Passage of the Harrison Act came after consultation with the trade and professional interests concerned, from the obligation of America to other nations, and with the support of reform groups, but it was not a question of primary national interest. Although drugs later became a great popular issue, the passage of the Harrison Act in 1914 seemed a routine slap at a moral evil, something like the Mann Act or the Anti-Lottery Acts. It went largely unnoticed because the question of controlling narcotics had none of the controversy associated with the prohibition of liquor. Perhaps half the nation saw nothing evil in moderate drinking. Most Americans described themselves as in favor of temperance, which could be interpreted as being opposed to public drunkenness. But almost no one ever used the term temperance in discussing the use of opiates or cocaine after 1900; by the teens of this century both classes of drugs were deemed in public debate to have no value except as medicine. The closest a public spokesman would come to defending such drugs would be to say that they were not especially harmful as compared say, with alcohol, and with a vigorous effort in progress to outlaw alcohol, the description did not protect narcotics Read more [...]

At the close of the nineteenth century, the Far East beckoned as a market for American investors. According to enthusiastic calculation, a pair of shoes sold to each Chinese would keep American shoe factories busy for years. American financial leaders coming out of the depression of 1893 believed that expanding markets were the key to future prosperity, blaming bad times on saturation of the home market.1 China may have needed almost everything manufactured, but China was also surrounded and intimidated by the great powers of Europe. America’s penetration of China so far had been chiefly by missionaries. Perhaps the most promising investment market was railroads, an essential part of China’s modernization plan and also a source of considerable income to the foreign syndicates which financed them. China’s repayment was practically guaranteed by Western control of her maritime customs service, and her enforced acquiescence to the demands of foreign powers promised a good basis on which to loan hundreds of millions of dollars.2 Understandably, Russia, France, Great Britain, Germany, and Japan did not wish to include the United States in profits from their loan agreements. The weakness of diplomatic notes without Read more [...]

An expansionist mood, stories of Spanish atrocities against defenseless Cubans, and confidence in an American mission to bring democracy to the world led to the United States’ declaration of war on Spain on 25 April 1898. The war’s otiose character did not dim American enthusiasm, and its four-month duration made effective opposition impossible. It was difficult to criticize a war in which 341 battle casualties gave the nation Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines as well as control of Cuba for some years. The Philippines, received, in the words of President McKinley, as a gift from the gods, intoxicated Americans who now saw indisputable proof of their new status as a world power and an opportunity to accept the eagerly sought burden of uplifting inferior peoples.4 The financial and commercial implications of a solid foothold in the Far East were also kept in mind. The United States had in one stroke become a world power in the style of the European nations; an entrepreneur in the expanding market of the Far East. Magnificent responsibilities showered on the nation as it rushed to learn more of those faraway lands about which most Americans, Finley Peter Dunne claimed, did not know “whether they were islands or canned Read more [...]

Having resolved the opium question in the Philippines, Americans intent upon international control of narcotics now focused on the Sino-Indian opium trade. Since the late eighteenth century Indian opium had been shipped to China; from this trade India received considerable tax revenue. The moral implication of such commerce was often regretted in England as well as elsewhere. To reformers, opium smuggling was unfortunate, but to make the opium evil a revenue source was intolerable. The British government feared that if the Indian opium trade were suspended, the great opium-producing nations of Persia and Turkey would quickly take it over or that China would merely grow more poppies. Such an event would make England moral, but the Indian government would have an unbalanced budget, and the Chinese would continue to smoke opium. Moreover, a British investigation into opium use in 1895 concluded that opium was more like the Westerner’s liquor than a substance to be feared and abhorred.22 Britons who denounced the Sino-Indian traffic and Chinese who saw in opium a curse to their nation (and a reason why China accepted foreign domination) found support in the Philippine Commission’s view of opium as one of the gravest Read more [...]

Chinese in the United States received some of their worst treatment during America’s period of expansion in 1904 in the Far East. Tension between China and the United States reached a climax over the determination of Congress to exclude Chinese laborers. Brutality in the United States against Chinese travelers and immigrants of all kinds furnished ammunition to the anti-imperialists in China.27 With an inadequate army, and knowing that burning the American Embassy would only bring back the marines, Chinese merchants protested by organizing a voluntary embargo against American goods in 1905.28 Although formally disavowed by the Chinese government, the embargo was popular and in certain trading areas effective. The growth of the embargo, and a fear of what total cessation of trade would mean to those who thirsted after the endless Chinese market, agitated American traders. President Roosevelt privately admitted the justice of the Chinese protest but felt it unmanly to allow America to be pushed around: he asked Congress for $100,000 to send troops to the Far East.29 On 24 July 1906, after the embargo had begun to take effect and while British and Chinese opposition to opium accelerated, Bishop Brent wrote to Roosevelt Read more [...]

The United States delegates had challenged themselves to prove America’s sincerity. They hoped that another meeting would soon be called to design formal international cooperation to eliminate the narcotic menace; but the American proposal for a post-Shanghai conference was not accepted as one of the resolutions.59 Most other nations were not interested. Great Britain did not wish to enter a conference until trade between India and China could be brought into a more popular and defensible form. Turkey had not sent a representative to the Shanghai meeting and gave no promise of appearing at any later conference. Eventually other nations equally essential to international control, for example France and Germany, proved to have little interest in such a meeting. The prospect for quick agreement by any nation other than China to meet again on the subject of opium did not seem good. Within a week of the Shanghai Commission’s adjournment, the United States inaugurated a new president, William Howard Taft, who had strongly supported Brent’s activities against opium and whose foreign policy goals were congenial to a plan for international control of narcotics.60 Taft had heartily encouraged the initial steps to call the Read more [...]

Wright believed that the Shanghai meeting gave the United States a moral obligation to appear with a clean slate before asking other nations to enact drastic legislation. He was quite ready to frame such laws, but he faced strong opposition even within the State Department. He had spent most of the summer of 1909 in Washington trying to formulate a bill and gathering the data for a strong report to Congress when “he of the eolithic mind [Huntington Wilson] cried halt.”70 Wilson, having lost on the question of another conference, now argued that proposing domestic legislation was an unwarranted action by the State Department. Frustrated by this block to his ambitious project, Wright saw no recourse but once again to take the question to Secretary of State Knox. The Secretary asked him to put in writing “not only its bearings on the home problem, but as it affected our foreign relations especially with China.” In a week or so Knox gave his approval and Wright was back on the rails.71 By late 1909, Wright had a plan for domestic legislation. He decided to seek the control of drug traffic through federal powers of taxation. His bill would require every drug dealer to register, pay a small tax, and record all transactions. Read more [...]

The December sessions heard arguments in support of strict control of habit-forming drugs, and several members of the drug trades favorably inclined toward the Foster bill appeared at the hearings. After the Christmas recess the opposition was heard. A week before hearings were resumed, Wright came to New York to conciliate doubtful medical and pharmaceutical interests. The drug-trade leaders gathered at the home of Dr. William J. Schieffelin, president of the National Wholesale Druggists Association (NWDA) and a prominent member of various national reform movements.88 After this meeting, trade representatives hoped that modifications would be made in the bill. Druggists, however, continued their attacks. The Drug Trade Section of the New York Board of Trade came out in opposition to the Foster bill, which it now described as pleasing no one except Dr. Wright. The section also correctly predicted that no action would be taken during the last session of the 6ist Congress.89 Attitudes toward narcotic control varied considerably within the drug industry. Restrictions on small amounts of narcotics that could make a best seller out of an otherwise slow item (mainly proprietary medicines) were opposed by retail drug interests. Read more [...]

Congress had failed Wright, and now prospects for the great international conference were filled with uncertainty. Delay after delay marked planning for its opening session. Wright and some of the State Department staff began to suspect a conspiracy against the American crusade. He was tempted to push a little harder, but from the American Embassy in Paris came the warning that the other nations were tired of American insistence. Now as Ambassador to France, Robert Bacon reminded the anxious planners that “everyone else has so much more at stake than we, they cannot be driven too hard.” 94 The doctor turned to publicity for support of the American proposals. He told his brother-in-law Frank Baldwin of the Outlook that he was willing to write an article on the economic aspects of the opium question, but the Outlook editors preferred something more “picturesque” on opium; for example, “selling girl babies into slavery.” 95 Wright rejected that idea. Dr. Lambert’s aid was enlisted to get Theodore Roosevelt, the Outlook’s contributing editor, to write an article on opium.96 Nothing ever came of this, although Wright tried constantly to get at least a stirring editorial paragraph out of Roosevelt. Even more disheartening Read more [...]

Before 1800, opium was available in America in its crude form as an ingredient of multidrug prescriptions, or in such extracts as laudanum, containing alcohol, or “black drop,” containing no alcohol. Valued for its calming and soporific effects, opium was also a specific against symptoms of gastrointestinal illnesses such as cholera, food poisoning, and parasites. Its relatively mild psychological effect when taken by mouth or as part of a more complex prescription was enhanced by frequent use, and the drug was supplied freely by physicians. In addition, self-dosing with patent medicines and the ministrations of quacks contributed to narcotic intake. The medical profession’s need for something that worked in a world of mysterious mortal diseases and infections cannot be overlooked as a major stimulus for the growth of the opium market. A drug that calmed was especially appealing since physicians could at least treat the patient’s anxiety. Technological advances in organic chemistry during the early nineteenth century led to plentiful supplies of potent habit-forming drugs. Alkaloids in crude opium were separated and crystallized to isolate active principles that give opium its physiological and psychic effects. Analysis Read more [...]