"Selling drugs" as a crime has ALWAYS been about race:
One source of tensions in the western and southwestern states was the influx of Mexicans to the U.S. following the 1910 Mexican Revolution.[22]Many Mexicans also smoked marijuana to relax after working in the fields.[23] It was also seen as a cheaper alternative to alcohol, due to Prohibition (which went into effect nationally in 1920).[24] Later in the 1920s, negative tensions grew between the small farms and the large farms that used cheaper Mexican labor. Shortly afterwards, the Great Depression came which increased tensions as jobs and resources became more scarce. Because of that, the passage of the initial laws is often described as a product of racism, yet the use of hashish by Near Eastern immigrants was also cited, as well as the misuse of pharmaceutical hemp, and the laws conformed with other legislation that was being passed around the country. Mexico itself had passed prohibition in 1925, following the International Opium Convention (see below).[25]