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Drugs have never been absent from American life, but the type and level of use have varied over time. Legal responses to drugs were profoundly influenced by the evolving interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, which, until the twentieth century, reserved to the states the police powers to regulate the health professions and drug availability. The result was a generally free economy in drugs until late in the nineteenth century when an ineffective patchwork of state antidrug laws were enacted.
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