What can be said about the history of drugs, drug abuse, and drug-control legislation in the United States?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The rampant, widespread use and abuse of mind- and mood-altering drugs in the U.S. is of relatively recent origin. Throughout the 1800s and early 1900s, the use of illegal drugs in America was mostly associated with artistic individuals and fringe groups. One exception was opium dens, which flourished in West Coast cities and eventually spread across the U.S. Psychoactive substances gained widespread acceptance during the hippie movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Drugs such as marijuana, LSD, hashish, psilocybin, and peyote became more popular.

There is a considerable amount of federal drug-control legislation in the U.S. The first major piece of anti-drug legislation was the Harrison Act, passed in 1914, which required anyone dealing in opium, morphine, heroin, and cocaine, or their derivatives, to register with the federal government and pay an annual tax of $1, and effectively outlawed street use of these drugs. Other early legislation included the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, which effectively outlawed marijuana and the 1951 Boggs Act, which reinforced this and also mandated deletion of heroin from the list of medically useful substances and required its complete removal from all medicines. More recent legislation includes the 1996 Comprehensive Methamphetamine Control Act and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which contained a large number of drug-related provisions. Recently, some states have begun to move to legalize the personal use of marijuana or allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes. A 2013 U.S. Department of Justice memorandum to federal prosecutors took a "hands-off" approach to enforcing the Controlled Substances Act in those jurisdictions.