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100 Years of federal drug prohibition - Drug crimes did not exist until a century ago PDF Print E-mail
Written by Dale Gieringer, Ph.D   
This year marks the centennial of the first federal drug laws. On June 30, 1906, Congress approved the Pure Food and Drugs Act, empowering the US Bureau of Chemistry - the forerunner of today's FDA - to ban dangerous drugs.
The act proved to be a fateful step toward a regime of total federal control that would eventually restrict Americans' access to medicine and create a vast federal bureaucracy and a brand new field of criminal enterprise.

At the time the act was passed, there was no such thing as an illegal drug. Americans could readily buy any drug at the pharmacy, including opium, cocaine, or cannabis, which was then widely recognized as a medicine. Yet there was little public fuss about drug abuse, and drug crime and violence were unknown in the legal market.

CANNABIS REMEDY — Cannabis was a prime ingredient in this pre-Drug War corn remedy. Image courtesy of Michael Krawitz, Director of the Cannabis Museum
CANNABIS REMEDY — Cannabis was a prime ingredient in this pre-Drug War corn remedy. Image courtesy of Michael Krawitz, Director of the Cannabis Museum
That began to change as a coalition of government bureaucrats and prohibitionists pushed for ever-tightening restrictions on drugs.

The intent of the Pure Food and Drug Act was basically sound: to stop mis-branded and adulterated products. However, the act was promptly abused by the first director of the Bureau of Chemistry, Harvey Washington Wiley, a prohibitionist, who tried unsuccessfully to ban saccharin, caffeine, and sodium benzoate.

However, Wiley did manage to banish harmless coca beverages containing small amounts of cocaine. Low-potency coca beverages had been on the market for a generation with no evident health problems. However, public alarm had been fueled by the introduction of high-potency, pharmaceutical cocaine, which caused serious addiction problems. Though Wiley succeeded in banning harmless coca products, he failed to stem the flood of potent pharmaceutical cocaine, which metastasized into a worldwide criminal problem.

The spring of 1906 brought a second important new anti-drug law. On May 7, Congress passed the District of Columbia Pharmacy and Poisons Act, cracking down on the sale of narcotics to “drug fiends.” The DCPPA made it a crime to sell opium, cocaine or morphine except on a doctor's prescription. The act was the first of a series of measures that would culminate in national narcotics prohibition with the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914. Although the DCPPA applied only to the District of Columbia, it was intended as a model bill for the states.

California followed suit with an aggressive war on drugs launched by the state board of pharmacy in 1907. The board procured a pioneering law against cannabis in 1913, when hardly anyone had yet heard of marijuana. Cannabis had previously been available in patent medicines or among small pockets of social or religious users. Ironically, only after becoming illegal did marijuana become popular among the general population.

Cannabis continued to be legally available as a prescription medicine until 1941, when it was forced off the market by the Marihuana Tax Act. The Supreme Court in 1969 ruled, in US v Timothy Leary, that the MTA was unconstitutional; it was promptly replaced by the Controlled Substances Act, and cannabis was kept unavailable in the drug schedule. Today, the FDA contends that cannabis is an unproven “new” drug, overlooking a long medical history predating its own existence.

{quotes}Viewed in retrospect, the toll of the drug laws exceeds that of the great 1906 earthquake.{/quotes} In the past century, thousands have been killed by prohibition-related drug crime and violence. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on drug law enforcement. Millions have been arrested and criminalized, and nearly half a million are now in prison for drug offenses that did not exist a century ago.

Despite this, the rate of narcotics addiction today is no lower than when drugs were legal - around one percent of the population.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that 20th century drug control laws have failed. By every criterion, the free market regime of 100 years ago worked better. At the dawn of the 21st century, the time is overdue to address the disastrous legacy of the Hundred Years' War on Drugs.

Dale Gieringer is CalNORML director. Based on an article in the June 2006 edition of Liberty, “Centennial of an Unnatural Disaster.” Online at libertyunbound.com/archive/2006_06/gieringer-centennial.html


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