Although we had “anti-drug” laws on the books back as far as around 1910, there was no real effort to enforce the laws for many years. Until about 1935. In 1935, marijuana became illegal, and enforcement stepped up on a number of other drugs such as opiates and cocaine. Why, you might ask?
What was attempted in the United States between 1919 and 1933? Prohibition of alcohol. However noble its aims, it clearly failed. But during that time a large “crime fighting” bureaucracy was built up around enforcement of prohibition. Now, in 1933, during the depths of the Depression, this bureaucracy no longer has a mission. Since bureaucracies never die, it needed to create a new mission.
There are the roots of the war on drugs.
The American criminal justice system is nothing but a giant bloated bureaucracy of cops, courts, probation officers, prosecutors and social service providers. It is every bit as ineffective as the welfare system; it is just as big, just as expensive, and has done as much to solve criminal behavior as the welfare system ended poverty.
It exists to consume and consumes to exist. It solves nothing. And with every governmental bureaucracy, it will often abuse the individual in an exercise of the power of the state.
The Revenuers were an agency without a mission.
statement of the Day:
Every governmental bureaucracy exists to consume and consumes to exist, solving nothing and it will often abuse the individual in an exercise of the power of the state.
And who was in control of our government at the time of Prohibition, as well as in the 1930s when the end of Prohibition brought the roots of the WOD?
Progressives.
Some “progress”.