Why is the use of some psychedelics illegal?
The idea of banning all “recreational” use of certain psychoactive substances was driven by a growing influence of Anglo-American Christian Puritanism and the temperance movement against alcohol in the late temperance movement against alcohol in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which in the United States also led to the prohibition of alcohol in the United States between 1920 and 1933. The campaign for prohibition was also fueled by racist sentiments toward by racist sentiments toward immigrants from China and Mexico, who used opiates and cannabis.
