In today’s society, we increasingly encounter the stigmatization of people who use psychoactive substances. As Jakub Popík—a human-rights and drug-policy expert at the Sociological Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and a member of the Scientific Board of the Institute for the Mental Health and Addiction Studies—notes, stigmatizing drug users has historically been an effective tool in political warfare, with profound societal repercussions.
Historical Roots of Stigmatization
“Discourse was the greatest driver of changes in drug policy,” explains Popík. Systematic regulation of addictive substances began in 1914, when the U.S. enacted the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act—the first attempt to regulate cocaine and heroin in the American market. This law was preceded by sensationalist media campaigns with headlines like Negro Cocaine Fiends and New South American Madness
Popík points out that respected outlets such as The New York Times framed drug use in moralistic terms: the word “fiend” conjures demons and absolute evil, equating marginalized groups with moral corruption. That discourse laid the groundwork for justifying public policies and social controls, including lynching in the early twentieth century.
The War on Drugs as a Political Tool
The stigmatizing narrative continued in Richard Nixon’s speeches that launched the so-called War on Drugs. According to Popík, Nixon used this rhetoric to discredit his political opponents—especially the anti-Vietnam-War hippie movement—calling them “bums,” accusing them of communist and anarchist sympathies, and blaming them for undermining traditional American values.
This moralistic view of drugs found its way into international treaties. The 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs opens its preamble by referring to the “duty to prevent and combat this evil.” As Popík observes, “We had effectively moralized drugs and their use. The discourse rests not on empirical science but on deontological grounds—dividing people by moral hierarchies rather than evidence.”
Profiling Minorities and Social Control
The stigmatizing narrative persists into the twenty-first century in policies like stop-and-frisk, which intensified after 2010. “We know that 55 % of New Yorkers were stopped, yet 84 % of those stops targeted minorities,” Popík highlights.
Although drug-use rates are roughly equal across racial groups, African Americans were up to 264 times more likely to be arrested in such interventions. Even the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration admitted in its museum exhibit that these policies were rooted in class and racial prejudices, using criminalization to control minorities.
Extreme Cases of Stigmatization
Popík traces the peak of this moralistic, us-versus-them rhetoric to Rodrigo Duterte’s 2016 presidential campaign in the Philippines. On his incendiary Facebook posts, Duterte vowed to kill as many people as needed to end the drug trade. The result was state-sanctioned killings and vigilante violence—ordinary citizens taking “justice” into their own hands, convinced that drug users must be eradicated from society. Human-rights estimates suggest up to 30,000 people may have been killed during Duterte’s tenure. Popík welcomes the recent arrest warrant issued for Duterte as the first sign that such rights violations may finally be punished, marking a potential shift away from impunity in global drug-policy enforcement.
Contemporary Uses of the Stigmatizing Narrative
According to Popík, that same moral-evil framing appears in today’s international conflicts. At the outset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin labeled Ukrainian defenders “Nazis and drug addicts,” a narrative later echoed in propaganda and by fringe media in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Popík also notes that Trump invoked the War on Drugs narrative in trade disputes with Canada and Mexico over fentanyl imports.
Slovak Experience and Shifting Public Opinion
In the 1990s, Bratislava became a major European heroin hub, producing a public-health crisis that persists in addiction-treatment statistics today. That climate of fear fueled draconian legislation: ministers spread warnings that marijuana was a “gateway” drug, leading to Slovakia’s “harshest ever” criminal-penalty increases, which remained in force for fifteen years.
A turning point came in 2019–2020 when media coverage of extreme sentences—such as Robert Čunko’s 16-year term (plus asset forfeiture) for a second offense of 7.7 g of cannabis—led public support for reducing marijuana penalties to plummet to just 36 %. President Zuzana Čaputová later granted six pardons for so-called “cannabis verdicts,” signaling her opposition to punitive laws. Another case, that of CBD-oil grower Jozef Šipoš (sentenced to seven years), further ignited debate. As a result, over 60 % of Slovaks now favor reducing or abolishing harsh marijuana sentences, prompting some political parties to adopt reform agendas.
Popík’s analysis shows that drug-user stigmatization has deep historical roots and remains a potent political weapon. Yet growing awareness of its injustices—and shifts in public opinion—offer hope for more humane, evidence-based drug policies that eschew moral judgment in favor of science and compassion.