Addiction and Opiates

CHAPTER 9 THE PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
"Opium smoking had been entirely confined to the Chinese up to and before the autumn of 1876, when the practice
was introduced by a sporting character who had lived in China, where he had contracted the habit. He spread the
practice amongst his class, and his mistress, a woman of the town, introduced it among her demi-monde acquaintances,
and it was not long before it had widely spread amongst the people mentioned and then amongst the younger class of
boys and girls, many of the latter of the more respected class of families. The habit grew very rapidly until it reached
young women of more mature age, when the necessity for stringent measures became apparent, and was met by the
passing of a city ordinance."(12)
Considerable numbers of Chinese arrived in the United States during the 1850's; there were thousands in the West by
186o. (13) It seems incredible, therefore, that no white man should have tried the drug before 1868. An addict who
began to smoke opium while he was in the West in 1906 told me that, although he had heard about the account given
by Kane, he was disposed to regard it as legend. At any rate, the denizens of the American underworld acquired the
habit from the Chinese, who taught them the ritual and the technique and at first supplied the drug. The Chinese
influence upon the use of narcotics is evident in many words in the addict's argot. (14)
According to Kane:
The very fact that opium smoking was a practice forbidden by law seemed to lead many who would not otherwise have
indulged to seek out the low dens and patronize them, while the regular smokers found additional pleasure in
continuing that about which there was a spice of danger. It seemed to add zest to their enjoyment. Men and women,
young girls, virtuous or just commencing a downward career, hardened prostitutes, representatives of the "hoodlum"
element, young clerks and errand boys who could ill afford the waste of time and money, and young men who had no
work to do were to be found smoking together in the back rooms of laundries in the low, pestilential dens of
Chinatown, reeking with filth and overrun with vermin, in the cellars of drinking saloons, and in houses of
prostitution.(15)
The San Francisco Chronicle of July 25, 1881., stated that "the habit in past years, so far as whites are concerned, was
confined to hoodlums and prostitutes mostly." It added, "Now that there are scores of places where the habit can be
contracted in clean rooms in respectable portions of the city, the practice will gradually extend up in the social
grade."(16)
The rapidity with which the opium-smoking habit spread was noted by an anonymous writer in Chambers' journal in
1888:
In 1877 and 1878 when Deadwood, the Metropolis of the Black Hills, one of the richest mining camps ever discovered
in the United States, was over 300 miles from the nearest railroad, it was ascertained that the Chinamen had introduced
the vice of opium-smoking among the white inhabitants. I was employed at the time as deputy sheriff, and received
instructions to investigate the subject with a view to closing the houses and punishing the proprietors.(17)
Action taken by local authorities was apparently not very effective, for former smokers state that as late as 1910 they
were able to travel almost anywhere in the West without taking along either a supply of opium or an opium pipe,
depending solely upon the dens that operated in almost all sizeable towns.
The opium smoker of the nineteenth century belonged to an elite underworld group which despised and generally
avoided all contact with the hypodermic user or "opium eater" of respectable society. Smokers usually regarded the
hypodermic habit as more vicious and difficult to break than the smoking habit. They applied the term "dope fiend" to
those who used the drug in some manner other than smoking, but did not apply it to themselves. Their attitudes were
indicated by an incident that occurred early in the twentieth century in a New York opium-smoking joint. One of the
smokers discovered a hypodermic user in the bathroom giving himself an injection. He immediately reported to the
proprietor that there was a "God-damned dope fiend in the can." The offender was promptly ejected.
Unlike opium eating, the smoking habit did not involve contact with the medical profession, for doctors did not
prescribe it. Hence, the habit spread solely through contacts with persons who were already addicted, and this is the
manner in which drug addiction in the underworld has continued to spread. A special committee of investigation
appointed in 1918 by the Secretary of the Treasury stated: "with respect to the addict of good social standing, the
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