We have to step back a bit to the origin of the drug
problem. Since the 1800s western societies - Europe, Australia,
America - have had very extensive drug problems. Now, you can
really divide the western world's century of mass drug abuse into
two convenient periods. From the late 1800s to the present we
can split it down the middle. From about the 1870s when you get
big-time mass consumption of narcotics to the 1920s drugs were
legal. The name "heroin" for example, was a trade name coined
by the Bayer company. In 1898 they came up with a new product
which seemed to be very good for respiratory ailments. They
put it on the market and called it "heroin." That's where the
term comes from. It's a trade name coined by one of the world's
major pharmaceutical manufacturers.

The next year, 1899, they came up with another nifty new product
that seemed to do the same thing for headaches that heroin did
for respiratory ailments. They called the new product "aspirin."
That one's worked out pretty well. So we got one winner and one
loser during this same period of the global boom of pharmaceuticals.

It wasn't until the 1920s that there was a general consensus that
law would be used to regulate personal behavior. So alcohol,
gambling and narcotics were, during the 1920s, globally subject
to regulation. So you have laws on the books in the United
Kingdom, Australia, the United States - not only the nations
themselves but their several states and provinces - banning the
use of narcotics.

Narcotics moved from being a personal choice - something you
picked up at your local pharmacy, your local drug store - to
being a criminal act.  The process by which it becomes illegal
varied in every country and, in some cases every state. By the
time you get to about 1930, drugs were illegal around the globe.

-John


"Talk of democracy has little content when big business rules the life of
 the country through its control of the means of production, exchange, the
 press and other means of publicity, propaganda and communication."
                                      -John Dewey