Some Real History

[Clifford Black]

Addiction in America: The Root of the Problem

Long before opium and heroin addiction became a law enforcement problem, it was a major cause for social concern in the United States. By the late 1800s Americans were taking opium-based drugs with the same alarming frequency as they now consume tranquilizers, pain killers, and diet pills. Even popular children's medicines were frequently opium based. When heroin was introduced into the United States by the German pharmaceutical company, Bayer, in 1898, it was, as has already been mentioned, declared nonaddictive, and was widely prescribed in hospitals and by private practitioners as a safe substitute for morphine. After opium smoking was outlawed in the United States ten years later, many opium addicts turned to heroin as a legal substitute, and America's heroin problem was born,

By the beginning of World War I the most conservative estimate of America's addict population was 200,000, and growing alarm over the uncontrolled use of narcotics resulted in the first attempts at control. In 1914 Congress passed the Harrison Narcotics Act. It turned out to be a rather ambiguous statute, requiring only the registration of all those handling opium and coca products and establishing a stamp tax of one cent an ounce on these drugs. A medical doctor was allowed to prescribe opium, morphine, or heroin to a patient, "in the course of his professional practice only." The law, combined with public awareness of the plight of returning World War I veterans who had become addicted to medical morphine, resulted in the opening of hundreds of public drug maintenance clinics. Most clinics tried to cure the addict by gradually reducing his intake of heroin and morphine. However, in 1923 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in United States vs. Behrman, that the Harrison Act made it illegal for a medical doctor to prescribe morphine or heroin to an addict under any circumstances. The clinics shut their doors and a new figure appeared on the American scene-the pusher.

[Adisa]

Interesting how the British East India Company introduced the opium trade into China to gain an economic foothold then in 1911 the former British colonies identified a market to assist the Chinese people with their opium problems.

[Clifford Black]

http://www.economichitman.com/pix/veracitymemo.pdf

See if this fits into what has been taught about history.!!!

[Clifford Black]

Namaska E, happy to know that you are still alive and well and glad that you are getting your study on.!!!

B.

[E Donelson II]

Having already peered into the Opium Wars, this bit of information highlights the efforts of capitalists to engage any means of aggrandizement of their portfolios! More reading is required. There is collateral damage to cultures that have sought to escape from or alter realities through the use of drugs.

[Clifford Black]

Namaska MS-

In reference to your comment I would think that you are talking about the drafters of the 'Harrison' act. There is going to more for you to 'SEE' as you uncover more data that is being kept in a position so that it is hard to grasp.

B.

[Michael Laray Stewart]

The drafters played on fears of “drug-crazed, sex-mad negroes” and made references to Negroes under the influence of drugs murdering whites, degenerate Mexicans smoking marijuana, and “Chinamen” seducing white women with drugs.^[11][12] Dr. Hamilton Wright, testified at a hearing for the Harrison Act. Wright alleged that drugs made blacks uncontrollable, gave them superhuman powers and caused them to rebel against white authority. Dr. Christopher Koch of the State Pharmacy Board of Pennsylvania testified that "Most of the attacks upon the white women of the South are the direct result of a cocaine-crazed Negro brain".^{[2]Before the Act was passed, on February 8, 1914 The New York Times published an article entitled "Negro Cocaine 'Fiends' Are New Southern Menace:Murder and Insanity Increasing Among Lower-Class Blacks" by Edward Huntington Williams which reported that Southern sheriffs had increased the caliber of their weapons from .32 to .38 to bring down Negroes under the effect of cocaine}

MANY PEOPLE THINK THAT DRUG ABUSE IS SOMETHING NEW IN OUR SOCIETY BUT AS YOU CAN PLAINLY SEE IT HAS BEEN AROUND BEFORE AND IF YOU CAN READ BETWEEN THE LINES THEY WERE

ALWAYS BLAMING THE LOWER-CLASS BLACKS