Holly D
3 March 2008
The Taboo of Illegal Drugs
For the past sixty years America’s obsession with illegal drugs has grown exponentially. It is rare to find teens today that have yet to fall under the influence. Whether it is cocaine, heroin, or marijuana, with new laws being passed every year on the illegalization of drugs more people in America seem to be falling harder under the influence. The government and its taboo on these addicting and non addicting drugs has influenced both society and the media, who have made it so tempting to try all sorts of new drugs. Although authority figures would like to blame everything on the media, it is more relevant that teens and adults are more than likely to test out the variety of illegal drugs simply because of the taboo that has always been plastered by the law.
Within the last century there have been many controversies to come up about not only the legalization of non addicting drugs, such as marijuana, but also about more serious addictive drugs like heroin and cocaine. In Richard Lawrence Miller’s controversial documentary book about illegal drugs and the laws that surround their illegalization, he states that “most citizens make little distinction among heroin, cocaine, and marijuana; neither does the law. To deal effectively with drugs, however, we must respect their differences (Miller 1).” Miller opened his book with this very statement, which to me is self explanatory. It means that drugs have their own unique properties, weights, uses, addictions, and effects. Just because a drug is a “drug” does not mean that it should automatically be illegal.
Cocaine has been in America since the nineteenth century when it was freely distributed by physicians as a “miracle drug,” beginning the epidemic to curing exhaustion and depression (Cocaine). As time passed and physicians began to notice the dangers of its side effects its use decreased, and by the 1920s the epidemic had ended. Years passed and the...