NCJ Number
172365
Date Published
1998
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This paper traces cycles and changes in American society's patterns of drug use and attitudes toward it, along with drug control policies pertinent to the consumption of opium, cocaine, and marijuana.
Abstract
Dramatic shifts in attitude have characterized America's relation to drugs. During the 19th century, certain mood-altering substances, such as opiates and cocaine, were often regarded as compounds helpful in daily life. The popularity and growth in demand for opiates and cocaine in mainstream society derived from a simple factor: the effect on most people's physiology and emotions was enjoyable. Moreover, Americans have recurrently hoped that the technology of drugs would maximize their personal potential. That opiates could relax and cocaine energize seemed wonderful opportunities for fine-tuning such efforts. Two other factors allowed a long and substantial increase in drug consumption during the 1800s. First, casualties of drug use accumulated gradually; and second, not everyone who took cocaine or opiates became addicted. Cocaine has caused the most dramatic change in estimating risk from its use. From a grand image as the ideal tonic, cocaine's reputation degenerated into that of the most dangerous of drugs, linked in the public's mind with stereotypes of mad, violent behavior. Opiates have never fallen so far in esteem, nor were they repressed to the extent cocaine had been between 1930 and 1970. As the Great Depression of the 1930s settled over America, the immigrants became an unwelcome minority linked with violence and with growing and smoking marijuana. Western States pressured the Federal Government to control marijuana use. In the shift to drug toleration in the late 1960s and early 1970s, investigators found it difficult to associate health problems with marijuana use. Today, American society is experiencing the reverse of recent decades, when the technology of drug use promised an extension of our natural potential. Increasingly, Americans view drug consumption as reducing what we could achieve on our own with healthy food and exercise. Ours is an era not unlike that early in the 20th century, when Americans made similar efforts at self-improvement, accompanied by an assault on habit-forming drugs. Americans seem to be the least likely of any people to accept the inevitability of historical cycles. Yet if we do not appreciate our history, we may again become captive to the powerful emotions that led to draconian penalties, exaggeration, or silence. 1 figure and 1 note