Drugs—A Long and Varied History - Regulating Drugs

The passage of the Harrison Narcotic Act reflected, in part, a growing belief that opium and cocaine were medicines to be taken only when a person was sick (and then only when prescribed by a doctor). In addition, many people were beginning to believe that these drugs caused insanity or led to crime, particularly among foreigners and minorities. For example, opium use was strongly associated with Chinese immigrants. Many Americans also believed that cocaine affected African-Americans more powerfully than it did whites, surmising the drug frequently incited the minority group to violence.

"The Cocaine Habit," an article published in 1900 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (vol. 34), claimed that southern African-Americans were the major purchasers of an inexpensive form of cocaine known as the "5-cent sniff." Because temperance laws had led to an increase in the price of alcohol, it was thought that many poor Americans, especially African-Americans, were turning to less expensive drugs. In addition, many observers claimed that the "drug-habit menace" had led to increased crime, particularly among African-Americans.

During the 1920s the federal government regulated drugs through the U.S. Treasury Department. In 1930 President Herbert Hoover created the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, headed by Commissioner of Narcotics Harry J. Anslinger. For the next thirty-two years, Anslinger, believing all drug users were deviant criminals, vigorously enforced the law. Marijuana, for example, was presented as a "killer weed" that threatened the very fabric of American society.

Marijuana was believed to have been brought into the country and promoted by Mexican immigrants and then picked up by African-American jazz musicians. These beliefs played a part in the passage of the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act (PL 75-238), which tried to control the use of marijuana. The act made the use or sale of marijuana without a tax stamp a federal offense. Since by this time the sale of marijuana was illegal in most states, buying a federal tax stamp would alert the police in a particular state to who was selling drugs. Naturally, no marijuana dealer wanted to buy a stamp and expose his or her identity to the police. (The federal tax stamp for gambling serves the same purpose.)

From the 1940s through the 1960s, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), based on the authority granted by the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (52 Stat. 1040), began to police the sale of certain drugs. The act had required the FDA to stipulate if specific drugs, such as amphetamines, barbiturates, and sulfa drugs, were safe for self-medication.

After studying most amphetamines and barbiturates, the agency concluded that it simply could not declare them safe for self-medication. Therefore, it ruled that these drugs could only be used under medical supervision—that is, with a physician's prescription. For all pharmaceutical products other than narcotics, this marked the beginning of the distinction between prescription and over-the-counter drugs.

For twenty-five years, undercover FDA inspectors tracked down pharmacists who sold amphetamines and barbiturates without a prescription and doctors who wrote illegal prescriptions. In the 1950s, with the growing sale of amphetamines, barbiturates, and, eventually, LSD and other hallucinogens at cafés, truck stops, flophouses, and weight-reduction salons, and by street-corner pushers, FDA authorities went after these other illegal dealers. In 1968 the drug-enforcement responsibilities of the FDA were transferred to the U.S. Department of Justice.