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Comment by argiopetech | Hacker News Reader

While framed as a "black and mixed-race working class vs white middle class" conflict, the remainder of the article suggests that burgeoning recreational use of the pure drug informed removal of that drug from a drink where it was included in sub-therapeutic doses (9mg/drink vs 50-75mg in a recreational "dose" [0]). It's unclear to me, as written, how race was causal and why it's included as in the article.

There are plenty of real problems, past and present, which we can point to as indicative of racial prejudice. The insistence on its insertion into other areas, lacking supporting evidence, is, imho, overtly harmful to discourse.

I have not read the book linked as the source of this article, so I'm happy to be shown to be wrong.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola#Coca_leaf

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>The insistence on its insertion into other areas, lacking supporting evidence, is, imho, overtly harmful to discourse.

There is a lack of supporting evidence that race has historically been a deciding factor in US drug policy in the same way that there is a lack of supporting evidence for the historical existence of the Romans.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5614457/

https://www.case.org/system/files/media/file/Penn%20Stater%2...

https://eji.org/news/nixon-war-on-drugs-designed-to-criminal...

I counter with this article [0], which I believe to be more historically relevant due to its closeness in time to the discussion in question. Race is not mentioned as a factor here, and cocaine is described as "the American habit".

Having noted my inability to thoroughly research this topic at this time in reply to a sibling post, I'll point to that post for my back of the envelope calculation regarding the number of working class whites versus blacks and suggest that, as poverty and drug abuse seem, to me, linked, that it is just as plausible that widespread abuse of the drug was the catalyst for change in this case.

[0] https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1914-02-1...

I am not clear on how an article that does not overtly tie race to drug use or policy is in any way supportive of the notion that the historical record does not contain supportive evidence of a link between race and drug policy in the United States. This article also does not mention escalators but I would not submit it to further a claim that there is no historical evidence of them existing.

I didn't suggest that there is no supportive evidence between race and drug policy, but that fact does not imply that there is a causal relationship in this case. Citing Nixon era documents to describe pre-WWI circumstances is evidence at least as poor as that which I presented.

The article itself cites in the first paragraph this much more detailed analysis of the topic, which may provide the historical context that you felt was lacking.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26391000?mag=who-took-the-cocai...

Thank you for this reference. I had overlooked it.

While this article confirms my assertion that whites were the majority of drug users, the drug of choice is stated to have been racially segregated (with whites preferring opiates).

Based on this, I'll accept (pending further research) that the southern bans on cocaine were racially motivated. I'd still consider the 1914 federal ban on a wider swath of drugs to be less so.

You really like going out of your way to pretend things aren’t racially motivated, don’t you?

You spent two paragraphs just to end it with an apprehensive concession at best.

I’m not sure why someone would pick the 1914 ban as being uniquely not racially influenced. That seems arbitrary and could mostly only be backed up by not reading about it.

The main difference between the 1914 ban and previous actions was the degree of added emphasis put on caricatures of Chinese people.

https://www.economist.com/special-report/2018/08/14/how-did-...

https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,962...

https://web.archive.org/web/20080705050104/http://www.hoover...

https://www.nytimes.com/1914/02/08/archives/negro-cocaine-fi...

https://archive.org/details/cu31924032583225

Yes, it is class based, and given the more quantifiable efforts to relegate black populations to an underclass along with everyone else already there, it is always 99% correlated to race when looking at that subset.

But you asked the right question. This article does skip a few steps and assumes you are already subscribed to that causality while not considering anything else or provide supporting evidence, just quips from separate states and cities to reach any conclusion.

Racism was involved in some drug prohibition laws, certainly. But to steel man the comment you’re replying to, the article mainly points to circumstantial links rather than identifying a smoking gun. A quote about why cocaine was removed, for example, might have made it stronger. Or maybe ruling out other possibilities, like a spike in the import cost of coca leaves.

The excerpt linked in the first paragraph of the article (0) has a much more detailed analysis of this topic.

0 https://www.jstor.org/stable/26391000?mag=who-took-the-cocai...

The eji article talks about the John Ehrlichman quote.

That is very unreliable.

The quote was given to Dan Baum in 1994 and talking about events in 1968 - 1971. The quote was revealed in a Harper's Bazaar article in 2016. John Erhlichman died in 1999, and his family denies the quote.

So the original quote was given more than 20 years after the events, and revealed 20 years after the quote (now 40 years after the event) after the person quoted had been dead for 17 years.

People should read their citations...

The case.org publication clearly states that Anslinger's first-hand exposure to drug addiction as a child in a poor neighborhood that drove his drug policy. After his personal story failed to convince legislators, he used minorities as scapegoats to get drug legislation to pass. His career demonstrates that this was not personal animus against minorities; Anslinger hired several dozen African-American agents at the FBN over the objectives of his staff; the first Chinese-American law-enforcement officer in America (and indeed, is credited as launching one of the first diversity initiatives in the federal government). Also, Anslinger really hated hippies, regardless of race (and most hippies were white), because of their excessive drug use.

The NIH article assumes a racial bias exists in drug policy without bothering to prove it.

Drug policies have had a disparate racial impact but this is not the same thing as having been intended to be based on race. It's simply that different racial groups in the U.S. use drugs to different degrees.

I think that you’re taking the most charitable view of Anslinger’s conduct possible.

You’re essentially arguing that because he hired a few black DEA agents, his vilification propaganda campaigns and pandering to the Jim Crow crowd in congress to get support wasn’t “intended” to target people based on their race.

You can split hairs that his actions were in conflict with his true feelings I suppose. But additions tend to speak louder than words, and brutal oppression of racial groups motivated by careerism is equally repugnant.

Except that he didn't brutally oppress racial groups...

He brutally went after drug dealers and drug users, regardless of race. He pursued WASPs, Catholic mobsters, white hippies, and minorities with equal lack of restraint.

Again, the problem was not racism. The problem was the extreme lengths he was willing to go to quash drugs. And that was driven by the drug use he witnessed as a child, in a white neighborhood.

Even worse, the guy is exactly making the point that it is exactly about race. Heck the dude himself may not have been racist, he clearly used systemic racism to get drug laws passed. That exactly is what racism is. If nothing about the system was racist, the associating it with black strategy would not have worked

>After his personal story failed to convince legislators, he used minorities as scapegoats to get drug legislation to pass.

This is a good undisputed example of race being a key factor in US drug policy. The fact that racial stereotypes and caricatures may have been the second strategy that Anslinger used to achieve his aims is neither here nor there when discussing the historical usage of race in creating and implementing drug policy in the US.

If, for some reason, the topic of the history of race and US drug policy were to be mistaken for the topic of “racism as defined as a fundamentally unknowable specter haunting the heart of Harry Anslinger” then his various hires could be germane. Those are, however, fundamentally different subjects to such a degree that there is no meaningful connection between the two that would make one useful in discussing the other.

When people are claiming that drug policy is racially motivated, proof of the opposite is very much on point. Anslinger was very open about the fact that his childhood in poverty was behind his extreme anti-drug stance, not some supposed racism that didn't exist until marijuana activists tried to rewrite history in the 1970s.

You are conflating what you think is a commentary on Anslinger’s internal values with what is a factual statement about the history of drug policy in the US.

We both agree that Anslinger leveraged racial stereotypes in order to achieve his agenda. Race was the tool that ultimately got him the power that he sought. The fact that he failed to gain that power through his own honest accounting of his life story does not in any way serve as proof of anything — certainly not “proof of the opposite” that drug policies were enacted on racial grounds.

It is easy to ponder the inner workings of a man’s soul and mind, as it is easy to project whatever positive or negative motivations on a man. That activity is, however, completely separate from a factual accounting of what a man said, did, and achieved.

> there is a lack of supporting evidence for the historical existence of the Romans.

Pshaw, if they existed, how come the Internet Archive doesn't have any of their government webpages archived?

The Internet Archive must be ran by some dang Goths!!

People write about history through the lens of their specialty and personal interests, which is what the author of the underlying article was doing when they published in their academic journal, Southern Culture. The author has a lot of insight and foreknowledge into their field of expertise and can situate this story within that context better than others can, and more deeply (probably) than they could do in some other context.

It's pretty normal, and helps develop a lot of different perspectives on history so that the bigger picture can be understood in a lot of different ways.

It's fair to call it out, but it's not going anywhere and it's not really a problem in the writing. Taking this history and reconciling it with other accounts is a reader literacy thing.

You should take a similar eye to pretty much all history you run across.

This is all well and good, except we all know the current zeitgeist is to go to any length necessary to frame absolutely everything in terms of race. As a reader, it's hard to distinguish between that and genuine academic interest. I now tend to close the tab the moment race is mentioned. I'm glad I don't live in the USA, it must be awful.

One of the core concepts used to push anti-marijuana campaigns was that marijuana would enable black men to seduce innocent young white woman, and create a mixed race.

That message was being pushed at a time where the US Senate, controlled by Jim Crow southerners, killed legislation making lynching a federal crime for 50 years. A common pretext for lynching was for a black man to be accused of having sex with, or talking to, a white woman.

I’m not an expert on the origins of Coke, but I do find it very plausible that white people in 1890’s Atlanta heard that “black people are doing it” and that was enough.

Plus the article mentions specific writing from the time which supports their view (quote from AJC).

It’s hard to overstate the level of anger white people had toward black people in post-reconstruction Georgia and how fundamental it was to their actions.

I don't have the time to do the research justice at this moment; however, let me lay out a rough argument.

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that poverty and drug abuse are strongly correlated. Poverty does not cause drug abuse, but people in poverty are more likely to abuse drugs, and people who abuse drugs are more likely to be in poverty due to their drug abuse. The article seems to agree with this point, as it points to working class people as the focal point of abuse of cocaine. In 1900, the white population was approximately 60 million and the black population was approximately 9 million. Casual research suggests that 50% of children were in poverty, which I will extend to suggest that 50% to families were in poverty. Let us; however, assume that only 30% of whites and 100% of blacks were in poverty. In this case, black working-class people were still a minority of working-class people, at a ratio of 2:1.

Under this assumption, is it reasonable to assume that cocaine abuse in non-white communities was the sole catalyst for this change?

My drug use has stopped when Im at my poorest simply because I can’t afford it. Without some sources I’m not even willing to get past your first premise.

Drugs become expensive only after they have been prohibited, no?

Particularly those you can grow yourself (cocaine, cannabis, opium), until the law burns your field.

Yes, as I stated, "Poverty does not cause drug abuse, but … people who abuse drugs are more likely to be in poverty due to their drug abuse."

So, you've abused drugs and landed yourself in poverty. If you don't stop abusing drugs, you'll stay there (or worse).

Good luck.

I’m not saying it’s the sole catalyst.

no one is putting cocaine in a drink today, so it’s certainly possible that people were starting to figure out that it’s a bad idea.

But what I am saying is that white fear of “anything perceived to be black” was absolutely a driver of behavior at this time/place.

I believe the popular cultural understanding of how bad race relations were at this time is understated.

That 9 mg number appears to be off by an order of magnitude.

The original recipe coca-cola recipe contained 3/200th of a grain of cocaine per serving, which would be 0.972 mg.

It was then lowered to 1/400th of a grain (0.2 mg) before being eliminated.

> There are plenty of real problems, past and present, which we can point to as indicative of racial prejudice. The insistence on its insertion into other areas, lacking supporting evidence, is, imho, overtly harmful to discourse.

Would you mind disclosing in which camp you stand? I need it to confirm if your disregard for discussing racial problems and warning about "harmful discourse" is real or just racism.

I don't believe in camps (with regards to allying myself with one — obviously they exist). I believe in seeking truth (to the extent possible) through discourse. See the rest of this thread for how I conduct that process and what I do when confronted with reasonable evidence.

I have no problem discussing racial problems. I just didn't see this as one (I've changed that opinion), and didn't appreciate the framing of the article (still don't, but the linked 25 pager is more nuanced).

Finally, I didn't say it was harmful discourse. I said it was "harmful to discourse".

Any time you are racist, intentionally or just because you can't grasp the full picture, you believe in camps and worse, you choose a side.

It's an American trend to write history as if everything was invented just to spite one race or one group of people.

Tit-for-tat, it's also an American trend to write history as if racism didn't exist at all.

People who write histories often frame the past in order to impact how people think about the present.

Except people are rewriting history for fun in America's case.

What are some specific examples of what you're referring to?

Slavery seems to be very "American" even though it's not. A lot of ideas and movements during BLM supported the narrative that certain figures were crazy racists. OP mentions about how illicit drugs were all just tools used to control minorities and are still used that way..

There are more serious ones, but most are just used as talking points about how the modern people are smarter and that people in the past were somehow bad people when trialled against their new modern ideals.

I don't think anyone would suggest that slavery was an exclusively american concept, but there are ways that slavery impacted america and is still impacting america that i don't think is true of other first world countries (e.g. how financially dependent early america was on it, how late in history relative to other countries it was abolished, how it was one of the causes of the civil war, which in turn significantly shaped america, etc)

> There are more serious ones, but most are just used as talking points about how the modern people are smarter and that people in the past were somehow bad people when trialled against their new modern ideals.

100% on this.

Sometimes I feel we are like salt water fish talking about how ridiculous and miserable the fresh water fish in the upstream are.

People have experiences that drive perception.

Drugs, particularly marijuana were a default easy way to get people into the justice system. It requires actual police work and attention to detail to get convictions for behavioral crimes. Possession of weed is easy. Those petit arrests were used to recruit informants and compel testimony.

The decriminalization of marijuana has been pretty transformative and disruptive of policing. There’s good and bad to that, but if we care about justice, it has been a major catalyst.

There’s a recent and ongoing concerted effort to push that narrative in the US that can be observed directly in book bans and school board fights about curriculums. Florida is an interesting contemporary example of a new history being mandated and previously mundane and uncontested accounts being declared ahistorical. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/floridas-new-africa...

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