The use of illegal drugs in the early 20s was never like it is now. The estimated 200,000 cocaine addicts in the U.S. by 1902 is not nearly the levels of addiction today. And the cocaine in Coca-Cola was not the crack cocaine of today. In fact, the cocaine in the powder form, which has been thought of as relatively harmless, is not the crack cocaine you should be worried about.
What we should be also concerned about is the emergence of a heroin epidemic. Between 2002 and 2013, the rate of heroin-related overdose deaths nearly quadrupled. However the impact of heroin on society is huge. Illegal drugs cost our society approximately $110 billion each year. The greatest cost of drug abuse is paid in human lives, either lost directly to overdose, or through drug abuse-related diseases such as tuberculosis, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), hepatitis, and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Each death affects families by the loss of parents and the pain of parents losing their offspring. Traffic accidents caused by drug-impaired drivers; street crime committed by addicts to support their addiction; and resources expended to apprehend, sentence, treat, and incarcerate drug abusers are the burdens borne by taxpayers year after year.
The effects of drugs were significant enough in our early history to cause prohibition of their use. Harrison Act was passed by Congress in 1914 to require that Cocaine be dispensed only with a doctor’s order. In 1924, the United States Congress banned the sale, importation and manufacture of heroin. Much of the prohibition was based upon hysteria based upon false information and racism against blacks. However, the effects of illegal drugs have been weighed by science and it is not good.
As to your final (P), all without authority (OK, the importation thing, sure)....and see where that lawlessness has brought us; a Republic no more.
Sorry, I trust the ‘weight’ of science as much as I do those in govt; I trust your assertion of their veracity as the same (no offense). The FEDERAL govt has very few defined authorities; this NOT being one of ‘em.
Colorado and the rest are doing it correctly: acts of and by The People. They are again shown the failure of the notion of conscience through Law (they should have learned w/ the 18th...c’est la vie).
The FIRST question that should always be asked, “What/how/why/etc. can X be done w/out deprivation of Rights?”. We need to restore PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, not expand the Nanny State on what has been shown over and over and OVER to be an abject FAILURE.