"The War on Drugs" a Bust?

[Rev. Rye]

You can go as far back as J. Edgar Hoover, who started the whole shebang in an effort to keep his FBI funded. After the mafia were busted and prohibition was ended (thanks very little to the FBI) Hoover was mad to find something to keep his bloated agency going. He hit on the idea of turning cannabis into marijuana, creating a big scare about how it affected people making them habitual criminals and immoral people, and claiming that it was Mexican gangs who controlled the supply of cannabis (Trump could learn a few lessons in hate from Hoover). So the drugs war was started by a kleptomaniac criminal in charge of a branch of US law enforcement.

Actually, you can go even further back: Around the turn of the century, even before anyone knew who J. Edgar Hoover was, Cocaine was being promoted for use by dock workers, in an attempt to get them impervious to the effects of temperature and give them more energy. Of course, as you can expect, it fucked up the people who used it. After briefly starting a scare about people being coerced into taking cocaine and being sold into prostitution, they found an angle that really struck a nerve when people started reporting crimes done by black people on cocaine.

Some brief examples:

• In 1901, the Atlanta Constitution wrote: "“Use of the drug [cocaine] among negroes is growing to an alarming extent."
  
• According to Edward Huntington William M.D., in an article written around the time Cocaine became illegal nationwide in 1914, "once the Negro has reached the stage of being a 'dope taker' (dope here referring to cocaine) . . . he is a constant menace to his community until he is eliminated . . . Sexual desires are increased and perverted, peaceful Negroes become quarrelsome, and timid Negroes develop a degree of 'Dutch courage' that is sometimes almost incredible. . In the language of the police officer, 'The cocaine nigger is sure hard to kill' - a fact that has been demonstrated so often that many of these officers in the South have increased the caliber of their guns for the express purpose of 'stopping' the cocaine fiend when he runs amuck."
  
• A 1910 survey done by the federal government said: 'cocaine is often the direct incentive to the crime of rape by the Negroes in the South and other sections of the country. Southern sheriffs believed cocaine even rendered blacks impervious to .32-cal. bullets (as a result many police departments switched to .38-cal.)." Allegedly, there were even rumours that cocaine gave the user superhuman marksmanship skills, and, therefore, it was advised to shoot first, ask questions later.
  
• In an article in the Literary Digest around the same time: "Under its (cocaine) influence are most of the daring crimes committed . . . Most of the attacks upon white women of the South are the direct result of a cocaine crazed Negro brain."
  
• One judge in Mississippi went so far as to say that giving a "Negro" cocaine is more dangerous than injecting a dog with rabies. I can't find the original quote, but I think it can be found in the March 20, 1905 issue of the New York Times in the article: "Negro Cocaine Evil: Mississippi Judge Urges Grand Jury to Punish Druggists." Maybe someone with a NYT subscription can confirm this.
  
• Reportedly, the Atlanta Race Riots of 1906 were caused by outrage against crimes done to white women by cocaine-addled black men.
  

And I just picked some of the most egregious examples!

You see, the rabbit hole of the link between drug prohibition and fucking with minorities goes a lot further than a lot of people realise.