what was life like before the drug war?

That's true, I had no idea about drugs before the D.A.R.E program in the late 80's in grade school. I started smoking weed heavily several years later.

Those campaigns were literally 'daring' kids to try something new and dangerous.

Say what you want about the corrupt drug-law system, but drugs have destroyed countless lives.

TPTB know addiction and how to use it as one of their most powerful weapons. Booze, drugs (legal and illegal), sex, power, greed...etc.

Make it look as harmless, attractive and cheap or free.

When the fish get reeled in and the hook is set...the price goes up and the real nightmare starts.

Like now.

So nothing much has changed then?

I'm not old enough to know what shit was like before Reagan's War on Drugs. I was in the first class of DARE to go through my school district. The education I got only stimulated my curiosity to try drugs, so when I got old enough to and had opportunity, I tried everything I could get my tiny paws on.

It's hard to imagine the peaceful, quiet days without a militarized police force bursting through your doors, killing your dogs and throwing flash grenades into your child's crib.

I'm sure there used to be quiet and peaceful days when the people who wanted to kill themselves on drugs did so quietly, in their own beds without having what used to be a safe family zone being turned into a war zone.

If you watch the movie Cocaine Cowboys, you'll be led to believe that it may have been VERY nice in some places.

Could have been. MTV was probably part of it. In the 70s the drugs were mellow, pot and schrooms, only the hardcore people did acid. We got high and listened to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young or America or the Eagles. Mellow.

Then the 80s happened with MTV and cocaine. Cocaine ruined so many lives, marriages, finances. Watch Miami Vice on Netflix to see how pervasive cocaine was. And also the lack of cameras on every street corner. It's an interesting view of the times.

"It's 1895 and your great grandparents are heading to the drugstore,
what was in the store before all the modern miracle drugs of today? Forget Tums & Tylenol. Forget Aleve & Benadryl. Look at the cool stuff they had back then! (PICS & LINK)

Metcalf's Coca Wine was one of a huge variety of wines with cocaine on the market..... Mariani wine
Everybody used to say that it would make you happy and it would also work as a medicinal treatment.
Mariani wine (1875) was the most famous Coca wine of it's time.
Pope Leo XIII used to carry one bottle with him all the time.
He awarded Angelo Mariani (the producer) with a Vatican gold medal.

Cramps, how about some tincture of cannabis?

Opium, cocaine, heroin, alcohol, cannabis, quinine all legal.
No such thing as street drugs, hardly any crime...

It's no wonder they were called, "The Good Old Days". From cradle to grave... everyone was STONED !!!"

- [link to webstation19.8k.com]

Drug use in my high school (late 60's, early 70's) was moderate. Easily accessible, pot, acid, and downers were the drugs of choice. It was not a good idea to be flamboyant about it though. There was the scare of having a "Narc" see you and turn you in to the cops. We talked and joked about nerdy kids who we were suspicious of being informants, but I never really knew one.

Life was simpler to be sure. I knew a cop later in the 70's (Chicago) who would be over at the house I shared with other musicians, and he would leave for about an hour, come back with a bag of smoke he snatched from some kids or whatever. I never asked him where he got it from.

If you got pulled over for a traffic violation back then, the trick was to have a $20 in your hand when he asked you for your license. At that moment of pulling the license out of your wallet, you drop the $20 on the ground and not say anything. Miraculously, he would give you a warning and you'd be on your way. Worked for me on a few occasions.

If you want to go back to before the drug war, you have to go as far back as 1827 when England's Queen Victoria was sending her ships from India to Shanghai to sell her opium to the opium dens.

(She needed the money because England was dead broke after fighting Napoleon.)

I graduated from high school in 1961. Good memories and really fun times!

The cops all wore blue, and they didn't act like SWAT. They called them "peace" officers. The cop cars didn't have window tint so dark that you couldn't see in. You told your children to find a cop if they got lost. They weren't trained to empty their magazine into the citizens, saving the last two bullets for the citizens headshot.

As late as 1980, the police in Chicago were trained to empty their magazine when using their firearm. I spoke to a retired Chicago cop back then. He had a perp draw a gun on him one time and he shot every bullet in his gun, and then shit his pants he was so scared.

Maybe in Mayberry the police were nicer back then, but in Chicago it was the wild west during the 60's race riots at the Democratic Convention, which put Chicago cops on the map as being ruthless pigs. I'll take today's cops any day. You have to realize, it's all the media attention that is bringing this police brutality to our attention. It's been happening forever, and I'm glad things are coming to light.

Last Edited by Nrg on 07/26/2015 10:40 PM

any portugal GLP'ers wanna check in and tell us how it's been since everything was decriminalized.

i know they haven't fallen off the map at all.

sounds like we should do the same
\but that would put the CIA and other stuff out of business

Much more peaceful and much more productive. Productive in a sense that people weren't necessarily doing drugs, but people were hired and fired for their productivity and their character. People were not fired for failing a drug test.

It was simple back then, if you did drugs to excess and couldn't work properly, you would be fired.

Back in those days some people were probably smoking some cannabis and even using a bit of cocaine, but would show up for work ready to go and be sharp and productive. It didn't take a drug test to know someone had a problem, that is, it would be evident there was a problem.

There are many people who know how to pass a drug test, they know ways around it, so the same rules apply today. You don't need drug tests.

You certainly don't need to be busting down peoples doors or pulling them over and arresting them.

100 years ago if you were high all the time and you weren't able to function at work, you didn't have a job.

Applies today as well, everything in moderation maybe except for Friday night and Saturday, right?

lol the irony is most women in my generation

gen x and now gen y are all PROUD wine drunks,

who like to brag on Fake book about all the cases of wine they go through every week

Well, being a teen in the 80's ROCKED. We were the first generation to really get to experience ecstasy in it's true, uncut form....MDMA. Man is that stuff the shit. We'd take up to 3 pills a night and dance our asses off. Rolling is what we called it. We'd hear about a rave in New Orleans and actually have to go to different places to receive info on where it was being held in NOLA.

Also tried acid a few times. This did not appeal to me as much as shrooms. We would play quarters with shroom juice.

Pot was red or purple hair and awesome. We even came across some sticky hash when we were lucky.

There were smoking areas at school. The cops only bothered us when we were in a field on private property having a keg party. No issues with mass shootings, date rape drugs, terrorists or racism. Even in the deep south we all got along and there were no issues between the races.

Damn, I sound like a junkie and probably was for a while, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I used to say if everyone woke up and took X the world would be a much better place.

well they didnt hate us becouse of our freedoms back then
now did they?

Things were a lot better.
Booze was settled long ago with the government selling it instead.

And that made it better in way off rural areas, where boom towns drew red light set ups, with gambling, prostitution, bootlegging and death.
The last of these in my area was in the early 80's basically the end of the 70's.

The drug situation is hideous and it became so widespread in its users. They are on jobs with you and the job duties are hazardous, this is a bad mix.
They are turning to crime to keep up their habits.

There was a time before the gambling bootlegging places shut down they started running guns.
Selling them to those who never should have gotten them, basically ex-cons and gangs.

Why this was allowed to grow so out of control I do not know.
It has cost old people to be killed in their homes for a couple of bucks.
It has cost police men in rural areas to lose their lives by criminals.
It has cost people at work to get hurt and on the highways.

It should have never been allowed to spread like it has and with such hideous drugs like heroine and cocaine.
That was something we thought on Hollywood and rich people did.

No its crack heads and salt maniacs.

Times have changed a whole lot since the 50's but it took Vietnam days to bring it rural.
At least in the most rural areas.

You could try looking them up in say the newspaper. I tried something once and it works quite well so I will share with you here.

Go to Google and type in following:

site:newyorktimes.com "1986" summary

Now where it says "1986", enter any date you would like. Was curious as to what was happening in the world around when I was born. By including the word "summary" allows all the headlines to be combined in a nice to read format.

This can allow you to search news articles from many different month/year combinations. What I find so amazing was how people wrote stories back than and how different it is compared to today.

So perhaps you could do above search but experiment with keywords such as drugs, prohibition, crime, etc.

Have fun : )

The drug war was much worse in the 60s and 70s on pot smokers. It keeps getting better. Thank all the old folks that paved and got beat up along the way.

Guess I'm not the youngest on here but in the middle someplace.
Drugs! LOL 1970 I was suiting up before a HS game out of town and there comes a Joint being passed around in the looker room. WTH is that?

Panhandle of Fl was a Maj Traffic area for drug running. I had a good friend I knew as a kid that stayed at another friends home for a month or so. Then the friend that let him stay at his house had been cleaning to put in new carpet, looked inside the closet and found a large brown bag. He was about to throw it away but looked inside it. He called the roommate that had stayed a Month or so up and asked him. Are you missing 75 thousand dollars? Humm? Yeah! I was wondering where that was. He's still alive..

From the west end of Florida back down the east coast of the Gulf of Mexico there were over 25 people that had become Millionaires that were under the age of 30. I knew some of them pretty well and they simple had no room to keep all their cash. It's True just like in the Movie Cocaine Cowboy.
Some of these folks got suicide, some ended up in water filled sink holes with bricks on there feet, some took a plane trip into the drink/Ocean avoiding Jail time. Some went to Federal Prison (Short stays) and spent all the Box's of cash on Attorneys. Others made enough and were smart enough to keep their cash and live well even to this day.
The Drug War? Well it got tougher.. DEA, Narc's,undercover agents of all kinds City, county, federal, state. Some knew each other from our school days when we were young. Funny thing is I had a good friend DEA that was friends with a drug runner we all knew each other.
But these guys were deadly serious and didn't care to much in the idea of going to jail. Hence, the suicide side of it. Reason I didn't get into it. There's a awful lot of Gulf to get lost in. Many did.

Yeah, those were the days. No fear of fun, and plenty of it! People got along with each other much better, too. Black Rage wasn't part of our world. Racial tensions are off the charts these days.

And so were some of the teachers!

How old are you?

There has always been a war on something, with few interludes.

The Strategy of Tension.

Distracts you from the man with his hand in your wallet.

say thank you

Before the cops brought their suitcase full of drugs to school to talk to us about drugs, I basically had no idea what drugs were. The first time I saw drugs, a cop showed them to me. At school.

Smoke weed everyday.

Great idea, cops.

So true of course for us Canadians hockey night in Canada before the double creature feature