The prohibitionist wave of the Twentieth century

D.Anton

The "witch hunt", referring to users of psychoactive substances, resumed in the United States during the period commonly called "Prohibition". During that time, which lasted from about 1915 to 1932, the authorities tried to restrict the consumption of alcohol. By limiting or prohibiting the production and marketing of liquors, the repression led to the emergence of organized groups dedicated to meet the demands of those people who wanted to obtain the substances by any means. These bands kept the government in check for several years, until the ban was repealed.

At the same time, central societies concentrated their energies on pursuing internal ideological opponents. The anticommunist fever that invaded Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Spain of Francoism, and then spread to the United States with the McCarthyite phenomenon, were the priority of the police forces for several decades.

Once it was found that the alleged subversive enemy had reduced its influence, particularly after the fall of the "Eastern Bloc", the elites of the central countries, particularly the United States, set about finding a new target to take their "idle" repressive forces.

Again, as in the times of the Holy Office, they found it in the production, trafficking and consumption of certain psychoactive substances.

So they several plants and their derivatives were banned and stigmatized: poppy, opium, morphine, heroine, marijuana, coca and cocaine, LSD, ecstasy and many other natural substances or synthetic substances which had the property of modifying the state of consciousness.

The new witch hunters were barricaded behind government and police offices, had great powers, could use jets and helicopters, had almost unlimited budgets and virtually assured impunity.

Meanwhile, many ordinary people, people who just wanted to satisfy their demands to modify their states of consciousness, have been forced to dispense with the forbidden substances, or obtain the "illegally" risking persecution and arrest.

The old logic of the Inquisition still continues, but now with a more subtle propaganda and many more material means.

From "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones.+