The war on drugs has been a misguided failure. Or so a professor claimed yesterday, as part of the Foley Institute’s Coffee & Politics series.

Suzanna Reiss, associate professor in the Department of History at University of Hawai’i Manoa and author of “We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of U.S. Empire,” spoke about how current and past discussion and policing of drugs in the U.S. has been intertwined with racist and anti-immigrant attitudes.

“Race and history of immigration are an essential part of this story,” Reiss said.

Reiss used examples from the late 1800s, early 1900s and recent times to illustrate the racist and anti-immigrant sentiment behind the rhetoric used to describe those who sell and use drugs.

She said opium was demonized and made illegal because it was used by Chinese immigrants, while the main users of opium at the time were white women who got the drug from their doctor.

She compared this example with the rhetoric used by current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who says the Mexicans that come to the U.S. are rapists and are bringing drugs.

“He’s blaming outsiders, which is typical in the history of drug control,” Reiss said referring to Trump.

Reiss said that many of the laws passed against drugs such as the 1914 Harrison Act were not necessarily prohibition, but more of a way to control certain groups.

“The new drug law effectively meant that primarily middle white class people with access to physician’s prescriptions, medical board licenses, government contracts or pharmaceutical company protection, can relatively end police access to drugs while other’s efforts to acquire drugs for recreational or medicinal purposes became very potentially legally hazardous,” Reiss said.

She said laws like these and the racist attitudes behind their creation and continuity are the roots of modern movements like Black Lives Matter.

Reiss said in her opinion it would be best to legalize all drugs in the U.S.

She reasoned that it would make it safer for anybody who actually wanted to try the drug and the current system has simply not benefited public safety.

Reporting by Dennis Farrell