It wouldn’t be the first time illegal drugs were brought into the president’s residence

A preliminary field test on a white substance found in the White House has reportedly come up positive for cocaine, law enforcement authorities said.

  • kescusay@lemmy.world
    60·
    1 year ago

    Right-wing social media is already screaming about Hunter Biden at the tops of their lungs, because of course they are.

    No one in Biden’s family is even at the White House right now. They’re at Camp David.

    • chaogomu@kbin.social
      34·
      1 year ago

      Well, Refined Cocaine didn’t exist prior to 1860, and was mostly a sort of curiosity in the medical world for the next two or so decades. After that, it was marketed as an anesthetic for a few years.

      Freud wrote a paper about the joys of recreational use of cocaine in 1884 (he was 24), and then struggled with addiction for the next 12 years.

      Then Coca-Cola was created in 1886, and bottled for mass consumption shortly afterward. They removed the cocaine from the recipe in 1903…

      Then the Harrison Narcotics act was passed in 1914, effectively banning cocaine and opium. Mostly based on racist fears that black people liked cocaine.

      So, it’s possible that some cocaine was in the White House as early as the 1880s, especially in some Coca-Cola, but the drink was considered low class, and cocaine was also a bit of a low class drug…

      So yeah, It’s very hard to say.

      As to WW2 and beyond. Well, Meth was invented about that time frame. 1940s Germany, and the entire Nazi military were all addicted to meth in the form of Pervitin, the brand name that it was sold under. Pervitin was literally issued to infantry to let them march for days at a time, and was a huge part of the initial Blitz.

      The Allied forces had their own versions of speed to issue to soldiers.

      I kind of wandered into the weeds there…

      • Ersatz86@lemmy.world
        22·
        1 year ago

        See, it’s just this very type of strangely believable deep-dive, semi-spectrumy response that gives me a sense of cautious optimism regarding this new forum that we have here (apologies to the true pioneers).

        I am both chagrined and encouraged by this thorough, inadvertently solicited response.

        God bless you, friend.

        • chaogomu@kbin.social
          8·
          1 year ago

          Weed would be another digression entirely. As a plant, it has a much longer history. And as a plant, it never really became the drug of the rich and powerful. Maybe because smoking too much causes introspection, which the rich and powerful cannot abide.

          There’s a lot of armchair psychoanalysis here. The rich and powerful seem to like uppers, because those let them think they’re getting more work done. And they like alcohol as the social lubricant and memory suppressor that it is. At least those are the socially acceptable drugs. Even Meth is acceptable to them if taken in pill for rather than being smoked.

          The downers all seem to be demonized. The refrain is that they make you lazy or some such bullshit. As if some of the most (admittedly misguidedly) productive times of my life weren’t fueled by pot.

          I got really into carpentry and stone carving for a time back in high school, and if YouTube had existed I would likely have gotten into metal casting as well. All to make some okay pipes and bongs. I’m sure I could do better these days, but was proud at the time.

    • sadreality@kbin.social
      310·
      1 year ago

      old man is too old for devil’s powder. no doubt

      i highly doubt tourists brought it in tho

      whoever did it, is high enough to not be punished but young enough not to die from it.

  • Kabloink@lemm.ee
    23·
    1 year ago

    later on Tuesday reported that the white powder was found “in an area accessible to tour groups, not in any particular West Wing office”.

    So, probably a tourist

  • ivanafterall@kbin.social
    62·
    1 year ago

    Damn, Secret Service have no chill. You’d think they’d be bros, living together all the time. Instant snitch mode.

    • tal@kbin.social
      9·
      1 year ago

      I would assume that the issue is that white powder can be some other unpleasant things.

      Like “someone had drugs in the White House and shouldn’t have” is probably not national news unless maybe it was Biden or something like that.

      But “someone scattered anthrax in the White House” is kinda serious.