HaCKeRz KrOnIcKLeZ 3/HaCKeRz_KrOnIcKLeZ.iso/drugs/prohibition-history

Internet Message Format | 1996-05-06 | 48KB

From:  steiny@hpcupt1

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.

There are some real jewels in this collection.   The entry for 1949 is
especially profound.

Note how many times governments have banned vaious drugs.   At one time
tabacco was illegal in more than a dozen states!   Fat lot of good it did.

I saw Szasz speak not too long ago, he is a wonderful person, absolutely
brilliant and very charming.   The book is now in its second edition.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

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 Shakespeare, *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 known 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 Mankind 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]