How the Myth of the ‘Negro Cocaine Fiend’ Helped Shape American Drug Policy

[xchrom]

http://www.thenation.com/article/178158/how-myth-negro-cocaine-fiend-helped-shape-american-drug-policy



Negro Cocaine “Fiends” Are a New Southern Menace. That was the headline of an article I came across while doing research for my PhD in 1996. It involved trying to understand the neurobiological and behavioral effects of psychoactive drugs like cocaine and nicotine. So I read everything that seemed relevant.

The provocatively headlined article had appeared in The New York Times on February 8, 1914. I was surprised by the title, although I knew it was once acceptable to print such blatantly racist words in respectable papers. But what really shocked me was how similar it was to modern media coverage of illegal drugs and how, from early on, the racialized discourse on drugs served a larger political purpose.

The author, a distinguished physician, wrote: “[The Negro fiend] imagines that he hears people taunting and abusing him, and this often incites homicidal attacks upon innocent and unsuspecting victims.” And he continued, “the deadly accuracy of the cocaine user has become axiomatic in Southern police circles…. the record of the ‘cocaine nigger’ near Asheville who dropped five men dead in their tracks using only one cartridge for each, offers evidence that is sufficiently convincing.”

Cocaine, in other words, made black men uniquely murderous and better marksmen. But that wasn’t all. It also produced “a resistance to the ‘knock down’ effects of fatal wounds. Bullets fired into vital parts that would drop a sane man in his tracks, fail to check the ‘fiend.’”

[Heather MC]

1. 1914???

Did he offer any evidence beyond his say so? I think this is further proof that the Government Allowed Cocaine into our society. I mean How did a Kneegrow from 1914 South get his hands on enough Cocaine to become a Dangerous Fiend???

[chervilant]

2. Edward Brecher and

Consumer Reports' editors gave us "Licit and Illicit Drugs," an historical compendium of almost all the mind-altering substances used and abused by our species. I highly recommend this detailed history of the criminalization of drugs.

[etherealtruth]

3. ... Cannabis laws were enacted to protect "us" from "racially inferior" or underclass communities"

The US shaped anti drug laws based on racism and xenophobia.


During the Great Depression, massive unemployment increased public resentment and fear of Mexican immigrants, escalating public and governmental concern about the problem of marijuana. This instigated a flurry of research which linked the use of marijuana with violence, crime and other socially deviant behaviors, primarily committed by "racially inferior" or underclass communities. By 1931, 29 states had outlawed marijuana.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/etc/cron.html

[Eleanors38]

4. Drug prohibition is always accompanied by a hated "Other."

Opiates/Chinese

Cocaine/Blacks

Marijuana/Mexicans (and Blacks where applicable)

Marijuana since 1960s/Breach Burst!

Since the number of users went up 1,000% during that decade, white "counter culture-types" became the "new n_____," (Jamil Al-Amin/H. Rap Brown's expression)

[etherealtruth]

5. Without doubt

It certainly explains our societal bent toward punishment vs rehab and recovery for addicts