Addiction and Opiates

CHAPTER 10 FEDERAL ANTI-NARCOTICS LEGISLATION
of the habit in the underworld is not subject to any public control.
There is no doubt that the existence of the illicit traffic in opiates in the United States today is directly dependent upon
the enforcement of the Harrison and Jones-Miller acts, which prevent almost all competition between the legal and
illegal businesses in narcotics. Prior to 1914 there was some smuggling of opium for smoking, but it was not until some
years later, when the Harrison Act began to be seriously enforced, that illicit prices rose and the smuggling of drugs
became a really big business.
Another interesting feature of our anti-narcotics legislation is that, whereas it purports to be aimed at the peddler of the
drug rather than at the user and does not specifically define the use of drugs as a crime, it does in fact make every
addict in the United States a criminal unless he happens to be so old and infirm that withdrawal of the drug would
cause death or unless he has an incurable disease. It is possible for a man to be a chronic alcoholic and to drink
himself to death without violating the law. It is not possible for an addict to use drugs without violating the law or
causing someone else to violate the law. As a consequence of the drug user's vulnerability to arrest, much of the
punishment for the violation of the drug laws is banded out to the user of the drug rather than to the peddler. The -
federal institutions and prisons are filled mainly with the victims of the drug traffic, not with those who profit from the
traffic.
The current evil reputation of drug addicts in the United States arises from the peculiar historical development of the
problem of addiction in this country. The fact that opium smoking became a fad in the American underworld probably
provided the original grounds for the idea that there is an inherent connection between crime and addiction and
provided the impetus for anti-narcotics legislation. This legislation in turn reinforced the notion that addicts are
necessarily criminals by actually making them that. The agencies which enforce anti-narcotics legislation have become
a vested interest in the status quo, and the fact that addicts in most of the other nations of the West are not nearly as
criminal as those of the United States has been ignored. In no other country in the world does the opiate addict pay as
much for his supply as he does here. This not only accounts for most of the crimes committed by addicts but has also
made the United States the most lucrative market in the world for the illicit trafficker. It has also stimulated the
cultivation of the poppy in remote portions of the earth.
A competent English observer and medical man commented upon the American situation:
In the United States of America a drug addict is regarded as a malefactor even though the habit has been acquired
through the medicinal use of the drug, as in the case, e.u., of American soldiers who were gassed and otherwise
maimed in the Great War. The Harrison Narcotic Law was passed in 1914 by the Federal Government of the United
States with general popular approval. It places severe restrictions upon the sale of narcotics and upon the medical
profession, and necessitated the appointment of a whole army of officials. In consequence of this stringent law a vast
clandestine commerce in narcotics has grown tip in that country. The small bulk of these drugs renders the evasion of the law
comparatively easy, and the country is overrun by an army of peddlers who extort exorbitant prices from their helpless victims. It appears that not
only has the Harrison Law failed to diminish the number of drug takers-some contend, indeed, that it has increased their numbers-but, far from
bettering the lot of the opiate addict, it has actually worsened it; for without curtailing the supply of the drug it has sent the price up tenfold, and
this has had the effect of impoverishing the poorer class of addicts and reducing them to a condition of such abject misery as to render them
incapable of gaining an honest livelihood.(8)
1. Taken from the text of the act as given by Terry and Pellens, The Opium Problem (New York: Committee on Drug
Addictions and Bureau of Social Hygiene, 1928), Appendix VIII, P. 984.
2. Ibid., p. 985.
3. Ibid., p. 989. See also Chapter 11, pp. 745-8o6, for a discussion of the implications of this law for the medical
profession.
4. Ibid., P. 756. Treasury Decision, NO. 28og, March 2o, igig.
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