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DRUG ABUSE :
SUBSTANCE ABUSE :
WAR ON DRUGS :
UNITED STATES: GOVERNMENT:
Four of the Major Fear Campaigns
That Helped Create America's Insane War on Drugs
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Four of the Major Fear Campaigns
That Helped Create America's Insane War on Drugs
By Jodie Gummow
AlterNet
February 5, 2014
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/four-moral-panics-drug-policy
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Every social problem needs to have deviant groups orr individuals, people
who aren't "like us" but who are the problem and who should be feared.
This process allows us to unpack primal fearsabout sex, race, and the
Otherand use those fears to mobilize a social response. These appeals to
fear are a powerful tool, and moral entrepreneurs and interest groups know
it.
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If moral entrepreneurs and interest groups manage to whip up enough fear
and anxiety, they can create a full-blown moral panic, the widespread
sense that the moral condition of society is deteriorating at a rapid
pace, which can be conveniently used to distract from underlying, status
quo-threatening social problems and exert social control over the working
class or other rebellious sectors of society.
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The problem is that policy made on the basis of the fear, emotionalism,
and hyperbole that typifies moral panics is not good policy. Yet we manage
to scare ourselves to death over and over again, with the same dire
results and unintended consequences. Here are four classic moral panics
over drugs:
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The Yellow Peril
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By the second half of the 19th Century, Americans were well acquainted
with opium. Its use as a medicine for middle-aged, middle-class white
women and as a soothing agent for distraught infants was well-known and
not especially controversial. But that changed with the arrival of Chinese
coolie labor in the 1860s and 1870s, and the first great drug panic of
American history was about to get underway.
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The Chinese brought with them their opium habits and opium dens, and the
establishments soon began popping up in the segregated Chinatowns where
the laborers lived. Within a few short years, a combination of racism,
sexual insecurity, and labor hostility ("they're taking our jobs!) had
been whipped by moral entrepreneurs, interested parties, and their willing
handmaidens in the press into a crisis that demanded a strong, resolute
response.
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snip
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Bullet-Proof Buck Negroes on Cocaine Raping Our White Women
At the turn of the 20th Century, drug prohibition didn't exist (unless you
were Chinese). Heroin and cocaine were legal, and sold as nostrums,
potions, and patent medicines, as well as being offered doctors and
pharmacies. Cocaine famously added zip to Coca-Cola, and for a nickel,
anyone, of any color could get the buzz.
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That was about to change. The Andean white powder first hit America in
1884, and as cocaine use surged amidst the social turmoil of the late 19th
Century, it crystallized latent fears of "the dangerous classes"late
arriving European immigrants in the Northeast, blacks in the South.
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Under pressure from white Southerners concerned it was contributing to
drug use among black, Coca-Cola abandoned cocaine in 1903, replacing it
with more caffeine and sugar. And no wonder people were nervousSouthern
newspapers at the time were full of accounts of "negro cocaine fiends"
impervious to lawmen's bullets and busily raping white women.
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snip
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Reefer Madness
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Reefer Madness bubbled up mainly in Western states a little more than a
century ago, and like most drug panics, it was a potent mix of
fear-mongering, race-baiting, moral entrepreneurship, and bureaucratic
empire-building. This time the villainous outsiders were Mexicanmore than
half a million of whom entering the country between 1915 and 1920 to work
here as the Mexican Revolution raged--bringing the devil's weed north
across the Rio Grande to get all messed up and, yes, entice our white
women.
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Replete with apocryphal tales of crazed Mexicans high on locoweed, the pot
panic percolated out West in the 1910s and 1920s as state after Western
state passed marijuana prohibition lawsoften after legislative debates
that mainly demonstrated lawmakers didn't have a clue.
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snip
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Crack Cocaine, Crack Babies, and Super Predators
It's the new heroin! That's one of the sillier over-hyped claims about
this smokeable form of cocaine. It's a particularly odd claim since the
two drugs have completely different biopharmaceutical properties; one is a
stimulant and the other is a central nervous system depressant.
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The fast-acting, compulsion-creating form of cocaine emerged in the early
1980s and quickly generated massive, obsessive media coverage, most
famously with Dan Rather's "48 Hours on Crack Street. But that was only
one example. Countless media outlets spent countless hours and column
inches decrying the way crack was ravaging the inner city.
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The complete article may be read at the URL above.
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Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
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