A case for decriminalizing drugs

...“I’m not saying drugs are good,” Pease said. “I’m saying prison is bad.”

Pease, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Central Connecticut State University, made a case for decriminalizing drugs by detailing a historical pattern of drug legislation that targets and punishes the country’s underclass. She spoke at the annual meeting of the League of Women Voters of Southeastern Connecticut at the Spa at Norwich Inn.

The local league adopted a plan at the meeting to initiate a regional study focusing on the pros and cons of the decriminalization of marijuana by gathering information from a variety of sources, including those in law enforcement, education, and substance abuse treatment.

Pease said 50 percent of federal prisoners are serving time for drug offenses; 46 percent of those people are black.

Some of the nation’s first drug legislation passed in 19th-century San Francisco after Cornelius Vanderbilt hired Chinese migrant workers to do the dirty and dangerous work of building a transcontinental railroad, work few white workers found appealing, Pease said. Along with their work ethic, the Chinese brought their custom of opium smoking. Not readily available to his workers, Vanderbilt supplied them with opium, selling it at inflated prices that kept them forever in debt, not unlike what we’ve seen throughout history with migrant workers at mills or factories renting company housing and buying food at the company store, she said.

With no money to return home after building the railroad, the Chinese settled on the West Coast. At about the same time, the country
experienced a recession, and unemployed white workers began to envy their Chinese counterparts for building the grand railroad, thinking they had stolen their jobs. Consequently, they were not welcomed in their communities and, being private people, settled in Chinatowns in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

They also continued their opium habit, because, as Pease said, “People just don’t give up their psychoactive drug of choice. Plus, they’re addicted.”

In 1875, laws made it illegal to sell and smoke opium. This marked Pease’s first instance of otherwise law-abiding people now being treated as criminals. ...

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