Why are cigarettes and alcohol legal, pharmaceuticals in the middle, and marijuana, cocaine, or heroin illegal? Most people assume it’s about science—that dangerous drugs were banned after careful study. But as Ethan Nadelmann argues, the U.S. history tells a different story.

It Was Never About the Science

Alcohol is linked to more violence than almost any illegal drug. Cigarettes are more addictive than heroin—many heroin users say quitting nicotine is harder. Yet alcohol and tobacco are legal. Why? Not because scientists ranked risks, but because of politics and prejudice.

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Opium and the Chinese

In the late 1800s, opiates were everywhere. Middle-aged white women used them for pain, cramps, or diarrhea. Nobody dreamed of criminalizing grandma’s medicine cabinet. But when Chinese immigrants smoked opium after long shifts building railroads, panic set in. Newspapers warned of “Chinamen” seducing white women in opium dens. By the 1870s, California and Nevada passed the first opium bans—not to protect health, but to police immigrants.

Cocaine and Black Workers

Early 1900s: Southern states outlawed cocaine amid fears of Black dock workers. Wild stories spread—that Black men on cocaine were violent, that police revolvers couldn’t stop them unless upgraded from .38s to .45s. The New York Times reported this racist myth as fact. Laws followed.

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Marijuana and Mexican Migrants

By the 1920s and 30s, marijuana bans emerged in the Midwest and Southwest. They were tied to anti-Mexican sentiment. Migrant workers smoked “reefer” after laboring in fields—just as white Americans drank beer at day’s end. Yet newspapers stoked panic: What would Mexican migrants do to “our women and children” after smoking? Prohibition followed.

Alcohol, Too

Even alcohol prohibition had an ethnic undertone: a clash between Northern/Western European “white” Americans and newer immigrants from Southern/Eastern Europe who brought beer, wine, and schnapps. When criminalized, enforcement fell disproportionately on poorer, less “white” communities.

The Pattern

As Nadelmann explains: “It has almost nothing to do with the relative risks of these drugs, and almost everything to do with who used and who was perceived to use them.” Laws framed as “public safety” were really tools to control minorities and the poor.

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From Origins to Today

Michelle Alexander calls the War on Drugs the “New Jim Crow.” Millions of white people have also been swept up—but enforcement has always been overwhelmingly harsher on young, poor, and Black or brown communities. Even today, cannabis businesses generate billions while many people of color remain in prison for the same plant.

Fun Fact: Heroin was once sold legally in cough syrups. Meanwhile, today’s legal opioids (like OxyContin) triggered a U.S. overdose crisis—showing again that legality and danger don’t always match.