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Introduction: The Classic Era of Narcotic Control
- The University of Tennessee Press
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Introduction: The Classic Era of Narcotic Control From the early 1920s until the middle 1960s American narcotic policy was unprecedentedly strict and punitive, in comparison both to other western countries and to what it has become in our own time. To use a shorthand phrase, this was the classic period of narcotic control-"classic" in the sense of simple, consistent, and rigid. The purpose of this book is to describe, through the medium of oral history, what it was like to be a narcotic addict during those years. The narratives we have assembled are drawn from the recorded testimony ofclassic-era addicts who started using drugs as long ago as 1910 and who, against long odds, lived to tell of their experiences. Such an approach is, to our knowledge, unique: although there have been other interview-based studies of American addicts , none has focused exclusively on older addicts whose memories reach so far back into the twentieth century.! Who our interviewees were, how they survived, and how we located them will be explained in due course. We shall begin, however, with a historical sketch of the period in question, to provide a conceptual and chronological framework for the personal narratives that follow. THE SOCIAL AND LEGISLATIVE BACKGROUND During the nineteenth century there was virtually no effective regulation of narcotics in the United States. Various preparations and derivatives of opium were freely available and widely used. Although several states had statutes governing the sale of narcotics, and many municipalities forbade opium smoking, these laws were only sporadically enforced. In practice just about anyone could secure pure drugs with little bother and at modest cost. Pharmacists even delivered, dispatching messenger boys with vials ofmorphine to houses ofhigh and low repute. Some customers 2 ADDICTS WHO SURVIVED were actually unaware ofwhat they were purchasing: proprietors ofpatent medicines were notorious for slipping narcotics into their products, which before 1906 bore no list of ingredients on their labels. Doctors, too, frequently overprescribed narcotics. Opiates were among the few effective drugs they possessed, and it was tempting to alleviate the symptoms (and thus continue the patronage) of their patients,. especially those who were chronically ill. The result of all this was a narcotic problem of considerable dimensions , with perhaps as many as 300,000 opiate addicts at the turn of the century, plus an unknown number ofirregular users.2 Today there are an estimated 500,000 narcotic (mainly heroin) addicts in the United States, but the population is also much larger. On a per capita basis, narcotic abuse was certainly as bad and probably worse in the late nineteenth century. Victorian Americans were much less worried about drugs, however, than they were about drink. An influential reform coalition, consisting mainly of native-born, white, middle-class Protestants, attacked alcohol as the principal source of social problems. Drinking was wrong because it led to drunkenness, and drunkenness led to battered wives, abandoned children, sexual incontinence, venal voting, pauperism, insanity, early death, and eternal damnation. Drinking was also objectionable because it was associated with groups whose morality was highly suspect: Catholic immigrants, machine politicians, urban blacks, demimondaines, criminals , tramps, casual laborers, and others of the lower strata. Reformers sought to uplift and reform drunkards, but they were also frank in their desire to control their behavior and to minimize the social costs they generated. The more ardent among them fought for and achieved prohibition , first on a local and state level, and then, in January 1920, on a national basis. Given the prevalence of narcotic use, why were Americans initially so much more agitated over the drink question? One answer lies in the comparative effects of opiates and alcohol. It was a commonplace that drink maddened while opium soothed. Alcoholics were notoriously obstreperous and often injured others as well as themselves. Their behavior was a public nuisance and a scandal. Addicts, by contrast, tended to be quiet and withdrawn. Though they might merit reprehension for their enslavement to a drug, theirs was a private vice, unlikely to affect anyone outside their immediate family-and in some cases even the family did not know. These distinctions were grounded in pharmacological reality, insofar as narcotics are potent tranquilizers, capable ofproducing a pacific and languid state. It is easier for an addict to remain inconspicuous than a drunkard. Who the narcotic users were was as important as how they acted. There was what might be termed a "hard core" of opium smokers, mainly Chi- [3.236.18.23] Project MUSE (2024...