The War on Drugs in the Americas

Christopher White

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781317359203
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

The War on Drugs in the Americas brings together the history of the War on Drugs in the US and Latin America to reveal how, since 1914, when the US first criminalized the non-medical use of narcotics, the trade and violence associated with drugs has developed throughout the hemisphere.

This concise and accessible book provides an overview of the geographic, historical, economic, and social dimensions of the War on Drugs throughout the past century. Notable figures, popular drugs, competing theories, and significant historical events take center stage, as the story moves between macro analysis and micro details. Aside from infamous cartel leaders like Colombia's Pablo Escobar and Mexico's El Chapo Guzman, the reader learns about equally important but lesser-known Latin American and US traffickers. In addition to counter-narcotics giants, readers learn about Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), DEA agents working to fight pharmaceutical companies and distributors, cutting-edge researchers and politicians that have pushed for and against the war.

The War on Drugs in the Americas is essential reading for students studying Latin American History, International Studies, and Politics through its clear and objective narrative of the origins, impact, and debates behind the War on Drugs in the US and Latin America.

PART I

The War on Drugs before 1981

1

THE US BEFORE 1981

Timeline of Significant Events

1861: Cocaine is invented and patented by Merck

1875: San Francisco Opium Den Ordinance

1898: Heroin is invented and patented by Bayer

1906: The Pure Food and Drug Act

1914: The Harrison Act

1920–33: Alcohol Prohibition Era

1930–62: Harry Anslinger runs the Federal Bureau of Narcotics

1937: Marihuana Tax Act

1938: Swiss scientist Albert Hoffman invents LSD in Sandoz Laboratories

1944: The La Guardia Study is released

1951: Boggs Act

1963: Israeli scientist Raphael Mechoulam isolates THC in cannabis

1969: Operation Intercept

1971: Controlled Substances Act is in effect

1972: The Shafer Commission report on cannabis is released

1973: The Drug Enforcement Administration is created

1975: The Columbia University’s “Jamaica Study” on cannabis is released

1981–89: US President Ronald Reagan administration

Legal vs. Illegal Defined

The idea that drugs are “illegal” only makes sense if we ignore the fact that all drugs became popularized when they were entirely legal. The first century of the proliferation of pharmaceutical drugs, beginning in the nineteenth century and ending with the first drug regulations, meant that four to five generations of Americans were able to consume the same drugs that became criminalized without a prescription after drug laws were passed. The Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 made cocaine and opium-based drugs (morphine and heroin) illegal without a prescription, which meant doctors could still prescribe powerful, addictive substances to people, and this is still the system in which most people who become addicted to drugs function. The legal opioids, stimulants, tranquilizers, and other powerful drugs that cause tens of thousands of deaths in the US every year, are created in laboratories owned by some of the wealthiest people in the world, who also have a tremendous amount of influence at all levels of government. Purdue Pharma, Merck, Pfizer, Cardinal, and many other pharmaceutical-related companies spend enormous sums on lobbying and campaign contributions in order to stay in the favor of government oversight committees. Many more drugs have been added to the list of legal vs illegal drugs, including all prescription drugs, heroin, cannabis, and hallucinogens. The last three have been given a special designation as entirely illegal, meaning prescriptions cannot be written for them in any circumstance. The DEA and the FDA have allowed experiments to be conducted with them, but under rigorous oversight.

International drug control efforts were initiated at the turn of the century, but only culminated in the UN Single Convention in 1961, which unified international anti-drug efforts. Though the twentieth century produced the modern War on Drugs, it was not the first time states implemented laws attempting to control the consumption of mind-altering substances.

Before the rise of the pharmaceutical age, the tendency on the part of most states was to ban a new product for a short period, then lift the ban. The exception is the Muslim world’s general ban on alcohol. The Japanese banned tobacco briefly in the sixteenth century, the Swedes banned coffee for a short period in the seventeenth, and the Spanish banned coca consumption for non-Indians in the sixteenth century in Peru. In the US, alcohol was the main concern of prohibitionist activists beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, a full seven decades before the federal government implemented the 18^th Amendment, and this ban, like most others, was quickly lifted. In addition, not all bans have been outright prohibitions. During Alcohol Prohibition in the US (1920–33), there were loopholes that allowed some people to consume alcohol. Religious leaders were licensed to use alcohol for ritual purposes, and doctors were allowed to prescribe it to patients. Needless to say, there was an enormous increase in religious and medicinal uses of alcohol during Prohibition. Likewise, drug seekers today can manipulate physicians into prescribing painkillers, benzodiazepines, and anti-depressants in order to produce an intense cocktail of drugs, which can send the user into the desired state. These are small examples of the conundrum of any type of prohibition.

This chapter examines the history of drugs and the War on Drugs before 1981, the year Ronald Reagan took office. The chapter outlines the era before and after anti-drug laws were enacted, as well as information about prohibitions on other products. The pre-1981 era can be considered as one of negotiation, rather than outright war. The presidents before Ronald Reagan were less fervent in their resolve to combat drugs as an all-out “war.” Even President Richard Nixon (1969–74), who declared the War on Drugs in 1971, dedicated more resources in his anti-drug budget to drug treatment than to drug law enforcement. It was Reagan’s “get tough,” “zero tolerance” approach that did the most to create the War on Drugs climate in which we live today. Before him, governments were not exactly lenient on drugs, but there were fewer federal, state, and local laws and resources dedicated to pursuing drug law violators before the Reagan era. Indeed, for a long time, all drugs were legal. In fact, during Alcohol Prohibition, cannabis was legal, and this situation was reversed in the 1930s. This meant a police officer could smoke a joint during the 1920s, but he could not drink a beer. The difficulty of policing any popular product, especially one that has a long history of human consumption prior to prohibition laws being enacted, is clarified with the long history of anti-smuggling legislation in the US.

Smuggling History

Peter Andreas’ book, Smuggler Nation, shows the long history of government efforts to halt a variety of products. Drugs have just one chapter in this book, which demonstrates the broader context in which the War on Drugs finds itself within a broader structure of governmental restrictions on trade and morality. For example, taxation and trade restrictions on paper, sugar, molasses, rum, and tea between the 1730s and 1770s helped instigate the colonists’ call for revolution in 1775. During the Revolution, George Washington’s rebel army engaged in illegal smuggling to procure restricted items such as guns, powder, clothing, food, and rum. Despite the nation being forged in part through smuggling encouraged by the Founding Fathers, after Independence, these same leaders enforced anti-smuggling laws in order to procure taxes, not unlike the British before them. Throughout the next two centuries, governments restricted more items, which increasingly grew the size and power of federal, state, and local governments. Police forces, customs houses, border patrol, the military, the judicial system, and prisons, have all expanded tremendously with the increase in the amount of anti-smuggling laws. Illicit smuggling also contributed to the growth of the US economy. For example, Americans imported patented English industrial technology in the nineteenth century, with encouragement from the federal government, thus enhancing the country’s economic power during the increasingly competitive Industrial Era. On the other hand, the American puritanical ethos manifested itself in the Comstock Laws of the late 1800s, which prohibited the production, importation, and distribution of items such as pornography, sexually explicit literature, and even condoms. Thus, the well-known cases of alcohol and drug prohibition were just the latest in a series of anti-smuggling laws.

Andreas’ chapter on Alcohol Prohibition could be coupled with Daniel Okrent’s book on the subject, Last Call, which outlines the many circumstances that led to the widespread acceptance of the criminalization of alcohol in 1920. Most of the states were on board because they were rural, sparsely populated, conservative, Protestant-dominant states also concerned with the rising tide of non-white, non-Protestant, non-Anglo, urban-based, immigrants entering the US between the mid-nineteenth century and the early twentieth. Maine passed the first alcohol prohibition law in 1851, just a few years after mass waves of German and Irish immigrants began flowing into the country. More and more anti-immigrant fervor built as the century progressed along with the burgeoning women’s suffrage movement. The 18^th and 19^th Amendments passed in quick succession, with the first being for Alcohol Prohibition and the second being for Women’s Suffrage.

The 18^th Amendment had no mechanism in place to enforce the law. The law’s advocates had pushed for prohibition on moral grounds, without taking into consideration how the law would be enforced. The law in fact could not stop alcohol production, transportation, sale, or consumption, and it enabled the explosion of organized crime and official corruption. Though resources were allocated to enforcement with the enactment of the Volstead Act, Alcohol Prohibition only lasted 13 years (1920–33), and was repealed due to its enormous social, political, and economic costs. The Italian mafia got an enormous shot in the arm with Prohibition, as many studies confirm, and Selwyn Raab’s book on the Italian mafia, Five Families, demonstrates this well. Once Prohibition ended in 1933, the mafia lost a significant portion of their alcohol revenues, but they were able to use other rackets, such as drugs, which eventually became the main focus of governmental anti-smuggling resources in the post-Prohibition era.

Race and Drug Prohibition

Drug prohibition has taken a century and a half to come to its current stage. There have been innumerable anti-drug laws enacted throughout history, concerning the manufacture, importation, sale, certification, and consumption of drugs. These laws began at the city and state level (similarly to alcohol prohibition’s “Maine laws”). San Francisco passed the Opium Den Ordinance of 1875, aimed at prohibition of opium smoking in Chinese-run opium dens. However, Americans had been drinking opium for decades, and San Franciscans were still permitted to do so after the ordinance. The difference lay in its form of consumption, and this established a pattern that would last far into the future. The Chinese act of smoking the drug meant that it was consumed communally, and the place in which it was consumed created a space in which men and women from different races could congregate in a manner that offended the average white American at the time. A person could purchase laudanum (a concoction of alcohol and opium) at the pharmacy, but they could not smoke opium. The double standard was thus established.

Though the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 was the first law to prohibit the non-medical use of cocaine and opioids, the first federal legislation to regulate drugs arrived with the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. This act introduced food and drug labelling, thus giving consumers more precise knowledge of the food and drugs they were consuming. Then came the Smoking Opium Exclusion Act of 1909, which forbade recreational opium usage. This act demonstrated the grey area where all drugs reside. How does the government effectively determine how a drug is being used? Opium, cannabis, and coca-based products all had recognized medical uses, but the general public had open access to these drugs for decades prior to anti-drug legislation, making it difficult to reverse recreational and medical consumer habits.

State laws were also moving at their own pace, as was the case when California passed the nation’s first anti-cannabis law in 1915. Californians and most other Americans could easily consume cannabis in the form of a tincture (hash oil) in the decades leading up to this new law. However, once large numbers of Mexicans fled the Mexican Revolution’s terrors during and after the 1910s, the reputation of cannabis was forever changed. One could drink pharmaceutical-grade cannabis tinctures in private, but cannabis smoking, introduced by the new arrivals, was a communal affair, in which Mexicans, Anglos, African Americans, men, and women would share a mood-altering experience. The Alcohol Prohibition movement was based on similar concerns. Rural white Protestants, fearful of the influence of so many urban European newcomers, who looked, spoke, and prayed differently, represented a threat to the former’s way of life.

The first and most authoritative account of the social roots of drug prohibition was the 1973 book, The American Disease, by Dr. David Musto. This was a ripe time to inject concrete history into the War on Drugs debate, as Richard Nixon (1969–74) launched the War on Drugs during this era. Aside from very real health and crime based concerns that motivated politicians, physicians, law enforcement officials, and the general public, Musto explained the several ways that race shaped drug policy. The Chinese were accused of using opium to seduce white women. Cocaine-crazed Black men were believed impervious to police firearms. Stoned Latinos were believed to commit heinous crimes on cannabis. And on and on.

A reasonable question could be, “What else would explain the urgent need to criminalize so many previously legal substances?” Another could be, “What else would explain the dual policy of allowing drinkable drugs like opium and cannabis while outlawing their smoking?” A drug was “legitimate” as a “medicine,” when consumed orally, but “illegal” or “recreational,” when smoked. Genuine concerns for health and safety were also part of this debate, as can be seen from the international anti-opium activism of people like Dr. Hamilton Wright, and many others, at the turn of the century. The two conferences that set the stage for international drug control patterns followed for the next century were in Shanghai in 1909 and The Hague in 1912, and Wright was the US representative to both. Examining the official and medical discussions at the turn of the century provides insight into this process. The racialized anti-drug laws appear to have been passed at the local and state levels, while federal anti-drug laws stemmed more from a concerted effort to raise awareness about the health dangers of pharmaceutical and natural narcotic drugs. There were international and national conferences and articles that debated this issue for years prior to the Act. This merely began the implementation of laws that divided legal from illegal drug production, sale, and consumption.

Harry Anslinger and the FBN

For a decade after 1914, doctors could even prescribe heroin to patients, usually in a manner that weaned them off the drug. The 1924 Heroin Act outlawed this practice, but it was not until 1930 that the government had an institution that could enforce this law fully. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) was headed by a former Prohibition Bureau officer, Harry Anslinger, who went after drugs with bulldog tenacity. As head of this bureau for the first 32 years of its existence, he set the tone for the War on Drugs for the next 9 decades. He prosecuted doctors who continued to prescribe heroin in the 1930s. He pushed for the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, using racial language to argue that cannabis was a dangerous narcotic that opened the door to other drugs, like heroin. The Boggs Act of 1951, which introduced mandatory minimums, was passed during his tenure. Anslinger also led the US effort to pass an international set of drug laws at the United Nations, which culminated in the (albeit compromised) UN Single Convention of 1961.

And yet, in between these years, many laws were constructed based on misinformation about “demonic” plants, minorities, and foreigners. The attachment of drugs to certain foreign groups can be further contextualized by examining the individual immigration histories of each ethnic group. Ronald Takaki’s A Different Mirror provides a chapter by chapter approach to this complex history and illustrates with myriad examples the different ways in which these groups were perceived by the dominant white population. While East European Jewish and Japanese immigrants received ill treatment, their relatively higher socioeconomic and educational backgrounds gave them a slight edge over those hailing from China or Mexico. While there are US-born stereotypes and racism about European Jews and Japanese, Americans viewed the Chinese and Mexicans at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. Despite religious and race-based negative views of Jews and Japanese, many Americans associated them with intelligence, thrift, and hard work. Takaki and Musto combined help contextualize the connection between anti-drug laws and US racism toward Chinese and Mexican immigrants. In addition, these authors explain in vivid detail how African Americans suffered the most from racial discrimination, and drug laws targeted them on a scale far beyond even the most vilified of immigrant groups. Indeed, cannabis alone has caused 22 million American arrests in the past 45 years.

Later US studies in Panama and New York City in 1925 and 1944, respectively, demonstrated the same. The Panama Canal Zone Report examined the use of marijuana by US soldiers and concluded that it was not addictive or problematic. An advisory committee composed of several heads of the Canal Zone’s government offices (including Medical, Civil Affairs, the District Attorney, Police, and Fire) was established to assess whether or not to restrict the plant’s use among soldiers and it concluded that prohibition was unwarranted. This kind of study was not even conceivable ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: “If it’s a War on Drugs, then Treat it like a War”
• PART I: The War on Drugs before 1981
• PART II: The War on Drugs, 1981–95
• PART III: The War on Drugs, 1995–Present
• Index