CLJ 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Jim Crow Laws, Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, Hypodermic Needle
Document Summary
Drug wars are not just reactions to problems people have with drugs or simple engineering issues. Drug scares are cultural/political affairs and must be understood as such. Drugs are symbolic resources in our ongoing cultural/political wars. By 2030, 16 million will die from drug overdose. Drugs problems have been in us society for over 200 years. They are moral panics in their own rights and they are ideological phenomena in another sense. Talked about the temperance movement and prohibition of booze and how this appealed to millions of middle class folks looking for simple answers to social and economic problems confronting the us in the early 20th century. Later, opium targeted chinese immigrants after completion of the railroad. Anti-opium legislation designed to discriminate against a specific group in lean economic times. Black, mexicans, and hippies have all been targeted 1986 drug abuse act.
