It is only true due to the United Nations general convention on narcotics and other similar deals, which are in effect in an attempt to limit smuggling to the US, to increase the revenue of US pharmaceutical companies, and considering the 60’s-70’s political motivations of Nixon and Reagan, to reap huge profits off the now illicit drug trade.

Drugs were made illegal because ”they were thought to be dangerous to the establishment” in the form of African-American and civil liberties activists, both of which were easy to label stereotypical drug users with a bout of fictitious press.

Another political reason was the historically open international trade which did end up with the Opium Wars in China — but that precedent was used as a propaganda tool first and foremost, since the real reason for the war was not opium, but Great Britain’s heavy-handed imperialist approach to trade.

The irony is that these conventions are enforced with a similarly heavy hand and with equally imperialist policy behind it.