In my opinion it’s because in the past human beings needed to be constantly working or assisting with a group in some capacity in order to ensure mutual survival for the group. Let’s say a village.
Activity which is not seen as being productive or could be construed as lazy has a stigma around it because it casts doubt on your ability to contribute to society.
Obviously none of this applies in the same way these days but there is a kind of primal conflation of intoxicants and laziness. Laziness is bad and so consuming intoxicants turns into a moral issue.
These attitudes are very deeply ingrained and although they can shift a bit as people become more liberal the deep suspicion remains.
Youre assuming there’s no use in using intoxicants, but there very much are. Arguably the most important, in terms of larger humanity.
Those “deeply grained” attitudes are the product of 20th century propaganda.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Binge
In WWI it was completely normal to send your son/friend a package of morphine, cocaine and syringes.
And what I’m talking about is “mind-expanding” substances.
Alcohol literally depresses neural activity and makes it so you lose your coordination and eventually get sedated. It’s the most “lazy” substance there is, yet none of these “deeply ingrained” attitudes concern it?
So no.
I don’t think there is a correct answer to the question you are posing. You asked for people’s opinions and I gave you mine.
And I showed you how it obviously can’t be that. Come up with a new explanation.
Not fucking with you, if you could genuinely think of another, I’d be pleased.
There is a correct answer. It’s the inordinate amounts of drug propaganda, and people’s tendency to self-reinforce and perpetuate that propaganda.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman#Drug_war_quote
“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
— John Erlichman, Nixon’s “right hand” man
Did you ever stop to think that the propaganda you speak of is directly influenced by exactly what steeznson was speaking about?
Why do you believe that anti-drug propaganda only began in the 20th century?
Do you have anything other than wikipedia links to back your stance up? Say, a real study done on the impacts of anti-drug propaganda through the ages which demonstrates that the 20th century was the most militant with it?
Do you know what Religion is, and its impacts on anti-drug mentalities predating the 20th century?
Why do you believe that anti-drug propaganda only began in the 20th century
Show me a single piece of drug propaganda earlier than the 20th century.
Do you know what Religion is, and its impacts on anti-drug mentalities predating the 20th century?
I do, you don’t.
Why do you believe that anti-drug propaganda only began in the 20th century?
No. But the vast vast majority did.
People were playing around with electricity in ancient Greece as well. (Electricity coming from the word for amber, even). But if you asked someone “when electricity was invented”, I’m sure you wouldn’t even think of anything before 1600.
Do you have anything other than wikipedia links to back your stance up? Say, a real study done on the impacts of anti-drug propaganda through the ages which demonstrates that the 20th century was the most militant with it?
“Other than Wikipedia links”
You do realise Wikipedia puts down sources, right?
“Do you have proof that the ground was dry before it starter raining, despite the rain having started decades before you were born?”
If you’re honestly interested, you can find tons of literature. Foremost though for figuring out what most people think; speaking to them. Like I said, I’ve spoken to thousand of people about this. That isn’t anecdotal, that is hard data I have, but I understand you won’t accept it.
You can see how some prohibition of cannabis began in the 19th century due to Egyptian cotton farmers wanting to get bigger market share. This was then copied to America with the 1937 Marihuana tax act, and later they’d push the laws through UN who’d make them global because of US pressure.
Do you think the people in India would’ve ever voted to criminalise cannabis? For the whole century it’s been banned, it’s been ridiculous. All the cops who arrest people for it smoke.
There’s literally actual tons of material on this stuff.
https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/reports/the-war-on-drugs
The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world. Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President Nixon launched the US government’s wr on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed. In this seminal report, the Global Commission on Drug Policy calls on global leaders to join an open discussion on drug policy reform.
And are you a bit thick if you’re saying that these attitudes have always been with humans, when literally everything shows you they haven’t? The Great Binge itself is proof UK and US both having enjoyed the pharmaceuticals at the turn of the 20th century. And again, those were opiates and cocaine.
I’m talking shrooms and weed.
