drug prohibition and prohjbition avoided, diffent attitudes

[Derek Jackson]

I believe that the United States would have been better off without the Noble experiment.

I also feel that the War on drugs is a mistake

Suppose the movement for Temperence as distinct from Prohibiton had won.

A lot of social disaproval but no laws against these substances


I think that there would be less damage done than in OTL BUT SOME real damage would be done both by alcohol and other drugs.

I suspect that the movement towards prohibition would now be quite strong and would be mainly led by progressives (people like me)

Any thoughts

[BELFAST]

Originally Posted by Derek Jackson

I believe that the United States would have been better off without the Noble experiment.

I also feel that the War on drugs is a mistake

Suppose the movement for Temperence as distinct from Prohibiton had won.

so laws that ration drugs and alcohol?

[CaliBoy1990]

Originally Posted by Derek Jackson

I believe that the United States would have been better off without the Noble experiment.

I also feel that the War on drugs is a mistake

Suppose the movement for Temperence as distinct from Prohibiton had won.

A lot of social disaproval but no laws against these substances


I think that there would be less damage done than in OTL BUT SOME real damage would be done both by alcohol and other drugs.

I suspect that the movement towards prohibition would now be quite strong and would be mainly led by progressives (people like me)

Any thoughts

Well.....I don't know about that; truth be told, we don't know all that much about OTL progressive stances on marijuana before WWII.

While it is indeed possible there may indeed be factions of the progressive movement who may support marijuana's illegalization, there also will undoubtedly be many who would want it to stay legal, even if taxed & regulated like other drugs.

Based on the research I've done throughout the years, the main factors contributing to it's demise were to protect the profits of the tobacco industry as well as that of certain other companies, and not to mention the rather hardcore racism against the Mexicans that was rather prevalent in certain parts of the nation.

One thing you could do is create a split in the Progressive movement, and get the pro-cannabis side to convince the majority that it's illegalization would only benefit those parties seeking to exploit the workers and such. Another thing you could do to make marijuana prohibition harder(and possibly vice-versa for alcohol, or at least most types of it.) is somehow make Hispanos more prominent in U.S. society(a la DoD).

[BELFAST]

Originally Posted by CaliBoy1990

Well.....I don't know about that; truth be told, we don't know all that much about OTL progressive stances on marijuana before WWII.

While it is indeed possible there may indeed be factions of the progressive movement who may support marijuana's illegalization, there also will undoubtedly be many who would want it to stay legal, even if taxed & regulated like other drugs.

Based on the research I've done throughout the years, the main factors contributing to it's demise were to protect the profits of the tobacco industry as well as that of certain other companies, and not to mention the rather hardcore racism against the Mexicans that was rather prevalent in certain parts of the nation.

One thing you could do is create a split in the Progressive movement, and get the pro-cannabis side to convince the majority that it's illegalization would only benefit those parties seeking to exploit the workers and such. Another thing you could do to make marijuana prohibition harder(and possibly vice-versa for alcohol, or at least most types of it.) is somehow make Hispanos more prominent in U.S. society(a la DoD).

marijuana was banned in the 1937 stamp act. a long time(20 years approx) after alcohol and other drugs were banned.

[CaliBoy1990]

Originally Posted by BELFAST

marijuana was banned in the 1937 stamp act. a long time(20 years approx) after alcohol and other drugs were banned.

Yes, I know that. But if we were to take away the overreaching power of the tobacco and chemical industries, as well as much of the racism against Chicanos and other groups who included hallucinogens as a major part of their culture(such as many Southwestern Native Americans), then it would be much more challenging to get the drug banned. That, and if the progressive movement can successfully purge whatever anti-marijuana elements that may have appeared from their ranks, that would also be very helpful.

[pnyckqx]

Originally Posted by BELFAST

marijuana was banned in the 1937 stamp act. a long time(20 years approx) after alcohol and other drugs were banned.

there's your POD. Have the 1937 stamp act challenged and declared unconstitutional.

After all, you're just a couple of decades removed from Prohibition, which DID take a constitutional amendment.

It's not the SCOTUS of the late 20th Century.

[Ace Venom]

Originally Posted by Derek Jackson

I believe that the United States would have been better off without the Noble experiment.

It also devastated the brewing industry and culture within the United States. The prohibition of marijuana also has its share of economic impacts as well.

[BELFAST]

Originally Posted by Ace Venom

It also devastated the brewing industry and culture within the United States. The prohibition of marijuana also has its share of economic impacts as well.

it also almost closed whiskey distilling in Ireland too.

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Might i point out that, for all its many failures which are so visible to us today, prohibition DID succeed at what it set out to do, which was to destroy the practice of men drrinking up half their weeks wages on the way home on friday. It massively improved the lives of poor families.

Was that success worth tthe costs? Possibly not. Could some of those benefits have been achieved using a less crude and less damaging tool? Surely.

But the ,,noble experiment,, truly was noble in purpose, and experiments often fail.

[BELFAST]

Originally Posted by Dathi THorfinnsson

Might i point out that, for all its many failures which are so visible to us today, prohibition DID succeed at what it set out to do, which was to destroy the practice of men drrinking up half their weeks wages on the way home on friday. It massively improved the lives of poor families.

it is work but only in the short term.

Originally Posted by Dathi THorfinnsson

Was that success worth tthe costs? Possibly not. Could some of those benefits have been achieved using a less crude and less damaging tool? Surely.

But the ,,noble experiment,, truly was noble in purpose, and experiments often fail.

Any attempt by the state to stop or or make people reducing drink or taking drugs is doom to failure and leads to unintended consequences.

for people to change they need to want to do it for them selves. No one state or private can make us good.


it is work but only in the short term.

[BlondieBC]

Originally Posted by Dathi THorfinnsson

Might i point out that, for all its many failures which are so visible to us today, prohibition DID succeed at what it set out to do, which was to destroy the practice of men drrinking up half their weeks wages on the way home on friday. It massively improved the lives of poor families.

Was that success worth tthe costs? Possibly not. Could some of those benefits have been achieved using a less crude and less damaging tool? Surely.

But the ,,noble experiment,, truly was noble in purpose, and experiments often fail.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. For a policy to be wise, it has to have more than a desirable end result, it also has to work. Prohibition clearly failed as the harms outweighed the good. 500% more federal prisoners, 40% more homicide and the building of the modern criminal gang (mafia, Purple gang, etc)

[metastasis_d]

So say for whatever reason marijuana is never banned. No stamp act of '37.

Would hemp find more common use in other applications in everyday use without the stigma attached to it?

[CaliBoy1990]

Originally Posted by metastasis_d

So say for whatever reason marijuana is never banned. No stamp act of '37.

Would hemp find more common use in other applications in everyday use without the stigma attached to it?

Maybe out West and certainly in the North, there's lots of potential. You can forget about the area south of the Mason-Dixon line, though, hemp will still be likely as good as dead at least in most of those states(it may survive in New Mexico, Arizona, and maybe Kentucky if enough pro-cannabis people make their voices heard and get enough votes to the ballot boxes. Depends on how powerful the old planters families are, though. If they have enough power left, this won't succeed.) at some point; down south, racism was one of the primary reasons for the support of cannabis's illegalization in these areas; after all, high society often claimed that it was causing black men to screw white girls & ladies, and it sure as hell didn't matter one whit, that most blacks were still living in conditions that were only a small step above the old slavery system(for a decent, though not exact, ATL comparison to OTL's sharecropping system, think of the typical living conditions of peons in Decades of Darkness). No matter how you look at it, it was all but inevitable in some places; with no Civil War and/or a surviving slavery system south of the Mason-Dixon, it almost surely would have been even more of a reality there.

There may be a way to prevent marijuana prohibition from taking off in the South, but it would almost certainly require, amongst other things, a significantly harsher Reconstruction, with many big planters driven permanently out of business, more Hispanic influence(& less racism towards them), and possibly even a greater backlash against the big tobacco growers(who certainly would have, almost to a man, been opposed the rise of cannabis as a smoking crop, for fear of losing profits).

[metastasis_d]

What about some public figure (from the south) somehow making pot "cool" for southerners (or midwesterners)?

Teddy Roosevelt smoking a blunt while riding a bull moose, for example.
I'm being silly, but seriously, could a popular figure prior to 1937 popularize the smoking of marijuana? Maybe even during OTL's prohibition? Or even early... How about Samuel Clemens? Or another POTUS?
Is it plausible to get rid of the racial stigma, say post WWI?

[CaliBoy1990]

Originally Posted by metastasis_d

What about some public figure (from the south) somehow making pot "cool" for southerners (or midwesterners)?

Teddy Roosevelt smoking a blunt while riding a bull moose, for example.
I'm being silly, but seriously, could a popular figure prior to 1937 popularize the smoking of marijuana? Maybe even during OTL's prohibition? Or even early... How about Samuel Clemens? Or another POTUS?
Is it plausible to get rid of the racial stigma, say post WWI?

It may be possible, but it'd be real tough to pull off, I think.

We may also be able to get rid of the racial stigma at some point after WWII, but probably not entirely after WWI, I don't think.

[metastasis_d]

How far back does the racial stigma go? I was thinking maybe nip it in the bud before it got ingrained, but I may have been completely mistaken on when it started. I don't know much about it.

[BlondieBC]

Originally Posted by metastasis_d

How far back does the racial stigma go? I was thinking maybe nip it in the bud before it got ingrained, but I may have been completely mistaken on when it started. I don't know much about it.

Drugs allowing none-white males to victimize white women goes back deep into the 1800's. It makes a good excuse to explain why white women will have sex with non-white men. Opium dens for Chinese men. Pot was black/mexicans. Also made them "uppity". LSD was the hippies, but you get the undesirable sex part too, but less racial.

American has this strange Puritan streak where we like to pretend that monogamy is the only thing people want, and we need excuse (the devil) to explain why it is not that way. IMO, in some ways, our drug laws can be seen as a proxy war on the devil.

[Mark E.]

Originally Posted by pnyckqx

After all, you're just a couple of decades removed from Prohibition, which DID take a constitutional amendment.

I'm not so sure an amendment was required to outlaw liquor; that was just the way it happened. Congress did outlaw cocaine earlier in the decade. They could have just as easily outlawed whiskey circa 1916 and whole history of liquor control would have changed. Perhaps mixed drinks would have returned only at the hands of licensed bartenders, to assure the drinks were not served too strong. But then again, some of the more fancy mixed drinks might not have emerged without bad-tasting bootleg liquor. In any case, the spread of organized crime would have been greatly affected.

[The Kiat]

There's a fair chance that if marijuana wasn't outlawed, it wouldn't have been all that popular with hippies (who did a few things just for spite), and as it was linked with tobacco with lung diseases (I doubt the moral panic in this alternate world would differentiate between the two), it might just fade like tobacco usage. Or maybe not. I think illegial drugs are sometimes coveted just because they are forbidden.

Some agents are going to be banned regardless. If you think drunk drivers are a hazard, imagine somebody doped up on LSD driving. Alcohol dulls the reflexes, but hallucines are going to make the driver think pedestrians are demonic dung beetles or something, and he'll deliberately hit them.

[metastasis_d]

I think even with the lack of the "rebelling" aspect of marijuana use, a subculture like hippies could still find psychoactives alluring; especially so with strong psychedelic drugs like LSD and natural occurring hallucinogens (psilocybin etm.)