History Main / GovernmentDrugEnforcement

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

* 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 ''Series/ThePrisoner1967''.
* ''Series/StargateSG1'' has a few examples and variants:
** The Jaffa are kept dependent on the Goa'uld, because they need a larval symbiote to survive past adolescence. Having a symbiote doesn't exactly keep them ''docile'', but it does cause serious logistics problems for rebel Jaffa.
** The government of Pangar doesn't force its citizens to take tretonin, but once someone's taken this cure-all wonder drug, they have to keep taking it every day. And the government is far from happy about being told to stop making and distributing it.
** The Aschen Confederacy sneaks birth control (at a ''minimum'') into the vaccines it provides to newly-joined worlds.

* A book called ''[[https://www.amazon.com/Blitzed-Drugs-Third-Norman-Ohler/dp/1328663795 Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich]]'' was released in German in 2015 and translated into English in 2017, and it details how the government of UsefulNotes/NaziGermany used to require their soldiers to take methamphetamines (then called Pervitin). The drugs enabled the Wehrmacht to go [[AddictionPowered days without rest]] and helped make the Blitzkrieg possible. And if that wasn't enough, Pervitin was sold over the counter and large swaths of Germans were {{Functional Addict}}s -- the drug was even advertised the same way antidepressants are today. Some physicians and scientists tried to publicize the negative side effects of so much meth, [[GovernmentConspiracy but that information was suppressed]].

In many {{Dystopia}}n settings, TheGovernment forces everyone to take psychoactive drugs. Maybe it's to keep them [[BreadAndCircuses peaceful and non-aggressive so they don't hurt each other]] (or more cynically, [[TheEvilsOfFreeWill to keep them too mellow and torpid to have the energy and desire to revolt]]). Maybe it's birth control pills to keep the population in check. Maybe it's outright MindControl. Maybe it's SuperSerum to keep their SuperSoldiers, well, super. But those who refuse to take the drugs are put into prison, or [[FateWorseThanDeath worse]]. Or perhaps it's just strongly encouraged to take the drugs, with only outright troublemakers forced to take the drugs whether they like it or not.

* ''Series/{{Sliders}}'' "Just Say Yes" -- On one of the PlanetOfHats alternate worlds they visit, the U.S. government mandates drug use, and the alternate Quinn Mallory is a leader of the anti-drug resistance. The [[ForWantOfANail reason for this]] was UsefulNotes/SigmundFreud accidentally discovering the pharmaceutical properties of lithium, which he so enjoyed that he became a biochemist instead of a psychologist. All people (in the US, at least) have implants in their arms that allow for direct intravenous injections without risk of infection. Using syringes is seen as barbaric. The police make sure everyone stays tranquil and happy. If someone acts out, they shoot them... with a narcotic dart.

** The CIA definitely did work with a lot of shady people back in the 'We don't care what you do as long as you aren't Communist' days, including some in Latin America who were into cocaine trafficking, most famously the [=CONTRAs=] in UsefulNotes/{{Nicaragua}} and the Noriega regime in UsefulNotes/{{Panama}} but quite a few other groups too. To exactly what extent they were directly complicit in that side of the business is unlikely ever to be clear. On the one hand, we know that the CIA didn't have a major problem with just paradropping guns and cash to people they were supporting, but on the flip side, it's hard to imagine that they were providing intelligence on their new friends to customs or the FBI.
** The other half of that story that probably isn't true is that the CIA were not only directly involved in importing cocaine to the US, but that they were also behind the introduction of crack to US cities. This springs from Senate findings in the late '80s that the CIA had knowingly worked with drug traffickers, causing people to draw their own conclusions as crack arrived on US streets. Some versions say that they were doing so to secretly fund the fight against communism, essentially co-opting the South American drug pipeline and redirecting the profits to things they couldn't do on the books. It's a reasonable(ish) theory, given that the CIA were already assassinating people and god knows what else; the mind boggles at what they couldn't get funding to do. Other versions of the story say that introducing crack was an assault on the urban poor and the black population in particular, but nobody seems to agree on exactly why the CIA would be interested in doing that, although social engineering, mind control, and just keeping the black man down have all been suggested. Perhaps the most logical theory goes that, rightly or not, the CIA saw a politically mobilized black community as being, or at least having the potential to become, a homegrown version of the left-wing militants they went to South America to fight in the first place. It wouldn't be the first time anybody's attempted genocide [[IDidWhatIHadToDo for fear of their country turning into a war zone]]. The link between the two may well exist (it's been seriously suggested that a sudden influx of CONTRA cocaine was what fueled the crack epidemic as a result of the CIA giving them a hand), but there is no evidence that the CIA actually had a hand in it.

* The two Opium Wars (1839-1842, 1856-1860) that the British and French fought with Qing China can be considered as manifestations of this. In the 18th and 19th Century, European and American appetite for Chinese goods grew insatiable, especially for tea, silk, and porcelain, but the Chinese bought almost nothing in return, only taking silver for payment. The constant drain of East India Company silver into China was seriously affecting the company's finances, so the company finally took note of the only major good that southern Chinese traders bought from Malacca (where Indian Muslim traders had shipped it from Bengal) and shipped back to mainland China: opium. Opium was grown domestically in the foothills of the Himalayas, but much like Chinese tobacco Chinese opium was also regarded as inferior and low-class - whether due to soil quality or the breeds imported, who knows. 'Luxury-quality' imported opium and tobacco made its way into the Chinese interior via a mindbogglingly complex network of middlemen and smugglers because the Qing government (notorious hedonism-haters) had banned both as soon as they heard about them. When the Qing government tried to crack down onopium (most notably when Lin Zexu, the Governor of the Canton district, confiscated and burned about 1.2 thousand tons of opium without compensation on the beaches of Humen in 1839), the British and French curb-stomped them in two hilariously lop-sided wars to keep the opium trade open, gaining the concession of Hong Kong and Shanghai as ports for off-loading of opium and forcing the Qing to adopt a European-style laissez-faire attitude to all drug use (most European countries not banning domestic recreational drug use until the early-to-mid 20th century). China didn't curb back opium use until the 1950s, five wars and two regime changes later - though the trade had dried up as early as the 1890s as cheap domestic production (chiefly in Sichuan province) made it unprofitable. And as anyone who's been there can tell you, they still love their tobacco.
* Amusingly, during the UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar three Guomindang-aligned warlord-run regional governments ran official provincial drug monopolies and the other five tried to crack down on the trade (or was it the other way around?). This was because the Guomindang had teetered on the edge of total bankruptcy for about two years (1940-42) as the Soviets withdrew their economic and military aid, forcing them to basically give up all the taxation and administration and conscription duties to the provincial warlords in order to cut their spending (this resulting in dramatically increased taxation and corruption). This desperate measure allowed them to survive for a time, but would have resulted in total collapse by the end of 1943 if it weren't for barely-adequate American loans which kept the central government afloat until the war's end.
* This trope led to at least two epidemic diseases in human history to go extinct. Small pox used to ravage cities. Now it can only be found in laboratories and in vaccines. Leading to [[UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheories speculation about AIDS having been created in government labs as a replacement for smallpox]] and nefariously introduced to Africa/bath-houses in San Francisco as a means of eliminating black people/sinful promiscuous gays.

In many {{Dystopia}}n settings, TheGovernment forces everyone to take psychoactive drugs. Maybe it's to keep them [[BreadAndCircuses peaceful and non-aggressive so they don't hurt each other]] (or more cynically, [[TheEvilsOfFreeWill to keep them too mellow and torpid to have the energy and desire to revolt]]). Maybe it's birth control pills to keep the population in check. Maybe it's outright MindControl. Maybe it's SuperSerum to keep their Supersoldiers, well, super. But those who refuse to take the drugs are put into prison, or [[FateWorseThanDeath worse]]. Or perhaps it's just strongly encouraged to take the drugs, with only outright troublemakers forced to take the drugs whether they like it or not.

* Several episodes of ''Series/TheTwilightZone'' and ''Series/TheOuterLimits1963''. In the TZ episode "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You" this is combined with not-officially-compulsory-but-strongly-encouraged plastic surgery.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Quarantine}}'', [[MegaCorp Omnicorp]] traps the population of Kemo City inside and injects a drug called Hydregine into the water supply, in the hopes of calming everyone down and suppress criminal thoughts. The complete opposite takes place, naturally, and the player character has to fight off these victims while also ferrying innocent civilians around town long enough to escape.

* ''Film/{{Serenity}}'' -- [[spoiler:The Alliance dispersed G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate, a drug designed to reduce aggression, into the atmosphere of the planet Miranda. [[GoneHorriblyRight Ninety-nine point nine percent of the population became so docile that they lay down and let themselves starve to death]], and one tenth of a percent become the [[AlwaysChaoticEvil maniacal, cannibalistic Reavers]]]]. Oops.

** Elsewhere in the Pessimal Discworld, the Assassins' Guild School makes it ''compulsory'' for students in the last years of training on the Black to take drugs. There is a dark reasoning behind this. Trainee Assassins are made to take intense training under the influence of stimulant drugs so that they can recognise, under safe supervision, that while amphetamines can coax new reserves of strength and alertness out of a body, they can also affect the mind - often in ways that encourage the primal Assassin failing of ''overconfidence''. And then, as the Guild intends, the subject has the awful experience of coming down afterwards. Thus acting as a deterrent to going out and doing it again. After the experience of two graduates whilst touring Klatch, the Guild is now trialling the exposure of selected students to ''bhong''. again this is designed to point out to the Assassin that stealthily entering the client's bedroom at night and forgetting why you came in, or else aborting a mission to detour to the client's kitchen to answer a craving for munchies, or else sitting down to groove and giggle at the interesting play of light and shadow on the blade of your killing knife, is not a bright thing to do on a mission and explains why the Hashishim of Klatch aren't as invincible as they think they are. With a more socially available drug - alcohol - the housemistress of a residential girls' House does not apply censure when a teenage girl gets drunk. She accepts that teenage girls will do this, and you're back, so no harm done... the next morning she ensures the girl involved gets the greaiest possible fried breakfast, at a time when she feels most fragile and delicate. Just to make the point.

* A ''Literature/GoodOmens'' fic by Creator/AAPessimal, in which the angel and the demon seek to spread the word through rock and pop music, had to be taken down from FFN as it contravened the "[[RealPersonFic no real people]]" rule. Not being able to work out how to do it ''without'' referring to real people, the story ''All The Best tunes?'' [[http://archiveofourown.org/works/769628/chapters/1444071 was migrated to A03]]. A sub-plot (in a tale where the association of rock music and mind-enhancing substances is freely referred to) deals with Pestilence making one last disease before retiring; he, his sucessor Pollution, and War conspire in the most effective way to introduce AIDS to the world. War points out that if everyone ''thinks'' the US Gov't created it in a lab somewhere and are wantonly dumping it in various countries around the world, it will enhance the levels of suspicion and mutual hatred sloshing around, in a way most suited to her purposes. Crowley is suitably appalled.

* The {{CIA}} thing mentioned up in the music section is best split into a few parts:

* ''Fanfic/EmpathTheLuckiestSmurf'' -- Empath mentions in "Smurfnip Madness" that all Psyches in Psychelia are required to take a drug called psychelium, which inhibits their ability to express emotions.

* 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 ''Series/ThePrisoner''.

** [[FalseReassurance He's a Doctor, a Government Official and he has a big smile on his face]] [[https://cdn4.dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/whf03first1280-1444956715605_1280w.jpg how can you not trust someone like that?]]

* A book called ''[[https://www.amazon.com/Blitzed-Drugs-Third-Norman-Ohler/dp/1328663795 Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich]]'' was released in German in 2015 and translated into English in 2017, and it details how the government of /NaziGermany used to require their soldiers to take methamphetamines (then called Pervitin). The drugs enabled the Wehrmacht to go [[AddictionPowered days without rest]] and helped make the Blitzkrieg possible. And if that wasn't enough, Pervitin was sold over the counter and large swaths of Germans were {{Functional Addict}}s -- the drug was even advertised the same way antidepressants are today. Some physicians and scientists tried to publicize the negative side effects of so much meth, [[GovernmentConspiracy but that information was suppressed]].

* In ''Literature/TheGiver'', aside from the usual birth control pills, people are given painkillers for every little hurt, to keep them from feeling even that most basic of emotions, pain. The mandatory pills also remove "stirrings," or sexual desire. Jonas is put on the pills soon after he has his first EroticDream about Fiona, a female friend.

* All of the teenagers in Springwood take hypnocil whether they know it or not in ''Film/FreddyVsJason''.

* ''VideoGame/{{Half-Life 2}}'': "Don't drink the water. They put something in it, to make you forget."

** In the pilot, the Federation's food and water supplies are laced with "emotional suppressants." The rebel approaching Blake insists he eat or drink nothing for three days to get them out of his system.
** The [[ReligionOfEvil cult on Cygnus Alpha]] used a fake medicine against a supposed horrific plague (actually a minor environmental poison that cleared itself within days) in place of communion wafers, to keep the cultists in line.
** In Season 4, the Federation is able to reconquer their VestigialEmpire thanks to a drug called Pylene-50 that blocks the production of adrenaline.

* Creator/JonathanLethem's ''Gun, with Occasional Music'', a futuristic FilmNoir-style story, tells us about a world where the population takes a variety of state-supplied drugs like Forgetol, Acceptol and Regretol (collectively called "Make") to get them through the day. Originally, there were many different varieties of drugs that produced pleasurable effects; which individuals could blend as they wanted. Their use was optional, not mandatory. After [[TimeSkip six years in cryogenic sleep]], the protagonist wakes up to a world in which the government mandated the use of a single drug, which dulled the mind and disrupted memory.

* Since the 1.5 update of ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'', you may decide to drug one or more species to the gills, maximizing their happiness but making them pretty much useless for any job. Perfect for a decadent master race relying on its slaves to do the real work!