Brief History of Drug Use and Control
Don Steiny
This is a history of drug use/prohibition based on the Appendix of
*Ceremonial Chemistry* by Thomas Szasz. The book is published
by "Doubleday/Anchor" Garden City, New York, 1975. I included his
references. I have added several items of interest and I have deleted
some things I did not feel were relevant (Szasz documents the parallel
course of relgious history). All unattributed items (no footnote)
are from the book.
Please forgive typos. It is fairly long and I cannot spend
too much time on it being as I have to earn a living.
My impression as I collected this and typed it in is that it has
all been done before. The panic, the draconian solutions, and the ultimate
ineffectuality of the solutions. Even Russia, the most oppressive state
in history, has considerable drug use.
Some of the people that support the war on drugs are acting under
the assumption that laws against drug use somehow restrict their use.
This is absurd. If we give up rights, like the right to buy anything
we want, the rights are gone. If there is a good reason, e.g., I am
happy to give up my right to murder people in exchange for not being murdered
myself, it might be worthwhile. However, history tells us that were to
accept the level of repression and state control that exists in the modern
day USSR, we would still have a drug problem. All that would have happened
is that we would have given up our other rights.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
c. 5000 B.C. The Sumerians use opium, suggested by the fact that
they have an ideogram for it which has been translated
as HUL, meaning "joy" or "rejoicing." [Alfred R. Lindensmith,
*Addiction and Opiates.* p. 207]
c. 3500 B.C. Earlist historical record of the production of alcohol:
the description of a brewery in an an Egyptian papyrus.
[Joel Fort, *The Pleasure Seekers*, p. 14]
c. 3000 B.C. Approximate date of the supposed origin of the use of
tea in China.
c. 2500 B.C. Earlist historical evidence of the eating of poppy seeds
among the Lake Dwellers on Switzerland. [Ashley Montagu,
The long search for euphoria, *Refelections*, 1:62-69
(May-June), 1966; p. 66]
c. 2000 B.C. Earliest record of prohibitionist teaching, by an
Egyptian priest, who writes to his pupil: "I, thy
superior, forbid thee to go to the taverns. Thou
art degraded like beasts." [W.F. Crafts *et al*.,
*Intoxicating Drinks and Drugs*, p. 5]
c. 350 B.C. Proverbs, 31:6-7: "Give strong drink to him
who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress;
let them drink and forget their poverty, and remember
their misery no more."
c. 300 B.C. Theophrastus (371-287 B.C.), Greek naturalist and philosopher,
records what has remained as the earlies undisputed
reference to the use of poppy juice.
c. 250 B.C. Psalms, 104:14-15: "Thou dost cause grass to grow for the
cattle and plants for man to cultivate, that he may
bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden
the heart of man.
350 A.D. Earliest mention of tea, in a Chinese dictionary.
4th century St. John Chrysostom (345-407), Bishop of Constantinople:
"I hear man cry, 'Would there be no wine! O folly! O
madness!' Is it wine that causes this abuse? No, for
if you say, 'Would there were no light!' because of
the informers, and would there were no women because
of adultery." [Quoted in Berton Roueche, *The Neutral
Spirit*, pp. 150-151]
c. 450 Babylonian Talmud: "Wine is at the head of all medicines;
where wine is lacking, drugs are necessary." [Quoted in
Burton Stevenson (Ed.), *The Macmillan Book of Proverbs*,
p. 21]
c. 1000 Opium is widely used in China and the far East. [Alfred
A. Lindensmith, *The Addict and the Law*, p. 194]
1493 The use of tobacco is introduced into Europe by
Columbus and his crew returning from America.
c. 1500 According to J.D. Rolleston, a British medical
historian, a medieval Russian cure for drunkenness
consisted in "taking a piece of pork, putting it
secretly in a Jew's bed for nine days, and then giving
it to the drunkard in a pulverized form, who will turn
away from drinking as a Jew would from pork." [Quoted in
Roueche, op. cit. p. 144]
c. 1525 Paracelsus (1490-1541) introduces laudanum, or tincture
of opium, into the practice of medicine.
1600 Shakespeare: "Falstaff. . . . If I had a thousand sons
the / first human principle I would teach them should /
be, to foreswear thin portion and to addict themselves
to sack." ("Sack" is an obsolete term for "sweet wine"
like sherry). [William Shakespear, *Second Part of King
Henry the Forth*, Act IV, Scene III, lines 133-136]
17th century The prince of the petty state of Waldeck pays ten thalers
to anyone who denounces a coffee drinker. [Griffith Edwards,
Psychoactive substances, *The Listener*, March 23, 1972,
pp. 360-363; p.361]
17th century In Russia, Czar Michael Federovitch executes anyone
on whom tobacco is found. "Czar Alexei Mikhailovitch
rules that anyone caught with tobacco should be
tortured until he gave up the name of the supplier."
[Ibid.]
1613 John Rolf, the husband of the Indian princess Pocahontas,
sends the first shipment of Virginia tobacco from
Jamestown to England.
c. 1650 The use of tobacco is prohibited in Bavaria, Saxony,
and in Zurich, but the prohibitions are ineffective.
Sultan Murad IV of the Ottoman Empire decrees the
death penalty for smoking tobacco: "Whereever there
Sultan went on his travels or on a military expedition
his halting-places were always distinguished by a
terrible rise in executions. Even on the battlefield
he was fond of surprising men in the act of smoking,
when he would punish them by beheading, hanging, quartering
or crushing their hands and feed. . . . Nevertheless,
in spite of all the horrors and persecution. . . the
passion for smoking still persisted." [Edward M. Brecher
et al., *Licit and Illicit Drugs*, p. 212]
1680 Thomas Syndenham (1625-80): "Among the remedies which it
has pleased the Almighty God to give to man to relieve his
sufferings, none is so universal and efficacious as opium."
[Quoted in Louis Goodman and Alfred Gilman, *The
Pharmacological Basis of Theraputics*, First Edition (1941),
p. 186]
1690 The "Act for the Encouraging of the Distillation of Brandy
and Spirits from Corn" is enacted in England. [Roueche, op.
cit. p. 27]
1691 In Luneberg, Germany, the penalty for smoking (tobacco)
is death.
1717 Liquor licenses in Middlesex (England) are granted only
to those who "would take oaths of allegiance and of
belief in the King's supremacy over the Church" [G.E.G.
Catlin, *Liquor Control*, p. 14]
1736 The Gin Act (England) is enacted with the avowed object
of making spirits "come so dear to the consumer that the
poor will not be able to launch into excessive use of them."
This effort results in general lawbreaking and fails to
halt the steady rise in the consumption of even legally
produced and sold liquor. [Ibid., p. 15]
1745 The magistrates of one London division demanded that
"publicans and wine-merchants should swear that they
anathematized the doctrine of Transubstantiation."
[Ibid., p. 14]
1762 Thomas Dover, and English physician, introduces his
prescription for a diaphoretic powder," which he
recommends mainly for the treatment of gout. Soon
named "Dover's powder," this compound becomes the most
widely used opium preparation during the next 150 years.
1785 Benjamin Rush publishes his *Inquiry into the Effects
of Ardent Spirits on the Human Body and Mind*; in it,
he calls the intemperate use of distilled spirits a "disease," and estimates the annual rate of death
due to alcoholism in the United States as "not less than
4000 people" in a population then of less than 6 million.
[Quoted in S. S. Rosenberg (Ed.), *Alcohol and Health*,
p. 26]
1789 The first American temperance society is formed in Litchfield,
Connecticut. [Crafts et. al., op. cit., p. 9]
1790 Benjamin Rush persuades his associates at the Philadelphia
College of Physicians to send an appeal to Congress to
"impose such heavy duties upon all distilled spirits as shall
be effective to restrain their intemperate use in the country."
[Quoted in ibid.]
1792 The first prohibitory laws against opium in China are
promulgated. The punishment decreed for keepers of opium
shops is strangulation.
1792 The Whisky Rebellion, a protest by farmers in western
Pennsylvania against a federal tax on liquor, breaks out
and is put down by overwhelming force sent to the area
by George Washington. Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes
"Kubla Khan" while under the influence of opium.
1800 Napoleon's army, returning from Egypt, introduces cannibis
(hashish, marijuana) into France. Avante-garde artists
and writers in Paris develop their own cannabis ritual,
leading, in 1844, to the establishment of *Le Club
de Haschischins.* [William A. Emboden, Jr., Ritual
Use of Cannabis Sativa L.: A historical-ethnographic
survey, in Peter T. Furst (Ed.), *Flesh of the Gods*,
pp. 214-236; pp. 227-228]
1801 On Jefferson's recommendation, the federal duty on liquor
was abolished. [Catlin, op. cit., p. 113]
1804 Thomas Trotter, an Edinburgh physician, publishes *An Essay,
Medical, Philosophical, and Chemical on Drunkenness and Its
Effects on the Human Body*: "In medical language, I consider
drunkenness, strictly speaking, to be a disease, produced by
a remote cause, and giving birth to actions and movements
in the living body that disorder the functions of health. . .
The habit of drunkenness is a disease of the mind." [Quoted
in Roueche, op. cit. pp. 87-88]
1805 Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Serturner, a German chemist, isolates
and describes morphine.
1822 Thomas De Quincey's *Confessions of an English Opium
Eater* is published. He notes that the opium habit,
like any other habit, must be learned: "Making allowance
for constitutional differences, I should say that *in
less that 120 days* no habit of opium-eating could
be formed strong enough to call for any extraordinary
self-conquest in renouncing it, even suddenly renouncing
it. On Saturday you are an opium eater, on Sunday no longer
such." [Thomas De Quincey, *Confessions of an English Opium
Eater* (1822), p. 143]
1826 The American Society for the Promotion of Temperance is
founded in Boston. By 1833, there are 6,000 local
Temperance societies, with more than one million members.
1839-42 The first Opium War. The British force upon China the
trade in opium, a trade the Chinese had declared illegal..
[Montagu, op. cit. p. 67]
1840 Benjamin Parsons, and English clergyman, declares:
". . . alcohol stands preeminent as a destroyer.
. . . I never knew a person become insane who was not
in the habit of taking a portion of alcohol every day."
Parsons lists forty-two distinct diseases caused by
alcohol, among them inflammation of the brain, scrofula,
mania, dropsy, nephritis, and gout. [Quoted in Roueche,
op. cit. pp. 87-88]
1841 Dr. Jacques Joseph Moreau uses hashish in treatment of mental
patients at the Bicetre.
1842 Abraham Lincoln: "In my judgement, such of us as have never
fallen victims, have been spared more from the absence of
apatite, than from any mental or moral superiority over those
who have. Indeed, I believe, if we take habitual drunkards
as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an
advantageous comparison with those of any other class."
[Abraham Lincoln, Temperance address, in Roy P. Basler
(Ed.), *The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 1,
p. 258]
1844 Cocaine is isolated in its pure form.
1845 A law prohibiting the public sale of liquor is enacted
in New York State. It is repealed in 1847.
1847 The American Medical Association is founded.
1852 Susan B. Anthony establishes the Women's State Temperance
Society of New York, the first such society formed by and
for women. Many of the early feminists, such as Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Abby Kelly, are also
ardent prohibitionists. [Andrew Sinclar, *Era of Excess*,
p. 92]
1852 The American Pharmaceutical Association is founded. The
Association's 1856 Constitution lists one of its goals
as: "To as much as possible restrict the dispensing and sale
of medicines to regularly educated druggests and apothecaries.
[Quoted in David Musto, *The American Disease*, p. 258]
1856 The Second Opium War. The British, with help from the French,
extend their powers to distribute opium in China.
1862 Internal Revenue Act enacted imposing a license fee of twenty
dollars on retail liquor dealers, and a tax of one dollar
a barrel on beer and twenty cents a gallon on spirits.
[Sinclare, op. cit. p 152]
1864 Adolf von Baeyer, a twenty-nine-year-old assistant of
Friedrich August Kekule (the discoverer of the molecular
structure of benzene) in Ghent, synthesizes barbituric acid,
the first barbiturate.
1868 Dr. George Wood, a professor of the theory and practice
of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, president
of the American Philosophical Society, and the author
of a leading American test, *Treatise on Therapeutics*,
describes the pharmacological effects of opium as follows:
"A sensation of fullness is felt in the head, soon to be
followed by a universal feeling of delicious ease and
comfort, with an elevation and expansion of the whole moral
and intellectual nature, which is, I think, the most
characteristic of its effects. . . . It seems to make
the individual, for the time, a better and greater man. . . .
The hallucinations, the delirious imaginations of alcoholic
intoxication, are, in general, quite wanting. Along
with this emotional and intellectual elevation, there is
also increased muscular energy; and the capacity to act,
and to bear fatigue, is greatly augmented. [Quoted in
Musto, op. cit. pp. 71-72]
1869 The Prohibition Party is formed. Gerrit Smith, twice
Abolitionist candidate for President, an associate
of John Brown, and a crusading prohibitionist, declares:
"Our involuntary slaves are set free, but our millions
of voluntary slaves still clang their chains. The lot of
the literal slave, of him whom others have enslaved, is indeed
a hard one; nevertheless, it is a paradise compared
with the lot of him who has enslaved himself to alcohol."
[Quoted in Sinclar, op. cit. pp. 83-84]
1874 The Woman's Christian Temperance Union is founded in Cleveland.
In 1883, Frances Willard a leader of the W.C.T.U. forms the
World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
1882 The law in the United States, and the world, making
"temperance education" a part of the required course in
public schools is enacted. In 1886, Congress makes such
education mandatory in the District of Columbia, and in
territorial, military, and naval schools. By 1900, all the
states have similar laws. [Crafts et. al., op. cit. p. 72]
1882 The Personal Liberty League of the United States is founded
to oppose the increasing momentum of movements for
compulsory abstinence from alcohol. [Catlin, op. cit. p. 114]
1883 Dr. Theodor Aschenbrandt, a German army physician, secures
a supply of pure cocaine from the pharmaceutical firm of
Merck, issues it to Bavarian soldiers during their
maneuvers, and reports on the beneficial effects of the
drug in increasing the soldiers' ability to endure fatigue.
[Brecher et. al. op. cit. p. 272]
1884 Sigmund Freud treats his depression with cocaine, and reports
feeling "exhilaration and lasting euphoria, which is in no
way differs from the normal euphoria of the healthy person. . .
You perceive an increase in self-control and possess more
vitality and capacity for work. . . . In other words, you
are simply more normal, and it is soon hard to believe that
you are under the influence of a drug." [Quoted in Ernest
Jones, *The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 1, p. 82]
1884 Laws are enacted to make anti-alcohol teaching compulsory
in public schools in New York State. The following year
similar laws are passed in Pennsylvania, with other states
soon following suit.
1885 The Report of the Royal Commission on Opium concludes that
opium is more like the Westerner's liquor than a substance
to be feared and abhorred. [Quoted in Musto, op. cit. p. 29]
1889 The John Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore, Maryland, is opened.
One of its world-famous founders, Dr. William Stewart Halsted,
is a morphine addict. He continues to use morphine in large
doses throughout his phenomenally successful surgical career
lasting until his death in 1922.
1894 The Report of the Indian Hemp Drug Comission, running to
over three thousand pages in seven volumes, is published.
This inquiry, commissioned by the British government,
concluded: "There is no evidence of any weight regarding the
mental and moral injuries from the moderate use of these
drugs. .. . . Moderation does not lead to excess in hemp any
more than it does in alcohol. Regular, moderate use of ganja
or bhang produces the same effects as moderate and regular
doses of whiskey." The commission's proposal to tax bhang
is never put into effect, in part, perhaps, because one of
the commissioners, an Indian, cautions that Moslem law and
Hindu custom forbid "taxing anything that gives pleasure
to the poor." [Quoted in Norman Taylor, The pleasant assassin:
The story of marihuana, in David Solomon (Ed.) *The
Marijuana Papers*, pp. 31-47, p. 41]
1894 Norman Kerr, and English physician and president of the
British Society for the study of Inebriety, declares:
"Drunkenness has generally been regarded as . . . a sin
a vice, or a crime. . . [But] there is now a consensus of
intelligent opinion that habitual and periodic drunkenness
is often either a symptom or sequel of disease . . . . The
victim can no more resist [alcohol] than an man with ague
can resist shivering. [Quoted in Roueche, op. cit., pp.
107-108]
1898 Diacetylmorphine (heroin) is synthesized in Germany.
It is widely lauded as a "safe preparation free from
addiction-forming properties." [Montagu, op. cit. p. 68]
1900 In an address to the Ecumenical Missionary Conference, Rev.
Wilbur F. Crafts declares: "No Christian celebration of the
completion of nineteen Christian centuries has yet been
arranged. Could there be a fitter one than the general
adoption, by separate and joint action of the great nations
of the world, of the new policy of civilization, in which
Great Britian is leading, the policy of prohibition for the
native races, in the interest of commerce as well as
conscience, since the liquor traffic among child races,
even more manifestly than in civilized lands, injures all
other trades by producing poverty, disease, and death.
Our object, more profoundly viewed, is to create a more
favorable environment for the child races that civilized
nations are essaying to civilize and Christianize."
[Quoted in Crafts, et. al., op. cit., p. 14]
1900 James R. L. Daly, writing in the *Boston Medical and Surgical
Journal*, declares: "It [heroin] possesses many advantages
over morphine. . . . It is not hypnotic; and there is no
danger of acquiring the habit. . . ." [Quoted in Henry
H. Lennard et. al. Methadone treatment (letters),
*Science*, 179:1078-1079 (March 16), 1973; p. 1079]
1901 The Senate adopts a resolution, introduced by Henry Cabot
Lodge, to forbid the sale by American traders of opium
and alcohol "to aboriginal tribes and uncivilized races."
Theses provisions are later extended to include "uncivilized
elements in America itself and in its territories, such as
Indians, Alaskans, the inhabitants of Hawaii, railroad workers,
and immigrants at ports of entry." [Sinclar, op. cit. p. 33]
1902 The Committee on the Acquirement of the Drug Habit of the
American Pharmaceutical Association declares: "If the
Chinaman cannot get along without his 'dope,' we can get
along without him." [Quoted in ibid, p. 17]
1902 George E. Petty, writing in the *Alabama Medical Journal*,
observes: "Many articles have appeared in the medical
literature during the last two years lauding this new agent
. . . . When we consider the fact that heroin is a morphine
derivative . . . it does not seem reasonable that such a
claim could be well founded. It is strange that such a claim
should mislead anyone or that there should be found among
the members of our profession those who would reiterate
and accentuate it without first subjecting it to the most
critical tests, but such is the fact." [Quoted in Lennard
et. al., op. cit. p. 1079]
1903 The composition of Coca-Cola is changed, caffeine replacing
the cocaine it contained until this time. {Musto, op. cit.
p. 43]
1904 Charles Lyman, president of the International Reform Bureau,
petitions the President of the United States "to induce
Great Britain to release China from the enforced opium
traffic. . . .We need not recall in detail that China
prohibited the sale of opium except as a medicine, until
the sale was forced upon that country by Great Britian
in the opium war of 1840." [Quoted in Crafts et al., op.
cit. p. 230]
1905 Senator Henry W. Blair, in a letter to Rev. Wilbur F.
Crafts, Superintendent of the International Reform
Bureau: "The temperance movement must include all poisonous
substances which create unnatural appetite, and international
prohibition is the goal." [Quoted in ibid.]
1906 The first Pure Food and Drug Act becomes law; until its
enactment, it was possible to buy, in stores or by mail order
medicines containing morphine, cocaine, or heroin, and without
their being so labeled.
1906 *Squibb's Materia Medical* lists heroin as "a remedy of much
value . . . is is also used as a mild anodyne and as a
substitute for morphine in combatting the morphine habit.
[Quoted in Lennard et al., op. cit. p. 1079]
1909 The United States prohibits the importation of smoking
opium. [Lawrence Kolb, *Drug Addiction*, pp. 145-146]
1910 Dr. Hamilton Wright, considered by some the father of U.S.
anti-narcotics laws, reports that American contractors give
cocaine to their Negro employees to get more work out of
them. [Musto, op. cit. p. 180]
1912 A writer in *Century* magazine proclaims: "The relation
of tobacco, especially in the form of cigarettes, and
alcohol and opium is a very close one. . . . Morphine is
the legitimate consequence of alcohol, and alcohol is the
legitimate consequence of tobacco. Cigarettes, drink,
opium, is the logical and regular series." And a physician
warns: "[There is] no energy more destructive of soul, mind,
and body, or more subversive of good morals than the
cigarette. The fight against the cigarette is a fight for
civilization." [Sinclar, op. cit., p. 180]
1912 The first international Opium Convention meets at the
Hague, and recommends various measures for the international
control of the trade in opium. Supsequent Opium Conventions
are held in 1913 and 1914.
1912 Phenobarbital is introduced into therapeutics under the trade
name of Luminal.
1913 The Sixteenth Amendment, creating the legal authority for
federal income tax, is enacted. Between 1870 and 1915,
the tax on liquor provides from one-half to two-thirds
of the whole of the internal revenue of the United States,
amounting, after the turn of the century, to about $200
million annually. The Sixteenth Amendment thus makes possible,
just seven years later, the Eighteenth Amendment.
1914 Dr. Edward H Williams cites Dr. Christopher Kochs "Most
of the attack upon white women of the South are the
direct result of the cocaine crazed Negro brain."
Dr. Williams concluded that " . . Negro cocaine fiends
are now a know Southern menace."
[New York Times, Feb. 8, 1914]
1914 The Harrison Narcotic Act is enacted, controlling the
sale of opium and opium derivatives, and cocaine.
1914 Congressman Richard P. Hobson of Alabama, urging a prohibition
amendment to the Constitution, asserts: "Liquor will actually
make a brute out of a Negro, causing him to commit unnatural
crimes. The effect is the same on the white man, though
the white man being further evolved it takes longer time
to reduce him to the same level." Negro leaders join
the crusade against alcohol. [Ibid., p. 29]
1916 The *Pharmacopoeia of the United States* drops whiskey and
brandy from its list of drugs. Four years later, American
physicians begin prescribing these "drugs" in quantities
never before prescribed by doctors.
1917 The president of the American Medical Association endorses
national prohibition. The House of Delegates of the
Association passes a resolution stating: "Resolved, The
American Medical Association opposes the use of alcohol
as a beverage; and be it further Resolved, That the use
of alcohol as a therapeutic agent should be discourages."
By 1928, physicians make an estimated $40,000,000 annually
by writing prescriptions for whiskey." [Ibid. p. 61]
1917 The American Medical Association passes a resolution declaring
that "sexual continence is compatible with health and is
the best prevention of venereal infections," and one of
the methods for controlling syphilis is by controlling alcohol.
Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels prohibits the practice
of distributing contraceptives to sailors bound on shore
leave, and Congress passes laws setting up "dry and decent
zones" around military camps. "Many barkeepers are fined
for selling liquor to men in uniform. Only at Coney Island
could soldiers and sailors change into the grateful anonymity
of bathing suits and drink without molestation from patriotic
passers-by." [Ibid. pp. 117-118]
1918 The Anti-Saloon League calls the "liquor traffic" "un-American,"
pro-German, crime-producing, food-wasting, youth-corrupting,
home-wrecking, [and] treasonable." [Quoted in ibid. p. 121]
1919 The Eighteenth (Prohibition) Amendment is added to the U.S.
Constitution. It is repealed in 1933.
1920 The U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes a pamphlet
urging Americans to grow cannabis (marijuana) as a profitable
undertaking. [David F. Musto, An historical perspective on
legal and medical responses to substance abuse, *Villanova
Law Review*, 18:808-817 (May), 1973; p. 816]
1920-1933 The use of alcohol is prohibited in the United States.
In 1932 alone, approximately 45,000 persons receive jail
sentences for alcohol offenses. During the first eleven
years of the Volstead Act, 17,971 persons are appointed
to the Prohibition Bureau. 11,982 are terminated "without
prejudice," and 1,604 are dismissed for bribery, extortion,
theft, falsification of records, conspiracy, forgery, and
perjury. [Fort, op. cit. p. 69]
1921 The U.S. Treasury Departmen issues regulations outlining
the treatment of addiction permitted under the Harrison
Act. In Syracuse, New York, the narcotics clinic doctors
report curing 90 per cent of their addicts. [Lindensmith,
*The Addict and the Law*, p. 141]
1921 Thomas S. Blair, M.D., chief of the Bureau of Drug Control
of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, publishes a paper
in the *Journal of the American Medical Association* in which
he characterizes the Indian peyote religion a "habit
indulgence in certain cactaceous plants," calls the belief
system "superstition" and those who sell peyote "dope vendors,"
and urges the passage of a bill in Congress that would prohibit
the use of peyote among the Indian tribes of the Southwest.
He concludes with this revealing plea for abolition: "The
great difficulty in suppressing this habit among the Indians
arises from the fact that the commercial interests involved
in the peyote traffic are strongly entrenched, and they
exploit the Indian. . . . Added to this is the superstition
of the Indian who believes in the Peyote Church. As soon
as an effort is made to suppress peyote, the cry is raised
that it is unconstitutional to do so and is an invasion of
religious liberty. Suppose the Negros of the South had
Cocaine Church!" [Thomas S. Blair, Habit indulgence in
certain cactaceous plants among the Indians, *Journal
of the American Medical Association*, 76:1033-1034 (April
9), 1921; p. 1034]
1921 Cigarettes are illegal in fourteen states, and ninety-two
anti-cigarette bills are pending in twenty-eight states.
Young women are expelled from college for smoking cigarettes.
[Brecher et al., op. cit. p. 492]
1921 The Council of the American Medical Association refuses
to confirm the Associations 1917 Resolution on alcohol.
In the first six months after the enactment of the Volstead
Act, more than 15,000 physicians and 57,000 druggests and
drug manufacturers apply for licenses to prescribe and sell
liquor. [Sinclair, op. cit., p. 492]
1921 Alfred C. Prentice, M.D. a member of the Committee on
Narcotic Drugs of the American Medical Association, declares
"Public opinion regarding the vice of drug addiction has
been deliberately and consistently corrupted through
propaganda in both the medical and lay press. . . . The
shallow pretense that drug addiction is a 'disease'. . . .
has been asserted and urged in volumes of 'literature'
by self-styled 'specialists.'" [Alfred C Prentice, The
Problem of the narcotic drug addict, *Journal of the
American Medical Association*, 76:1551-1556; p. 1553]
1924 The manufacture of heroin is prohibited in the United
States.
1925 Robert A. Schless: "I believe that most drug addiction today
is due directly to the Harrison Anti-Narcotic Act, which
forbids the sale of narcotics without a physician's
prescription. . . . Addicts who are broke act as *agent
provocateurs* for the peddlers, being rewarded by gifts
of heroin or credit for supplies. The Harrison Act made
the drug peddler, and the drug peddler makes drug addicts."
[Robert A. Schless, The drug addict, *American Mercury*,
4:196-199 (Feb.), 1925; p. 198]
1928 In a nationwide radio broadcast entitled "The Struggle
of Manking Against Its Deadlist Foe," celebrating the
second annual Narcotic Education Week, Richmond P. Hobson,
prohibition crusader and anti-narcotics propagandist,
declares: "Suppose it were announced that there were more
than a million lepers among our people. Think what a shock
the announcement would produce! Yet drug addiction is far
more incurable than leprosy, far more tragic to its victims,
and is spreading like a moral and physical scourge. . . .
Most of the daylight robberies, daring holdups, cruel murders
and similar crimes of violence are now known to be committed
chiefly by drug addicts, who constitute the primary cause
of our alarming crime wave. Drug addiction is more
communicable and less curable that leprosy. . . .
Upon the issue hangs the perpetuation of civilization,
the destiny of the world, and the future of the human
race." [Quoted in Musto, *The American Disease*, p. 191]
1928 It is estimated that in Germany one out of every hundred
physicians is a morphine addict, consuming 0.1 grams of
the alkaloid or more per day. [Eric Hesse, *Narcotics and
Drug Addiction*, p. 41]
1929 About one gallon of denatured industrial in ten is
diverted into bootleg liquor. About forty Americans
per million die each year from drinking illegal alcohol,
mainly as a result of methyl (wood) alcohol poisoning.
[Sinclare, op. cit. p. 201]
1930 The Federal Bureau of Narcotics is formed. Many of its
agents, including its first commissioner, Harry J. Anslinger,
are former prohibition agents.
1935 The American Medical Association passes a resolution declaring
that "alcoholics are valid patients." [Quoted in Neil Kessel
and Henry Walton, *Alcoholism*, p. 21]
1936 The Pan-American Coffee Burreau is organized to promote
coffee use in the U.S. Between 1938 and 1941 coffee
consumption increased 20%. From 1914 to 1938 consumption
had increased 20%. [Coffee, *Encyclopedia Britannica* (1949),
Vol. 5, p. 975A]
1937 Shortly before the Marijuana Tax Act, Commissioner Harry
J. Anslinger writes: "How many murders, suicides, robberies,
criminal assaults, hold-ups, burglaries, and deeds of
maniacal insanity it [marijuana] causes each year, especially
among the young, can only be conjectured." [Quoted in
John Kaplan, *Marijuana*, p. 92]
1937 The Marijuana Tax Act is enacted.
1938 Since the enactment of the Harrison Act in 1914, 25,000
physicians have been arraigned on narcotics charges, and
3,000 have served penitentiary sentences. [Kolb, op. cit.
p. 146]
1938 Dr. Albert Hoffman, a chemist at Sandoz Laboratories in
Basle, Switzerland, synthesizes LSD. Five years later he
inadvertently ingests a small amount of it, and observes and
reports effects on himself.
1941 Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek orders the complete suppression
of the poppy; laws are enacted providing the death penalty
for anyone guilty of cultivating the poppy, manufacturing
opium, or offering it for sale. [Lindensmith, *The Addict
and the Law*, 198]
1943 Colonel J.M. Phalen, editor of the *Military Surgeon*,
declares in an editorial entitled "The Marijuana Bugaboo":
"The smoking of the leaves, flowers, and seeds of Cannibis
sativa is no more harmful than the smoking of tobacco. . . .
It is hoped that no witch hunt will be instituted in the
military service over a problem that does not exist."
[Quoted in ibid. p. 234]
1946 According to some estimates there are 40,000,000 opium smokers
in China. [Hesse, op. cit. p. 24]
1949 Ludwig von Mises, leading modern free-market economist
and social philosopher: "Opium and morphine are certainly
dangerous, habit-forming drugs. But once the principle
is admitted that is the duty of government to protect
the individual against his own foolishness, no serious
objections can be advanced against further encroachments.
A good case could be made out in favor of the prohibition
of alcohol and nicotine. And why limit the governments
benevolent providence to the protection of the individual's
body only? Is is not the harm a man can inflect on his
mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily
evils? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and
seeing bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues
and listening to bad music? The mischief done by bad
ideologies, surely, is much more pernicious, both for
the individual and for the whole society, than that
done by narcotic drugs." [Ludwig von Mises, *Human Action*,
pp. 728-729]
1951 According to United Nations estimates, there are approximately
200 million marijuana users in the world, the major places
being India, Egypt, North Africa, Mexico, and the United
States. [Jock Young, *The Drug Takers*, p. 11]
1951 Twenty thousand pound of opium, three hundred pounds of
heroin, and various opium-smoking devices are publicly
burned in Canton China. Thirty-seven opium addicts
are executed in the southwest of China. [Margulies,
China has no drug problem--why? *Parade*, 0ct. 15 1972,
p. 22]
1954 Four-fifths of the French people questioned about wine
assert that wine is "good for one's health," and one quarter
hold that it is "indispensable." It is estimated that a
third of the electorate in France receives all or part of
its income from the production or sale of alcoholic
beverages; and that there is one outlet for every forty-
five inhabitants. [Kessel and Walton, op. cit. pp. 45, 73]
1955 The Prasidium des Deutschen Arztetages declares: "Treatment
of the drug addict should be effected in the closed sector
of a psychiatric institution. Ambulatory treatment is useless
and in conflict, moreover, with principles of medical
ethics." The view is quoted approvingly, as representative
of the opinion of "most of the authors recommending
commitment to an institution," by the World Health
Organization in 1962. [World Health Organization,
*The Treatment of Drug Addicts*, p. 5]
1955 The Shah of Iran prohibits the cultivation and use of opium,
used in the country for thousands of years; the prohibition
creates a flourishing illicit market in opium. In 1969
the prohibition is lifted, opium growing is resumed under
state inspection, and more than 110,000 persons receive
opium from physicians and pharmacies as "registered addicts."
[Henry Kamm, They shoot opium smugglers in Iran, but . . ."
*The New York Times Magazine*, Feb. 11, 1973, pp. 42-45]
1956 The Narcotics Control Act in enacted; it provides the death
penalty, if recommended by the jury, for the sale of heroin
to a person under eighteen by one over eighteen. [Lindesmith,
*The Addict and the Law*, p. 26]
1958 Ten percent of the arable land in Italy is under viticulture;
two million people earn their living wholly or partly from
the production or sale of wine. [Kessel and Walton, op. cit.,
p. 46]
1960 The United States report to the United Nations Commission on
Narcotic Drugs for 1960 states: "There were 44,906 addicts
in the United States on December 31, 1960 . . ." [Lindesmith,
*The Addict and The Law*, p. 100]
1961 The United Nations' "Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
of 10 March 1961" is ratified. Among the obligations of
the signatory states are the following: "Art. 42. Know
users of drugs and persons charges with an offense under
this Law may be committed by an examining magistrate
to a nursing home. . . . Rules shall be also laid down
for the treatment in such nursing homes of unconvicted
drug addicts and dangerous alcoholics." [Charles Vaille,
A model law for the application of the Single Convention
on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, *United Nations Bulletin on
Narcotics*, 21:1-12 (April-June), 1961]
1963 Tobacco sales total $8.08 billion, of which $3.3 billion go
to federal, state, and local taxes. A news release from
the tobacco industry proudly states: "Tobacco products
pass across sales counters more frequently than anything
else--except money." [Tobacco: After publicity surge
Surgeon General's Report seems to have little enduring
effect, *Science*, 145:1021-1022 (Sept. 4), 1964; p. 1021]
1964 The British Medical Association, in a Memorandum of Evidence
to the Standing Medical Advisory Committee's Special Sub-
committee on Alcoholism, declares: "We feel that in some very
bad cases, compulsory detention in hospital offer the only
hope of successful treatment. . . . We believe that some
alcoholics would welcome compulsory removal and detention
in hospital until treatment is completed." [Quoted in
Kessel and Walton, op. cit. p. 126]
1964 An editorial in *The New York Times* calls attention
to the fact that "the Government continues to be the tobacco
industry's biggest booster. The Department of Agriculture
lost $16 million in supporting the price of tobacco in the
last fiscal year, and stands to loose even more because it
has just raised the subsidy that tobacco growers will get
on their 1964 crop. At the same time, the Food for Peace
program is getting rid of surplus stocks of tobacco abroad."
[Editorial, Bigger agricultural subsidies. . .even more for
tobacco, *The New York Times*, Feb. 1, 1964, p. 22]
1966 Sen. Warren G. Magnuson makes public a program, sponsored by
the Agriculture Department, to subsidize "attempts to increase
cigarette consumption abroad. . . . The Department is paying
to stimulate cigarette smoking in a travelogue for $210,000
to subsidize cigarette commercials in Japan, Thailand,
and Austria." An Agriculture Department spokesman
corroborates that "the two programs were prepared under
a congressional authorization to expand overseas markets
for U.S. farm commodities." [Edwin B. Haakinsom, Senator
shocked at U.S. try to hike cigarette use abroad,
*Syracuse Herald-American*, Jan. 9, 1966, p. 2]
1966 Congress enacts the "Narcotics Addict Rehabilitation Act,
inaugurating a federal civil commitment program for addicts.
1966 C. W. Sandman, Jr. chairman of the New Jersey Narcotic Drug
Study Commission, declares that LSD is "the greatest threat
facing the country today . . . more dangerous than the
Vietnam War." [Quoted in Brecher et al., op. cit. p. 369]
1967 New York State's "Narcotics Addiction Control Program"
goes into effect. It is estimated to cost $400 million
in three years, and is hailed by Government Rockefeller
as the "start of an unending war . . ." Under the new
law, judges are empowered to commit addicts for compulsory
treatment for up to five years. [Murray Schumach, Plan for
addicts will open today: Governor hails start, *The New
York Times*, April 1, 1967]
1967 The tobacco industry in the United States spends an estimated
$250 million on advertising smoking. [Editorial, It
depends on you, *Health News* (New York State), 45:1
(March), 1968]
1968 The U.S. tobacco industry has gross sales of $8 billion.
Americans smoke 544 billion cigarettes. [Fort, op. cit.
p. 21]
1968 Canadians buy almost 3 billion aspirin tablets and approximately
56 million standard does of amphetamines. About 556 standard
doses of barbituates are also produced or imported for
consumption in Canada. [Canadian Government's Commission
of Inquiry, *The Non-Medical Uses of Drugs*, p. 184
1968 Six to seven percent of all prescriptions written under the
British National Health Service are for barbituates; it is
estimated that about 500,000 British are regular users.
[Young, op. cit. p. 25]
1968 Brooklyn councilman Julius S. Moskowitz charges that the
work of New York City's Addiction Services Agency, under
its retiring Commissioner, Dr. Efren Ramierez, was a
"fraud," and that "not a single addict has been cured."
[Charles G. Bennett, Addiction agency called a "fraud,"
*New York Times*, Dec. 11, 1968, p. 47]
1969 U.S. production and value of some medical chemicals:
barbituates: 800,000 pounds, $2.5 million; aspirin
(exclusive of salicylic acid) 37 milliion pounds,
value "withheld to avoid disclosing figures for
individual producers"; salicylic acid: 13 million
pounds, $13 million; tranquilizers: 1.5 million
pounds, $7 million. [*Statistical Abstracts of the
United States*, 1971 92nd Annual Edition, p. 75]
1969 The parents of 6,000 secondary-level students in
Clifton, New Jersey, are sent letters by the Board
of Education asking permission to conduct saliva tests
on their children to determine whether or not they use
marijuana. [Saliva tests asked for Jersey youths on
marijuana use, *New York Times*, Apr. 11, 1969, p. 12]
1970 Dr. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Nobel Laureate in Medicine and
Physiology, in reply to being asked what he would do if
he were twenty today: "I would share with my classmates
rejection of the whole world as it is--all of it. Is there
any point in studying and work? Fornication--at least that
is something good. What else is there to do? Fornicate
and take drugs against the terrible strain of idiots who
govern the world." [Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, in *The New
York Times*, Feb. 20, 1970, quoted in Mary Breastead, *Oh!
Sex Education!*, p. 359]
1971 President Nixon declares that "America's Public Enemy
No. 1 is drug abuse." In a message to Congress, the President
calls for the creation of a Special Action Office of Drug
Abuse Prevention. [The New Public Enemy No. 1, *Time*,
June 28, 1971, p. 18]
1971 On June 30, 1971, President Cvedet Sunay of Turkey decrees
that all poppy cultivation and opium production will be
forbidden beginning in the fall of 1972. [Patricia M Wald
et al. (Eds.), *Dealing with Drug Abuse*, p. 257]
1972 Myles J. Ambrose, Special Assistant Attorney General of
the United States: "As of 1960, the Bureau of Narcotics
estimated that we had somewhere in the neighborhood
of 55,000 addicts . . . they estimate now the figure is
560,000. [Quoted in *U.S. News and World Report*, April
3, 1972, p. 38]
1972 The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs proposes
restricting the use of barbituates on the ground that they
"are more dangerous than heroin." [Restrictions proposed
on barbituate sales, *Syracuse Herald-Journal*, Mar 16,
1972, p. 32]
1972 The house votes 366 to 0 to authorize "a $1 billion,
three-year federal attack on drug abuse." [$1 billion
voted for drug fight, *Syracuse Herald-Journal*, March
16, 1972, p. 32]
1972 At the Bronx house of corrections, out of a total of 780
inmates, approximately 400 are given tranquilizers such
as Valium, Elavil, Thorazine, and Librium. "'I think they
[the inmates] would be doing better without some of the
medication,' said Capt. Robert Brown, a correctional officer.
He said that in a way the medications made his job harder
. . . rather than becoming calm, he said, an inmate who
had become addicted to his medication 'will do anything
when he can't get it.'" [Ronald Smothers, Muslims: What's
behind the violence, *The New York Times*, Dec. 26, 1972,
p. 18]
1972 In England, the pharmacy cost of heroin is $.04 per grain
(60 mg.), or $.00067 per mg. In the United States, the
street price is $30 to $90 per grain, or $.50 or $1.50
per mg. [Wald et al. (Eds.) op. cit. p. 28]
1973 A nationwide Gallop poll reveals that 67 percent
of the adults interviewed "support the proposal of New York
Governer Nelson Rockefeller that all sellers of hard drugs
be given life imprisonment without possibility of parole."
[George Gallup, Life for pushers, *Syracuse Herald-American*,
Feb. 11, 1973]
1973 Michael R. Sonnenreich, Executive Director of the National
Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, declares: "About
four years ago we spent a total of $66.4 million for the
entire federal effort in the drug abuse area. . . .
This year we have spent $796.3 million and the budget
estimates that have been submitted indicate that we will
exceed the $1 billion mark. When we do so, we become,
for want of a better term, a drug abuse industrial
complex.: [Michael R. Sonnenreich, Discussion of the
Final Report of the National Commission on Marijuana
and Drug Abuse, *Villanova Law Review*, 18:817-827 (May),
1973; p. 818]
197? Operation Intercept. All vehicles returning from Mexico
are checked by Nixon's order. Long lines occur and, as
usual no dent is made in drug traffic.
1981 Congress ammends the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which
forbids the armed forces to enforce civil law, so that
the military could provide surveillance planes and ships
for interdiction purposes.
1984 U.S. busts 10,000 pounds of marijuana on farms in Mexico.
The seizures, made on five farms in an isolated section of
Chihuahua state, suggest a 70 percent increase in estimates
that total U.S. consumption was 13,000 to 14,000 tons in 1982.
Furthermore, the seizures add up to nearly eight times the
1300 tons that officials had calculated Mexico produced
in 1983. [the San Francisco Chronicle, Saturday,
November 24, 1984]
1985 Pentagon spends $40 million on interdiction.
1986 The Communist Party boss, Boris Yeltsin said that the
Moscow school system is rife with drug addiction,
drunkenness and principles that take bribes. He
said that drug addiction has become such a problem
that there are 3700 registered addicts in Moscow. [The
San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 22, 1986, p. 12]
----
--
scc!steiny
Don Steiny @ Don Steiny Software
109 Torrey Pine Terrace
Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060
(408) 425-0382
Gordon E. Banks
attempts to legislate morality.
The number of people who have died to preserve the constitution
and the basic rights it proclaims is far greater than all those
who died of drug abuse to say nothing of their quality.
Let's not lose sight of what is most precious.
I do not use illegal drugs (or tobacco or alcohol) but feel that adults
have the right to decide what they will use in private as long
as they are not harming others, and that we have the
right not to have our bodies invaded by tests against our will, regardless
of the end these means are supposed to serve.