• themelm@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    Alcohols the default legal one because people can brew it in any jug with some yeast and sugar. If it were invented today it wouldn’t have been legalized. And the attempts to prohibit it went very poorly and of course show us why all prohibitions like that do is funnel money to criminals and poison people.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      11 months ago

      Sure, it’s fairly easy to brew. Marijuana and psilocybin just grow though and don’t even have to be brewed or processed much in any way. Marijuana was also reasonably popular in the past–I think at least Thomas Jefferson has a record of using it, along with many others. I understand it was more the default. I just don’t get why, nor is that a good enough reason, in my opinion, to keep it legal and not some others. Also, yes, making it illegal has gone horribly, but that still doesn’t answer why the others are illegal. I guess people just didn’t fight hard enough? Although marijuana prohibition hasn’t been great either yet it’s still illegal.

      • wildcherry@slrpnk.net
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        11 months ago

        iirc it was mostly a racist move in the west, against black people and latinos in the us and against arabs in europe.

      • themelm@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        Well there’s some theories that they really started pushing the drug war as a way to criminalize minorities and political groups like socialists and antiwar protesters. Also probably alcohol companies push it now. Like they changed the name from cannabis to marijuana to make it sound more foreign. And the CIA helped start the crack epidemic.

        I’ve also heard that lumber companies wanted to shut down hemp stuff too.

        But cannabis is legal in Canada now at least and I think well see psychedelics legalized here eventually.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          11 months ago

          All good points, yeah. I’m also pretty sure it’s not just some theories that it started as a way to target minority groups and anti-war protesters. I think there’s explicit statements from Nixon of such.

          Still, the fact that it had become mostly only used by minority groups is weird. That wasn’t the case several hundred years ago. I think it was fairly widespread, including many upper class people, like several of the founding fathers of the US. I just don’t get how we transitioned from that to alcohol being the only thing middle class America consumed. (We all know the elites do whatever they want and use plenty of drugs.) Maybe that’s always been the case a marijuana was never widely consumed by the middle class, but that seems strange if both rich and poor partook.

          • themelm@sh.itjust.works
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            11 months ago

            It isn’t mostly used by minorities it is mostly used to target minorities. Though people in poorer conditions tend to have worse trouble with addiction due to lack of safety nets and people who are on the streets more are going to get busted more. Like no one is going to bust me if my buddy brings over an 8ball of coke and we snort it all up in the basement.

            And I remember the quote its from Nixon’s aid. But I remember trying to verify it once and not finding anything conclusive.

            I remember my eritrean friend telling me the cops here used to to stop his car and do body searches on them and everything I mean he was dealing crack and had guns but they had no probable cause for the searches it was definitely just because he was black. They would never do that to me because they don’t want to and they know I’d be calling a lawyer. I’ve definitely driven around with more drugs than he had on him and wasn’t even a little worried because I was following traffic laws in a decent car.

            Also had a white friend who put himself through college running coke from the big city up to ours. He had a newish little Hyundai never once got stopped or hassled at all.