If you ask the question why are some drugs
legal and others illegal.
Why are cigarettes and alcohol legal and pharmaceuticals
in the middle and these other drugs -- marijuana
and, you know, other ones illegal?
You know, some people sort of inherently assume
well this must be because there was a thoughtful
consideration of the relative risks of drugs
and, you know -- but then that can't be because
we know alcohol is more associated with violence
than almost any illegal drugs.
And cigarettes are more addictive than any
of the illegal drugs.
I mean, heroin addicts routinely say it's
harder to quit cigarettes than it is to quit
heroin.
So, it's not as if there was ever any kind
of National Academy of Science that a hundred
years ago decided that these drugs -- these
ones had to be illegal and those ones legal.
And it's not as if this is in the Bible or
in the Code of Hammurabi.
I mean, nobody was making legal distinctions
among many of these drugs back in -- until
the twentieth century essentially.
So if you ask how and why this distinction
got made, what you realize when you look at
the history is it has almost nothing to do
with the relative risks of these drugs and
almost everything to do with who used and
who was perceived to use these drugs, right.
So there's -- you know, back in the 1870s
when the majority of opiate consumers were
middle aged white women, you know -- throughout
the country using them for their aches and
pains and for their, you know, the time of
the month and menopause and there was no aspirin.
There was no penicillin.
You know, lots of diarrhea because of bad
sanitation and nothing stops you up like opiates.
I mean, millions -- many more -- a much higher
percentage of the population back then used
opiates than now.
But nobody thought about criminalizing it
because nobody wanted to put, you know, auntie
or grandma behind bars, right.
But then when the Chinese started coming to
the country in large numbers in the 1870s
and 80s and, you know, working on the railroads
and working in the mines and working in factories
and, you know -- and then going back home
at the end of the night to smoke up a little
opium the way they did in the old country.
The same way White people were having a couple
of whiskeys in the evening.
And that's when you got the first opium prohibition
laws.
In Nevada, in California in the 1870s and
80s directed at the Chinese minorities.
It was all about the fear -- what would those
Chinamen with their opium do to our precious
women.
You know, addicting them and seducing them
and turning them into sex slaves and all this
sort of stuff.
The first anti-cocaine laws were in the South
in the early part of the twentieth century
directed at black men working on the docks
and the fear.
You know, what would happen to those black
men when they took that white powder up their
black noses and forgot their proper place
in society.
You know, going out -- the first time anybody
ever said that, you know, the cops needed
a 38 would not bring down a Negro crazed on
cocaine.
You needed a 45.
I mean, the New York Times, the paper of record,
reporting this stuff as fact back in those
days.
That's when you got the first cocaine prohibition
laws.
The first marijuana prohibition laws were
in the Midwest and the Southwest directed
at Mexican migrants, Mexican Americans taking
the good jobs from the good white people.
Going back home to their communities, smoking
a little of that funny smoking, you know,
marijuana, reefer cigarette.
And once again the fear, what would this minority
do to our precious women and children.
So, I mean, it's always been about that.
I mean even alcohol prohibition was to some
extent a broader conflict between the white
white Americans and the not so white white
Americans, right.
The white white Americans coming from northern
and western Europe in the eighteenth, early
nineteenth century with all of their stuff.
And then the not so white white Americans
coming from southern Europe and eastern Europe
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century bringing with them their beer and
their vino and, you know, their schlivowitz,
right.
I mean, it was all about that type of conflict.
And it wasn't as if the white white Americans
weren't also consuming.
It's just many of them knew that when you
criminalize a vice that is engaged in by a
huge minority of the population and you leave
it inevitably to the discretion of law enforcement
as to how to enforce those laws, those laws
are not typically gonna be enforced against
the whiter and wealthier and more affluent
or middle class members of society.
Inevitably those laws will be disproportionately
enforced against the poor and younger and
darker skinned members of society.
So to some very good extent that's really
what the war on drugs has been about.
When people talk about it as the new Jim Crow
in this wonderful book by Michelle Alexander
with that title, it's about understanding
that, you know, the war on drugs is not just
about race and it's not just about targeting
black and brown young people because, God
knows, I mean, millions of white people have
been swept up in the war on drugs as well.
But it is disproportionately and overwhelmingly
about that from its origins to its enforcement
to who gets victimized today.
