How/Why did alcohol and tobacco become legal ?

[Catchawave]

Sidebar: Oh, I'm definitely not against alcohol *hic* and I'm a smoker. But DEAR GOD, they are evil, harmful and can send us all to early graves according to the Surgeon Generalismo's reports..!? <---underwritten by the pharma's because they want to control our addictions?

Seriously, more people probably die from the effects and affects of alcohol and smoking. Which are legal, controlled for safety and purity, And Taxed, so why not weed ? We could probably send the next generation of college kids through school for free with just the marijuana "tax" !

I know this is a silly *brainfart*, but if our gov could identify street drugs and make them legal through safety controls and taxes....how much better would we be off ?

[babylonsister]

1. Weed's not legal because the big pharma and gov't wouldn't

make any money on it. No more, no less. IMOSHO!

[Catchawave]

8. Big Pharma, oh yeah!

Wasn't heroin OTC in the early 20th century? It was the snakeoil cure for everything?

BTW, if chocolate was tested on dogs, it would have been illegal too !

[uppityperson]

14. and they need it to justify the War on Drugs

otherwise there just hasn't been enough drugs out there to justify it all. Crystal meth, that might bulk TWOD up enough now.

[meow2u3]

17. Pure nonsense!

Weed can be regulated and taxed, perhaps at a slightly higher rate than smokes or booze, even if the total cost of weed can equal, or be somewhat lower than, the current street value.

Weed can be sold to adults 21 and up legally, but the sale or distribution to minors can remain felonious. Possession by minors can still be criminal, preferably a misdemeanor.

[babylonsister]

18. If it was legal, we could also grow it at no profit to anyone.

Edit to add: except users.:smoke:

[arcane1]

20. and make methanol from the leftovers

and paper...

and cloth...

etc...

[babylonsister]

23. Sounds like a win-win-win-win to me! nt

[liberal N proud]

2. As far as alcohol, I think it had something to do with religion

The fundies wanted to deprive people from having fun.

I do believe that prohibition was driven by a fundamentalist religion movement.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. Alcoholism was also once a lot worse than it is now

Before modern medicine, alcohol was used as a pain killer, and in many places was drunk because the water was unsafe. Even the Pilgrims drank beer! Carrie Nation and her ilk were worried not so much about alcohol per se as the effects on families-if the main breadwinner was a drunkard, the whole family would suffer.

[Catchawave]

11. Exactly, so how was it legalized ?

I guess taxes trumped church !?

[hfojvt]

21. not the same type of fundamentalism

more like Puritans being moralistic and less concerned with the rapture. WCTU - Women's Christian Temperance Union and revival preacher Billy Sunday lead the movement for prohibition. Also there was a heavy strain of anti-Catholicism too, since Catholics did more drinking, generally, than protestants.
Is alcohol really fun?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. Until the mid 1930s, hemp was legal as well

And then one of the big chemical companies invented nylon, and wanted to get rid of competition. And the T-Men had nothing to do since Prohibition....even cocain and other hard drugs were once legal in this country. And there are some places where they are treating drug addiction as a medical problem. Costs of cleaning up their act is a lot less than spending time in jail, and productive citizens are the result.

[dysfunctional press]

6. it wasn't just nylon..there was paper too...

and Dow chemical Co.(the ones with the nylon rope) also had a process for turning wood pulp into paper- and a new machine(not theirs) that would revolutionize hemp harvesting was coming online...too much competition for one well-connected company to bear.

[Catchawave]

15. Industrial hemp should be legal now....

..but I think saving the earth's forests is not a captialist priority :shrug:

Drug/alcohol addiction is still a medical problem, unfortunately the drug part is now the pharma's wart on our society.

[babylonsister]

26. Cocaine was in Coca-Cola, before anyone figured out how bad

that was for you. Dang, those folks must have been flying! It's amazing!

[Asgaya Dihi]

28. True, but in small amounts

That's one of the worst problems with making it illegal, there was some in coke but the amount was fairly small and it didn't do much. We also used it for toothache and other things as well, and even today opiates are some of the best pain relievers that can be used for cancer and other serious injury patients. Now if we can just let the doctors prescribe it without the local cops and DA trying to decide how much is too much, that's what medical review boards were for.

In Columbia the natives have chewed the leaves for ages, never had a real addiction problem till it became illegal. Make it illegal and it gets more concentrated for easier movement, so more addictive and dangerous. Legal we can control that, and decide who gets it better than the street dealer is doing today.

[babylonsister]

29. Wow, you're a wealth of knowledge! Thanks for that!

I imagine the earlier cocoa is similar to the impact on beetlenut users. It's a small rush, but they also continue using til their teeth turn brown/fall out!

[Asgaya Dihi]

30. No problem

I've been having these debates for a few years, so what I didn't run into myself someone tossed at me over the years ;) The drug war is a sore point with me, too many lives wasted for no reason at all that I can tell.

[Catchawave]

32. Cola is an addiction too....

...caffeine related?

[Asgaya Dihi]

33. Yep

http://drugwarfacts.org/addictiv.htm

[Skip Intro]

4. Because we live in a nation of people free to make their own choices

about their own lives?

no, seriously...I'm not stoned...

seriously

[Catchawave]

22. LOL...I gotcha....

It's just that I sometimes worry that Amerikka doesn't have their control priorities in order....like worrying that I'll die anytime from consuming cigs and coughing up a trial lawyer, or drink an Appletini too many and drive into a minivan full of orphans ?

But Viagra's advertising budget is 1.2 million this year, and we're still rated at the bottom on infant mortality polls in the WORLD !?

I love 'choice' believe me :hug:

[napi21]

7. Actually, alcohol became legal because the mahority of people

wanted it and it was proven, during the the prohibition, that it couldn't be stopped!

As for tobacco, I don't really know. I guess it was determined to be "one of the sin habits" that also couldn't be stopped, so they decided to tax it instead!

[Catchawave]

24. Agree!

We can stop the "war on drugs" just tax the suckers.

I'm really trying to understand why this is so difficult for our government!? What did we learn from 'prohibition'....?

[napi21]

34. What did we learn from 'prohibition'....? The answer....

NOTHING!!!!

[babylonsister]

27. The evils of tobacco weren't know then; I don't know if anyone had

really figured out cancer when prohibition was done away with.

[Asgaya Dihi]

9. Good question

People act as if things are somehow active, and drugs and alcohol are just tools in the end. Use can be good, neutral or bad. Tobacco I don't see a real use for, but I couldn't tell you how to get rid of it.

Basically tobacco never was illegal that I know of and when we tried it with alcohol we just traded slow deaths of liver failure for fast ones of lead or other poison from cheap brews and gunfire. Nothing got better, it got worse, so we traded Al Capone back in for sponsored sporting events and the Budweiser frogs. It could be better still, but that's a matter of not glorifying the stuff so much and more education.

I figure the same approach can be used for drugs, we've dropped smoking by over 50% in recent years and nicotine is more addictive than heroin, did that just by changing it from making us sexy and grown up to smelling like an ashtray. All in the attitude and education. We've also tried regulating heroin itself with good results, lots less damage than feeding the black markets is causing if we did it on a large scale I would think. Check the following link for info on that.
http://www.dpft.org/heroin.htm

[MrSlayer]

10. People have been drinking and smoking for thousands of years.

They weren't developed products like Tang or whatever.

[Gregorian]

12. The funny thing is, cannibis used to be the leading migraine medication.

Common sense and justice are two things that do not exist in America.

Sorry, I really shouldn't say that. I'm just totally depressed at how much of an idiot I am. Everyone on DU is a heavy reader, with great recollection. I just have that gut produced truthiness. And no ability to argue, or remember, or fucking anything. But I ain't leaving. :)

[sweetheart]

13. Alcohol is for social control, tobacco saves on Social Security

Both save social security payments, as they kill their victems before
retirement, or early-on in retirement, statistically.

But really, you must realize how alcohol lets the working classes
blow off steam, that isntead of an armed rebellion or a strike,
they vent their steam in a fight at the pub. Britain figured this
early on, and transmitted this wisdom of class-control to the US, combined
with its racist hatred of all "other" forms of intoxication...

But when you realize that alcohol is for social control, you see the reason
why other drugs are not legal. They are not as good for social control,
and less useful for repressing a population, hence, "of no medical use".

[Jose Diablo]

16. According to a very informative film I saw when growing-up,

The Killer Weed turns normally modest young ladies into raging, lustful, wanton hunks of burning flesh. So naturally all of us guys sought it out as a sure way to score. I think thats why it was outlawed, because it felt so good.

Now alcohol is similar, in that it lowers inhibitions, but alcohol has been around since the very beginning, whenever that was. They tried outlawing it. Didn't work. Seems people enjoy feeling good. Don't ask me why.

Tobacco? I am not so sure, but it can make you high also. But only the first few times, then it's just sort of a thing to do. Something to do with your hands other than masterbating. You don't want people masterbating in public do you? Well, smoking helps in that regard.

[Atman]

19. Hit the freepers over the head with this...

when they spout their "Christian nation" crap. We're an alcohol and tobacco nation, too. Our country was built on firewater and smoke. Probably the only thing that made all the God stuff bearable for 'em back then.

[proud patriot]

25. You mean why did other things become illegal

:think:

[Catchawave]

31. Yes

How do "other" things become illegal? Who is controlling addiction, so to speak?

[progressivebydesign]

35. Because someone can make money off of it.. pure and simple.

I'm always amazed at liberals who smoke.. because they are funding one of the most evil empires of all... the tobacco industry. The only industry SO bad that they have to run PSAs to tell you not to use their products, and to keep your kids from using it. Why in the world would you want to make those people so rich?

[johnnie]

37. The tobacco industry is only one of them

Read about the fast food industry, the dairy and meat industry and the oil industry, all which are much more destructive to our health and the environment than the tobacco industry in my opinion.

[Catchawave]

36. Thanks all.....

I think I figured out our gov wants to control our addictions, only the pharmas will be making money off of it!?

Pharma's bad.

[mandyky]

38. History channel said the Founding Fathers

were a bunch of drunks (not in those words exactly). And tobacco is one of America's natural products. Even Native Americans smoked it.

That said, I did my senior termpaper on legalization of marijuana.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

39. Booze has existed since time immemorial

There was a Scientific American article about it a few years ago, in which it said that people in Europe used to drink prodigious amounts of diluted wine and beer because their drinking water often wasn't safe. This was carried over into North America, but after the industrial revolution, with people gathered in cities, bars were open 18 hours a day, booze was cheap, and alcoholism became a huge problem, especially among those who could least afford it. If the breadwinner spent the week's paycheck on booze, the family starved.

With typical American extremism, the Temperance Movement decided that the cure was to ban booze.

:shrug:

Tobacco (used by Native Americans since forever) became widespread before anyone knew about its harmful effects.

[Asgaya Dihi]

40. I should have thought of this earlier

I can't think of a thread this belongs more in. The history of drug use in the US by a professor of law who has had access to the government archives to research the issue.

History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/whiteb1.htm

[Warren DeMontague]

41. They didn't "become" legal. The natural state of things is for people to

be left the fuck alone about what they want to ingest in their own bodies.

It's only through a series of mind-whammies and brainwashing that the public was ever convinced of the "need" for narcotics laws and various forms of prohibition in the first place.

[hexola]

42. Thank You...NOTHING becomes legal...things are MADE "illegal" by man...

impeachdubya got it way right!!!