It was a century ago this year that the federal government moved to make certain kinds of opium illegal. And the war was on. Dale Gieringer takes it from there:
Early 20th-century Americans would be astounded to see what a problem drugs have become since the establishment of drug prohibition. Every year, two million Americans are arrested and 400,000 imprisoned for drug offenses that did not exist in their time. Drug laws are now the number-one source of crime in the U.S., with one-half of the entire adult population having violated them. Long gone are the days when Americans were free to keep opium in their closet; today, even gravely suffering patients are denied pain-killing narcotics by their doctors out of fear of federal prosecution.
The drug hysteria today is fertile ground for politicians on both sides of the aisle to whip up public support in the form of fear to tap phones, grab personal property, and drive the profits for criminal syndicates even higher in an ideal demonstration of a Keynesian-Police State symbiosis.
The latest casualty of the hundred year war is Olympic Gold Medalist Michael Phelps. Kellogg, a company named after a sort of real life Dr. Richard B. Vannacutt, who recommended treating masturbation by sewing *****es shut or pouring acid on young vaginas, may drop Phelps's lucrative endorsement deal to prevent tarnishing their brand name. The latest winner is the histrionic local police department, which has spent gads of taxpayer money to bust a "drug ring" that allegedly supplied or is in some way associated with the Phelps party.
The mixed message here is clear: don't use drugs - except when we tell you to. You might end up homeless, in prison, or even a world-class athlete or President of the United States! Now drink up, like good l'il Americans, and maybe, if you work hard at it, one day you'll star in an episode of Cops.