"Eventaully Opium, MJ and Cocaine were seen as dangerous substances and laws were passed against them."

Ruleboy your lack of knowledge on this subject is really glaring! If the law-makers were truly concerned about protecting people from so-called "dangerous" substances, why are tobacco and alcohol and gasoline still legal, for just a few examples? Please, take the time to do some research - and use your own head to do some creative critical analysis of what you discover before you make claims like that!

Here's what Canadian sociologist/criminologist Peter Elgin has to say about the reasons for the development of Canadian narcotics legislation criminalizing the import, manufacture, sale, possession and use for other than medical purposes of opium and it's derivatives, and of cocaine and marihuana, back in the time-period 1908-1923:

"(1) the racial conflict between 'whites' and 'orientals',
   (2) the status conflict between the high-status medical profession   
       and its clients using narcotics for therapeutic purposes and   
       the low-status users, particularly Chinese, using opium for      
       pleasure, and
   (3) the prevailing cultural beliefs and values about drugs and
       their links to sexual promiscuity and 'race mixing' ... (God      
       forbid, interracial sex)."

"...Those legal norms created the public morality that was responsible for the moral transformation of a private indulgence into a public crime.... In time, through the efforts of zealous reformers and enforcers and the paucity of organized or influential opposition, the public came to share that drug ideology that motivated the initial anti-drug crusaders.

...The 'solution' to the marijuana problem is not the prevention of it's use but a changing of attitudes towards it. Such a change could also have other consequences. If the cultivation, distribution and sale of cannabis were legalized, then one would do away with a lot of deviant activity. One would have put an end to the need to smuggle the drug and also the illegalities involved in the use of the profits from the trade.

... Whether marijuana is harmful is a complicated question, and whether it is more so than other drugs [tobacco and alcohol] in widespread and legal use is debatable."

             From "A Sociology of Crime", 1992
                Dr. Peter Elgin and Dr. Stephen Hester

Peter Elgin was one of my professors at Wilfrid Laurier University, highly respected and certainly no 'pot-head'. Although he did make some waves being a fan of Noam Chomsky!

Anyway, it cost me much time and effort - and money - to study these things. I'm certainly not going to do any more of your research for you!

daylia