I also don’t know, but I seriously doubt there was cost benefit analysis.
My two bets would be:
- church/priests had power and they condemned most things, except for preying.
- it became widely known that opium is really obviously bad for you, after a bit of mental juggling that became “drugs are bad”, and then wholesale bans followed.
The Chinese 100 years of humiliation at the hands of the Brits, was down to Opium
The fall of the medieval European dynasties was all down to Luandanum
Time and again, the unhealthy, and unregulated use of drugs has toppled empires and led to social upheaval.
Makes perfect sense if you ran a country you would be scared of it.
Not clear why you think the Hapsburgs and the Medicis lost their reigns due to alcoholic opium use. That's a new one to me.
Edit: Also, I was unaware the Allies were uniformly under the influence (aside from the Yanks). Citation?
> Not clear why you think
> Citation?
Are you okay?
The misspelling of "praying" is ironically on point.
It doesn't correlate with violent behaviors, unlike meth and alcohol. It isn't highly addictive like opioids. Users don't tend to spend their lives sedated beyond cognition, like residents of opium dens and absinthe parlors (without discussing what part of absinthe encouraged it).
I don't personally enjoy it, but ... did banning it include some reasoning beyond "Drugs are immoral!"?