Points About the 'Progressive' Era War Of Drugs

as embodied by such pieces of U.S. legislation as the 1906 Food & Drugs Act; the 1914 Harrison 'Narcotics' Tax Act; the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act; and the 1951 Boggs Act establishing more draconian sentences

 graph from page 230 of the book Licit & Licit Drugs

The drug war is Tobacco cigarette market protection & promotion; note how sales climbed relatively little following the introduction of the mass machine produced cigarettes around 1884, until the enactment of the 1906, 1914 and 1937 drug market protection scheme legislative acts.

The 1906 Act would be designed to allow the USDA to claim without any basis that the chief market threat to Tobacco of dilute cocaine products were unacceptably dangerous as "adulterated", while exempting Tobacco from USDA regulation via that Act's limitation of such authority to substances listed in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, from which Tobacco had been included until being deleted in 1905.  

Such policies would eliminate the safe dilute cocaine containing products from markets, while leaving cocaine available only in ultra concentrated forms, with the USDA stating its particular fear of such being sold as 'Tobacco Habit Cures' in a 1910 USDA farmers Bulletin article "Habit Forming Agents- Their Sale and Use a Menace to the Pubic Welfare", thus making the world markets safe for cigarettes resulting in their subsequent boon with over 100 million premature deaths during the 1900s.

The war on drugs, or rather the war of drugs is a far far worse set of policies than even its detractors generally make it out to be.

- One ushering in an era of human rights violations for the sake of a so far inadequately challenged unconstitutional market control scheme fostering draconian maximum measures whereas minimalist approaches would respect basic rights of choice while doing an infinity better job at serving actual goals of promoting health and discouraging problematic modes of drug use-abuse.

- One not based upon consistent science regarding substances and the different forms- aka the dilution-concentration factors of pharmacokinetics, such as with Opiates and cocaine, and particularly the double-standard regarding the latter and market competitors as caffeine and especially nicotine.

- One ruining countless lives via the abuse of the judicial system, in complete disregard of the 8th and 9th Amendments and the fact that alcohol prohibition - which actually only prohibited manufacture, sales and transportation, while allowing possession and consumption on private property! - required an Amendment. 

- One negatively affecting many people via the market distortion effects, rippling throughout society, starting with the denial of relatively safe and effective medicinal herbs. 

- Not only with the perversion of substances as Opium and Coca into ultra-concentrated opiates and cocaine hci-sulfate.

- But also the market protection of intrinsically more dangerous substances. In particular, the over 100 million deaths resulting from the market explosion of the Tobacco cigarettes which the firm was the lead entity towards protecting, and which the USDA was clearly interested in protecting with its banning of Coca feared as a “Tobacco Habit Cure’, despite the relative safeties with Coca found to be “the easiest to control and the one least likely to produce toxicity or dependency”. [see various articles at my blog Freedom of Medicine and Diet – including that of March 10, 2008]   Note the cigarette production graph that I have reproduced in that blog showing the sharp spikes occurring following the 1906 and 1914 Acts. 

- This has additionally culminated in an arrogant pharmaceutical campaign of human rights violations against people over Cannabis. One that would deny valuable herbal preparations as Cannabis Oil for treating cancer and epilepsy far more safely, efficacy and less toxicity and expense than many pharmaceuticals. [search engine “Rick Simpson” – “Running From The Cure” – “Cannabis Oil”]. 

- And one with intellectually fraudulent campaigns for “drug free” America, and even “drug free” children, that neglect serious instances of child abuse such as highly questionable forced thorazine and perhaps even Phencyclidine (PCP- ‘Sernyl’), particularly via parent- physicians for “un-cooperative”/”un-controllable” children, associated with causing “social impairment” related issues. 

- Such has been a side effect of the “drug war” (criminal-unconstitutional-deceitful pharmacratic inquisition) in so overly emphasizing the alleged “dangers” of the illegal drugs- namely giving modern petro chemical pharmaceuticals a free pass. 

- Along with the serious escalation of health care costs via a system favoring the expensive development of generally relatively more toxic synthetic molecules over naturally occurring substances, such as Cannabis, brought about by an early 1900s media propaganda campaign against dilute medicinal preparations employing the word "nostrum" as a slur word, favoring ultra concentrated pills and powders, coordinated by a pharma-medical political alliance favoring and even directly promoting Tobacco cigarettes, with such Tobacco bred to foster greatly intensified use and addiction, as loaded with a great many additives that are unlabeled.

Indeed, with such a broader set of implications than commonly discussed, it can only be a testimony to the influence of big money that we have politicians so unwilling to address these broader issues, along with a drug policy reform movement of organizations instead promoting more of a tunnel vision simply upon Marijuana, so influenced by figures and entities tied together with the Tobacco and pharmaceutical industries, of a paced agenda designed to minimize threats to the more broad social-mercantile order.

The more socialist, big government people will pretend that though we should not maintain the draconian war on certain drugs inquisition, that the illegalized drugs are simply undesirable and thus "medicalized" via an extensive systematic drug treatment bureaucracy - try imaging nicotine addicts going through the routines of opiate addicts with methadone clinics, etc.

And even the free market Libertarians with their greater consciousness of the workings of economic markets, neglect much of this, via a likewise pretense that the illegalized drugs, though they should be tolerated rather than the subject of this ongoing war of drugs inquisition, are simply undesirable.

Such a set of neglects would be largely why the attempts starting during the latter 1970s to expand opposition to the drug prohibition inquisition beyond Marijuana were so poorly done, with images of Coca-Cola machines dispensing not the original drink with dilute cocaine via Coca leaf extract, but rather streams of white powders.

This continues today with the occasional pronouncements that we must legalize all drugs with zero mention let alone discussion of these drugs domestication via making them available in forms that are way less abuseable and safer - a particularly curious omission from a drug policy reform movement that touts the concept of "Harm Reduction".

This policy is merely designed to be relatively ineffective, slowing the end of the drug war inquisition by pandering to people's fears.  Such is now is what is being done with the scare campaign against opioid pills that present measured predictable doses as opposed to contraband "heroin" of widely varying potencies and thus unpredictable doses thus increasing the dangers of fatal overdosing- all despite the relative lack of organ damage from chronic use as compared with the regular use of Tobacco and the excessive use of alcohol.  That Coca leaf-dilute cocaine, opiates and Marijuana are so criminalized without regard to their relative safeties, while Tobacco and alcohol remain so legal and available while just so happening to be the two set of substances exempted in the U.S. from retail labeling of ingredients, only further marks the drug war as a criminal market control scheme rather than a legitimate exercise of government power to protect people's health.

Such a money market mercantilist crony capitalist political arena is what is likewise prevalent with such matters involving mass markets as the failure of U.S. politicians regarding the issue of GMO ingredient labeling, across an either/or political spectrum, sadly from U.S. Senator Al Franken to U.S. Senator Rand Paul and U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.

Thus it is perfectly understandable that the political arena is sufficiently corrupt to have politicians from either the U.S. democrat of Republican parties to suppress contrary information, as that in the early 1990s U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment Harvard University report Coca Reduction Strategies that ended up being favorably to making Coca products of natural potencies legal and available, and subsequent reports via the United Nations.

Alas, too many people have set a low standard for their favored politicians.