It seems like all kinds of toxic, dangerous substances were socially acceptable to use until the 50s and 60s, when recreational drug use became a symbol of the new culture war. From Jamaican immigrants in the UK using more cannabis, to Mods with amphetamines, Hell's Angels with cocaine, Beatniks with jazz cigarettes, Hippies with pot and LSD, and eventually homeless veteran junkies and segregated inner-cities with heroin (later crack), the entire world's straight-laced societal norms were being uprooted, and one common thread ran among all the different non-conformist groups: drugs. "Drug culture" became synonymous with the other, bad, low, foreign, corrupt, criminal, and those seeking to supplant old social norms and conventions.

Before then, drugs were widely used by all classes (although not much recreationally). Housewives took "pep pills" to clean longer without getting tired. Airmen were given amphetamines to fly for 36 hours straight. Cocaine was in coca-cola. Laudanum was the West's miracle pain killer and palliative. Cocaine was only made illegal in 1920, and heroin in 1924. And of course I'm completely ignoring alcohol, despite it being the world's most abused intoxicant, with its own share of bizarre social norms and demonizations attributed to social class.

The idea that people use drugs to "alter their consciousness" is intoxicant romanticism. People use drugs because it's a fun distraction. Drugs as a concept have never been a societal sin, they are medicine. It's the association between an unpopular social group and a particular drug that causes the drug to be demonized.