Before Drug Prohibition: Images from the preprohibition era

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http://wings.buffalo.edu/aru/preprohibition.htm

This is an interesting site which includes pictures from the 1800s and early 1900s of things like products that were available for sale in those days which contained drugs which are now illegal. When the drugs were legal they were manufactures by companies such as Bayer and could be purchased in any pharmacy. A child could go into the pharmacy and buy a brick of heroin and no one would have thought that strange at the time. There was virtually no organized crime to speak of in those days because they were not being funded by the illegal sale of drugs, because drugs were legal.

Contrast that with now where drugs are illegal and prisons are overcrowded with nonviolent offenders and organized crime has turned our inner cities into war zones. It may sound like a bad idea to some people, but I really truly think drugs should be legalized. If they were legalized companies like Bayer would start manufacturing the drugs in safe measured doses with warning labels and organized crime would wither away without it's primary source of revenue.

Money !

Government (i mean the poeple in governement) are making huge money with drugs. They would loose that (or at least have to declare it) if it would go back legal.

Drugs are the best product ever to put on market; they don't need any marketing. Poeple come back to buy more by themselves. Government (again, poeples who are in governement) saw the huge possibility and grabbed it.

They knew that making money by addicting poeple to a substance would soon be seen as immoral. The solution ? make it illegal. Price will skyrocket, the market will not be stopped by rules and safety, and poeple will think you're doing a good job when you bust some trafficant (thats how they collect ).

The perfect scam !

They will never bring that legal again, there is simply just too much easy and good money flowing out of it

That's really bad because i agree that, black market and violence would significantly drop down if it's legalised. And the fraction of consumer who abuse it would not go higher. And those who consume it in a safe, non abusive, recreationnal manner would have a better quality product, a safer way to obtain it, a better ambiance to take it (don't have to hide), and would be more knowledgable about the substance (effect, duration, dose ect) so there would be even less problems associated with that.

What poeple have to realise is that, only a tiny fraction of those who takes drugs take them in an abusive manner. Those poeple have underlying problems that are not due to substance abuse. Only those would continue to have problem dealing with drugs in a non prohibition world.

They say that pot consumer becomes paranoid. Is it the substance that do that to the mind or the fact that you have to hide to obtain it, you have to hide to take it, you often get scrap (or get scammed), and fear that you could end up in jail and ruin your entire life and loose everything you own ?

The Government likes having drugs illegal because it is just another way to get people to argue among themselves. As long as we are doing that, we're too preoccupied to notice that all our money is being taken to further enrich the wealthy.

I think that goes back to the days where pop (or soda) was called "phosphates" and was given out by pharmacists to make medicine taste better. My thought on the modern day equivalent to cocain in medicine - the dextromethorphan in cough syrup (in recreational use it's called DXM).

I definitely remember that cocain cough drops picture though, me and my friends used to laugh when we saw that in our psychology books. I'd imagine those kids were probably too far from building real houses with those logs after too many of those

Overall though, when you look at brain chemistry and how the human body works, some of these things just aren't avoidable. Yeah, they obviously don't need cocain per say but when people talk about getting medicine head, it's because a lot of those chmicals needed to take care of the problems associated with a cold are psychoactive.

Yay UB. Sorry, just had to be happy to see an alma mater show up.

I think it's more that the government can't control several types of drugs. Marijauna for example.



That and the nation was founded by Puritans and blah blah blah....


I think I might just be running my mouth for the sake of it.

Fortunately one of the best drugs available, morphine and other opiate derivatives, are available from your friendly MD (at least in the US)
But I agree with you 100%. Tried to get a clinical research study going on the effects of cannabis on people with HIV, but it was logistically impossible (thanks to this country's crazy laws)

I've always thought a lot of drugs would make good excise taxes for the government, and spare everyone the cost involved with drug crimes. Commercialization of the drugs would result in a huge reduction in prices. Addicts could still make a contribution to society instead of commiting crimes to find money for drugs.

Prohibition make the drugs a luxury item. Under normal circumstances, this would result in a one-time/occassional usage. Highly addictive substances, however, just don't work that way. You get hooked. Normally, you'd seek rehabilitative therapy for a harmful substance, but the social stigma, real or imagined, and the law's aggressive attitude toward drug users could delay or altogether prevent one from doing so. Also, the artificial limitation of the supply drives up the price, making the business highly lucrative for one who can get into it and resulting in pushing. Want to kill the drug culture? Ask a decent economist, preferably one who still does this old-fashioned thing called "pulling out a piece of chalk and actually working the thing out, you stupid, ret*d hacks."