The War on Drugs - The First Shot

The War on Drugs – The First Shot 

Professor Curt A. Benson

On June 28, 1914, Gavril Princip fired the shot that ended the life of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. And thus began World War I. 

But who fired the first shot in America’s war on Drugs? And why?

Take some familiar, long-standing quarrels over the nation’s immigration policies, add some labor trouble, throw in for good measure a whole lot of good old fashion racism, and what do you get? You get the first set of laws banning the use of narcotics in the United States.

The Background

Beginning in the early 1850s, Chinese immigrants traveled by the thousands to the American west to work the railroads and mines. An abundance of cheap, low skilled labor kept wages low. Eventually, and inevitably, as railroad projects were completed and mining operations changed, the Chinese “Coolies” began competing directly with white workers for the more desirable manufacturing jobs. In 1873, an economic depression hit the country that lingered for nearly a decade. And while the depression was nationwide, it hit the west particularly hard. Not surprisingly, the Chinese immigrants became the scapegoat. In the face of a severe economic crisis, white workers in California saw the huge numbers of uneducated, unskilled, low wage “Coolies” as the reason for high unemployment and stagnant wages.

Labor Unions were particularly vicious in their attacks against the Chinese. With Labor’s backing, the City Council of San Francisco, the California Legislature, and the federal government passed numerous anti-Chinese laws. Laws prohibited queues, (a Chinese hairstyle with a long braid of hair worn hanging down the back of the neck,) restricted legal rights of property ownership, forbade employing of Chinese on public-works projects, and legally disenfranchised Chinese-American citizens.[1] And let’s not forget infamous Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Chester Arthur, which provided for an absolute ten year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration.

Paranoid politics, by that I mean politicians who stoke up our worst fears, intensify in times of national uncertainty, like economic distress and changing social norms. The Chinese were not only despised for driving down wages. They were likewise hated for their alien looks, their incomprehensible language, their “pagan” religions and strange folk customs. Among these customs was smoking opium, a decidedly Chinese practice. Among Americans, it was commonly believed that opium acted as a stimulant, inciting the Chinese to work tirelessly, and thus putting whites at an economic disadvantage.

These days were also the high point of so-called “yellow” journalism. Californian newspapers and dime novels regularly served up lurid accounts of the opium smoking, monstrously evil Chinaman, with fixed, staring eyes, seducing, corrupting, and finally destroying, our fair skinned American boys and girls.

Bang!

The city of San Francisco outlawed opium smoking in 1874. In 1875, San Francisco passed another ordinance, this one banning the operation of opium dens. These two ordinances were the first explicit anti-drug legislation in the United States

 Additional Information

For further reading, I recommend this interesting article which provided much of the material found in this essay: Kathleen Auerhahn, The Split Labor Market and the Origins of Antidrug Legislation in the United States, 24 Law & Soc. Inquiry 411, (1999)