Popular culture, including novels, film, music, and television shows have also been important sites for representing the discourse of prohibition. In turn the drug policy reform movement has greatly expanded its ability to challenge the discourse of prohibition by using the Internet, a topic I turn to in greater detail in chapter three. Despite the earnest intent of its backers, prohibition did not stop the flow of alcohol. Instead it diverted alcohol into more lucrative and underground channels. While the number of drinkers dropped modestly, prohibition created both semi-licit and completely illicit ways to buy and sell alcohol. The byproducts of these alternate commercial channels were huge spikes in violent crime, graft, bootlegging and boondoggle spending . The utopian idea that the state had the ability to eliminate alcohol consumption resurfaces in the name of the organization “Partnership for a Drug-Free America” and the stated goals of the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the U.N. Office of Drug Control; the complete eradication of illicit drugs. Racist attitudes were prominent among the overwhelmingly “native” born whites that made up the lion’s share of the Drys. Anti-immigrant, sentiment played a prominent role in the temperance movement . In the Southern U.S., Drys also relied on a potent mix of racism against African-Americans and anti-Eastern industrialist rhetoric to marshal support for prohibition.
Strong currents of racism, xenophobia, cannabis dryer and anti-immigrant sentiment were also prominent in three related episodes of federal drug prohibition; the banning of opium in 1909, the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 and the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. Although opium did not become subject to prohibition at the Federal level until 1909, its use was outlawed at the local and state level much earlier. Beginning in the late 1870s, local authorities moved to prohibit the smoking of opium in the Western U.S. and beginning in the 1910s, authorities sought to prohibit the smoking of cannabis in the Southwestern U.S. From roughly 1870 to 1900, many states and cities moved to outlaw the use of opium , but did nothing to control the use of pharmaceutical narcotics . This policy targeted the Chinese and white petty criminals for using one form of opium and exempted native-born whites for using different forms of the same compound. The first drug laws passed in the U.S. targeted the smoking of opium by Chinese migrants in California and several other western states . As Chinese immigrants moved into California cities after completing work on the railroads in the 1870s, xenophobia and racism typified the response of white English speaking Californians. Ironically, San Francisco, , was the first city to pass a law banning the operation of opium dens in 1875. An 1881 California law penalizing both patrons and operators of opium dens followed the San Francisco ban .
In 1882, Congress banned Chinese immigrants from coming to the U.S. entirely and denied those already in the country the right to become citizens under the Chinese Exclusion Act . Although cities and states banned opium smoking, they did nothing to curtail the much more widespread consumption of morphine and opium in “patent medicines” such as laudanum . During the late nineteenth century most narcotic addicts were not Chinese immigrants or professional gamblers, but affluent native-born whites, mostly women. When white women injected morphine and imbibed opium , claims makers did not portray such behavior as criminal but as a tragic or unfortunate consequence of medical treatment . Traditional images of drug use feature marginalized individuals whose behavior violates both social and legal norms, whereas iatrogenic drug users are cast as victims. The U.S. also embarked on a six decades long mission to institute global drug prohibition early in the twentieth century. The effort to sponsor international narcotic prohibition soon led to a drive for domestic prohibition in the U.S. After gaining possession of the Philippines from Spain in the Spanish-American war, some colonial authorities wrote of their dismay at the population of Chinese opium addicts, and of U.S. complacency on the issue. President Roosevelt commissioned Brent to investigate the drug distribution system in the Philippines and three commissioners from the state department were selected .
Most ambitious of the three, was Dr. Hamilton Wright, who in the spring of 1908, became a tireless advocate for a 1909 Shanghai Convention on the international prohibition of opium and its chemical cousins. To strengthen the position of the U.S. as chief backer of the inchoate international prohibition regime, Wright thought it necessary for the U.S. to first have a federal law in place. The goal of national narcotic prohibition led Wright to become the chief advocate for what would eventually become the Harrison Anti-Narcotics Act of 1914 . Musto details the role of moral entrepreneurs, federal legislation and Supreme Court decisions in implementing both domestic and international drug prohibition. He pays special attention to the period of morphine maintenance and the role of the Treasury Department in regulating and eventually shutting down morphine maintenance through a series of Supreme Court decisions that re-interpreted the Harrison Anti-Narcotic Act of 1914. From 1918 to 1923, as the Treasury Department arrested doctors under the new interpretation of federal drug law, doctors began to stop prescribing morphine to their addicted patients. The passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act was a profoundly important moment in the history of drug prohibition. Unlike the alcohol prohibition under the Volstead Act, this legislation actually criminalized drug users, creating a new class of deviants. It was the key moment in the early implementation of drug prohibition. Duster documents demographic shifts in the population of narcotic addicts in the first decades of the twentieth century and the resulting criminalization of narcotics under the Harrison Act. Individuals who promoted drug prohibition, such as Hamilton Wright, sought to marshal support for their efforts by harnessing the virulent currents of American racism against the Chinese in the West and African-Americans in the South . Somewhat transparently the title of the second major piece of federal drug control legislation, The Smoking Opium Exclusion Act of 1909, is remarkably similar to the title of the earlier anti-immigrant Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 . The push for federal cannabis prohibition came later than alcohol and “narcotic” prohibition. Although some states outlawed cannabis in the 1910s, Congress did not pass the Marihuana Tax Act until 1937. Historian Isaac Campos traces the ideology behind cannabis prohibition to Mexico in the late nineteenth century. He looks to the depiction of cannabis in official documents during and after the colonial period, and its representation in popular Mexican literature and cartoons. Numerous historical accounts of cannabis maintain that cannabis smoking was a common practice in Mexico . Campos questions the accuracy of this view. According to Campos , the symbolic importance of cannabis does not stem from its widespread use, but from the complete marginality of its use and users.
The conflation of cannabis intoxication with the effects of other psychoactive plant drugs in Mexico including peyote and the morning glory plant also contributed to the reputation of cannabis as a fantastically dangerous drug. The “killer weed” myth discussed later by Himmelstein actually originates in Mexico. Popular descriptions of the drug as leading to violence have long echoing effects for its criminalization on both sides of the border. Mexican laborers began to move to Texas and New Mexico in search of work during the early 1900s. These workers brought the vice of smoking “Rosa Maria” with them, and soon drug stores, grocers, vertical farming systems and mail order companies were providing a supply of imported cannabis from Mexico. According to Bonnie and Whitebread , “the plant and its intoxicant use encountered a hostile political and social climate.” Local law enforcement authorities soon linked cannabis smoking to criminal and belligerent behavior, parroting the alleged link to violent and criminal behavior found in reports from Mexican authorities in the previous decades . The twin ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles , consisting of fourteen individually gated terminals, combine to create the largest container port complex in the US. In 2015, the combined ports handled 15.4 million 20-foot equivalent units. This number represents a 56% increase since 2000 and is expected to grow even higher in the future. Since most of the containers in use are 40-foot units , the figure of 15.4 million TEUs corresponds to approximately 8.3 million individual container units . This large volume of container trips results in traffic congestion, noise pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions in the areas around and within the ports. Traffic congestion, in turn, impacts the local economy by decreasing reliability of delivery time for the imported goods, which forces local businesses to use more operators, equipment, distribution centers and inventory in order to deliver their end-products on time. One metric that can be used to assess the overall effectiveness of a proposed solution is the total travel time for trucks transporting goods from/to the ports during a given time period. This metric is correlated strongly with all of the items outlined above. Therefore, any concept which could minimize this total travel time can be expected to have a positive effect on all of these areas. One such concept which could have a positive impact on total travel time is the concept of Centralized Processing of Chassis. The main objective of this project is to study and develop an analytical framework for modeling and optimization of the concept of Centralized Processing of Chassis around marine container terminals, with application to the Los Angeles/Long Beach port area, which will be used as a particular case study of interest. This concept revolves around an off-dock terminal , which in this project will be referred to as Chassis Processing Facilities . A CPF is located close to the port, where trucks will go to exchange chassis, thereby reducing traffic at the marine terminals, resulting in reduced travel times for trucks and the potential of reduced emissions. The methodologies developed herein could contribute to improving the traffic conditions in the areas surrounding the ports, by modifying the patterns of truck trips to the ports. They have the potential to reduce traffic congestion on the roads to the terminal gates, air pollution and economic loss that would result from unnecessary delays and truck waiting times. A detailed example of the application of the methodology developed in this project is presented through a case study, which focuses on the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and on the areas in the vicinity of the ports. The case study considers the locations of all existing container marine terminals in the POLB/POLA complex, the locations of a number of existing trucking companies in the greater Los Angeles/Long Beach geographical area, and a set of potential locations for Chassis Processing Facilities. The developed methodology is used to study and analyze the optimal CPF locations, and to evaluate the potential benefits of the Centralized Processing of Chassis concept. The analytical models and optimization are first defined for import-only transactions under the assumption that any of the potential CPF locations are available and can be used. This model is then expanded to include import and export transactions, using only a small number of CPFs, which have storage capacity limitations. The expanded model, which optimizes the chassis exchange process with a smaller number of CPFs allows for policy makers to make decisions for optimal solutions while taking into account budgetary constraints. Analysis based on the simulation results, shows that the total travel time can be improved up to 20% when using CPFs to store and retrieve chassis as compared to the baseline situation where the chassis are retrieved directly from the marine terminals. In addition, optimal locations and CPF combinations are recommended, and a sensitivity analysis is performed. The sensitivity analysis explores the impact on the optimal solution that can result from limitations on CPF capacities, the total numbers of transactions, and the ratio of import to export transactions. Furthermore, a discrete simulation model has been developed which serves as a tool for performing more detailed studies, taking into account items not included in the analytical model, such as daily traffic variations, queuing at the marine terminals, and other random variations, representing a more realistic environment. As mentioned previously, the combined twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach create the largest container port complex in the US.