From: steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,net.med
Subject: Brief History of Drug Use and Control
Date: 25 Sep 86 20:19:15 GMT
Organization: Don Steiny Software
Lines: 1025


        This is a history of drug use/prohibition  based on the
Appendix of *Ceremonial Chemistry* by Thomas  Szasz.   The book
is published by "Doubleday/Anchor"  Garden City, New York, 1975.
I included his references.   I have added several items of
interest and I have deleted some things I did not feel were
relevant (Szasz documents the parallel course of relgious
history).  All unattributed items (no footnote) are from the
book.

        Please forgive typos.  It is fairly long and I cannot spend
too much time on it being as I have to earn a living.

        My impression as I collected this and typed it in is that it has
all been done before.   The panic, the draconian solutions, and the ultimate
ineffectuality of the solutions.    Even Russia, the most oppressive state
in history, has considerable drug use.

        Some of the people that support the war on drugs are acting under
the assumption that laws against drug use somehow restrict their use.
This is absurd.   If we give up rights, like the right to buy anything
we want, the rights are gone.   If there is a good reason, e.g., I am
happy to give up my right to murder people in exchange for not being murdered
myself, it might be worthwhile.   However, history tells us that were to
accept the level of repression and state control that exists in the modern
day USSR, we would still have a drug problem.  All that would have happened
is that we would have given up our other rights.


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

c. 5000 B.C.    The Sumerians use opium, suggested by the fact that
                they have an ideogram for it which has been translated
                as HUL, meaning "joy" or "rejoicing."  [Alfred R. Lindensmith,
                *Addiction and Opiates.* p. 207]

c. 3500 B.C.    Earlist historical record of the production of alcohol:
                the description of a brewery in an an Egyptian papyrus.
                [Joel Fort, *The Pleasure Seekers*, p. 14]

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

c. 2500 B.C.    Earlist historical evidence of the eating of poppy seeds
                among the Lake Dwellers on Switzerland. [Ashley Montagu,
                The long search for euphoria, *Refelections*, 1:62-69
                (May-June), 1966; p. 66]

c. 2000 B.C.    Earliest record of prohibitionist teaching, by an
                Egyptian priest, who writes to his pupil: "I, thy
                superior, forbid thee to go to the taverns. Thou
                art degraded like beasts." [W.F. Crafts *et al*.,
                *Intoxicating Drinks and Drugs*, p. 5]

c. 350 B.C.     Proverbs, 31:6-7:  "Give strong drink to him
                who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress;
                let them drink and forget their poverty, and remember
                their misery no more."

c. 300 B.C.     Theophrastus (371-287 B.C.), Greek naturalist and philosopher,
                records what has remained as the earlies undisputed
                reference to the use of poppy juice.

c. 250 B.C.     Psalms, 104:14-15:  "Thou dost cause grass to grow for the
                cattle and plants for man to cultivate, that he may
                bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden
                the heart of man.

350 A.D.        Earliest mention of tea, in a Chinese dictionary.

4th century     St. John Chrysostom (345-407), Bishop of Constantinople:
                "I hear man cry, 'Would there be no wine! O folly! O
                madness!'  Is it wine that causes this abuse?  No, for
                if you say, 'Would there were no light!' because of
                the informers, and would there were no women because
                of adultery." [Quoted in Berton Roueche, *The Neutral
                Spirit*, pp. 150-151]

c. 450          Babylonian Talmud: "Wine is at the head of all medicines;
                where wine is lacking, drugs are necessary." [Quoted in
                Burton Stevenson (Ed.), *The Macmillan Book of Proverbs*,
                p. 21]

c. 1000         Opium is widely used in China and the far East. [Alfred
                A. Lindensmith, *The Addict and the Law*, p. 194]

1493            The use of tobacco is introduced into Europe by
                Columbus and his crew returning from America.

c. 1500         According to J.D. Rolleston, a British medical
                historian, a medieval Russian cure for drunkenness
                consisted in "taking a piece of pork, putting it
                secretly in a Jew's bed for nine days, and then giving
                it to the drunkard in a pulverized form, who will turn
                away from drinking as a Jew would from pork." [Quoted in
                Roueche, op. cit. p. 144]

c. 1525         Paracelsus (1490-1541) introduces laudanum, or tincture
                of opium, into the practice of medicine.

1600            Shakespeare: "Falstaff. . . . If I had a thousand sons
                the / first human principle I would teach them should /
                be,  to foreswear thin portion and to addict themselves
                to sack."  ("Sack" is an obsolete term for "sweet wine"
                like sherry). [William Shakespear, *Second Part of King
                Henry the Forth*, Act IV, Scene III, lines 133-136]

17th century    The prince of the petty state of Waldeck pays ten thalers
                to anyone who denounces a coffee drinker. [Griffith Edwards,
                Psychoactive substances, *The Listener*, March 23, 1972,
                pp. 360-363; p.361]

17th century    In Russia, Czar Michael Federovitch executes anyone
                on whom tobacco is found.  "Czar Alexei Mikhailovitch
                rules that anyone caught with tobacco should be
                tortured until he gave up the name of the supplier."
                [Ibid.]

1613            John Rolf, the husband of the Indian princess Pocahontas,
                sends the first shipment of Virginia tobacco from
                Jamestown to England.

c. 1650         The use of tobacco is prohibited in Bavaria, Saxony,
                and in Zurich, but the prohibitions are ineffective.
                Sultan Murad IV of the Ottoman Empire decrees the
                death penalty for smoking tobacco: "Whereever there
                Sultan went on his travels or on a military expedition
                his halting-places were always distinguished by a
                terrible rise in executions.  Even on the battlefield
                he was fond of surprising men in the act of smoking,
                when he would punish them by beheading, hanging, quartering
                or crushing their hands and feed. . . . Nevertheless,
                in spite of all the horrors and persecution. . . the
                passion for smoking still persisted." [Edward M. Brecher
                et al., *Licit and Illicit Drugs*, p. 212]

1680            Thomas Syndenham (1625-80): "Among the remedies which it
                has pleased the Almighty God to give to man to relieve his
                sufferings, none is so universal and efficacious as opium."
                [Quoted in Louis Goodman and Alfred Gilman, *The
                Pharmacological Basis of Theraputics*, First Edition (1941),
                p. 186]

1690            The "Act for the Encouraging of the Distillation of Brandy
                and Spirits from Corn" is enacted in England. [Roueche, op.
                cit. p. 27]

1691            In Luneberg, Germany, the penalty for smoking (tobacco)
                is death.

1717            Liquor licenses in Middlesex (England) are granted only
                to those who "would take oaths of allegiance and of
                belief in the King's supremacy over the Church" [G.E.G.
                Catlin, *Liquor Control*, p. 14]

1736            The Gin Act (England) is enacted with the avowed object
                of making spirits "come so dear to the consumer that the
                poor will not be able to launch into excessive use of them."
                This effort results in general lawbreaking and fails to
                halt the steady rise in the consumption of even legally
                produced and sold liquor. [Ibid., p. 15]

1745            The magistrates of one London division demanded that
                "publicans and wine-merchants should swear that they
                anathematized the doctrine of Transubstantiation."
                [Ibid., p. 14]

1762            Thomas Dover, and English physician, introduces his
                prescription for a diaphoretic powder," which he
                recommends mainly for the treatment of gout.  Soon
                named "Dover's powder," this compound becomes the most
                widely used opium preparation during the next 150 years.

1785            Benjamin Rush publishes his *Inquiry into the Effects
                of Ardent Spirits on the Human Body and Mind*; in it,
                he calls the intemperate use of distilled spirits a        "disease," and estimates the annual rate of death
                due to alcoholism in the United States as "not less than
                4000 people" in a population then of less than 6 million.
                [Quoted in S. S. Rosenberg (Ed.), *Alcohol and Health*,
                p. 26]

1789            The first American temperance society is formed in Litchfield,
                Connecticut.  [Crafts et. al., op. cit., p. 9]

1790            Benjamin Rush persuades his associates at the Philadelphia
                College of Physicians to send an appeal to Congress to
                "impose such heavy duties upon all distilled spirits as shall
                be effective to restrain their intemperate use in the country."
                [Quoted in ibid.]

1792            The first prohibitory laws against opium in China are
                promulgated.  The punishment decreed for keepers of opium
                shops is strangulation.

1792            The Whisky Rebellion, a protest by farmers in western
                Pennsylvania against a federal tax on liquor, breaks out
                and is put down by overwhelming force sent to the area
                by George Washington.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes
                "Kubla Khan" while under the influence of opium.

1800            Napoleon's army, returning from Egypt, introduces cannibis
                (hashish, marijuana) into France.  Avante-garde artists
                and writers in Paris develop their own cannabis ritual,
                leading, in 1844, to the establishment of *Le Club
                de Haschischins.*  [William A. Emboden, Jr., Ritual
                Use of Cannabis Sativa L.: A historical-ethnographic
                survey, in Peter T. Furst (Ed.), *Flesh of the Gods*,
                pp. 214-236; pp. 227-228]

1801            On Jefferson's recommendation, the federal duty on liquor
                was abolished. [Catlin, op. cit., p. 113]

1804            Thomas Trotter, an Edinburgh physician, publishes *An Essay,
                Medical, Philosophical, and Chemical on Drunkenness and Its
                Effects on the Human Body*: "In medical language, I consider
                drunkenness, strictly speaking, to be a disease, produced by
                a remote cause, and giving birth to actions and movements
                in the living body that disorder the functions of health. . .
                The habit of drunkenness is a disease of the mind." [Quoted
                in Roueche, op. cit. pp. 87-88]

1805            Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Serturner, a German chemist, isolates
                and describes morphine.

1822            Thomas De Quincey's *Confessions of an English Opium
                Eater* is published.  He notes that the opium habit,
                like any other habit, must be learned: "Making allowance
                for constitutional differences, I should say that *in
                less that 120 days* no habit of opium-eating could
                be formed strong enough to call for any extraordinary
                self-conquest in renouncing it, even suddenly renouncing
                it.  On Saturday you are an opium eater, on Sunday no longer
                such." [Thomas De Quincey, *Confessions of an English Opium
                Eater* (1822), p. 143]

1826            The American Society for the Promotion of Temperance is
                founded in Boston.  By 1833, there are 6,000 local
                Temperance societies, with more than one million members.

1839-42         The first Opium War.   The British force upon China the
                trade in opium, a trade the Chinese had declared illegal..
                [Montagu, op. cit. p. 67]

1840            Benjamin Parsons, and English clergyman, declares:
                ". . . alcohol stands preeminent as a destroyer.
                . . . I never knew a person become insane who was not
                in the habit of taking a portion of alcohol every day."
                Parsons lists forty-two distinct diseases caused by
                alcohol, among them inflammation of the brain, scrofula,
                mania, dropsy, nephritis, and gout. [Quoted in Roueche,
                op. cit. pp. 87-88]

1841            Dr. Jacques Joseph Moreau uses hashish in treatment of mental
                patients at the Bicetre.


1842            Abraham Lincoln: "In my judgement, such of us as have never
                fallen victims, have been spared more from the absence of
                apatite, than from any mental or moral superiority over those
                who have.  Indeed, I believe, if we take habitual drunkards
                as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an
                advantageous comparison with those of any other class."
                [Abraham Lincoln, Temperance address, in Roy P. Basler
                (Ed.), *The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 1,
                p. 258]

1844            Cocaine is isolated in its pure form.

1845            A law prohibiting the public sale of liquor is enacted
                in New York State.  It is repealed in 1847.

1847            The American Medical Association is founded.

1852            Susan B. Anthony establishes the Women's State Temperance
                Society of New York, the first such society formed by and
                for women.  Many of the early feminists, such as Elizabeth
                Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Abby Kelly, are also
                ardent prohibitionists. [Andrew Sinclar, *Era of Excess*,
                p. 92]

1852            The American Pharmaceutical Association is founded.  The
                Association's 1856 Constitution lists one of its goals
                as: "To as much as possible restrict the dispensing and sale
                of medicines to regularly educated druggests and apothecaries.
                [Quoted in David Musto, *The American Disease*, p. 258]

1856            The Second Opium War.  The British, with help from the French,
                extend their powers to distribute opium in China.

1862            Internal Revenue Act enacted imposing a license fee of twenty
                dollars on retail liquor dealers, and a tax of one dollar
                a barrel on beer and twenty cents a gallon on spirits.
                [Sinclare, op. cit. p 152]

1864            Adolf von Baeyer, a twenty-nine-year-old assistant of
                Friedrich August Kekule (the discoverer of the molecular
                structure of benzene) in Ghent, synthesizes barbituric acid,
                the first barbiturate.

1868            Dr. George Wood, a professor of the theory and practice
                of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, president
                of the American Philosophical Society, and the author
                of a leading American test, *Treatise on Therapeutics*,
                describes the pharmacological effects of opium as follows:
                "A sensation of fullness is felt in the head, soon to be
                followed by a universal feeling of delicious ease and
                comfort, with an elevation and expansion of the whole moral
                and intellectual nature, which is, I think, the most
                characteristic of its effects. . . . It seems to make
                the individual, for the time, a better and greater man. . . .
                The hallucinations, the delirious imaginations of alcoholic
                intoxication, are, in general, quite wanting.  Along
                with this emotional and intellectual elevation, there is
                also increased muscular energy; and the capacity to act,
                and to bear fatigue, is greatly augmented. [Quoted in
                Musto, op. cit. pp. 71-72]

1869            The Prohibition Party is formed.  Gerrit Smith, twice
                Abolitionist candidate for President, an associate
                of John Brown, and a crusading prohibitionist, declares:
                "Our involuntary slaves are set free, but our millions
                of voluntary slaves still clang their chains.  The lot of
                the literal slave, of him whom others have enslaved, is indeed
                a hard one; nevertheless, it is a paradise compared
                with the lot of him who has enslaved himself to alcohol."
                [Quoted in Sinclar, op. cit. pp. 83-84]

1874            The Woman's Christian Temperance Union is founded in Cleveland.
                In 1883, Frances Willard a leader of the W.C.T.U. forms the
                World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

1882            The law in the United States, and the world, making
                "temperance education" a part of the required course in
                public schools is enacted.  In 1886, Congress makes such
                education mandatory in the District of Columbia, and in
                territorial, military, and naval schools.  By 1900, all the
                states have similar laws. [Crafts et. al., op. cit. p. 72]

1882            The Personal Liberty League of the United States is founded
                to oppose the increasing momentum of movements for
                compulsory abstinence from alcohol. [Catlin, op. cit. p. 114]



1883            Dr. Theodor Aschenbrandt, a German army physician, secures
                a supply of pure cocaine from the pharmaceutical firm of
                Merck, issues it to Bavarian soldiers during their
                maneuvers, and reports on the beneficial effects of the
                drug in increasing the soldiers' ability to endure fatigue.
                [Brecher et. al. op. cit. p. 272]

1884            Sigmund Freud treats his depression with cocaine, and reports
                feeling "exhilaration and lasting euphoria, which is in no
                way differs from the normal euphoria of the healthy person. . .
                You perceive an increase in self-control and possess more
                vitality and capacity for work. . . . In other words, you
                are simply more normal, and it is soon hard to believe that
                you are under the influence of a drug." [Quoted in Ernest
                Jones, *The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 1, p. 82]

1884            Laws are enacted to make anti-alcohol teaching compulsory
                in public schools in New York State.  The following year
                similar laws are passed in Pennsylvania, with other states
                soon following suit.

1885            The Report of the Royal Commission on Opium concludes that
                opium is more like the Westerner's liquor than a substance
                to be feared and abhorred.  [Quoted in Musto, op. cit. p. 29]

1889            The John Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore, Maryland, is opened.
                One of its world-famous founders, Dr. William Stewart Halsted,
                is a morphine addict.  He continues to use morphine in large
                doses throughout his phenomenally successful surgical career
                lasting until his death in 1922.

1894            The Report of the Indian Hemp Drug Comission, running to
                over three thousand pages in seven volumes, is published.
                This inquiry, commissioned by the British government,
                concluded: "There is no evidence of any weight regarding the
                mental and moral injuries from the moderate use of these
                drugs. .. . . Moderation does not lead to excess in hemp any
                more than it does in alcohol.   Regular, moderate use of ganja
                or bhang produces the same effects as moderate and regular
                doses of whiskey."  The commission's proposal to tax bhang
                is never put into effect, in part, perhaps, because one of
                the commissioners, an Indian, cautions that Moslem law and
                Hindu custom forbid "taxing anything that gives pleasure
                to the poor." [Quoted in Norman Taylor, The pleasant assassin:
                The story of marihuana, in David Solomon (Ed.) *The
                Marijuana Papers*, pp. 31-47, p. 41]

1894            Norman Kerr, and English physician and president of the
                British Society for the study of Inebriety, declares:
                "Drunkenness has generally been regarded as . . . a sin
                a vice, or a crime. . . [But] there is now a consensus of
                intelligent opinion that habitual and periodic drunkenness
                is often either a symptom or sequel of disease . . . . The
                victim can no more resist [alcohol] than an man with ague
                can resist shivering. [Quoted in Roueche, op. cit., pp.
                107-108]

1898            Diacetylmorphine (heroin) is synthesized in Germany.
                It is widely lauded as a "safe preparation free from
                addiction-forming properties."  [Montagu, op. cit. p. 68]

1900            In an address to the Ecumenical Missionary Conference, Rev.
                Wilbur F. Crafts declares: "No Christian celebration of the
                completion of nineteen Christian centuries has yet been
                arranged.  Could there be a fitter one than the general
                adoption, by separate and joint action of the great nations
                of the world, of the new policy of civilization, in which
                Great Britian is leading, the policy of prohibition for the
                native races, in the interest of commerce as well as
                conscience, since the liquor traffic among child races,
                even more manifestly than in civilized lands, injures all
                other trades by producing poverty, disease, and death.
                Our object, more profoundly viewed, is to create a more
                favorable environment for the child races that civilized
                nations are essaying to civilize and Christianize."
                [Quoted in Crafts, et. al., op. cit., p. 14]

1900            James R. L. Daly, writing in the *Boston Medical and Surgical
                Journal*, declares: "It [heroin] possesses many advantages
                over morphine. . . . It is not hypnotic; and there is no
                danger of acquiring the habit. . . ." [Quoted in Henry
                H. Lennard et. al. Methadone treatment (letters),
                *Science*, 179:1078-1079 (March 16), 1973; p. 1079]

1901            The Senate adopts a resolution, introduced by Henry Cabot
                Lodge, to forbid the sale by American traders of opium
                and alcohol "to aboriginal tribes and uncivilized races."
                Theses provisions are later extended to include "uncivilized
                elements in America itself and in its territories, such as
                Indians, Alaskans, the inhabitants of Hawaii, railroad workers,
                and immigrants at ports of entry." [Sinclar, op. cit. p. 33]

1902            The Committee on the Acquirement of the Drug Habit of the
                American Pharmaceutical Association declares: "If the
                Chinaman cannot get along without his 'dope,' we can get
                along without him." [Quoted in ibid, p. 17]

1902            George E. Petty, writing in the *Alabama Medical Journal*,
                observes: "Many articles have appeared in the medical
                literature during the last two years lauding this new agent
                . . . .  When we consider the fact that heroin is a morphine
                derivative . . . it does not seem reasonable that such a
                claim could be well founded.  It is strange that such a claim
                should mislead anyone or that there should be found among
                the members of our profession those who would reiterate
                and accentuate it without first subjecting it to the most
                critical tests, but such is the fact." [Quoted in Lennard
                et. al., op. cit. p. 1079]

1903            The composition of Coca-Cola is changed, caffeine replacing
                the cocaine it contained until this time. {Musto, op. cit.
                p. 43]

1904            Charles Lyman, president of the International Reform Bureau,
                petitions the President of the United States "to induce
                Great Britain to release China from the enforced opium
                traffic. . . .We need not recall in detail that China
                prohibited the sale of opium except as a medicine, until
                the sale was forced upon that country by Great Britian
                in the opium war of 1840." [Quoted in Crafts et al., op.
                cit. p. 230]

1905            Senator Henry W. Blair, in a letter to Rev. Wilbur F.
                Crafts, Superintendent of the International Reform
                Bureau: "The temperance movement must include all poisonous
                substances which create unnatural appetite, and international
                prohibition is the goal." [Quoted in ibid.]

1906            The first Pure Food and Drug Act becomes law; until its
                enactment, it was possible to buy, in stores or by mail order
                medicines containing morphine, cocaine, or heroin, and without
                their being so labeled.

1906            *Squibb's Materia Medical* lists heroin as "a remedy of much
                value . . . is is also used as a mild anodyne and as a
                substitute for morphine in combatting the morphine habit.
                [Quoted in Lennard et al., op. cit. p. 1079]

1909            The United States prohibits the importation of smoking
                opium.  [Lawrence Kolb, *Drug Addiction*, pp. 145-146]

1910            Dr. Hamilton Wright, considered by some the father of U.S.
                anti-narcotics laws, reports that American contractors give
                cocaine to their Negro employees to get more work out of
                them. [Musto, op. cit. p. 180]

1912            A writer in *Century* magazine proclaims: "The relation
                of tobacco, especially in the form of cigarettes, and
                alcohol and opium is a very close one.  . . . Morphine is
                the legitimate consequence of alcohol, and alcohol is the
                legitimate consequence of tobacco.  Cigarettes, drink,
                opium, is the logical and regular series."  And a physician
                warns: "[There is] no energy more destructive of soul, mind,
                and body, or more subversive of good morals than the
                cigarette.  The fight against the cigarette is a fight for
                civilization."  [Sinclar, op. cit., p. 180]

1912            The first international Opium Convention meets at the
                Hague, and recommends various measures for the international
                control of the trade in opium.  Supsequent Opium Conventions
                are held in 1913 and 1914.

1912            Phenobarbital is introduced into therapeutics under the trade
                name of Luminal.

1913            The Sixteenth Amendment, creating the legal authority for
                federal income tax, is enacted.  Between 1870 and 1915,
                the tax on liquor provides from one-half to two-thirds
                of the whole of the internal revenue of the United States,
                amounting, after the turn of the century, to about $200
                million annually.  The Sixteenth Amendment thus makes possible,
                just seven years later, the Eighteenth Amendment.

1914            Dr. Edward H Williams cites Dr. Christopher Kochs "Most
                of the attack upon white women of the South are the
                direct result of the cocaine crazed Negro brain."
                Dr. Williams concluded that " . . Negro cocaine fiends
                are now a know Southern menace."
                [New York Times, Feb. 8, 1914]


1914            The Harrison Narcotic Act is enacted, controlling the
                sale of opium and opium derivatives, and cocaine.

1914            Congressman Richard P. Hobson of Alabama, urging a prohibition
                amendment to the Constitution, asserts: "Liquor will actually
                make a brute out of a Negro, causing him to commit unnatural
                crimes.  The effect is the same on the white man, though
                the white man being further evolved it takes longer time
                to reduce him to the same level." Negro leaders join
                the crusade against alcohol. [Ibid., p. 29]

1916            The *Pharmacopoeia of the United States* drops whiskey and
                brandy from its list of drugs.  Four years later, American
                physicians begin prescribing these "drugs" in quantities
                never before prescribed by doctors.

1917            The president of the American Medical Association endorses
                national prohibition.  The House of Delegates of the
                Association passes a resolution stating: "Resolved, The
                American Medical Association opposes the use of alcohol
                as a beverage; and be it further Resolved,  That the use
                of alcohol as a therapeutic agent should be discourages."
                By 1928, physicians make an estimated $40,000,000 annually
                by writing prescriptions for whiskey." [Ibid. p. 61]

1917            The American Medical Association passes a resolution declaring
                that "sexual continence is compatible with health and is
                the best prevention of venereal infections," and one of
                the methods for controlling syphilis is by controlling alcohol.
                Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels prohibits the practice
                of distributing contraceptives to sailors bound on shore
                leave, and Congress passes laws setting up "dry and decent
                zones" around military camps.   "Many barkeepers are fined
                for selling liquor to men in uniform.   Only at Coney Island
                could soldiers and sailors change into the grateful anonymity
                of bathing suits and drink without molestation from patriotic
                passers-by." [Ibid. pp. 117-118]

1918            The Anti-Saloon League calls the "liquor traffic" "un-American,"
                pro-German, crime-producing, food-wasting, youth-corrupting,
                home-wrecking, [and] treasonable." [Quoted in ibid. p. 121]

1919            The Eighteenth (Prohibition) Amendment is added to the U.S.
                Constitution.   It is repealed in 1933.

1920            The U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes a pamphlet
                urging Americans to grow cannabis (marijuana) as a profitable
                undertaking. [David F. Musto, An historical perspective on
                legal and medical responses to substance abuse, *Villanova
                Law Review*, 18:808-817 (May), 1973; p. 816]

1920-1933       The use of alcohol is prohibited in the United States.
                In 1932 alone, approximately 45,000 persons receive jail
                sentences for alcohol offenses.  During the first eleven
                years of the Volstead Act, 17,971 persons are appointed
                to the Prohibition Bureau.   11,982 are terminated "without
                prejudice," and 1,604 are dismissed for bribery, extortion,
                theft, falsification of records, conspiracy, forgery, and
                perjury.  [Fort, op. cit. p. 69]

1921            The U.S. Treasury Departmen issues regulations outlining
                the treatment of addiction permitted under the Harrison
                Act.  In Syracuse, New York, the narcotics clinic doctors
                report curing 90 per cent of their addicts. [Lindensmith,
                *The Addict and the Law*, p. 141]

1921            Thomas S. Blair, M.D., chief of the Bureau of Drug Control
                of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, publishes a paper
                in the *Journal of the American Medical Association* in which
                he characterizes the Indian peyote religion a "habit
                indulgence in certain cactaceous plants," calls the belief
                system "superstition" and those who sell peyote "dope vendors,"
                and urges the passage of a bill in Congress that would prohibit
                the use of peyote among the Indian tribes of the Southwest.
                He concludes with this revealing plea for abolition: "The
                great difficulty in suppressing this habit among the Indians
                arises from the fact that the commercial interests involved
                in the peyote traffic are strongly entrenched, and they
                exploit the Indian. . . . Added to this is the superstition
                of the Indian who believes in the Peyote Church.  As soon
                as an effort is made to suppress peyote, the cry is raised
                that it is unconstitutional to do so and is an invasion of
                religious liberty.  Suppose the Negros of the South had
                Cocaine Church!" [Thomas S. Blair, Habit indulgence in
                certain cactaceous plants among the Indians, *Journal
                of the American Medical Association*, 76:1033-1034 (April
                9), 1921; p. 1034]

1921            Cigarettes are illegal in fourteen states, and ninety-two
                anti-cigarette bills are pending in twenty-eight states.
                Young women are expelled from college for smoking cigarettes.
                [Brecher et al., op. cit. p. 492]

1921            The Council of the American Medical Association refuses
                to confirm the Associations 1917 Resolution on alcohol.
                In the first six months after the enactment of the Volstead
                Act, more than 15,000 physicians and 57,000 druggests and
                drug manufacturers apply for licenses to prescribe and sell
                liquor. [Sinclair, op. cit., p. 492]

1921            Alfred C. Prentice, M.D.  a member of the Committee on
                Narcotic Drugs of the American Medical Association, declares
                "Public opinion regarding the vice of drug addiction has
                been deliberately and consistently corrupted through
                propaganda in both the medical and lay press. . . . The
                shallow pretense that drug addiction is a 'disease'. . . .
                has been asserted and urged in volumes of 'literature'
                by self-styled 'specialists.'"  [Alfred C Prentice, The
                Problem of the narcotic drug addict, *Journal of the
                American Medical Association*, 76:1551-1556; p. 1553]

1924            The manufacture of heroin is prohibited in the United
                States.

1925            Robert A. Schless: "I believe that most drug addiction today
                is due directly to the Harrison Anti-Narcotic Act, which
                forbids the sale of narcotics without a physician's
                prescription. . . . Addicts who are broke act as *agent
                provocateurs* for the peddlers, being rewarded by gifts
                of heroin or credit for supplies.  The Harrison Act made
                the drug peddler, and the drug peddler makes drug addicts."
                [Robert A. Schless, The drug addict, *American Mercury*,
                4:196-199 (Feb.), 1925; p. 198]

1928            In a nationwide radio broadcast entitled "The Struggle
                of Manking Against Its Deadlist Foe," celebrating the
                second annual Narcotic Education Week, Richmond P. Hobson,
                prohibition crusader and anti-narcotics propagandist,
                declares: "Suppose it were announced that there were more
                than a million lepers among our people.  Think what a shock
                the announcement would produce!  Yet drug addiction is far
                more incurable than leprosy, far more tragic to its victims,
                and is spreading like a moral and physical scourge. . . .
                Most of the daylight robberies, daring holdups, cruel murders
                and similar crimes of violence are now known to be committed
                chiefly by drug addicts, who constitute the primary cause
                of our alarming crime wave.   Drug addiction is more
                communicable and less curable that leprosy. . . .
                Upon the issue hangs the perpetuation of civilization,
                the destiny of the world, and the future of the human
                race." [Quoted in Musto, *The American Disease*, p. 191]

1928            It is estimated that in Germany one out of every hundred
                physicians is a morphine addict, consuming 0.1 grams of
                the alkaloid or more per day. [Eric Hesse, *Narcotics and
                Drug Addiction*, p. 41]

1929            About one gallon of denatured industrial in ten is
                diverted into bootleg liquor.  About forty Americans
                per million die each year from drinking illegal alcohol,
                mainly as a result of methyl (wood) alcohol poisoning.
                [Sinclare, op. cit. p. 201]

1930            The Federal Bureau of Narcotics is formed.  Many of its
                agents, including its first commissioner, Harry J. Anslinger,
                are former prohibition agents.

1935            The American Medical Association passes a resolution declaring
                that "alcoholics are valid patients." [Quoted in Neil Kessel
                and Henry Walton, *Alcoholism*, p. 21]

1936            The Pan-American Coffee Burreau is organized to promote
                coffee use in the U.S.   Between 1938 and 1941 coffee
                consumption increased 20%.   From 1914 to 1938 consumption
                had increased 20%. [Coffee, *Encyclopedia Britannica* (1949),
                Vol. 5, p. 975A]

1937            Shortly before the Marijuana Tax Act, Commissioner Harry
                J.  Anslinger writes: "How many murders, suicides, robberies,
                criminal assaults, hold-ups, burglaries, and deeds of
                maniacal insanity it [marijuana] causes each year, especially
                among the young, can only be conjectured." [Quoted in
                John Kaplan, *Marijuana*, p. 92]

1937            The Marijuana Tax Act is enacted.

1938            Since the enactment of the Harrison Act in 1914, 25,000
                physicians have been arraigned on narcotics charges, and
                3,000 have served penitentiary sentences. [Kolb, op. cit.
                p. 146]

1938            Dr. Albert Hoffman, a chemist at Sandoz Laboratories in
                Basle, Switzerland, synthesizes LSD.  Five years later he
                inadvertently ingests a small amount of it, and observes and
                reports effects on himself.

1941            Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek orders the complete suppression
                of the poppy; laws are enacted providing the death penalty
                for anyone guilty of cultivating the poppy, manufacturing
                opium, or offering it for sale. [Lindensmith, *The Addict
                and the Law*, 198]

1943            Colonel J.M. Phalen, editor of the *Military Surgeon*,
                declares in an editorial entitled "The Marijuana Bugaboo":
                "The smoking of the leaves, flowers, and seeds of Cannibis
                sativa is no more harmful than the smoking of tobacco. . . .
                It is hoped that no witch hunt will be instituted in the
                military service over a problem that does not exist."
                [Quoted in ibid. p. 234]

1946            According to some estimates there are 40,000,000 opium smokers
                in China. [Hesse, op. cit. p. 24]


1949            Ludwig von Mises, leading modern free-market economist
                and social philosopher: "Opium and morphine are certainly
                dangerous, habit-forming drugs.  But once the principle
                is admitted that is the duty of government to protect
                the individual against his own foolishness, no serious
                objections can be advanced against further encroachments.
                A good case could be made out in favor of the prohibition
                of alcohol and nicotine.   And why limit the governments
                benevolent providence to the protection of the individual's
                body only?  Is is not the harm a man can inflect on his
                mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily
                evils?  Why not prevent him from reading bad books and
                seeing bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues
                and listening to bad music?   The mischief done by bad
                ideologies, surely, is much more pernicious, both for
                the individual and for the whole society, than that
                done by narcotic drugs." [Ludwig von Mises, *Human Action*,
                pp. 728-729]

1951            According to United Nations estimates, there are approximately
                200 million marijuana users in the world, the major places
                being India, Egypt, North Africa, Mexico, and the United
                States. [Jock Young, *The Drug Takers*, p. 11]

1951            Twenty thousand pound of opium, three hundred pounds of
                heroin, and various opium-smoking devices are publicly
                burned in Canton China.  Thirty-seven opium addicts
                are executed in the southwest of China. [Margulies,
                China has no drug problem--why?  *Parade*, 0ct. 15 1972,
                p. 22]

1954            Four-fifths of the French people questioned about wine
                assert that wine is "good for one's health," and one quarter
                hold that it is "indispensable."  It is estimated that a
                third of the electorate in France receives all or part of
                its income from the production or sale of alcoholic
                beverages; and that there is one outlet for every forty-
                five inhabitants. [Kessel and Walton, op. cit. pp. 45, 73]

1955            The Prasidium des Deutschen Arztetages declares: "Treatment
                of the drug addict should be effected in the closed sector
                of a psychiatric institution.  Ambulatory treatment is useless
                and in conflict, moreover, with principles of medical
                ethics."  The view is quoted approvingly, as representative
                of the opinion of "most of the authors recommending
                commitment to an institution," by the World Health
                Organization in 1962. [World Health Organization,
                *The Treatment of Drug Addicts*, p. 5]

1955            The Shah of Iran prohibits the cultivation and use of opium,
                used in the country for thousands of years; the prohibition
                creates a flourishing illicit market in opium.   In 1969
                the prohibition is lifted, opium growing is resumed under
                state inspection, and more than 110,000 persons receive
                opium from physicians and pharmacies as "registered addicts."
                [Henry Kamm, They shoot opium smugglers in Iran, but . . ."
                *The New York Times Magazine*, Feb. 11, 1973, pp. 42-45]

1956            The Narcotics Control Act in enacted; it provides the death
                penalty, if recommended by the jury, for the sale of heroin
                to a person under eighteen by one over eighteen. [Lindesmith,
                *The Addict and the Law*, p. 26]

1958            Ten percent of the arable land in Italy is under viticulture;
                two million people earn their living wholly or partly from
                the production or sale of wine. [Kessel and Walton, op. cit.,
                p. 46]

1960            The United States report to the United Nations Commission on
                Narcotic Drugs for 1960 states: "There were 44,906 addicts
                in the United States on December 31, 1960 . . ." [Lindesmith,
                *The Addict and The Law*,  p. 100]

1961            The United Nations' "Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
                of 10 March 1961" is ratified.  Among the obligations of
                the signatory states are the following: "Art. 42. Know
                users of drugs and persons charges with an offense under
                this Law may be committed by an examining magistrate
                to a nursing home. . . . Rules shall be also laid down
                for the treatment in such nursing homes of unconvicted
                drug addicts and dangerous alcoholics." [Charles Vaille,
                A model law for the application of the Single Convention
                on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, *United Nations Bulletin on
                Narcotics*, 21:1-12 (April-June), 1961]

1963            Tobacco sales total $8.08 billion, of which $3.3 billion go
                to federal, state, and local taxes.  A news release from
                the tobacco industry proudly states: "Tobacco products
                pass across sales counters more frequently than anything
                else--except money." [Tobacco: After publicity surge
                Surgeon General's Report seems to have little enduring
                effect, *Science*, 145:1021-1022 (Sept. 4), 1964; p. 1021]

1964            The British Medical Association, in a Memorandum of Evidence
                to the Standing Medical Advisory Committee's Special Sub-
                committee on Alcoholism, declares: "We feel that in some very
                bad cases, compulsory detention in hospital offer the only
                hope of successful treatment. . . . We believe that some
                alcoholics would welcome compulsory removal and detention
                in hospital until treatment is completed." [Quoted in
                Kessel and Walton, op. cit. p. 126]

1964            An editorial in *The New York Times* calls attention
                to the fact that "the Government continues to be the tobacco
                industry's biggest booster.  The Department of Agriculture
                lost $16 million in supporting the price of tobacco in the
                last fiscal year, and stands to loose even more because it
                has just raised the subsidy that tobacco growers will get
                on their 1964 crop.   At the same time, the Food for Peace
                program is getting rid of surplus stocks of tobacco abroad."
                [Editorial, Bigger agricultural subsidies. . .even more for
                tobacco, *The New York Times*, Feb. 1, 1964, p. 22]

1966            Sen. Warren G. Magnuson makes public a program, sponsored by
                the Agriculture Department, to subsidize "attempts to increase
                cigarette consumption abroad. . . . The Department is paying
                to stimulate cigarette smoking in a travelogue for $210,000
                to subsidize cigarette commercials in Japan, Thailand,
                and Austria." An Agriculture Department spokesman
                corroborates that "the two programs were prepared under
                a congressional authorization to expand overseas markets
                for U.S. farm commodities." [Edwin B. Haakinsom, Senator
                shocked at U.S. try to hike cigarette use abroad,
                *Syracuse Herald-American*, Jan. 9, 1966, p. 2]

1966            Congress enacts the "Narcotics Addict Rehabilitation Act,
                inaugurating a federal civil commitment program for addicts.


1966            C. W. Sandman, Jr. chairman of the New Jersey Narcotic Drug
                Study Commission, declares that LSD is "the greatest threat
                facing the country today . . .  more dangerous than the
                Vietnam War." [Quoted in Brecher et al., op. cit. p. 369]

1967            New York State's "Narcotics Addiction Control Program"
                goes into effect.   It is estimated to cost $400 million
                in three years, and is hailed by Government Rockefeller
                as the "start of an unending war . . ." Under the new
                law, judges are empowered to commit addicts for compulsory
                treatment for up to five years. [Murray Schumach, Plan for
                addicts will open today: Governor hails start, *The New
                York Times*, April 1, 1967]

1967            The tobacco industry in the United States spends an estimated
                $250 million on advertising smoking. [Editorial, It
                depends on you, *Health News* (New York State), 45:1
                (March), 1968]

1968            The U.S. tobacco industry has gross sales of $8 billion.
                Americans smoke 544 billion cigarettes. [Fort, op. cit.
                p. 21]

1968            Canadians buy almost 3 billion aspirin tablets and approximately
                56 million standard does of amphetamines.  About 556 standard
                doses of barbituates are also produced or imported for
                consumption in Canada. [Canadian Government's Commission
                of Inquiry, *The Non-Medical Uses of Drugs*, p. 184

1968            Six to seven percent of all prescriptions written under the
                British National Health Service are for barbituates; it is
                estimated that about 500,000 British are regular users.
                [Young, op. cit. p. 25]

1968            Brooklyn councilman Julius S. Moskowitz charges that the
                work of New York City's Addiction Services Agency, under
                its retiring Commissioner, Dr. Efren Ramierez, was a
                "fraud," and that "not a single addict has been cured."
                [Charles G. Bennett, Addiction agency called a "fraud,"
                *New York Times*, Dec. 11, 1968, p. 47]

1969            U.S. production and value of some medical chemicals:
                barbituates: 800,000 pounds, $2.5 million; aspirin
                (exclusive of salicylic acid) 37 milliion pounds,
                value "withheld to avoid disclosing figures for
                individual producers"; salicylic acid: 13 million
                pounds, $13 million; tranquilizers: 1.5 million
                pounds, $7 million. [*Statistical Abstracts of the
                United States*, 1971 92nd Annual Edition, p. 75]

1969            The parents of 6,000 secondary-level students in
                Clifton, New Jersey, are sent letters by the Board
                of Education asking permission to conduct saliva tests
                on their children to determine whether or not they use
                marijuana. [Saliva tests asked for Jersey youths on
                marijuana use, *New York Times*, Apr. 11, 1969, p. 12]

1970            Dr. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Nobel Laureate in Medicine and
                Physiology, in reply to being asked what he would do if
                he were twenty today: "I would share with my classmates
                rejection of the whole world as it is--all of it.  Is there
                any point in studying and work?  Fornication--at least that
                is something good.  What else is there to do?  Fornicate
                and take drugs against the terrible strain of idiots who
                govern the world." [Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, in *The New
                York Times*, Feb. 20, 1970, quoted in Mary Breastead, *Oh!
                Sex Education!*, p. 359]

1971            President Nixon declares that "America's Public Enemy
                No. 1 is drug abuse."  In a message to Congress, the President
                calls for the creation of a Special Action Office of Drug
                Abuse Prevention.  [The New Public Enemy No. 1, *Time*,
                June 28, 1971, p. 18]

1971            On June 30, 1971, President Cvedet Sunay of Turkey decrees
                that all poppy cultivation and opium production will be
                forbidden beginning in the fall of 1972. [Patricia M Wald
                et al. (Eds.), *Dealing with Drug Abuse*, p. 257]

1972            Myles J. Ambrose, Special Assistant Attorney General of
                the United States: "As of 1960, the Bureau of Narcotics
                estimated that we had somewhere in the neighborhood
                of 55,000 addicts . . . they estimate now the figure is
                560,000. [Quoted in *U.S. News and World Report*, April
                3, 1972, p. 38]

1972            The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs proposes
                restricting the use of barbituates on the ground that they
                "are more dangerous than heroin." [Restrictions proposed
                on barbituate sales, *Syracuse Herald-Journal*, Mar 16,
                1972, p. 32]

1972            The house votes 366 to 0 to authorize "a $1 billion,
                three-year federal attack on drug abuse." [$1 billion
                voted for drug fight, *Syracuse Herald-Journal*, March
                16, 1972, p. 32]

1972            At the Bronx house of corrections, out of a total of 780
                inmates, approximately 400 are given tranquilizers such
                as Valium, Elavil, Thorazine, and Librium.  "'I think they
                [the inmates] would be doing better without some of the
                medication,' said Capt. Robert Brown, a correctional officer.
                He said that in a way the medications made his job harder
                . . . rather than becoming calm, he said, an inmate who
                had become addicted to his medication 'will do anything
                when he can't get it.'" [Ronald Smothers, Muslims: What's
                behind the violence, *The New York Times*, Dec. 26, 1972,
                p. 18]

1972            In England, the pharmacy cost of heroin is $.04 per grain
                (60 mg.), or $.00067 per mg.  In the United States, the
                street price is $30 to $90 per grain, or $.50 or $1.50
                per mg. [Wald et al. (Eds.) op. cit. p. 28]

1973            A nationwide Gallop poll reveals that 67 percent
                of the adults interviewed "support the proposal of New York
                Governer Nelson Rockefeller that all sellers of hard drugs
                be given life imprisonment without possibility of parole."
                [George Gallup, Life for pushers, *Syracuse Herald-American*,
                Feb. 11, 1973]

1973            Michael R. Sonnenreich, Executive Director of the National
                Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, declares: "About
                four years ago we spent a total of $66.4 million for the
                entire federal effort in the drug abuse area. . . .
                This year we have spent $796.3 million and the budget
                estimates that have been submitted indicate that we will
                exceed the $1 billion mark.  When we do so, we become,
                for want of a better term, a drug abuse industrial
                complex.: [Michael R. Sonnenreich, Discussion of the
                Final Report of the National Commission on Marijuana
                and Drug Abuse, *Villanova Law Review*, 18:817-827 (May),
                1973; p. 818]

197?            Operation Intercept.    All vehicles returning from Mexico
                are checked by Nixon's order.    Long lines occur and, as
                usual no dent is made in drug traffic.

1981            Congress ammends the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which
                forbids the armed forces to enforce civil law, so that
                the military could provide surveillance planes and ships
                for interdiction purposes.

1984            U.S. busts 10,000 pounds of marijuana on farms in Mexico.
                The seizures, made on five farms in an isolated section of
                Chihuahua state, suggest a 70 percent increase in estimates
                that total U.S. consumption was 13,000 to 14,000 tons in 1982.
                Furthermore, the seizures add up to nearly eight times the
                1300 tons  that officials had calculated Mexico produced
                in 1983.  [the San Francisco Chronicle, Saturday,
                November 24, 1984]

1985            Pentagon spends $40 million on interdiction.

1986            The Communist Party boss, Boris Yeltsin  said that the
                Moscow school system is rife with drug addiction,
                drunkenness and principles that take bribes.  He
                said that drug addiction has become such a problem
                that there are 3700 registered addicts in Moscow. [The
                San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 22, 1986, p. 12]

----
--
scc!steiny
Don Steiny @ Don Steiny Software
109 Torrey Pine Terrace
Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060
(408) 425-0382

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