Illegal drug use not a new phenomenon
While illegal drugs and illegal drug culture often dominate headlines today, how long ago did illicit drug use first become an issue across the country?
According to reports at PBS.org and historical data compiled from source materials from the nation’s very early days, the drug that is now often considered a gateway to harder narcotics, marijuana, was one of the first drugs used in a recreational capacity and eventually abused in the United States.
In the 1600s settlers grew marijuana in Jamestown for multiple purposes, including reports of medicinal uses.
In the 1800s and early 1900s, marijuana was widely used medicinally and was not illegal, sold in many pharmacies, according to PBS.org.
A spike in the use of marijuana was reported during Prohibition, and later officials can trace the rise in use to the surge of the jazz and beatnik cultures, which both helped to further marijuana’s popularity in the United States.
But weed wasn’t the only drug in the 1800s that was popular across the country, with others like opiates, cocaine and methamphetamine also being used and abused.
Opiates were extremely popular in the mid to late 1800s and we’re sold as tonics and elixirs. It wasn’t until the mid-1900s that heroin broke onto the scene, but by that point opiates were a part of America’s drug culture, PBS.org discovered.
The use of cocaine dates back to the late 1800s, and also has ties to Coca-Cola products, which initially had small amounts of cocaine in them.
But it wasn’t until after cocaine was made illegal that it’s use among America’s elite grew. Then, when cocaine was made into crack — a dirtier and more affordable variant of the powdered drug — its use skyrocketed in the 1980s among all socioeconomic classes and it became one of the focal points of America’s war on drugs.
LSD and methamphetamine-based drugs like speed also soared in drug culture in the 1950s and 1960s, although it’s first uses in an abusive fashion can be traced to earlier decades. According to media reports, soldiers in World War I used stimulants that included amphetamines as an ingredient as way to combat fatigue.
Methamphetamines continue to be a source of concern today, with meth labs and meth production a significant area of consternation among law enforcement officials waging war on illegal drug use.
A TIME Magazine report indicates that the first nationwide attempt to crack down on the country’s growing dependence on controlled substances was commenced during the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s.
By the 1970s, President Richard Nixon was also battling America’s growing drug culture, and it was during that time that the term “war on drugs” became a common phrase in the media, as heroin use spiked among U.S. soldiers fighting in Vietnam and cocaine imports into the country also began to rise.
In 1983, the Los Angeles Police Department launched the D.A.R.E. Campaign — Drug Abuse Resistance Education — and the following year, First Lady Nancy Reagan, in response to a question from a child about what she would do if she were offered drugs, coined the now famous phrase, “Just say no,” according to TIME.
To date, reports indicate that the U.S. has spent in excess of $3 trillion to battle illicit drug use and sales. However, the nation’s addiction rate has still continued to rise. In a 2011 report, the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that as many as 22 million Americans were illegal drug users.
And while the major types of drugs and drug abuse remain, law enforcement and the nation’s leaders face a new challenge with the rise in the appearance of prescription medications.
In fact, a 2012 report from the National Institute on Drug Abuse indicates that prescription medication abuse is the second most common drug abuse problem behind marijuana.