3 drugs that went from legal to illegal and back again

Cannabis, cocaine and heroin have intriguing life histories and long records. We may know them today as illegal drugs, but at one time each of them was legal.

Then everything changed. Racism and politics played a role in how we perceived them. We also learned more about their impact on health. Over time, they were deemed illegal.

However, several decades later, these drugs and their derivatives began to be legally used for medical purposes.

Here’s how we finally made cannabis, cocaine and heroin illegal and what happened next.

Cannabis, religion and racism

Cannabis plants comes from Central Asiaspread to North Africa and then to the Americas. People grew cannabis for him hemp fiberused for making ropes and bags. But it also had other properties. Like many other old medical discoveries, it all started with religion.

Cannabis is mentioned in Hindu texts known as Vedas (1700-1100 BC) as a sacred plant that improves well-being. Hemp or bhang is still used ritually in India today during holidays, e.g Shivratri AND Holi.

From the end of the 18th century, the British began operations in India taxation of cannabis products. They also noticed a high rate ofIndian hemp madness” – including what we would now consider psychosis – in the colony. At the end of the 19th century A British Government Inquiry only found heavy cannabis use seemed to have an impact on people’s mental health.

In the 1880s, hemp was used therapeutically in the United States for the treatment of tetanus, migraines and “crazy delirium”. But not everyone agreed (or even knew) the best dose. Local producers simply mixed what they had in tincture – soaking cannabis leaves and buds in alcohol to extract indispensable oils – and he hoped for the best.

So how did marijuana go from a somewhat useless legal drug to a social menace?

Some of this was due to genuine health concerns about what is added to food, drinks and medicines.

In 1908 in Australiain Modern South Wales has designated cannabis as an ingredient likely to ‘adulterate’ food and drink (along with opium, cocaine and chloroform). To legally sell the product, customers had to be informed that it contained cannabis.

Some of them concerned international politics. Efforts to control the exploit of cannabis began in 1912 the world’s first treaty against drug trafficking. Both the United States and Italy wanted cannabis to be included, but it took time for this to happen until 1925.

Some of it was racist. Word marijuana is Spanish for cannabis (later anglicized to marijuana), and the drug became associated with impoverished immigrants. In 1915, El Paso, Texas, on the Mexican border, was the first U.S. municipality to do so prohibit the trade of cannabis for non-medical purposes.

In the tardy 1930s cannabis was firmly entrenched as a public menace and most countries have introduced drug laws US, Europe and (less quickly) Australia prohibit its exploit. Cannabis has now become a ‘poison’ regulated similarly to cocaine and opiates.

Film from 1936 Ice madness was the height of cannabis paranoia. Smoking cannabis was also part of another ‘suspicious’ new subcultures such as black jazz1950s Beatnik movement and U.S. service personnel returning from Vietnam.

Nowadays, recreational exploit of cannabis is associated with physical and mental harm. In the brief term, it impairs your functioning, including your ability to work learn, drive and pay attention. In the long run, the damage includes increasing the risk of psychosis.

But what about cannabis as medicine? It has existed since the 1980s mood change towards experimenting with cannabis as a therapeutic drug. Cannabis products are those that contain cannabidiol (CBD) or tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Currently, in Australia and some other countries, some doctors may prescribe them to treat medical conditions other medications don’t work.

Medicinal marijuana is touted as a cure for certain chronic conditions such as cancer pain AND multiple sclerosis. But it is not yet clear whether this is the case effective for the range of chronic diseases for which it is prescribed. But it seems so improve quality of life Down people suffering from serious or fatal diseases who exploit other prescription medications.

Cocaine, tonics and addiction

Several different species coca grows in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. For centuries, local people have chewed coca leaves or made a slightly stimulating tea out of them. Coca and ayahuasca (a plant psychedelic) has probably been used to put people to sleep before Still a human sacrifice.

In 1860 German scientist Albert Niemann (1834-1861) isolated an alkaloid from coca leaves that we now call “cocaine”. Niemann noticed that applying it to the tongue caused a numbing sensation.

However, since effective anesthetics such as ether and nitrous oxide had already been discovered, cocaine was instead used mainly in tonics and patent medicines.

Perhaps the most famed example was Coca-Cola, which contained cocaine when was it launched in 1886. But cocaine had been used before, in the 1860s in Italy, in a drink called Vin Mariani – Pope Leo XIII was a fan.

Because cocaine-based products were readily available, it quickly became an addictive drug.

Cocaine remained popular in entertainment industry. Fictional detective Sherlock Holmes he injected itAmerican actor Tallulah Bankhead she swore by it, and the writer Agatha Christie used cocaine to kill herself some of its characters.

In 1914, there was possession of cocaine illegal in the US. After the hippie era in the 1960s and 1970s, cocaine became the “it” drug 80’s yuppie. Crack cocaine was also destroyed. mainly urban black American communities.

Cocaine exploit is now associated with physical and psychological harm. In the brief and long term, this can cause problems for yours heart and blood pressure AND cause damage to organs. Worst case scenario can kill you. This now also applies to the illegal production and exploit of cocaine growing all over the world.

But cocaine has always been legal medical and surgical usemost often in the form of cocaine hydrochloride. In addition to the analgesic effect, it includes, among others: vasoconstrictor – narrows blood vessels and reduces bleeding. So it’s still used some types of surgery.

Heroin, cough and overdose

Opium began to be used to relieve pain when people discovered how to extract the sap from the opium poppy. In the 19th century, addictive and potentially fatal opium-based products such as laudanum were widely available in the UK, Europe and US. Opium addiction was also a real problem.

For this reason, scientists have been looking for protected and effective alternatives to relieve pain and aid people recover from addictions.

In 1874, the English chemist Charles Romley Alder Wright (1844-1894) created diacetylmorphine (also known as diamorphine). The pharmaceutical company Bayer thought it might be useful cough medicineshe gave it the brand Heroina and introduced it to the market in 1898. It worked worse chest infections.

Although diamorphine was created with good intentions, this opiate was highly addictive. Shortly after entering the market, it became clear that this was the case just as addictive like other opiates. This coincided with international moves to close the trade in non-medical opiates due to their devastating impact on China and other Asian countries.

Like cannabis, heroin quickly gained radical chic. The Mafia entered the United States and became popular in the United States Jazz scene in Harlem, the beatniks embraced it and American soldiers returned from Vietnam addicted to it. Heroin also helped kill American singers Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison.

Today we know that heroin exploit and addiction contribute to a number of health conditions physical and mental health problemsand death from an overdose.

However, the harms associated with heroin are now being replaced by powerful synthetic opioids such as oxycodone, fentanyland nitazen group of drugs. Australia has seen more deaths and hospital admissions prescription opiate overdose than from a heroin overdose.

In a nutshell

Not all medications have a spotless track record. And not all illegal drugs were always illegal.

The legal status of drugs and their exploit are shaped by factors such as politics, racism and prevailing social norms, as well as their impact on health.