Middle class shock value

This picture has gone viral.

History intrigues people, especially when it is history, and even more especially when it is shocking history.

And let’s face it, it really is a shock for most modern Americans to consider that in those days, one could walk into a drugstore and, without so much as a prescription, buy something like that over the counter.

It concerned the hell out of Wilsonian busybodies, so much so that they started the war on drugs by pushing through the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 (a piece of legislation so unprecedented in its federal sweep that the Supreme Court only barely upheld its constitutionality by a 5-4 vote, and even that was based on the court construing it in such a way as to save it).

It is easy in retrospect to understand the mindset of the Wilsonians. Middle class Americans were drug addicts, an intolerable situation.

What they didn’t quite get was that turning middle class drug addicts into criminals would not solve the largely unsolvable problem of drug addiction.

It simply created crime.

Now, if we assume (as we must) that there will always be drug addicts, can anyone tell me why it is better to have criminal drug addicts than law abiding drug addicts?


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6 responses to “Middle class shock value”

  1. […] that this picture, and all that it implies, is as shocking as Eric says it is. But it is. I do take issue with an […]

  2. Simon Avatar

    why it is better to have criminal drug addicts than law abiding drug addicts?

    The Prison/Industrial Complex.

  3. revjen45 Avatar
    revjen45

    1) It provides busywork for legions of cops, shysters, “counselors”, prison guards and other non-productive minions of Leviathan.
    2) It gives the busybodies the warm fuzzies that they are fixing something.
    3) It provides opportunities for criminal cartels to make unlimited money (see #1 above).
    4) It provide a rationale for Leviathan to meddle in every aspect of peoples’ lives and expands .gov’s power exponentially.

  4. […] Eric’s post for what real legalization means. Print PDF Categories: Uncategorized 0 […]

  5. Oz Avatar
    Oz

    “It simply created crime.” Just like prohibition.

  6. anon Avatar
    anon

    This was even before Wilson got so horny – and needed to get laid – that he made the what turned out to be the worst decision ever in the history of American Foreign Policy.

    What ever Pres. Obama does can only pale in comparison to what that southern racist Democrat ( but I repeat myself ) did.

    Yet Wilson still remains a huge hero to the unquestioning left.

    Figures, don’t it?