John Fredrick Parker
Donor
What is the latest PoD for preventing a War on Drugs and what are the butterflies?
AHC and WI: No War on Drugs
- Thread starter John Fredrick Parker
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I think that cannabis picked up negative cultural associations in many people in the 60s. I could see cannabis use being normalized in the eyes of most Americans in the 70s if the 60s hadn't as tumultuous or culturally divisive (good luck figuring out how to avoid all that, though).
For all drugs, you'd have to start far earlier, with people having a very different view of what the government can and can't do. Perhaps if Prohibition had never happened, you'd see a more relaxed attitude towards cocaine drinks, opium, and the like.
A major issue here is race relations. A lot of the fears about drugs are bound up in anxiety about white youth falling into the clutches of ethnic gangsters (this even extends to Prohibition and alcohol's association with 'white ethnic' Catholics).
The short answer is 'it depends.'
For all drugs, you'd have to start far earlier, with people having a very different view of what the government can and can't do. Perhaps if Prohibition had never happened, you'd see a more relaxed attitude towards cocaine drinks, opium, and the like.
A major issue here is race relations. A lot of the fears about drugs are bound up in anxiety about white youth falling into the clutches of ethnic gangsters (this even extends to Prohibition and alcohol's association with 'white ethnic' Catholics).
The short answer is 'it depends.'
Marijuana was formally outlawed in the 1930s, IIRC.
A lot of it had to do with racial fears, since Mexicans (who competed with whites for jobs) and black jazz musicians were the main users.
A lot of it had to do with racial fears, since Mexicans (who competed with whites for jobs) and black jazz musicians were the main users.
To choose a random POD, I'd have President Cleveland experience back pain and his doctor prescribe cannabis for some reason. The cannabis doesn't help Grover with the pain, but it helps him feel better about having the pain. He heartily endorses the product and encourages all his friends to use it. Cannabis use spreads through bohemian circles in the Gay Nineties, but sees a drop off in the aughts and teens, only to come back full force in the twenties. Today cannabis is viewed as normal and distinctively American pastime, like baseball or pizza.
(Presidential endorsement isn't too far-fetched, in OTL Pope Leo XIII and Thomas Edison endorsed Mariani Wine, which contained cocaine).
(Presidential endorsement isn't too far-fetched, in OTL Pope Leo XIII and Thomas Edison endorsed Mariani Wine, which contained cocaine).
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The War on Drugs is going to happen... many of these drugs are just way too hard to allow legal use without absolutely ruinous consequences to society ala China (and modern day Iran)...
I can see certain drugs like cannabis being made/kept legal but there is no way amphetamines, PCP, heroin, cocaine and its derivative nor many/most of the opiates are legal and available for OTC recreational use.
If these somehow WERE legal you'd probably see the following:
1. They are legal but if you commit a crime while under the influence the punishments are draconian including execution (DUI homicide would be 1st degree murder). Basically the govn't doesn't have the right to regulate your choice but when your behavior does cause you to fall under the govn't jurisdiction... well... it ain't going to be a slap on the wrist...
2. Breakdown of society... These drugs would be legal and they would be marketable/advertising dollars would be spent to get more people hooked... It would be a pretty vicious cycle eventually culminating in our economic/societal collapse or some nasty shit like the ChiComs did to finally rid themselves of opium aka kill the addicts. Either way in the end we would be a much less free society if we ever came out of that...
Honestly the people who think ending the WOD and legalization of most drugs would lead to some Amsterdam like Utopia are on something...
I can see certain drugs like cannabis being made/kept legal but there is no way amphetamines, PCP, heroin, cocaine and its derivative nor many/most of the opiates are legal and available for OTC recreational use.
If these somehow WERE legal you'd probably see the following:
1. They are legal but if you commit a crime while under the influence the punishments are draconian including execution (DUI homicide would be 1st degree murder). Basically the govn't doesn't have the right to regulate your choice but when your behavior does cause you to fall under the govn't jurisdiction... well... it ain't going to be a slap on the wrist...
2. Breakdown of society... These drugs would be legal and they would be marketable/advertising dollars would be spent to get more people hooked... It would be a pretty vicious cycle eventually culminating in our economic/societal collapse or some nasty shit like the ChiComs did to finally rid themselves of opium aka kill the addicts. Either way in the end we would be a much less free society if we ever came out of that...
Honestly the people who think ending the WOD and legalization of most drugs would lead to some Amsterdam like Utopia are on something...
That works.
Gin in Dickensian Britain was like the crack epidemic in the United States, but Britain didn't impose prohibition, nor did it experience Qing China-like addiction problems.
I always thought that was a front. The real reason was that hemp makes better paper than wood (the declaration of independence was written on it) and lumber companies were losing money.
This was something I was going to put in my TL but IDK when I can get that rolling again (work is killing my soul) - delay the assault on 'Indian Hemp' for a few years, just in time for the Great Depression. An alternate New Deal involves federally subsidized 'European Hemp', to bolster failing farms. Of course, the Indian and European hemp get mixed up occasionally, some farmers, who are now comfortable and not afraid of the product, start to take some recreation time with it, and now you have rural southern whites demanding the government keeps their regulatory hands off their hemp.
EDIT: Also mix in some progressive, anti-lumber, protect our forest types see it as a way to promote national parks, etc.
EDIT: Also mix in some progressive, anti-lumber, protect our forest types see it as a way to promote national parks, etc.
Cannabis use was demonized a long, long time before the 1960s, and even before it was outlawed federally in 1937. Some of the New England states were outlawing sales before World War One even started, and this was before the Harrison Act (which restricted possession of cocaine and opiates for the first time) was even passed. There were several waves of states criminalizing marijuana between 1911 and 1937, at which point it became illegal in every state by virtue of the Marihuana Tax Act. This entire process was driven by hysteria among the public and the media which puts today's anti-pot attitudes to shame. The general view was more or less that smoking pot once would drive you incurably insane, completely disassociate you from your actions to the point where you'd murder someone at the bat of an eye, and you'd grow incredibly addicted incredibly fast before eventually dying of overdose. Was any of it true? No. But you could count the number of white Americans smoking pot at that time on two hands and have fingers left over, so the truth didn't really matter very much.
In other words, making the sixties less turbulent won't do a thing to prevent the drug war. If anything, continuing with the calm of the 1950s is more likely to extend the drug war, since the 1950s and early 60s were the time when some of the most draconian drug laws were in place. In the 1950s, for example, you could be arrested for merely having track marks on your arms in many states, and in some places first time marijuana possession could get you upwards of 15 or 20 years minimum. Throughout the sixties attitudes softened somewhat (presumably because drug users were no longer that weird guy out on the sidewalk to most parents, but rather their own children), though real reform didn't show up until the very end of the decade in many places. For example, until 1969, first time sale of any amount of marijuana in Virginia had a MINIMUM forty year sentence. In other words, there was just absolutely no traction at all towards softening the legal stance on drugs until the social changes of the sixties made it an issue.
Basically, to avert the drug war, you're going to have to go way, way back, further than a lot of people would think. I'm not entirely sure where to start, though eliminating the prohibition movement as a political force would be a good start (requiring a POD before probably the late 1860s, and possibly as far back as the 1840s).
John Fredrick Parker
Donor
A lot of good answers so far... But I'm getting curious as to how to keep as few drugs as possible legal (even ic regulated).
Not having Prohibition seems a good start, as jakewilson pointed out, but what else?
Not having Prohibition seems a good start, as jakewilson pointed out, but what else?
Orville_third
Banned
Perhaps a different person in office when Leary vs. United States throws out the Marijuana Tax Act?
There are other approaches beside 'Legalise all Drugs!' and 'War on Drugs!' you know.
What's the latest POD for the Cold War going hot? Nuclear Armageddon probably gets rid of the war on drugs.
John Fredrick Parker
Donor
Now that's interesting... maybe could ask RogueBeaver or Emperor Norton about that...
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I think people need to stop looking at the 1960s and 1970s as a time to legalize pot. Anyone who had a chance of being in office in 1969 wouldn't have legalized because something like 20% of the population thought it was a good idea at that point. Not responding to Leary v. United States in the way Nixon did (the Controlled Substances Act or some similar bill) would give the opposition party an ironclad attack to use against you come election time, and it'd probably work. MAYBE you could get away with decriminalization, but in 1969 I'm not even sure of that one. The first state to decriminalize was Oregon, and that wasn't until three years later.
Recall that California had a ballot initiative to legalize marijuana in 1972, and it failed with 33.5% yes. Jimmy Carter, in 1976, could only support decriminalization publicly, and decriminalization isn't an end to the drug war at all. It just keeps small time users out of jail while not solving any of the problems relating to the black market (the removal of which is a key point in favour of legalizing pot in the first place). Maybe if we had a more liberal 1980s, pot might be legal today, but the 60s and 70s were just too early in anything resembling OTL conditions.
Recall as well that the challenge is "no war on drugs", not "no war on pot", and for that we need to be looking a hell of a lot earlier than the 60s anyway. The idea of waging war on substances (alcohol or otherwise) in the USA goes back to the mid-1800s at the latest (with the first drugs being made illegal in 1915), and so I still think the easiest way to butterfly making drugs illegal is to butterfly the whole idea of making any substance illegal. Keep the prohibition movement from gaining large amounts of political stature, and you may very well delay drug regulations significantly, perhaps even leading to an age of actual government control over what we would know as illegal drugs, as opposed to the utterly unregulated free for all that exists now.
Recall that California had a ballot initiative to legalize marijuana in 1972, and it failed with 33.5% yes. Jimmy Carter, in 1976, could only support decriminalization publicly, and decriminalization isn't an end to the drug war at all. It just keeps small time users out of jail while not solving any of the problems relating to the black market (the removal of which is a key point in favour of legalizing pot in the first place). Maybe if we had a more liberal 1980s, pot might be legal today, but the 60s and 70s were just too early in anything resembling OTL conditions.
Recall as well that the challenge is "no war on drugs", not "no war on pot", and for that we need to be looking a hell of a lot earlier than the 60s anyway. The idea of waging war on substances (alcohol or otherwise) in the USA goes back to the mid-1800s at the latest (with the first drugs being made illegal in 1915), and so I still think the easiest way to butterfly making drugs illegal is to butterfly the whole idea of making any substance illegal. Keep the prohibition movement from gaining large amounts of political stature, and you may very well delay drug regulations significantly, perhaps even leading to an age of actual government control over what we would know as illegal drugs, as opposed to the utterly unregulated free for all that exists now.
John Fredrick Parker
Donor
I don't know that you need to necessarily do away with the whole temperance movement just to avoid an all out war on drugs...
I didn't say that was the only way to butterfly it, just the easiest way. The point I was trying to make is that I really can't see a war on drugs being averted after about the turn of the 20th century without some fundamental, sweeping change in public opinion over a short period (what could cause this, I don't know, but it'd have to be something big) or radical government change. The Harrison Act, which more or less started the modern war on drugs as we know it, was passed in 1915 and there was significant support for such a bill in the public and government for years beforehand. Marijuana sales were made illegal in Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Rhode Island between 1913 and 1918 based purely upon public hysteria, because literally nobody (black, white, or otherwise) was smoking pot in New England at the time. This hysteria about drug use would only continue to amplify onto itself for the next fifty years, and progress since the late 1960s on changing the law has been hard-fought and slow in coming.
Is totally eliminating the temperance movement a requirement for preventing the war on drugs? No. Would it help? Probably, considering how many of the same people who fought for alcohol prohibition were fighting for drug prohibition too. Even if the temperance movement stays, that doesn't necessarily mean a war on drugs is inevitable, but I just can't see a realistic way of having it be averted if public attitudes in the early 20th century are anything like what they were OTL. I'm not claiming to be an expert, but just based on what I know I see it as very unlikely. Of course, I'm more than willing to listen to anyone who disagrees!
Is totally eliminating the temperance movement a requirement for preventing the war on drugs? No. Would it help? Probably, considering how many of the same people who fought for alcohol prohibition were fighting for drug prohibition too. Even if the temperance movement stays, that doesn't necessarily mean a war on drugs is inevitable, but I just can't see a realistic way of having it be averted if public attitudes in the early 20th century are anything like what they were OTL. I'm not claiming to be an expert, but just based on what I know I see it as very unlikely. Of course, I'm more than willing to listen to anyone who disagrees!
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John Fredrick Parker
Donor
Alright Panzer, you make a good point.
Let me modify the OP somewhat then -- what needs to happen so that there's no "war on drugs" (or just far fewer outright illegal substances) by 2000?
Let me modify the OP somewhat then -- what needs to happen so that there's no "war on drugs" (or just far fewer outright illegal substances) by 2000?