by Crazy Cat Lady

Created on: January 19, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

Illicit drug use is a hot topic today. Everyday on the news and in the papers we read reports about another massive drug bust. Seemingly, the war on drugs is working. People are being arrested, property and cash is being seized for government use and criminals are being put out of business. Onlyit's not working. We see the happy faade given us on the daily news. We hear police expounding upon the great work done when another smuggler is arrested with 40 lbs of pot in his trunk. But this only the surface and below the surface lurks a nasty, fetid problem of astounding proportions.

In 1919 the Volstead Act was passed into law. This act specified that intoxicating beverages were not to be produced, sold or consumed. It was started by what were called Temperance movements. These were political movements, mostly headed up and run by women, who were sick of what they perceived to be society's moral decline due to alcohol. At first it seemed to work. Alcohol consumption dropped and alcohol-related arrests declined. However, the statistics, nice as they were, didn't allow for the growing lawlessness and underground production and movement of alcohol. By 1925 in NYC alone there were anywhere between 30k and 100k speakeasy clubs. People's desire and demand for alcohol overrode the legislation and they devised clever ways of avoiding Prohibition agents.1.

Sound familiar? It should.

From 1915 1937 at the insertion of the Marihuana tax act, states were working hard to prohibit and stop marijuana from coming into the country. A Texas legislator said, on the senate floor, "All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff (referring to marijuana) is what makes them crazy." A Montana legislator said, "Give one of these Mexican beet field workers a couple of puffs on a marijuana cigarette and he thinks he is in the bullring at Barcelona."

Besides the racial motivation there were other motivators in states without a high incidence of migratory workers, namely a fear of substitution'. A New York Times editorial in 1919 said, "No one here in New York uses this drug marijuana. We have only just heard about it from down in the Southwest but, we had better prohibit its use before it gets here. Otherwise all the heroin and hard narcotics addicts cut off from their drug by the Harrison Act and all the alcohol drinkers cut off from their drug by 1919 alcohol Prohibition will substitute this new and unknown drug marijuana for the drugs they used to use."

One final history lesson, one that illustrates

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