likely be dating and marrying white women, even if they were Catholic, so there is no visual cue for impropriety. You cannot by sight tell if a Protestant and a Catholic are dating, but that is certainly the case for a couple where the man is black and the woman white.
I do not believe, or mean to imply, that the prohibition movement aimed at cocaine was caused by white people’s hatred of blacks, and their desire to see them marginalized and thrown into jail. What I am arguing is that the use of stereotypes and ingrained fears contributed to the social stigma that was given to cocaine. Looking at the larger sociopolitical arena of that era, blacks were living under forced segregation and with reduced access to the political system. The restrictions put on cocaine were just another way of bolstering the anti-black sentiment of that era; to add to that, the prevalent racism helped demonize cocaine by linking it to blacks. While there may have been a legitimate case to put legal restrictions on cocaine, the media blitz focusing on black criminal tendencies when high, especially in reference to sexually assaulting white women, contributed to the public’s negative view of cocaine. Through this avenue, cocaine use was changed from a playful activity of wealthy whites to a deviant social behavior.
Not unexpectedly, the same racial stereotyping was used in the arguments against crack when it became popular in the mid 1980’s. "Concern about crack crystallized when it began spreading among poor minority drug users. [This] "scapegoating" hypothesis suggests that, in similarity to previous drug eras, the use of crack by the urban poor provided political leaders with a convenient scapegoat for ... blaming a specific powerless group for social disorder" (Belenko 1993:9-10). Perhaps the greatest arena of discrimination, however, is the justice system. Blacks disproportionately outnumber whites in arrest numbers for cocaine and other drug use. "Blacks, about 12 percent of the population, accounted for 10 percent of all drug arrests in 1984, 40 percent in 1988, and 42 percent in 1990" (Bertram 1996:38). It is estimated that blacks make up about 15 percent of illegal drug users, which is pretty close to their percentage of the population, but a third of the percentage of arrestees. As if that isn’t bad enough, "black drug defendants receive considerably longer average prison terms than do whites who commit comparable crimes" (Bertram 1996:39). Even in the ordinarily progressive state of Minnesota, the legislature passed a law in 1989 that required harsher sentences for crack cocaine than for powder cocaine. Powder cocaine offenders received probation while crack users were sentenced to four years in prison. That law was struck down the next year, though, because of the vast difference in the racial breakdown of cocaine arrests. Nearly all powder arrestees are white, while nearly all crack convicts are black (Belenko 1993:17).
By now, the reader should be able to recognize that there was serious racial bias in the history of cocaine legislation. A final bit of evidence comes from an article studying the content of drug stories in the nightly news in 1990 (which was well after the initial scare of crack cocaine had died down). The conclusion was that drugs are almost universally treated as an "us against them" battle. In this case, white suburban America is "us," and black urban America is "them." An example of this blatant bias comes from an ABC news program (not identified by name, but most likely 20/20). "The drug dealers, users and arrestees depicted are overwhelmingly African American. Below the words: "Cocaine costs more and is less pure than a year ago," a black hand holds a large vial, cradling it as though offering it to someone. In the next shot, a much smaller vial lies in a white hand fingering it as if inspecting it. Below the words "Enforcement efforts," white hands inspect a plastic bag of white powder or rock. On the word "supply," a black man lights up a crack pipe" (Jernigan 1996:183-184). These sorts of racial stereotypes still penetrate the mass media, and keep alive the us-versus-them mentality that has plagued American politics since the turn of the century. Despite the fact most cocaine users are white, the common belief is that the majority of addicts are blacks who pose a threat to white Americans.
In the case of marijuana, we know already that the media blitz led by Harry Anslinger contributed in great part to the movement against marijuana. Marijuana was, in fact, associated with two different racial minority groups, Mexicans and blacks. In the deep South, it was considered like cocaine, a narcotic that made blacks violent. One route of marijuana into America was "from the West Indies into the port cities along the Gulf of Mexico, especially into New Orleans ... this was imported by the lower classes, usually black seamen from fruit and fishing boats" (Cloyd 1982:38). In this arena, marijuana use caught on with the jazz crowd, as New Orleans was one of the jazz capitals of the world. "Jazz musicians in New Orleans’s whorehouses were not the only ones smoking marihuana. "Moota," as the drug was known in the city, was popular throughout the red-light district, and eventually its association with this part of town came to the attention of the city’s moral crusaders who began to warn of its dangers" (Abel 1980:214). Attention in the area was not aroused until 1920, and the media blitz, primarily by the New Orleans Morning Tribune, began in 1926. "In the 1930’s, "reefer" songs were the rage of the jazz world. Distinctive and characteristic, it was music written and played by black musicians for black audiences" (Abel 1980:220). After the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act, Anslinger had the FBN follow and keep marijuana records on jazz musicians during the 40’s, "but not to bust them until he could coordinate all the jazz busts on the same night ... Anslinger ordered his agents to keep files and constant surveillance on ... Thelonius Monk, Louis Armstrong, Les Brown, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington [and] Dizzy Gillespie" among others (Herer 1995:68). The only reason the bust never occurred was that the Treasury Department’s Assistant Secretary, Anslinger’s superior, disapproved. Had Anslinger had a sympathetic boss, every famous jazz musician would have been arrested for using marijuana and thrown in jail.
All throughout this time, however, "white folks were becoming concerned over what marihuana might do to blacks. To emphasize the menace to white society, American Mercury carried an article by A. Parry entitled "The Menace of Marihuana," in which the author cited an incident calculated to arouse white readers. As described by Parry, a Negro man was arrested and brought to a New York hospital after threatening two white women in the street" (Abel 1982:221). Here again, we see the recurring theme of minority violence on white women as a call for prohibition.
In the Southwest, where mass Mexican immigration was occurring, the stereotypical association of marijuana was with Mexicans. "The idea that marihuana use made Mexican laborers violent was well established among upper-strata Mexicans in both Mexico and the United States in the early 1900’s" (Himmelstein 1983:51). One writer, Alfred Lewis, wrote a short story in 1913 concerning "the ill-fated adventures of an errant Harvard graduate who is attracted to Mexicans and marihuana in a border town and ultimately becomes so violent that he must be killed in self-defense. Lewis’s narrator is quite clear that marihuana is a Mexican drug, and he is no less clear that marihuana induces violence and that Mexicans are worthless" (Himmelstein 1983:51). Overall, "Anslinger’s view also dominated periodical articles during the period. All but one of the twenty-one articles [appearing between 1935-1940] that discussed the matter agreed that the drug was dangerous" (Himmelstein 1983:60). Marijuana really did not get fair press during this period, as it was characterized as a wretched, violence inducing drug that was of Mexican, and thus inferior, origin.
Overall, it is safe to say that Anslinger’s racist agenda was a considerable force in the push to criminalize marijuana. Had he not done what he did, I have little doubt that marijuana eventually would have been prohibited, but I think it would have come later, and with a more sensible implementation. The Marijuana Tax Act struck a huge blow to the industrial hemp industry, and eventually killed it, leaving a large gap in the paper, fuel, textiles, bird seed and other related markets. Had the laws been implemented differently, we would be living in a considerably different society, as hemp products could make a substantial difference in the environmental battles we see today.
In conclusion, there can be no doubt but to infer that race was a major factor in the successful moral legislation of the twentieth century. By successful, I mean legislation that is still in existence today. One can debate on whether or not the country has lost the war on drugs, but that is not the determinant of success. The drug laws have created vast institutions, which cost billions of dollars per year to maintain, and supply thousands of jobs to corrections and legal workers. In this sense, the legislation has spun off its own industry, which is surviving quite well. Prison building is one of the most stable industries in the past decade, mostly because of the overburdening of the justice system with non-violent drug offenders. While there are several movements aiming to end drug prohibition, none of them have gained much momentum on the national scale. The idea of legalizing marijuana is never discussed in congress, even though a considerable percentage of the population has admitted to smoking it and is aware the drug is not nearly as bad as the propaganda makes it out to be.
Despite the unfortunate continued existence of drug laws in America, the point of this paper was not to bemoan the current situation but to understand it. I believe that the simplest way to explain the existence of the drug laws is to look at the widespread changes in America during the first three decades of this century. As people began immigrating en masse, moving to the cities, and otherwise changing the primary modes of life in America, the Protestant elite which had ruled the country since the colonial days began to felt pressure for the first time. Their reactions to this pressure included anti-immigration laws, prohibition of drugs and alcohol and a more isolationist stance in world politics. In all, these were symbolic reactions to a structural problem. Clearly, the entire situation is very complex, and cannot be completely understood in this amount of space. I do feel, however, that I have pinpointed some of the primary factors in the creation of moral legislation during the early twentieth century.
Allow me to conclude with the following passage: "The mounting sense of danger - even dispossession - among millions of native-born white Protestants in the period 1910-1930 is not hard to understand. A people whose roots were in the towns and farms of the early republic saw great cities coming more and more under the control of strangers whose speech and values were not their own ... In reaction, the older America mounted a cultural counteroffensive through the prohibition movement, immigration restriction, and a sharpened racism" (Higham 1975:48). The moral legislation, then, was just a reaction to a new set of circumstances faced by Protestant America. They felt the changes were an affront to their values, and did whatever they could to end the threat. Because they controlled the legal system, one of the ways was through legal controls on things that offended their sensibilities. Moral legislation was one example of the ways in which the Protestants enacted the necessary changes to keep themselves in control of this great nation when faced with the first real threat to their power.
Abel, Ernest L.
1980 Marihuana: The First Twelve Thousand Years. Plenum Press, New York, NY.
Allen, Frederick Lewis.
1965 The Big Change: America Transforms Itself 1900-1950. Bantam Books, New York, NY.
Baritz, Loren.
1970 The Culture of the Twenties. Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, IN.
Belenko, Steven R.
1993 Crack and the Evolution of Anti-Drug Policy. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT.
Ben-Yehuda, Nachman.
1990 The Politics and Morality of Deviance: Moral Panics, Drug Abuse, Deviant Science, and Reversed Stigmatization. SUNY Press, Albany.
Bertram, Eva et al.
1996 Drug War Politics: The Price of Denial. University of California Press, Berkeley, California.
Bordin, Ruth.
1990 Women and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873-1900. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick.
Brecher, Edward M. and Consumer Reports Magazine Editors
1972 The Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/CU21.html
Cashman, Sean Dennis.
1981 Prohibition: The Lie of the Land. The Free Press, New York, NY.
Cloyd, Jerald W.
1982 Drugs and Information Control: The Role of Men and Manipulation in the Control of Drug Trafficking. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT
Collins, Randall.
1992 Sociological Insight: An Introduction to Non-Obvious Sociology. Oxford Press, Oxford, England.
Durkheim, Emile.
1938 The Rules of Sociological Method. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Erickson, Kai T.
1975 On the Sociology of Deviance, in Davis, F. James and Stivers, Richard (ed) The Collective Definition of Deviance. The Free Press. New York.
Flynn, John C.
1991 Cocaine: an in-depth look at the facts, Science, History and Future of the World’s Most Addictive Drug. Berch Lane Press, New York, NY.
Greenberg, Leon.
1959 Alcohol in the Body in McCarthy, Raymond Drinking and intoxication:Selected Readings in Social Attitudes and Controls. The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois.
Grinspoon, Lester and Bakalar, James B.
1976 Cocaine: A Drug and Its Social Evolution. Basic Books, Inc., New York, NY.
Gusfield, Joseph R.
1972 Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Termperance Movement. University of Illinios Press, Urbana, Illinois.
Harriston, Keith and Jenkins, Sally.
1986 Maryland Basketball Star Len Bias Is Dead at 22, Traces of Cocaine Found in System.
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/longterm/memories/bias/bias1.htm
Herer, Jack.
1995 Hemp and the Marijuana Conspiracy: The Emperor Wears No Clothes. HEMP/Queen of Clubs Publishing, Van Nuys, CA.
Higgam, John.
1975 Send These to Me: Jews and Other Immigrants in Urban America. Atheneum Press, New York, NY.
Himmelstein, Jerome L.
1983 The Strange Career of Marihuana: Politics and Ideology of Drug Control in America. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT.
Hunter, Robert (Lyric Archive)
1998 Truckin’. http://www.dead.net/RobertHunterArchive.html/files/lyrics/teleprompter.html#anchor373280
Jernigan, David and Dorfman, Lori.
1996 Visualizing America’s drug problems: and Ethnographic Content Analysis of Illegal Drug Stories on the Nightly News in Contemporary Drug Problems 23(2)169-196.
Knight, Robert and Bernstein, Dennis.
1996 Why Is the CIA-contra-cocaine Connection STILL Being Ignored?
http://www.wbaifree.org/earthwatch/baltolex.html
Lender, Mark Edward
1982 Drinking in America: A History. The Free Press, New York, NY.
Lopez-Ortiz, Alejandro.
1998 Coffee and Caffeine's Frequently Asked Questions.
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/caffeine-faq/faq.html
MacAndrew, Craig and Edgerton, Robert
1969 Drunken Comportment: A Social Explanation. Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago, Ill.
Malin, James Claude.
1930 The United States After the World War. Ginn and Company, Boston, MA.
McCarthy, Raymond, and Douglass, Edgar.
1959 Prohibition and Repeal in McCarthy, Raymond Drinking and intoxication: Selected Readings in Social Attitudes and Controls. The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois.
McGlothlin, William, Arnold, David, and Rowan, Paul.
1973 Marijuana Use Among Adults in Abel, Ernest (ed) Behavioral and Social Effects of Marijuana. MSS Information Corporation, New York.
Meier, Kenneth J.
1994 The Politics of Sin: Drugs, Alcohol, and Public Policy. M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, New York.
Schiffer, Michael Brian
1994 Taking Charge: The Electric Automobile in America. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC
Sussman, Steve et al.
1996 Marijauna Use: Current Issues and New Research Directions in Journal of Drug Issues. 29(4)695-734.
Veblen, Thorstein.
1994 The Theory of the Leisure Class. Penguin Books. New York.
Weber, Max.
1996 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirits of Capitalism. Roxbury Publishing Company, Los Angeles, CA.
hits since 12/4/00