Page 230 - Encyclopedia Of World History

580 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

This nineteenth-century drawing titled Selling the Deadly Drug depicts Western attitudes
toward opium and China.

sorting drugs into legal categories according to their med- arettes a day. In fact, given tobacco’s role as a “gateway”
ical benefits, toxicity, and addiction potential. The most drug (those who smoked tobacco were far more likely to
restrictive category, which included hallucinogens such as experiment with other drugs), there wouldn’t have been
LSD or (in some nations) cannabis, amounted to prohi- as much marijuana use if cigarettes hadn’t been so read-
bition. Other categories ranged from tight controls on ily available.
manufacturing and distribution for drugs like methadone, Though irrational in public health terms, tobacco and
a synthetic opiate, down to simple prescription require- alcohol’s underregulation made sense in economic and
ments for drugs of lesser abuse potential. Unscheduled sociological terms.The smaller and more deviant a drug-
drugs such as caffeinated beverages, tobacco, and alcohol using population, the easier it was to impose and main-
were regulated, if at all, through tax policy and restric- tain restrictive legislation.The larger and less deviant, the
tions on advertising or sales to minors. harder it was. By the early twentieth century nonmedical
cocaine use was widely associated with prostitutes and,
The Double Standard in North America, with renegade black men. The places
The most anomalous feature of the modern control sys- that grew most of the world’s coca, Peru and Java, were
tem was that it privileged tobacco and, at least outside of poor and politically inconsequential.That simplified the
Islamic lands, alcohol, despite the fact that tobacco and task of international control. The same couldn’t be said
alcohol were as harmful as many of the drugs subject to of alcohol production, then an important industry on
stricter controls. As lung tumors became the world’s every continent except Antarctica. In the early twentieth
most common form of cancer, critics complained that it century, one in every eight Frenchmen derived income
made no sense to outlaw marijuana while permitting from some aspect of the alcohol business. The scale of
worldwide sales to pass, in 2000, a record 15 billion cig- potential opposition was one important reason why