Substances used to not be prohibited and regulated in the United States the way they are today. The idea that the government can regulate what people can put in their body is one that is fairly new. The attitude of the American government, and most of the world today has on drugs can be considered fairly radical. The act of outlawing all drug use is in nature claiming that all illegal and medically unnecessary drug use is evil, even if it is in moderation. The prohibition of intoxicating substances has a far more sinister background than being put in place just to protect people from harming themselves. Prohibition has always been based on ending deviance rather than preventing people from harming themselves with a substance. As a result, more deviant groups emerge. Drugs that are legal and socially acceptable lead to far more deaths than drugs that are said to only be used by “deviants.” Most drugs have been systematically criminalized and prohibition of some of these substances is only now starting to loosen up. Today, much of the country is focused on the issue of marijuana legalization. This is an issue that is up for political debate and several states have already legalized it for medical use. You don’t hear anyone arguing for the legalization of hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin however. It is not politically correct to do so and if someone argues for legalization of all drugs, they would be shunned by mainstream society. There was a time in this country when no substances were banned. Society did not crumble during this time and drug addiction was no more rampant than it is today. Drugs started becoming outlawed in the late 1800s. Almost every time a substance has been outlawed in this country, the government has used the deviance of either a racial minority or a social group as its reasoning. Deviance has always been used as opposed to the harmful effects that the substance might have. It is very comical. More than once, the U.S. government has claimed that a racial minority was using a particular substance to take advantage of white women. The first example of this is opium, which was introduced to Americans by Chinese immigrants in the 1870s. The Chinese kept to themselves for the most part. And most whites, who were very prejudiced towards them, tended to ignore them. Some whites mingled with them out of curiosity however and others became acquainted with Chinese laborers on jobs. Eventually, adventurous white men started visi