The Age Of Prohibition In The Early 1900s

When one thinks of prohibition, they generally think of the time in which America attempted to limit and prevent the buying and use of alcohol. What one might not know is that the “age of prohibition” also included laws limiting drugs, most of which preceded the alcohol laws. In the early 1900s, drugs and alcohol were becoming to become a larger problem among the common populace. During this time, there were no laws inhibiting the purchase of opium, heroin, marijuana, alcohols, etc. The complications that subsequently arose were that the perfectly legal substances were beginning to be linked to crimes, whether they were directly related to intoxicated behavior or crimes were being committed to acquire them. To combat the trouble, the US government created various laws to restrict and/or abolish the use of inebriants. However, it was not going to work as well as they would have hoped.

The law made the importation, possession, and use of smokable opium illegal, thus creating America’s first illegal drug. This, however, did not solve the problem as the opium trade just became a sort of black market ran by criminals with high prices, and desperate customers who would pay anything for the now illegal substance. Then as the years went on and the opium market had just seemed to slow with the capture of many marketers, users of the drug decided to move on to morphine and cocaine; which were more potent forms of opium that were legally used for medicinal purposes. Once this was realized, the next law to prohibit drugs was