Cohen supports this thesis when he writes that “At the root of the drug prohibition movement in the United States is race, the driving force behind the first laws criminalizing the use of drugs” (p. 56). Cohen explains how Southern progressives used image and narrative to target African Americans as criminal public threats. White employers in 1880s New Orleans provided cocaine as a stimulant to African American dockworkers to help them endure the extreme strain and long hours of loading and unloading ships (p. 70). Cocaine spread through the South to the agricultural working class, and use of the drug steadily increased as African Americans discovered that they could work longer hours and earn more money (Cohen, p. 70). Eventually, African Americans began using cocaine recreationally, which fueled the production by reformers and white supremacists of "pornographic nightmares of black men raping white women...medical journals reported the 'Negro menace of cocaine '...newspapers published reports of the use of cocaine "by the lowest, most criminal and depraved portion of the population of any city'"... the physician Edward Huntington Williams warned that cocaine "makes anyone he uses immune to shock"... the cops declared, "the cocaine nigger sure is hard to kill", to perpetuate "the myth that the system's primary function is to keep our streets and homes safe , rooting out dangerous criminals and punishing them" (Cohen, pp.. 72-3;