History Main / GovernmentDrugEnforcement

* ''{{Film.Serenity}}''. [[spoiler:The Alliance put a drug called Pax in the air processors of the planet Miranda, causing 99.9 percent of the population to lie down and die, and .1 percent to become the [[AlwaysChaoticEvil maniacal, cannibalistic Reavers]]]]. Oops.

* The Holy Empire of Britannia from the ''CodeGeass'' universe illegaly sell a drug called Refrain, to the "numbers" (people from the Britannia's conquered countries who refuse to take a britannian citizenship), the drug is extremely addictive and has hallucinogenic properties that induce flashbacks in the user, that's why the drug is so popular between the people that have lived before Britannia's control. Britannia sell the drug for the profits and in order to keep the numbers controlled.

* The Holy Empire of Britannia from the CodeGeass universe illegaly sell a drug called Refrain, to the "numbers" (people from the Britannia's conquered countries who refuse to take a britannian citizenship), the drug is extremely addictive and has hallucinogenic properties that induce flashbacks in the user, that's why the drug is so popular between the people that have lived before Britannia's control. Britannia sell the drug for the profits and in order to keep the numbers controlled.

* In the GreenSkyTrilogy, the Wissenberry is considered sacred and given out freely among the Kindar population to abate any kind of physical or "mind" pain. Teachers even pass them out in school to keep the children calm and compliant. (Snyder was a teacher, and the school system drugging unruly students is OlderThanTheyThink). Raamo's [[IllGirl eight-year-old sister is "wasting" to death]] due to her addiction to the Berries. Widespread addiction in the population is also cited as one of the symptoms of the society itself being ill. To a lesser extent, birth control wafers are passed out among Kindar from the ages of 13-25 so that the youth can obstensibly concentrate on their apprenticeships. Ol-Zhaan, however, are forbidden families of their own.

* In PiersAnthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant: Executive, the eponymous Space Tyrant puts birth control in the drinking water, and demands any country that receives foreign aid do the same. He also allows euthanasia pills to the suicidal.

* LarryNiven's Known Space in the early period, where birth control was mandatory, anti-paranoid drugs were mandatory for those diagnosed with it, and by the time of the 1st Man-Kzin War thinking of a violent act was a psychological disorder (treated by drugs). In later works (Beowulf Schaefer/Louis Wu era), the cops were taking drugs to CAUSE paranoia!

* ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' - The Initiative, an undercover demon hunting operation bent on creating a BiologicalMashUp of demon/human/cybernetic parts, secretly feeds its very human agents with performancew enhancing drugs. Expect usual withdrawal symptoms

** The movie ''Star Trek: Insurrection'' features the alien Son'a, who want to take over a peaceful planet in order to use its naturally-occurring radiation as a mandatory life-extending drug for their own population.

* At any given moment in the Village, the water, the food, and even the air may be spiked to make you more comfortable. Constant drugging is all part of being in ThePrisoner.

* Dead Kennedy's Kinky Sex Makes The World Go Round.
Now don't worry about demonstrations-just pump up your drug supply.
So many people have hooked themselves on heroin
and amphetamines since we took over, it's just like Vietnam.

* A fantasy-world version appears in the early D&D adventure "B4: The Lost City", in which the [[ReligionOfEvil corrupt priests]] of [[EldritchAbomination Zargon]] have gotten most of the population of [[HiddenElfVillage Cynidecia]] addicted to an unspecified cocktail of drugs. Presumably this makes it easier to control the masses, and/or to convince them to worship a deity as grotesque as Zargon.

* In one Futurama episode featuring Blurnsball (a HIGHLY modified game of baseball), prof. Farnsworth revealed that for the past few centuries professional athletes are required to take steroids.
* The "Genetic Enabling Factor" given to the [[ArtificialHuman Supertroopers]] in GalaxyRangers. The youngest of the 'Troopers [[TheLancer (who becomes the show's Lancer)]] refuses to take his dose. [[DaChief Walsh]] is about to order Shane to take the stuff, but [[MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate Nagata proposes using him as a control instead]]. Shane's refusal to take the drugs may have helped him remain sane when [[CorruptBureaucrat Senator Wheiner]] doesed the 'troopers with PsychoSerum.

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* ''{{DragonAge}}'' contains an unusual example of ''church'' Drug Enforcement. The Chantry deliberately makes Templar recruits addicted to [[FantasticDrug lyrium]] - partly as a SuperSerum, but your Templar party member [[DeadpanSnarker Alistair]] suspects it's a means of controlling them (since they need to get their supply from the Chantry).

* ''StarshipTroopers'' -- Future soldiers in an endless BugWar are allowed otherwise-illegal drugs, including time-released cocaine, to keep them awake and alert during prolonged engagements.

* With [[{{Propaganda}} posters]] directing the populace to drink multiple bottles each day, only the most GenreBlind PlayerCharacter wouldn't see this coming: in the [[{{Dystopia}} Praetoria]] setting of ''[[CityOfHeroes City of Heroes]]'', "Enriche" subtly makes [[GullibleLemmings those that drink it]] more suceptible to MindControl. However, it's filled from the same pipes as [[ParanoiaFuel the city's water supply]]. Are ''you'' drinking enough, Citizen? More importantly, how could you ''not''?

* A fantasy-world version appears in the early D&D adventure "B4: The Lost City", in which the corrupt priests of [[EldritchAbomination Zargon]] have gotten most of the population of [[HiddenElfVillage Cynedicia]] addicted to an unspecified cocktail of drugs. Presumably this makes it easier to control the masses, and/or to convince them to worship a deity as grotesque as Zargon.

** Not really, Soma just gives pleasure, therefore it's actually desirable, and birth control is not forced, it just runs along the no commitment lifestyle.
*** It's not "forced" in the usual sense, but everyone is trained from infancy (arguably to the point of [[{{Brainwashed}} brainwashing]]) to routinely take the drugs.
** Should it be mentioned that Soma is also the trade name of the muscle relaxant [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carisoprodol Carisoprodol?]]
** It should be also mentioned that soma was [[OlderThanYouThink a (presumably) psychoactive drink considered by early Indo-Iranian cultures as divine]].
*** Considering Huxley was obsessed with Hinduism, it's a ShoutOut.

* In ''TheChroniclesOfNarnia'', the Queen of Underland's {{brainwash}}ing procedure involves burning a green incense that dulls your thinking and gives you a pleasant drowsy feeling.

** In ''[[StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'', the Jem Ha'dar are kept under control by the Founders with their genetic addiction to Ketracel White, sort of a combination narcotic and nutrient supplement.

**** It's less forced drugs (and more real food) but you can always take more drugs

* ''[[{{Firefly}} Serenity]]''. The Alliance put a drug called Pax in the air processors of the planet [[spoiler:Miranda]], causing [[spoiler:99.9 percent of the population to lie down and die, and .1 percent to become the [[AlwaysChaoticEvil maniacal, cannibalistic Reavers]]]]. Oops.

* The Reveal of [[StanislawLem ''The Futurological Congress'']] is that [[spoiler: a conspiracy of scientists is pumping colossal amounts of hallucinogens into the atmosphere so that humanity doesn't realize how utterly, utterly [[CrapsackWorld awful]] reality is...]]

[[folder:Real Life/Truth In Television]]
* Floride is added to the water in a lot of places. The government is forcing you to have healthy teeth, whether you want them or not!
* Alan Turing, inventor of the modern computer, was chemically castrated to "cure" his then-illegal homosexuality. He committed suicide in 1954.
* In 1996 the ''San Jose Mercury News'' printed stories by reporter Gary Webb stating that the CIA had flown illegal drugs into the country in the 1980s and sold them to Los Angeles street gangs, using the profits to fund counter-insurgency efforts in South America. Hit with an enormous backlash from the government and the rest of the national media, the paper's publisher recanted and said Webb had been wrong; Webb himself never backed down from his allegations. They have since been confirmed from [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Alliance numerous official and unofficial sources]].
* An Egyptian news outlet once blamed the country's supposed increase in teenage and young adult sexual activity on an alleged Israeli-produced chewing gum laced with an aphrodisiac.
* One often sees stories coming out of Islamic Africa claiming that AIDS was created by the US and/or Israeli governments to decimate the black African or Islamic population, or that AIDS drugs or the condoms used to prevent the spread of AIDS are part of a vicious American or Jewish plot to reduce the black African or Islamic population by making men infertile. It has become increasingly clear in recent years that this not a fringe conspiracy theory, but the mainstream belief.
* In theocratic post-revolutionary Iran, official government propaganda claimed that heroin abuse by Iranian citizens was caused by a joint conspiracy between the USA and USSR to destroy the country.
* In an interview on ''Henry Rollins Show'', SamuelLJackson claimed that in the 70's, the psychedelic drugs disappeared from the streets of Atlanta and were replaced by heroin. He didn't outright say it, but it seems like he thought the feds were behind it.
** As noted above re: similar ideas in the movie ''Panther'', [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Alliance he may have a point.]]
** Dealers have an incentive to focus on cocaine and heroin: the profit margin is tremendous. Marijuana is bulky and has a distinctive odor: therefore more difficult to smuggle. LSD and other psychedelics are harder to come by, perhaps because: most have no organic source, there are legal barriers to buying precursor chemicals, and the laboratory synthesis is often difficult.
* Paul R. Ehrlich (author of ''The Population Bomb'') recommended that food aid to third world countries be laced with anti-fertility drugs.
* In Britain in the fifties, bromide was supposedly put in the water in various offices, or given to soldiers, in order to lower their sex drive. Don't know if this is an UrbanLegend or not though.
** Spike Milligan's take on this was that the only way bromide would have this effect on the British soldier would be if it was loaded into an artillery shell and fired just under the serviceman's waist.
** Similar legends about "saltpeter" in the food were common in the U.S. military. It's likely that this tale was popular because of the very real deadening of sex drive that comes from exertion and stress (in any case, potassium nitrate has no such effect).
** Military personnel are ordered to take pyridostigmine bromide, aka the Nerve Agent Pretreatment Set (NAPS), in a combat theatre where they might be exposed to nerve agents. Rather than lowering your sex drive, many personnel who have taken them report having extremely vivid erotic dreams.
* More of a government-sanctioned drug enforcement, during the 18th and 19th century there was a massive demand in Europe and America for Chinese goods like silk, tea and such but there was zero demand in China for Western goods. The East India Company finally hit on opium as a trade good and quickly a sizable chunk of China (about 27% of the Chinese population were estimated to be addicted and everyone else who can afford it dabbled in it, consuming 90% of the global opium production) was hooked. When ImperialChina woke up one day and suddenly realized all of their best stuff was gone and tried to impose a prohibition, the British government went to war with and crushed the Chinese army twice to protect their opium interests (that was how Hong Kong become a British colony). The country did not get around to fully detoxing itself until the 1950s.
* The idea of the government lacing a city and/or country's water supply with psychedelic chemicals - usually LSD - has been a popular element in conspiracy theory and urban legend for years. The CIA did apparently investigate the possibility starting in the mid 1950's, but every scientist they asked rejected the idea as being impractical or downright impossible on any large scale. Examining the persistence of the "LSD in the water" myth, The Fortean Times calculated roughly how much LSD one would actually need: 1kg of LSD for every million gallons in a reservoir. So for a city the size of Birmingham, one would require about 26 tons of LSD. Multiple dedicated LSD factories couldn't produce a fraction of that in years; and then there's the problem of how you transport it to the reservoir and get it in the water, to say nothing of the fact that most of that water won't actually be drunk neat...
* [[PathOfInspiration Scientologists]] accuse psychiatrists of wanting to do this to everyone.
* On the "keeping supersoldiers super" aspect, the U.S. and probably many other militaries often require or encourage their members to take drugs, usually to increase alertness. This was put under review after an air force pilot hopped up on amphetamines fired on Canadian troops in Afghanistan.
* A small-scale form of this was [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA Project MKULTRA]], in which the CIA tried to figure out how to do mind control, typically with drugs--and often without the subjects' knowledge or consent. The only drug that proved to be of any use in getting people to do things they wouldn't otherwise was marijuana, and even then it wasn't the CIA that proved that but the FBI (on some gangster who gave up details of a planned heist while high), and it eventually proved little more useful than [[InVinoVeritas just getting people drunk]].
** As for the rest of MKULTRA, it didn't just fail--it backfired. Far from controlling minds, it created quite a few rebels, such as:
*** Ken Kesey, who came into Stanford a clean-cut, All-American jock (he played football in high school). Then MKULTRA came looking for test subjects, and (since it was a paid job), Kesey volunteered. They gave him LSD, and let's just say that [[OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest his career was never]] [[TheElectricKoolAidAcidTest quite the same again]].
*** Robert Hunter, another relatively normal American college kid, has a story similar to Kesey's, except that instead of literature he went into music. After being given LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin (i.e. 'shrooms), he became a lyricist for the GratefulDead (Jerry Garcia was an old friend of his). SoYeah.
** The long and short of it, the CIA tried to do mind control, but ended up being partially responsible for the Counterculture. What have we learned today, gentlemen?

[[/folder]]

** Sadly, there is hard evidence of the CIA link-while they did not invent and traffic cocaine, their allies the Contras did. The CIA covered it up, going so far as to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Alliance tip off Contra traffickers about impending DEA raids]].

* The Reveal of ''The Futurological Congress'' is that [[spoiler: a conspiracy of scientists is pumping colossal amounts of hallucinogens into the atmosphere so that humanity doesn't realize how utterly, utterly [[CrapsackWorld awful]] reality is...]]