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ecord. Yet the records contain information about physicians
who avoided treatment in psychiatric institutions.
About 40 per cent of the physicians listed by the health
service did not receive hospital treatment for drug abuse.
The National Health Service kept control of prescriptions
of all pharmacies and had an index that made it possible
to discover new cases of abuse. Almost all drugs used by
addicts in Denmark were obtained by prescriptions, and
smuggling of drugs was not very common in this period.
The record of the Health Service can thus provide a more
detailed picture of the physicians who were using drugs.
Most doctors began using drugs when they were between
30 and 39 years old (this was about 45 % of the physicians).
But there was also a large group who began using
drugs rather late in their life, when they were 40–49 years
old (31 %). Most of the addicts were general practitioners
(57 %) but physicians in high position were also among
the people registered by the Health Service. Seven Chief
physicians were listed in the records.
Even though the Danish Health Service kept a record of
the addicts, few of these physicians got in trouble with the
police; and the Health Service was not that interested in
taking legal actions against these doctors. The records of
the Health Service show that few legal actions were taken
against the addict physicians. Some physicians had their
prescription rights of psychotropic drugs (i. e. morphine
etc.) deprived. Yet only 3 of the 108 physicians were deprived
the right to practise. 37 were deprived prescription
rights but some of them regained this right later on. Even
though some physicians were stealing drugs from hospitals
or forging prescriptions this usually did not lead to
imprisonment or even fines. 16
It was only in the late 1940s that the Health Service accepted
that it was necessary to support a stricter policy on
drug use. In the 1950s the first narcotics law was implemented
in Denmark. But this change had less to do with
the addicted physicians and more to do with new groups
of drug abusers.
Legislation
Danish drug legislation was founded in 1955 with the Act
on Euphoriant Drugs. The act took the place of the previous
Opium Act of 1936. The Opium Act was based upon
the opium conventions of 1912, 1925, 1931 and 1936,
which Denmark had ratified. 17 The Act on Euphoriant
Drugs had a penal clause under which up to two years
of imprisonment could be imposed. It was punishable to
import, export, sell or buy, distribute, manufacture, prepare
prohibited or regulated drugs. In sum, the new law
led to a more restrictive course against drug abuse from
the middle of the twentieth century and onwards. 18
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«The Act on Euphoriant Drugs» (Lov om euforiserende
stoffer) was based on a committee report commissioned
in 1950 by the Ministry of the Interior. During the late
1940s a number of cases of over-prescription of morphine
and amphetamine gave rise to concern over lax practices
and abuse of morphine among doctors, but it was foremost
a growing black marked in morphine and methadone
in the harbour areas of Copenhagen that gave rise
to concern (heroin and cannabis was not used frequently
in Denmark in this period). The press and the committee
report paid special attention to a group of working class
men and women living in these harbour areas of Copenhagen.
Danish newspapers began to run stories of these
addicts of lower social class, who were obtaining drugs
by stealing from pharmacies and forging prescriptions.
These newspaper articles gave rise to concern among
members of the Danish parliament, and this led to the
foundation of the state committee in 1950 and the first
national law on narcotics in 1955. 19
Different responses to drug addiction
The change in social class distribution among the addicts
led to different ways of dealing with the people using
drugs. While the better-off morphine users such as
physicians were handled by the medical system, the drug
abusers of lower social class were often registered with the
police or diagnosed as psychopaths. Several of them were
convicted and confined in the Psychopath Institution in
Herstedvester (Copenhagen). 20 In the 1940s, the Danish
police made a registry containing information about the
people with whom contact was made by the police because
of their abuse or illicit handling with psychotropic
drugs. In 1958, more than 1000 abusers were registered
by the police. Conversely, the better-off drug abusers
only on rare occasions had psychiatric diagnosis such as
psychopathia, and they were not controlled by the police
but by the National Health Service and the mental hospital
system. The reaction of the medical community to
drug addiction was also mixed. Contrary to the studies
emphasising the expansive aims of the medical profession,
it appears that the medical community had a much
more ambivalent attitude towards drug abuse. The medical
profession had little interest in drawing attention to
the group of addict physicians and was, for a long time,
not interested in suggesting strict regulations or laws that
would criminalise the drug users. The later regulations of
the 1950s had less to do with the interests of the medical
profession and more to do with class and the fact that
drug addiction was spreading to people of lower social
status.