It would be a mistake to view the "War on Drugs" as Nixon's child alone.

Rather, the intensified counter-drug policy that coincided with Nixon's administration was only part of a nationwide law and order push that arose as a result of the disruption of the 1960s. In his 2009 book, The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs, Jeremy Kuzmarov makes a compelling (in my view) argument that the Nixon-era War on Drugs was successfully used to pursue a wide sweep of foreign and domestic policy objectives. The War on Drugs, he and others have argued, wasn't just a war against narcotics and addiction ─ Nixon and others of his ilk were fighting everything they viewed as detrimental to traditional American values.

Let's rewind to 1914. That's the year Congress approved the Harrison Narcotics Act. The act required cocaine and opium manufacturers, retailers and importers to register with the Department of the Treasury, pay special taxes and come under the supervision of the federal government. Doctors were also regulated, being allowed to prescribe these drugs "in the course of their professional practice only."

This vague wording left Treasury agents with a great deal of latitude in enforcement, and they took advantage. Many doctors were arrested and prosecuted out of the belief that they were prescribing these drugs to addicts (which many were). Unfortunately for the addicts, the Harrison Act enforcement merely meant they had to turn to the black market; the federal government shut off the supply, but it didn't end the demand.

David Musto's The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control is the absolute classic when it comes to the history of drugs in the United States. Musto died in 2010, but his book (whose latest edition was published in 1999) is mandatory reading if you want a background in American drug policy. Much of what I'm explaining here will draw on his work. You might also try Charles Levinthal's Drugs, Society and Criminal Justice, which is used as a textbook in many courses (but I don't think is as good as Musto's book ─ personal opinion there).

In 1930, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics took over narcotics enforcement within the Treasury. Commissioner Harry Anslinger, first commissioner of this bureau, testified to Congress repeatedly that marijuana was evil and needed to be outlawed. He also took a hard line on all drug use. Testifying to Congress in 1937, he declared: "The major criminal in the United States is the drug addict; that of all the offenses committed against the laws of this country, the narcotic addict is the most frequent offender."

Even at this early date, drug use was being considered a crime in the United States, not a medical condition to be addressed. Contrast this with the report drafted in the United Kingdom by a panel of experts led by Sir Humphry Rolleston. In 1924, the committee advised the British government that addiction to morphine and heroin should "be regarded as a manifestation of disease and not as a mere form of vicious indulgence."

As other nations examined drug use in the context of addiction and disease (not entirely, of course ─ drug use was criminalized around the world to various degrees), the United States stayed on the crime track. In 1951, the Boggs Act called for mandatory prison sentences for some drug crimes. Five years later, the 1956 Narcotic Control Act increased some of those sentences and added still more penalties ─ including the federal death penalty for selling heroin to kids.

In the 1960s, attitudes started to change, however. Organizations including the American Bar Association spoke out against punishment as the sole approach to drug addiction and drug use. A 1963 presidential commission recommended dismantling the Bureau of Narcotics, reducing penalties for drug offenses, and funding treatment to a greater degree. Congress also got into the act, creating the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control and passing the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act, which declared that those "who are determined to be addicted to narcotic drugs, and likely to be rehabilitated through treatment, should, in lieu of prosecution or sentencing, be civilly committed for confinement and treatment ... ."

If that sounds startlingly modern, you're not far off. In my state, Alaska, the Legislature followed in the path of other states and relaxed penalties for simple drugs possession in order to divert addicts from prison into treatment and rehabilitation programs. Nationally, we're seeing more states turn away from imprisonment for crimes of possession and use.

In the 1960s, however, social trends meant this type of tolerance for drugs possession was rapidly becoming a political issue. This was an era when Timothy Leary was advocating LSD and marijuana use, when drugs were a symbol of the counterculture movement and became a symbol of "all that's wrong with America." Nixon, in a November 1969 speech, asked for the support of the "silent majority" of Americans as he pursued his policy objectives. He correctly believed that many Americans were scared of inner-city violence, scared of the counterculture movement and scared by what they saw as the erosion of "traditional" American values.

Drug use was a key piece in this puzzle. One of the popular myths of the era was the notion that American soldiers were being turned into junkies through exposure to addictive drugs during the Vietnam War. Kuzmarov's book addresses this myth and exposes it as such, but at the time it was a popular concern and a symbol of the way drugs impacted the American social consciousness.

Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 contained the Controlled Substances Act, which created the classification system of drugs that the United States still uses today. Three years later, with Executive Order 11727, Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Agency with tough new powers to enforce the Controlled Substances Act. These actions federalized, streamlined and consolidated counter-narcotics power, making it much stronger.

Nixon wasn't acting alone at this time and in this fashion. States across the United States were making similar moves. In 1973, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller declared that his state's then-progressive drug treatment programs were a failure. He called (and successfully got Legislative approval) for tough new laws that were the toughest in the nation when it came to narcotics. In a smart 2010 paper, Julilly Kohler-Hausmann characterized New York's legislation as an "Atilla the Hun law" that created a punitive state for drug possession and addiction.

New York's legislation created an example that states across the nation would subsequently follow, kicking off nearly three decades of failed policies that targeted the urban poor and led to an explosion in American incarceration rates, mostly among black Americans. Many historians have argued that the Nixon-era War on Drugs was racially motivated, but motivation is difficult to prove. What we can see, with the benefit of hindsight, is that the War on Drugs allowed an expansion of governmental power in the interest of public safety, and that newfound power was not always used correctly.

When did DARE and its propaganda come about? I'd like to know more about the history of it, as I remember DARE in the 90's but I heard it was even worse in the 80's in terms of spreading lies and fear about drugs.

How much truth was there behind marijuana's legality surrounding paper manufacturing, and whether its outlaw had anything to do with some newspaper manufacturers finding hemp based paper undercutting manufacturing costs and threatening their business as it was sold to competitors?

Another question was weed in probation ?

As a follow up question, what sort of record is there of traditional American use of Cannabis as a recreational drug pre 1900 or so?

I know fiber hemp is only very minimally psychoactive, but with the rather relaxed plant breeding practices of the time and consequently high crop genetic diversity, it seems ridiculous that a nation that grows a lot of hemp would be unaware that some cultivars can produce pleasant effects, especially when neighboring cultures (carribean and Latin American) have figured it out.

But I've pretty much never heard of early Americans smoking pot without some foreign influence that gave them the idea. Did rural hemp growing Americans occasionally smoke pot?

I can't get this number. Searching, maybe someone here can help?

How many TOTAL marijuana arrests in the USA since 1937? Seems simple, but I can't find a valid number.

Thanks, a million! :-)