Alison Myrden's LEAP Blog June 11th 2007

[Alison Myrden]

It seems like every day there's a study relating to narcotic

prohibition. Unfortunately the abundance of new information has us

neglecting the past.Sometimes I think, when and how did prohibition

start?What was the catalyst?

 

Most of us can't even remember what we had for lunch two days ago, me

especially with the MS, so I gave myself a little history lesson.

 

It's good, as they say, those who don't remember history are doomed to

repeat it.

 

Interestingly six weeks after the Harrison Narcotic Act (1914) was

passed the first anti-prohibition editorial appeared in the New York

Medical Journal, May 15, 1914.

 

"As was expected … the immediate effects of the Harrison anti-narcotic

law were seen in the flocking of drug habitues to hospitals and

sanatoriums. Sporadic crimes of violence were reported too, due

usually to desperate efforts by addicts to obtain drugs."

 

Another appeared six months later in American Medicine.

 

"Instead of improving conditions the laws recently passed have made

the problem more complex. Abuses in the sale of narcotic drugs are

increasing.

 

" .. . A particular sinister sequence . . . is the character of the

places to

which [addicts] are forced to go to get their drugs and the type of

people with whom they are obliged to mix. The most depraved criminals

are often the dispensers of these habit-forming drugs."

 

Unbelievable.

 

More unbelievable is originally this U.S. statue was to impose a

special tax on those who import or produce, deal, distribute, sell, or

giveaway opium and coca leaves. The congressional debate centered

around ensuring the U.S. did not contravene recently signed

international agreements.

 

The law morphed from a taxing and regulating statute to a solidly

prohibitionist one.

 

Three years later the first commission was appointed to examine why

drugs were skyrocketing in usage, especially in San Francisco and New

York City where it was concluded, more law enforcement would solve the

problem.

 

More drug laws were passed.

 

More negative consequences were reported.

 

Eleven years later, June 1926 the Illinois Medical Journal reported,

"The Harrison Narcotic law should never have been placed upon the

Statute books of the United States. That instead of stopping the

traffic, those who deal in dope now make double their money from the

poor unfortunates upon whom they prey. . ."

 

I could keep going....

 

 

For the remainder of my Blog please go to http://blog.leap.cc/

 

Thank you...

 

Love and a squish,

 

 

Alison

xx

[I believe]

If this was the initial reaction, surely it would have been scrapped for sake of practicality alone from the point of view of enforcement. It just goes to show there must have really been some vested interests in this whole outcome... and they must have had the influence to get away with it.

Bastards!