The History of Drugs

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The History of Drugs

Drug use and abuse is as old as mankind itself. Human beings have
always had a desire to eat or drink substances that make them feel
relaxed, stimulated, or euphoric. Humans have used drugs of one sort
or another for thousands of years. Wine was used at least from the
time of the early Egyptians; narcotics from 4000 B.C.; and medicinal
use of marijuana has been dated to 2737 BC in China.

As time went by, "home remedies" were discovered and used to alleviate
aches, pains and other ailments. Most of these preparations were
herbs, roots, mushrooms or fungi. They had to be eaten, drunk, rubbed
on the skin, or inhaled to achieve the desired effect.

One of the oldest records of such medicinal recommendations is found
in the writings of the Chinese scholar-emperor Shen Nung, who lived in
2735 BC He compiled a book about herbs, a forerunner of the medieval
pharmacopoeias that listed all the then-known medications.

He was able to judge the value of some Chinese herbs. For example, he
found that Ch'ang Shan was helpful in treating fevers. Such fevers
were, and still are, caused by malaria parasites.

South and Central American Indians made many prehistoric discoveries
of drug-bearing plants. Mexican Aztecs even recorded their properties
in hieroglyphics on rocks, but our knowledge of their studies comes
mainly from manuscripts of Spanish monks and medical men attached to
the forces of the conquistador Hernan Cortes (1485-1547).

Pre-Columbian Mexicans used many substances, from tobacco to
mind-expanding (hallucinogenic) plants, in their medicinal
collections. The most fascinating of these substances are sacred
mushrooms, used in religious ceremonies to induce altered states of
mind, not just drunkenness.

These were all naturally occurring substances. No refinement had
occurred, and isolation of specific compounds (drugs) had not taken place.

As the centuries unrolled and new civilizations appeared, cultural,
artistic, and medical developments shifted toward the new centers of
power. A reversal of the traditional search for botanical drugs
occurred in Greece in the fourth century BC, when Hippocrates
(estimated dates, 460-377 BC), the "Father of Medicine," became
interested in inorganic salts as medications.

Hippocrates' authority lasted throughout the Middle Ages and reminded
alchemists and medical experimenters of the potential of inorganic
drugs. In fact, a distant descendant of Hippocrates' prescriptions was
the use of antimony salts in elixirs (alcoholic solutions) advocated
by Basilius Valentius in the middle of the 15th century and by the
medical alchemist Phillippus Aureolus Paracelsus (born Theophrastus
Bombast von Hohenheim, in Switzerland, 1493-1541).

South American Indians, especially those in the Peruvian Andes
mountains, made several early discoveries of drug-bearing plants. Two
of these plants contain alkaloids of worldwide importance that have
become modern drugs. They are cocaine and quinine. Cocaine's potential
for addiction was known and used with sinister intent by South
American Indian chiefs hundreds of years ago.

Sigmund Freud, the Austrian psychoanalyst (1856-1939), treated many
deeply disturbed cocaine addicts. In the course of his practice, he
noted the numbing effect of the drug. He called this effect to the
attention of the clinical pharmacologist Carl Koller, who introduced
cocaine as a local anesthetic into surgical procedures.

But not until the 19th cent. A.D. were the active substances in drugs
extracted. There followed a time when some of these newly discovered
substances morphine, laudanum, cocaine were completely unregulated and
prescribed freely by physicians for a wide variety of ailments. They
were available in patent medicines and sold by traveling tinkers, in
drugstores, or through the mail.

During the American Civil War, morphine was used freely, and wounded
veterans returned home with their kits of morphine and hypodermic
needles. Cocaine and heroin were sold as patent medicines in the 19th
and early 20th centuries, and marketed as treatments for a wide
variety of ailments. Recreational use of opium was once common in
Asia, and from there spread to the West, peaking in the 19th century.
Opium dens flourished. By the early 1900s there were an estimated
250,000 addicts in the United States.

The majority of human societies throughout history have practiced
recreational drug use in various forms. Probably the best known
example of a recreational drug is alcohol, which most cultures have
manufactured in one form or another. As with any drugs, some
recreational drugs are addictive, most are harmful to one's health,
and some are illegal in most places.

A wide variety of drugs have been employed for recreation at various
times through history. By far the most popular recreational drug in
modern society is caffeine, accepted by nearly all societies today.
Also very popular are alcohol and nicotine in the form of tobacco,
present and accepted in most cultures today. Despite relatively recent
proscription as an illegal drug in much of the world, marijuana
retains its historical popularity.

The problems of addiction were recognized gradually. Legal measures
against drug abuse in the United States were first established in
1875, when opium dens were outlawed in San Francisco. The first
national drug law was the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which
required accurate labeling of patent medicines containing opium and
certain other drugs. In 1914 the Harrison Narcotic Act forbade sale of
substantial doses of opiates or cocaine except by licensed doctors and
pharmacies. Later, heroin was totally banned. Subsequent Supreme Court
decisions made it illegal for doctors to prescribe any narcotic to
addicts; many doctors who prescribed maintenance doses as part of an
addiction treatment plan were jailed, and soon all attempts at
treatment were abandoned. Use of narcotics and cocaine diminished by
the 1920s. The spirit of temperance led to the prohibition of alcohol
by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1919, but
Prohibition was repealed in 1933.

In the 1930s most states required antidrug education in the schools,
but fears that knowledge would lead to experimentation caused it to be
abandoned in most places. Soon after the repeal of Prohibition, the
U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics (now the Drug Enforcement
Administration) began a campaign to portray marijuana as a powerful,
addicting substance that would lead users into narcotics addiction. In
the 1950s, use of marijuana increased again, along with that of
amphetamines and tranquilizers.

The intolerance of drug use that characterized the earlier decades of
the Twentieth Century changed with the tremendous social changes and
political upheavals of the 1960s. With new challenges to traditional
values and beliefs, previous anti-drug rhetoric began to be seen as
inaccurate and even ridiculous. Increasingly, drug policy became a
referendum on the war in Vietnam and other social inequities. Along
with the tremendous change in public attitudes went a surge in the use
of illegal drugs, and with it a renewed debate over decriminalization
and even legalization of drug use.

Elected by appealing to a "law and order" constituency, President
Nixon saw the relaxation of intolerance for drug use as the first shot
in a culture war. Nixon equated drug use with an attack on specific
American traditions and the conservative world-view in general. He
launched a vigorous campaign to turn the tide against the
decriminalization and legalization forces, calling for a "War on
Drugs" in the same manner that his predecessor Lyndon Johnson had
called for a "War on Poverty."

Nixon also proposed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act which
attempted to rank addictive drugs according to their dangerousness and
apply restrictions to the highest categories. This effort was fraught
with difficulty since the degree to which drugs have been prohibited
in the United States has had little to do with their inherent
dangerousness. Going by annual deaths, alcohol and tobacco should be
in the most dangerous categories, but powerful economic interests made
this impossible. Instead, five "schedules" were adopted with each
increasing schedule based on the abuse potential of the drug and its
accepted medical usage. Schedule One was reserved for dangerous drugs
with a severe liability for abuse and no accepted medical use, and
included marijuana, heroin and LSD.

The 1980s brought a decline in the use of most drugs, but cocaine and
crack use soared. The military became involved in border patrols for
the first time, and troops invaded Panama and brought its de facto
leader, Manuel Noriega, to trial for drug trafficking.

Throughout the years, the public's perception of the dangers of
specific substances changed. The surgeon general's warning label on
tobacco packaging gradually made people aware of the addictive nature
of nicotine. By 1995, the Food and Drug Administration was considering
its regulation. The recognition of fetal alcohol syndrome brought
warning labels to alcohol products. The addictive nature of
prescription drugs such as diazepam (Valium) became known, and
caffeine came under scrutiny as well.

Drug laws have tried to keep up with the changing perceptions and real
dangers of substance abuse. By 1970 over 55 federal drug laws and
countless state laws specified a variety of punitive measures,
including life imprisonment and even the death penalty. To clarify the
situation, the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of
1970 repealed, replaced, or updated all previous federal laws
concerned with narcotics and all other dangerous drugs. While
possession was made illegal, the severest penalties were reserved for
illicit distribution and manufacture of drugs. The act dealt with
prevention and treatment of drug abuse as well as control of drug
traffic. The Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 increased funding
for treatment and rehabilitation; the 1988 act created the Office of
National Drug Control Policy. Its director, often referred to as the
drug "czar, " is responsible for coordinating national drug control
policy.

Below is a timeline of the history of drugs

5000 BC 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. Lindesmith, *Addiction and Opiates.* p. 207]

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]

3000 B.C. Approximate date of the supposed origin of the use of tea in
China.

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]

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]

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."

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.

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]

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 judgment, such of us as have never fallen
victims, have been spared more from the absence of appetite, 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. In the same year, violent crime
drops two-thirds and does not reach the same levels again until after
World War II.

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 Department 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. [Lindesmith, *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. [Lindesmith, *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 Governor 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 our 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]

1972 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.

1977 The Joint Committee of the New York Bar Association concludes
that the Rockefeller drug laws, the toughest in the nation, have had
no effect in reducing drug use but have clogged the courts and the
criminal justice system to the point of gridlock.

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. By 1990, the General
Accounting Office will report that the military's efforts have had no
discernible impact on the flow of drugs.

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]