Drug Experimentation Quotes
This quotation brought him much ridicule. See {585947}. Clinton was of the swing era where there were very negative public views about the morality of using illicit drugs and the character of those who might have used it. So Clinton felt constrained to emphasize that it was only marijuana, the most popular and benign of the illicit drugs, and to emphasize the fact that he did not enjoy it. His successor, however George W. Bush, had been an alcoholic and a heavy cocaine user, but learning from the Clinton error, would never comment about it other than to say that it was wrong and he urged all to avoid drugs.
This is an interesting quotation in that we see that the Federal Government actually distributed the hallucinogen, mescaline, to some physicians and psychologists to experiment with. Historically, morphine, cocaine and opium were not only legal at this point but were commonly sold as medicine. President McKinley gave an endorsement for Mariani Wine—Bordeaux wine laced with cocaine. The slogan “Good for what ails you” was used to sell patent medicines, so laced with narcotics that people with almost any ailment would “feel good” for a while and many would refrain from needed medical treatment. It would take over a decade more for policy makers to learn of the addicting properties of narcotics and other drugs as well as their other deleterious properties.
This CIA program MKUltra actually too place. In addition to at least one death, there were a number of people whose unwitting massive exposure to LSD maimed them for life. In addition to shoddy research and junk science, the CIA violated the basic ethical rules of research with human subjects. Most had no idea that they were being given massive doses of dangerous drugs. The CIA kept the program secret when it was ongoing, and later CIA leaders kept it secret to avoid the embarrassment and the greater oversight from Congress that was long overdue.
