The author proposes that current antidrug efforts have their origins in the Prohibition Era, and that lawmakers over the past 50 years have created social attitudes toward drug use, rather than responding to them. The chapter describes the use of heroin in 19th Century America, the passage of the first legislation controlling the manufacturing and distribution of opiates products, and the creation of the Bureau of Narcotics in 1930, where government bureaucrats began to disseminate the idea that drug addiction posed a great threat to American society. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some of the controversies over antidrug policy that have emerged in the past 15 years, and argues that Administration efforts to end the use of methadone treatment for drug addicts is the latest measure to totally repress drug use in the U.S. 42 references