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Comment by corporateslave3 | Hacker News Reader

Was the threat to the traditional American way of life really the reason they were made illegal? It seems more likely that it was due to the unknown and possibly dangerous nature of the drugs. As a society we have always outlawed drugs that can drastically alter perception (aside from alcohol).

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"As a society we have always outlawed drugs that can drastically alter perception"

Actually, in America nationwide drug laws began in the 20th century, and it had nothing to do with health or unknown effects. Opium was outlawed as part of a general effort to "protect America" from Chinese immigrants. Heroin was outlawed because a German company held a patent on it. Cocaine was outlawed because, according to the people in Congress at the time, it drove black men crazy and made it impossible to kill them with standard police-issue sidearms (also, according to an article from the New York Times just before cocaine was banned, Jews were selling it). Marijuana prohibition was principally driven by racism and as a form of regulatory capture by industries that competed with hemp.

LSD was discovered decades before it was outlawed and the effects were well understood before it was banned. LSD happens to be one of the safest recreational drugs; in fact, the biggest danger is the poorly regulated supply chain i.e. most "LSD" on the market today is not actually LSD (as with most drugs, the ban poses a greater health risk than the drug itself). The government conducted its own extremely unethical LSD study to determine if it could be used as a mind control drug (it cannot) and knew the safety profile long before the ban. LSD was banned because of concerns that it was contributing to the moral corruption of American youth (i.e. think of all those white teenagers out partying with hippies); in other words, it was viewed as a threat to the prevailing social order (probably not a coincidence that this coincided with the civil rights movement, which was a direct challenge to that social order).

"LSD happens to be one of the safest recreational drugs"

Purely anecdotal, but have you ever met someone that has taken large doses of LSD over the course of a few years? They are almost always permanently changed

I don't think there's a firm consensus on the reasoning, but it's generally acknowledged that the Sch. 1 classification of the psychedelics was motivated to 1) quell their threat of cultural and political destabilization and 2) to keep hippies and blacks in check. The 60s were similar to Occupy Wall Street: there's major (valid) fear on the part of the establishment when a radically different movement picks up steam. Psychedelics were (rightly) considered a partial fuel to the new movement.

I also agree that the U.S. is much less of a monoculture now and people generally agree that others should be able to live, think, and believe whatever and however they want.

>there's major (valid) fear on the part of the establishment when a radically different movement picks up steam

What do you mean by "valid" here? Do you mean they are afraid for society, or themselves?

As in, there was a legitimate possibility in the 60s or with OWS that the movement would pick up enough momentum to really shake things up, power-structure-wise.

Don't forget that the civil rights movement actually was shaking things up in the 60s. I suspect that influenced political decisions by magnifying perceived threats to the prevailing social order.

I agree, but we must remove all government social programs as well to make that dream come true. You can't have one group experimenting at the expense of another.

>It seems more likely that it was due to the unknown and possibly dangerous nature of the drugs.

The benign physical effects of plants like cannabis were well established by the government's own studies. The science was purposefully ignored because it did not align with the political goals of the Nixon administration.

Safety played absolutely no role in these decisions. If that we’re the case, only personal consumption or distribution would be banned, not basic research itself including research that didn’t even administer the drugs to humans.

There's also an article from someone high up (sorry I'm not being more specific) in the government/presidency of the 60s who said the main reason for the drug laws was so they could lock up lots of African Americans

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.

"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-r...

Both marijuana and heroin were illegal long before Nixon was president.

Well it was known as a powerful mind-altering substance in the 50's when it was released as a medication, yet was kept on the market because it was seen as a breakthrough with alcoholism, PTSD, and other mental health issues. It wasn't actually made illegal until the 70's when its use became widespread in the growing counterculture. That makes me believe that the counterculture had a large part of it being banned.

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