Yeah...times really change.
I think what pushed things over the edge was the introduction of heroin in 1898. It proved to be too strong and too addictive.
Bayer Company sold both. Strangely, there was more hope for heroin as a "wonder drug" than for aspirin. If you love history, you gotta love irony.
Heroin addicts,if affluent and thus assured of a clean and easily acquired “product” can live long and healthy lives as the drug posseses no true toxic properties other than the addiction itself.
But the opiates,like THC,often makes the users too content and thus uninterested in industrious pursuits so they tend to become entitlement junkies and thus solid liberal Democrat voters.
Reasons enough to make drug crimes capital offenses don't you think?