
Originally Posted by
99SI
Pot was oringally made illegal, along with cocaine, morphine, and heroin because lawmakers were afraid of black people doing them. That's the bottom line. It was considered Ok for white people to use cocaine, morphine, weed, etc because they "could handle it" or were "smarter". There were urban legends coming out of the south after the civil war that groups of "crazed black people" who were high on cocaine and marijuana were raping/murdering white women and that the "black mind was not capable of handling such drugs". It's the same way with opium, it was because of racism against the Chinese immigrants who we worked to death on the railroads and gold mines out west. They were seen as "inferior" people and b/c they smoked opium/heroin they were evil.