The Surprising History of Drugs

Summary of Historical Events -in the History of Drugs: This list has been copied from The Schaffer Library of Drug Policy, and BP has added additional text regarding events we know off and think are important where possible (all fact-checked with references and links where poss). We like this one because of the the insistence where possible to include references. Don’t miss visiting the Schaffer Library online for excellent drug policy resources, including many collections that are now out of print. If there are any events you think should be here and that others should know about, please comment and we can add it on!NOTE: We are also working towards adding the  foundation dates of all major drug user groups/unions national bodies. Please let us know if we are missing some (this will, of course be an evolving process).

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5000 B.C. The Sumerians use opium, suggested by the fact that they have an ideogram for it which has been translated as HUL, meaning “joy” or “rejoicing.” [Alfred R. Lindesmith, *Addiction and Opiates.* p. 207]

3500 B.C. Earlist historical record of the production of alcohol: the description of a brewery in an an Egyptian papyrus. [Joel Fort, *The Pleasure Seekers*, p. 14]

3000 B.C. Approximate date of the supposed origin of the use of tea in China.

2500 B.C. Earlist historical evidence of the eating of poppy seeds among the Lake Dwellers on Switzerland. [Ashley Montagu, The long search for euphoria, *Refelections*, 1:62-69 (May-June), 1966; p. 66]

2000 B.C.Earliest record of prohibitionist teaching, by an Egyptian priest, who writes to his pupil: “I, thy superior, forbid thee to go to the taverns. Thou art degraded like beasts.” [W.F. Crafts *et al*., *Intoxicating Drinks and Drugs*, p. 5]

Earliest recorded historical account of brewing of alcohol in Eqypt, 3500bc

350 B.C. Proverbs, 31:6-7: “Give strong drink to him who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress; let them drink and forget their poverty, and remember their misery no more.”

300 B.C. Theophrastus (371-287 B.C.), Greek naturalist and philosopher, records what has remained as the earlies undisputed reference to the use of poppy juice.

250 B.C. Psalms, 104:14-15: “Thou dost cause grass to grow for the cattle and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the heart of man.

350 A.D. Earliest mention of tea, in a Chinese dictionary.

4th century St. John Chrysostom (345-407), Bishop of Constantinople: “I hear man cry, ‘Would there be no wine! O folly! O madness!’ Is it wine that causes this abuse? No, for if you say, ‘Would there were no light!’ because of the informers, and would there were no women because of adultery.” [Quoted in Berton Roueche, *The Neutral Spirit*, pp. 150-151]

450 Babylonian Talmud: “Wine is at the head of all medicines; where wine is lacking, drugs are necessary.” [Quoted in Burton Stevenson (Ed.), *The Macmillan Book of Proverbs*, p. 21]

c. 1000 Opium is widely used in China and the far East. [Alfred A. Lindensmith, *The Addict and the Law*, p. 194]

1493The use of tobacco is introduced into Europe by Columbus and his crew returning

Tobacco smoking is introduced to Europe by Columbus in 1493 from America.

c. 1500 According to J.D. Rolleston, a British medical historian, a medieval Russian cure for drunkenness consisted in “taking a piece of pork, putting it secretly in a Jew’s bed for nine days, and then giving it to the drunkard in a pulverized form, who will turn away from drinking as a Jew would from pork.” [Quoted in Roueche, op. cit. p. 144]

c. 1525 Paracelsus (1490-1541) introduces laudanum, or tincture of opium, into the practice of medicine.

1600 Shakespeare: “Falstaff. . . . If I had a thousand sons the / first human principle I would teach them should / be, to foreswear thin portion and to addict themselves to sack.” (“Sack” is an obsolete term for “sweet wine” like sherry). [William Shakespeare, *Second Part of King Henry the Forth*, Act IV, Scene III, lines 133-136]

17th century The prince of the petty state of Waldeck pays ten thalers to anyone who denounces a coffee drinker. [Griffith Edwards, Psychoactive substances, *The Listener*, March 23, 1972, pp. 360-363; p.361]

17th century In Russia, Czar Michael Federovitch executes anyone on whom tobacco is found. “Czar Alexei Mikhailovitch rules that anyone caught with tobacco should be tortured until he gave up the name of the supplier.” [Ibid.]

1613 John Rolf, the husband of the Indian princess Pocahontas, sends the first shipment of Virginia tobacco from Jamestown to England.

c. 1650 The use of tobacco is prohibited in Bavaria, Saxony, and in Zurich, but the prohibitions are ineffective. Sultan Murad IV of the Ottoman Empire decrees the death penalty for smoking tobacco: “Whereever there Sultan went on his travels or on a military expedition his halting-places were always distinguished by a terrible rise in executions. Even on the battlefield he was fond of surprising men in the act of smoking, when he would punish them by beheading, hanging, quartering or crushing their hands and feed. . . . Nevertheless, in spite of all the horrors and persecution. . . the passion for smoking still persisted.” [Edward M. Brecher et al., *Licit and Illicit Drugs*, p. 212]

1680 Thomas Syndenham (1625-80): “Among the remedies which it has pleased the Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and efficacious as opium.” [Quoted in Louis Goodman and Alfred Gilman, *The Pharmacological Basis of Theraputics*, First Edition (1941), p. 186]

1690 The “Act for the Encouraging of the Distillation of Brandy and Spirits from Corn” is enacted in England. [Roueche, op. cit. p. 27]

1691 In Luneberg, Germany, the penalty for smoking (tobacco) is death.

1717 Liquor licenses in Middlesex (England) are granted only to those who “would take oaths of allegiance and of belief in the King’s supremacy over the Church” [G.E.G. Catlin, *Liquor Control*, p. 14]

1736 The Gin Act (England) is enacted with the avowed object of making spirits “come so dear to the consumer that the poor will not be able to launch into excessive use of them.” This effort results in general lawbreaking and fails to halt the steady rise in the consumption of even legally produced and sold liquor. [Ibid., p. 15]

1745 The magistrates of one London division demanded that “publicans and wine-merchants should swear that they anathematized the doctrine of Transubstantiation.” [Ibid., p. 14]

1762Thomas Dover, and English physician, introduces his prescription for a diaphoretic

powder,” which he recommends mainly for the treatment of gout. Soon named “Dover’s powder,” this compound becomes the most widely used opium preparation during the next 150 years.

1785 Benjamin Rush publishes his *Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits on the Human Body and Mind*; in it, he calls the intemperate use of distilled spirits a “disease,” and estimates the annual rate of death due to alcoholism in the United States as “not less than 4000 people” in a population then of less than 6 million. [Quoted in S. S. Rosenberg (Ed.), *Alcohol and Health*, p. 26]

1789 The first American temperance society is formed in Litchfield, Connecticut. [Crafts et. al., op. cit., p. 9]

1790 Benjamin Rush persuades his associates at the Philadelphia College of Physicians to send an appeal to Congress to “impose such heavy duties upon all distilled spirits as shall be effective to restrain their intemperate use in the country.” [Quoted in ibid.]

1792 The first prohibitory laws against opium in China are promulgated. The punishment decreed for keepers of opium shops is strangulation.

1792 The Whisky Rebellion, a protest by farmers in western Pennsylvania against a federal tax on liquor, breaks out and is put down by overwhelming force sent to the area by George Washington. Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes “Kubla Khan” while under the influence of opium.

1800 Napoleon’s army, returning from Egypt, introduces cannibis (hashish, marijuana) into France. Avante-garde artists and writers in Paris develop their own cannabis ritual, leading, in 1844, to the establishment of *Le Club de Haschischins.* [William A. Emboden, Jr., Ritual Use of Cannabis Sativa L.: A historical-ethnographic survey, in Peter T. Furst (Ed.), *Flesh of the Gods*, pp. 214-236; pp. 227-228]

1801 On Jefferson’s recommendation, the federal duty on liquor was abolished. [Catlin, op. cit., p. 113]

1804 Thomas Trotter, an Edinburgh physician, publishes *An Essay, Medical, Philosophical, and Chemical on Drunkenness and Its Effects on the Human Body*: “In medical language, I consider drunkenness, strictly speaking, to be a disease, produced by a remote cause, and giving birth to actions and movements in the living body that disorder the functions of health. . . The habit of drunkenness is a disease of the mind.” [Quoted in Roueche, op. cit. pp. 87-88]

1805 Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Serturner, a German chemist, isolates and describes morphine.

Confessions of an English Opium Eater, 1822

1822 Thomas De Quincey’s *Confessions of an English Opium Eater* is published. He notes that the opium habit, like any other habit, must be learned: “Making allowance for constitutional differences, I should say that *in less that 120 days* no habit of opium-eating could be formed strong enough to call for any extraordinary self-conquest in renouncing it, even suddenly renouncing it. On Saturday you are an opium eater, on Sunday no longer such.” [Thomas De Quincey, *Confessions of an English Opium Eater* (1822), p. 143]

1826 The American Society for the Promotion of Temperance is founded in Boston. By 1833, there are 6,000 local Temperance societies, with more than one million members.

1839-42 The first Opium War. The British force upon China the trade in opium, a trade the Chinese had declared illegal.. [Montagu, op. cit. p. 67]

1840 Benjamin Parsons, and English clergyman, declares: “. . . alcohol stands preeminent as a destroyer. . . . I never knew a person become insane who was not in the habit of taking a portion of alcohol every day.” Parsons lists forty-two distinct diseases caused by alcohol, among them inflammation of the brain, scrofula, mania, dropsy, nephritis, and gout. [Quoted in Roueche, op. cit. pp. 87-88]

1841 Dr. Jacques Joseph Moreau uses hashish in treatment of mental patients at the Bicetre.

1842 Abraham Lincoln: “In my judgment, such of us as have never fallen victims, have been spared more from the absence of appetite, than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have. Indeed, I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class.” [Abraham Lincoln, Temperance address, in Roy P. Basler Ed.), *The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 1, p. 258]

1844 Cocaine is isolated in its pure form.

1845 A law prohibiting the public sale of liquor is enacted in New York State. It is repealed in 1847.

1847 The American Medical Association is founded.

1852 Susan B. Anthony establishes the Women’s State Temperance Society of New York, the first such society formed by and for women. Many of the early feminists, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Abby Kelly, are also ardent prohibitionists. [Andrew Sinclar, *Era of Excess*, p. 92]

1852 The American Pharmaceutical Association is founded. The Association’s 1856 Constitution lists one of its goals as: “To as much as possible restrict the dispensing and sale of medicines to regularly educated druggests and apothecaries. [Quoted in David Musto, *The American Disease*, p. 258]

1856 The Second Opium War. The British, with help from the French, extend their powers to distribute opium in China.

1862 Internal Revenue Act enacted imposing a license fee of twenty dollars on retail liquor dealers, and a tax of one dollar a barrel on beer and twenty cents a gallon on spirits. [Sinclare, op. cit. p 152]

1864 Adolf von Baeyer, a twenty-nine-year-old assistant of Friedrich August Kekule (the discoverer of the molecular structure of benzene) in Ghent, synthesizes barbituric acid, the first barbiturate.

1868 Dr. George Wood, a professor of the theory and practice of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, president of the American Philosophical Society, and the author of a leading American test, *Treatise on Therapeutics*, describes the pharmacological effects of opium as follows: “A sensation of fullness is felt in the head, soon to be followed by a universal feeling of delicious ease and comfort, with an elevation and expansion of the whole moral and intellectual nature, which is, I think, the most characteristic of its effects. . . . It seems to make the individual, for the time, a better and greater man. . . . The hallucinations, the delirious imaginations of alcoholic intoxication, are, in general, quite wanting. Along with this emotional and intellectual elevation, there is also increased muscular energy; and the capacity to act, and to bear fatigue, is greatly augmented. [Quoted in Musto, op. cit. pp. 71-72]

1869 The Prohibition Party is formed. Gerrit Smith, twice Abolitionist candidate for President, an associate of John Brown, and a crusading prohibitionist, declares: “Our involuntary slaves are set free, but our millions of voluntary slaves still clang their chains. The lot of the literal slave, of him whom others have enslaved, is indeed a hard one; nevertheless, it is a paradise compared with the lot of him who has enslaved himself to alcohol.” [Quoted in Sinclar, op. cit. pp. 83-84]

1874 The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union is founded in Cleveland. In 1883, Frances Willard a leader of the W.C.T.U. forms the World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

1882 The law in the United States, and the world, making “temperance education” a part of the required course in public schools is enacted. In 1886, Congress makes such education mandatory in the District of Columbia, and in territorial, military, and naval schools. By 1900, all the states have similar laws. [Crafts et. al., op. cit. p. 72]

1882 The Personal Liberty League of the United States is founded to oppose the increasing momentum of movements for compulsory abstinence from alcohol. [Catlin, op. cit. p. 114]

Merck Cocaine 1882

1883 Dr. Theodor Aschenbrandt, a German army physician, secures a supply of pure cocaine from the pharmaceutical firm of Merck, issues it to Bavarian soldiers during their maneuvers, and reports on the beneficial effects of the drug in increasing the soldiers’ ability to endure fatigue. [Brecher et. al. op. cit. p. 272]

1884 Sigmund Freud treats his depression with cocaine, and reports feeling “exhilaration and lasting euphoria, which is in no way differs from the normal euphoria of the healthy person. . . You perceive an increase in self-control and possess more vitality and capacity for work. . . . In other words, you are simply more normal, and it is soon hard to believe that you are under the influence of a drug.” [Quoted in Ernest Jones, *The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 1, p. 82]

1884 Laws are enacted to make anti-alcohol teaching compulsory in public schools in New York State. The following year similar laws are passed in Pennsylvania, with other states soon following suit.

1885 The Report of the Royal Commission on Opium concludes that opium is more like the Westerner’s liquor than a substance to be feared and abhorred. [Quoted in Musto, op. cit. p. 29]

1889 The John Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore, Maryland, is opened. One of its world-famous founders, Dr. William Stewart Halsted, is a morphine addict. He continues to use morphine in large doses throughout his phenomenally successful surgical career lasting until his death in 1922.

1894 The Report of the Indian Hemp Drug Comission, running to over three thousand pages in seven volumes, is published. This inquiry, commissioned by the British government, concluded: “There is no evidence of any weight regarding the mental and moral injuries from the moderate use of these drugs. .. . . Moderation does not lead to excess in hemp any more than it does in alcohol. Regular, moderate use of ganja or bhang produces the same effects as moderate and regular doses of whiskey.” The commission’s proposal to tax bhang is never put into effect, in part, perhaps, because one of the commissioners, an Indian, cautions that Moslem law and Hindu custom forbid “taxing anything that gives pleasure to the poor.” [Quoted in Norman Taylor, The pleasant assassin: The story of marihuana, in David Solomon (Ed.) *The Marijuana Papers*, pp. 31-47, p. 41]

1894 Norman Kerr, and English physician and president of the British Society for the study of Inebriety, declares: “Drunkenness has generally been regarded as . . . a sin a vice, or a crime. . . [But] there is now a consensus of intelligent opinion that habitual and periodic drunkenness is often either a symptom or sequel of disease . . . . The victim can no more resist [alcohol] than an man with ague can resist shivering. [Quoted in Roueche, op. cit., pp. 107-108]

1898 Diacetylmorphine (heroin) is synthesized in Germany. It is widely lauded as a “safe preparation free from addiction-forming properties.” [Montagu, op. cit. p. 68]

1900 In an address to the Ecumenical Missionary Conference, Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts declares: “No Christian celebration of the completion of nineteen Christian centuries has yet been arranged. Could there be a fitter one than the general adoption, by separate and joint action of the great nations of the world, of the new policy of civilization, in which Great Britian is leading, the policy of prohibition for the native races, in the interest of commerce as well as conscience, since the liquor traffic among child races, even more manifestly than in civilized lands, injures all other trades by producing poverty, disease, and death. Our object, more profoundly viewed, is to create a more favorable environment for the child races that civilized nations are essaying to civilize and Christianize.” [Quoted in Crafts, et. al., op. cit., p. 14]

1900 James R. L. Daly, writing in the *Boston Medical and Surgical Journal*, declares: “It [heroin] possesses many advantages over morphine. . . . It is not hypnotic; and there is no danger of acquiring the habit. . . .” [Quoted in Henry H. Lennard et. al. Methadone treatment (letters),*Science*, 179:1078-1079 (March 16), 1973; p. 1079]

1901 The Senate adopts a resolution, introduced by Henry Cabot Lodge, to forbid the sale by American traders of opium and alcohol “to aboriginal tribes and uncivilized races.” Theses provisions are later extended to include “uncivilized elements in America itself and in its territories, such as Indians, Alaskans, the inhabitants of Hawaii, railroad workers, and immigrants at ports of entry.” [Sinclar, op. cit. p. 33]

1902 The Committee on the Acquirement of the Drug Habit of the American Pharmaceutical Association declares: “If the Chinaman cannot get along without his ‘dope,’ we can get along without him.” [Quoted in ibid, p. 17]

1902 George E. Petty, writing in the *Alabama Medical Journal*, observes: “Many articles have appeared in the medical literature during the last two years lauding this new agent . . . . When we consider the fact that heroin is a morphine derivative . . . it does not seem reasonable that such a claim could be well founded. It is strange that such a claim should mislead anyone or that there should be found among the members of our profession those who would reiterate and accentuate it without first subjecting it to the most critical tests, but such is the fact.” [Quoted in Lennard et. al., op. cit. p. 1079]

1903The composition of Coca-Cola is changed, caffeine replacing the cocaine it contained until this time. {Musto, op. cit. p. 43]

Cocaine is removed from Coca Cola in 1903

1904 Charles Lyman, president of the International Reform Bureau, petitions the President of the United States “to induce Great Britain to release China from the enforced opium traffic. . . .We need not recall in detail that China prohibited the sale of opium except as a medicine, until the sale was forced upon that country by Great Britian in the opium war of 1840.” [Quoted in Crafts et al., op. cit. p. 230]

1905 Senator Henry W. Blair, in a letter to Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts, Superintendent of the International Reform Bureau: “The temperance movement must include all poisonous substances which create unnatural appetite, and international prohibition is the goal.” [Quoted in ibid.]

1906 The first Pure Food and Drug Act becomes law; until its enactment, it was possible to buy, in stores or by mail order medicines containing morphine, cocaine, or heroin, and without their being so labeled.

1906 *Squibb’s Materia Medical* lists heroin as “a remedy of much value . . . is is also used as a mild anodyne and as a substitute for morphine in combatting the morphine habit. [Quoted in Lennard et al., op. cit. p. 1079]

1909 The United States prohibits the importation of smoking opium. [Lawrence Kolb, *Drug Addiction*, pp. 145-146]

1910 Dr. Hamilton Wright, considered by some the father of U.S. anti-narcotics laws, reports that American contractors give cocaine to their Negro employees to get more work out of them. [Musto, op. cit. p. 180]

1912 A writer in *Century* magazine proclaims: “The relation of tobacco, especially in the form of cigarettes, and alcohol and opium is a very close one. . . . Morphine is the legitimate consequence of alcohol, and alcohol is the legitimate consequence of tobacco. Cigarettes, drink, opium, is the logical and regular series.” And a physician warns: “[There is] no energy more destructive of soul, mind, and body, or more subversive of good morals than the cigarette. The fight against the cigarette is a fight for civilization.” [Sinclar, op. cit., p. 180]

1912 The first international Opium Convention meets at the Hague, and recommends various measures for the international control of the trade in opium. Supsequent Opium Conventions are held in 1913 and 1914.

1912 Phenobarbital is introduced into therapeutics under the trade name of Luminal.

1913 The Sixteenth Amendment, creating the legal authority for federal income tax, is enacted. Between 1870 and 1915, the tax on liquor provides from one-half to two-thirds of the whole of the internal revenue of the United States, amounting, after the turn of the century, to about $200 million annually. The Sixteenth Amendment thus makes possible, just seven years later, the Eighteenth Amendment.

1914 Dr. Edward H Williams cites Dr. Christopher Kochs “Most of the attack upon white women of the South are the direct result of the cocaine crazed Negro brain.” Dr. Williams concluded that ” . . Negro cocaine fiends are now a known Southern menace.” [New York Times, Feb. 8, 1914]

1914 The Harrison Narcotic Act is enacted, controlling the sale of opium and opium derivatives, and cocaine.

1914 Congressman Richard P. Hobson of Alabama, urging a prohibition amendment to the Constitution, asserts: “Liquor will actually make a brute out of a Negro, causing him to commit unnatural crimes. The effect is the same on the white man, though the white man being further evolved it takes longer time to reduce him to the same level.” Negro leaders join the crusade against alcohol. [Ibid., p. 29]

1916 The *Pharmacopoeia of the United States* drops whiskey and brandy from its list of drugs. Four years later, American physicians begin prescribing these “drugs” in quantities never before prescribed by doctors.

1917 The president of the American Medical Association endorses national prohibition. The House of Delegates of the Association passes a resolution stating: “Resolved, The American Medical Association opposes the use of alcohol as a beverage; and be it further Resolved, That the use of alcohol as a therapeutic agent should be discourages.” By 1928, physicians make an estimated $40,000,000 annually by writing prescriptions for whiskey.” [Ibid. p. 61]

1917 The American Medical Association passes a resolution declaring that “sexual continence is compatible with health and is the best prevention of venereal infections,” and one of the methods for controlling syphilis is by controlling alcohol. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels prohibits the practice of distributing contraceptives to sailors bound on shore leave, and Congress passes laws setting up “dry and decent zones” around military camps. “Many barkeepers are fined for selling liquor to men in uniform. Only at Coney Island could soldiers and sailors change into the grateful anonymity of bathing suits and drink without molestation from patriotic passers-by.” [Ibid. pp. 117-118]

1918 The Anti-Saloon League calls the “liquor traffic” “un-American,” pro-German, crime-producing, food-wasting, youth-corrupting, home-wrecking, [and] treasonable.” [Quoted in ibid. p. 121]

1919 The Eighteenth (Prohibition) Amendment is added to the U.S. Constitution. It is repealed in 1933. In the same year, violent crime drops two-thirds and does not reach the same levels again until after World War II.

1920 The U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes a pamphlet urging Americans to grow cannabis (marijuana) as a profitable undertaking. [David F. Musto, An historical perspective on legal and medical responses to substance abuse, *Villanova Law Review*, 18:808-817 (May), 1973; p. 816]

1920-1933 The use of alcohol is prohibited in the United States. In 1932 alone, approximately 45,000 persons receive jail sentences for alcohol offenses. During the first eleven years of the Volstead Act, 17,971 persons are appointed to the Prohibition Bureau. 11,982 are terminated “without prejudice,” and 1,604 are dismissed for bribery, extortion, theft, falsification of records, conspiracy, forgery, and perjury. [Fort, op. cit. p. 69]

1921 The U.S. Treasury Department issues regulations outlining the treatment of addiction permitted under the Harrison Act. In Syracuse, New York, the narcotics clinic doctors report curing 90 per cent of their addicts. [Lindesmith, *The Addict and the Law*, p. 141]

1921 Thomas S. Blair, M.D., chief of the Bureau of Drug Control of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, publishes a paper in the *Journal of the American Medical Association* in which he characterizes the Indian peyote religion a “habit indulgence in certain cactaceous plants,” calls the belief system “superstition” and those who sell peyote “dope vendors,” and urges the passage of a bill in Congress that would prohibit the use of peyote among the Indian tribes of the Southwest. He concludes with this revealing plea for abolition: “The great difficulty in suppressing this habit among the Indians arises from the fact that the commercial interests involved in the peyote traffic are strongly entrenched, and they exploit the Indian. . . . Added to this is the superstition of the Indian who believes in the Peyote Church. As soon as an effort is made to suppress peyote, the cry is raised that it is unconstitutional to do so and is an invasion of religious liberty. Suppose the Negros of the South had Cocaine Church!” [Thomas S. Blair, Habit indulgence in certain cactaceous plants among the Indians, *Journal of the American Medical Association*, 76:1033-1034 (April 9), 1921; p. 1034]

1921 Cigarettes are illegal in fourteen states, and ninety-two anti-cigarette bills are pending in twenty-eight states. Young women are expelled from college for smoking cigarettes. [Brecher et al., op. cit. p. 492]

1921 The Council of the American Medical Association refuses to confirm the Associations 1917 Resolution on alcohol. In the first six months after the enactment of the Volstead Act, more than 15,000 physicians and 57,000 druggests and drug manufacturers apply for licenses to prescribe and sell liquor. [Sinclair, op. cit., p. 492]

1921 Alfred C. Prentice, M.D. a member of the Committee on Narcotic Drugs of the American Medical Association, declares “Public opinion regarding the vice of drug addiction has been deliberately and consistently corrupted through propaganda in both the medical and lay press. . . . The shallow pretense that drug addiction is a ‘disease’. . . . has been asserted and urged in volumes of ‘literature’ by self-styled ‘specialists.’” [Alfred C Prentice, The Problem of the narcotic drug addict, *Journal of the American Medical Association*, 76:1551-1556; p. 1553]

1924 The manufacture of heroin is prohibited in the United States.

1925 Robert A. Schless: “I believe that most drug addiction today is due directly to the Harrison Anti-Narcotic Act, which forbids the sale of narcotics without a physician’s prescription. . . . Addicts who are broke act as *agent provocateurs* for the peddlers, being rewarded by gifts of heroin or credit for supplies. The Harrison Act made the drug peddler, and the drug peddler makes drug addicts.” [Robert A. Schless, The drug addict, *American Mercury*, 4:196-199 (Feb.), 1925; p. 198]

1928 In a nationwide radio broadcast entitled “The Struggle of Mankind Against Its Deadlist Foe,” celebrating the second annual Narcotic Education Week, Richmond P. Hobson, prohibition crusader and anti-narcotics propagandist, declares: “Suppose it were announced that there were more than a million lepers among our people. Think what a shock the announcement would produce! Yet drug addiction is far more incurable than leprosy, far more tragic to its victims, and is spreading like a moral and physical scourge. . . . Most of the daylight robberies, daring holdups, cruel murders and similar crimes of violence are now known to be committed chiefly by drug addicts, who constitute the primary cause of our alarming crime wave. Drug addiction is more communicable and less curable that leprosy. . . . Upon the issue hangs the perpetuation of civilization, the destiny of the world, and the future of the human race.” [Quoted in Musto, *The American Disease*, p. 191]

1928 It is estimated that in Germany one out of every hundred physicians is a morphine addict, consuming 0.1 grams of the alkaloid or more per day. [Eric Hesse, *Narcotics and Drug Addiction*, p. 41]

1929 About one gallon of denatured industrial in ten is diverted into bootleg liquor. About forty Americans per million die each year from drinking illegal alcohol, mainly as a result of methyl (wood) alcohol poisoning. [Sinclare, op. cit. p. 201]

1930 The Federal Bureau of Narcotics is formed. Many of its agents, including its first commissioner, Harry J. Anslinger, are former prohibition agents.

1935 The American Medical Association passes a resolution declaring that “alcoholics are valid patients.” [Quoted in Neil Kessel and Henry Walton, *Alcoholism*, p. 21]

1936 The Pan-American Coffee Burreau is organized to promote coffee use in the U.S. Between 1938 and 1941 coffee consumption increased 20%. From 1914 to 1938 consumption had increased 20%. [Coffee, *Encyclopedia Britannica* (1949), Vol. 5, p. 975A]

1937 Shortly before the Marijuana Tax Act, Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger writes: “How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, hold-ups, burglaries, and deeds of maniacal insanity it [marijuana] causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured.” [Quoted in John Kaplan, *Marijuana*, p. 92]

1937The Marijuana Tax Act is enacted. On Oct 8 1937, a Mr Samuel Caldwell is arrested and begins 4 years hard labour for selling 2 joints.

Sam Caldwell, the first guy to be arrested for pot, in 1937. He did 4 years hard labour for selling 2 joints

1938 Since the enactment of the Harrison Act in 1914, 25,000 physicians have been arraigned on narcotics charges, and 3,000 have served penitentiary sentences. [Kolb, op. cit. p. 146]

1938 Dr. Albert Hoffman, a chemist at Sandoz Laboratories in Basle, Switzerland, synthesizes LSD. Five years later he inadvertently ingests a small amount of it, and observes and reports effects on himself.

1941 Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek orders the complete suppression of the poppy; laws are enacted providing the death penalty for anyone guilty of cultivating the poppy, manufacturing opium, or offering it for sale. [Lindesmith, *The Addict and the Law*, 198]

1943 Colonel J.M. Phalen, editor of the *Military Surgeon*, declares in an editorial entitled “The Marijuana Bugaboo”: “The smoking of the leaves, flowers, and seeds of Cannibis sativa is no more harmful than the smoking of tobacco. . . . It is hoped that no witch hunt will be instituted in the military service over a problem that does not exist.” [Quoted in ibid. p. 234]

1946 According to some estimates there are 40,000,000 opium smokers in China. [Hesse, op. cit. p. 24]

1949 Ludwig von Mises, leading modern free-market economist and social philosopher: “Opium and morphine are certainly dangerous, habit-forming drugs. But once the principle is admitted that is the duty of government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments. A good case could be made out in favor of the prohibition of alcohol and nicotine. And why limit the governments benevolent providence to the protection of the individual’s body only? Is is not the harm a man can inflect on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily evils? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and seeing bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and listening to bad music? The mischief done by bad ideologies, surely, is much more pernicious, both for the individual and for the whole society, than that done by narcotic drugs.” [Ludwig von Mises, *Human Action*, pp. 728-729]

1951 According to United Nations estimates, there are approximately 200 million marijuana users in the world, the major places being India, Egypt, North Africa, Mexico, and the United States. [Jock Young, *The Drug Takers*, p. 11]

1951 Twenty thousand pound of opium, three hundred pounds of heroin, and various opium-smoking devices are publicly burned in Canton China. Thirty-seven opium addicts are executed in the southwest of China. [Margulies, China has no drug problem–why? *Parade*, 0ct. 15 1972, p. 22]

1954 Four-fifths of the French people questioned about wine assert that wine is “good for one’s health,” and one quarter hold that it is “indispensable.” It is estimated that a third of the electorate in France receives all or part of its income from the production or sale of alcoholic beverages; and that there Is one outlet for every forty- five inhabitants. [Kessel and Walton, op. cit. pp. 45, 73]

1955 The Prasidium des Deutschen Arztetages declares: “Treatment of the drug addict should be effected in the closed sector of a psychiatric institution. Ambulatory treatment is useless and in conflict, moreover, with principles of medical ethics.” The view is quoted approvingly, as representative of the opinion of “most of the authors recommending commitment to an institution,” by the World Health Organization in 1962. [World Health Organization, *The Treatment of Drug Addicts*, p. 5]

1955 The Shah of Iran prohibits the cultivation and use of opium, used in the country for thousands of years; the prohibition creates a flourishing illicit market in opium. In 1969 the prohibition is lifted, opium growing is resumed under state inspection, and more than 110,000 persons receive opium from physicians and pharmacies as “registered addicts.” [Henry Kamm, They shoot opium smugglers in Iran, but . . .” *The New York Times Magazine*, Feb. 11, 1973, pp. 42-45]

1956 The Narcotics Control Act in enacted; it provides the death penalty, if recommended by the jury, for the sale of heroin to a person under eighteen by one over eighteen. [Lindesmith, *The Addict and the Law*, p. 26]

1958 Ten percent of the arable land in Italy is under viticulture; two million people earn their living wholly or partly from the production or sale of wine. [Kessel and Walton, op. cit., p. 46]

1960 The United States report to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs for 1960 states: “There were 44,906 addicts in the United States on December 31, 1960 . . .” [Lindesmith, *The Addict and The Law*, p. 100]

1961 The United Nations’ “Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 10 March 1961″ is ratified. Among the obligations of the signatory states are the following: “Art. 42. Know users of drugs and persons charges with an offense under this Law may be committed by an examining magistrate to a nursing home. . . . Rules shall be also laid down for the treatment in such nursing homes of unconvicted drug addicts and dangerous alcoholics.” [Charles Vaille, A model law for the application of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, *United Nations Bulletin on Narcotics*, 21:1-12 (April-June), 1961]

1963 Tobacco sales total $8.08 billion, of which $3.3 billion go to federal, state, and local taxes. A news release from the tobacco industry proudly states: “Tobacco products pass across sales counters more frequently than anything else–except money.” [Tobacco: After publicity surge Surgeon General’s Report seems to have little enduring effect, *Science*, 145:1021-1022 (Sept. 4), 1964; p. 1021]

1964 The British Medical Association, in a Memorandum of Evidence to the Standing Medical Advisory Committee’s Special Sub- committee on Alcoholism, declares: “We feel that in some very bad cases, compulsory detention in hospital offer the only hope of successful treatment. . . . We believe that some alcoholics would welcome compulsory removal and detention in hospital until treatment is completed.” [Quoted in Kessel and Walton, op. cit. p. 126]

1964 An editorial in *The New York Times* calls attention to the fact that “the Government continues to be the tobacco industry’s biggest booster. The Department of Agriculture lost $16 million in supporting the price of tobacco in the last fiscal year, and stands to loose even more because it has just raised the subsidy that tobacco growers will get on their 1964 crop. At the same time, the Food for Peace program is getting rid of surplus stocks of tobacco abroad.” [Editorial, Bigger agricultural subsidies. . .even more for tobacco, *The New York Times*, Feb. 1, 1964, p. 22]

1966 Sen. Warren G. Magnuson makes public a program, sponsored by the Agriculture Department, to subsidize “attempts to increase cigarette consumption abroad. . . . The Department is paying to stimulate cigarette smoking in a travelogue for $210,000 to subsidize cigarette commercials in Japan, Thailand, and Austria.” An Agriculture Department spokesman corroborates that “the two programs were prepared under a congressional authorization to expand overseas markets for U.S. farm commodities.” [Edwin B. Haakinsom, Senator shocked at U.S. try to hike cigarette use abroad, *Syracuse Herald-American*, Jan. 9, 1966, p. 2]

1966 Congress enacts the “Narcotics Addict Rehabilitation Act, inaugurating a federal civil commitment program for addicts.

1966 C. W. Sandman, Jr. chairman of the New Jersey Narcotic Drug Study Commission, declares that LSD is “the greatest threat facing the country today . . . more dangerous than the Vietnam War.” [Quoted in Brecher et al., op. cit. p. 369]

1967 New York State’s “Narcotics Addiction Control Program” goes into effect. It is estimated to cost $400 million in three years, and is hailed by Government Rockefeller as the “start of an unending war . . .” Under the new law, judges are empowered to commit addicts for compulsory treatment for up to five years. [Murray Schumach, Plan for addicts will open today: Governor hails start, *The New York Times*, April 1, 1967]

1967 The tobacco industry in the United States spends an estimated $250 million on advertising smoking. [Editorial, It depends on you, *Health News* (New York State), 45:1 (March), 1968]

1968 The U.S. tobacco industry has gross sales of $8 billion. Americans smoke 544 billion cigarettes. [Fort, op. cit. p. 21]

1968 Canadians buy almost 3 billion aspirin tablets and approximately 56 million standard does of amphetamines. About 556 standard doses of barbituates are also produced or imported for consumption in Canada. [Canadian Government’s Commission of Inquiry, *The Non-Medical Uses of Drugs*, p. 184

1968 Six to seven percent of all prescriptions written under the British National Health Service are for barbituates; it is estimated that about 500,000 British are regular users. [Young, op. cit. p. 25]

1968 Brooklyn councilman Julius S. Moskowitz charges that the work of New York City’s Addiction Services Agency, under its retiring Commissioner, Dr. Efren Ramierez, was a “fraud,” and that “not a single addict has been cured.” [Charles G. Bennett, Addiction agency called a “fraud,” *New York Times*, Dec. 11, 1968, p. 47]

Millions of dollars are made from Barbiturates like Seconal, and overdoses surge during the ’60′s and 70′s.

1969 U.S. production and value of some medical chemicals: barbituates: 800,000 pounds, $2.5 million; aspirin (exclusive of salicylic acid) 37 milliion pounds, value “withheld to avoid disclosing figures for individual producers”; salicylic acid: 13 million pounds, $13 million; tranquilizers: 1.5 million pounds, $7 million. [*Statistical Abstracts of the United States*, 1971 92nd Annual Edition, p. 75]

1969 The parents of 6,000 secondary-level students in Clifton, New Jersey, are sent letters by the Board of Education asking permission to conduct saliva tests on their children to determine whether or not they use marijuana. [Saliva tests asked for Jersey youths on marijuana use, *New York Times*, Apr. 11, 1969, p. 12]

1970 Dr. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology, in reply to being asked what he would do if he were twenty today: “I would share with my classmates rejection of the whole world as it is–all of it. Is there any point in studying and work? Fornication–at least that is something good. What else is there to do? Fornicate and take drugs against the terrible strain of idiots who govern the world.” [Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, in *The New York Times*, Feb. 20, 1970, quoted in Mary Breastead, *Oh! Sex Education!*, p. 359]

1971 President Nixon declares that “America’s Public Enemy No. 1 is drug abuse.” In a message to Congress, the President calls for the creation of a Special Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention. [The New Public Enemy No. 1, *Time*, June 28, 1971, p. 18]

1971 On June 30, 1971, President Cvedet Sunay of Turkey decrees that all poppy cultivation and opium production will be forbidden beginning in the fall of 1972. [Patricia M Wald et al. (Eds.), *Dealing with Drug Abuse*, p. 257]

1972 Myles J. Ambrose, Special Assistant Attorney General of the United States: “As of 1960, the Bureau of Narcotics estimated that we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 55,000 addicts . . . they estimate now the figure is 560,000. [Quoted in *U.S. News and World Report*, April 3, 1972, p. 38]

1972 The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs proposes restricting the use of barbituates on the ground that they “are more dangerous than heroin.” [Restrictions proposed on barbituate sales, *Syracuse Herald-Journal*, Mar 16, 1972, p. 32]

1972 The house votes 366 to 0 to authorize “a $1 billion, three-year federal attack on drug abuse.” [$1 billion voted for drug fight, *Syracuse Herald-Journal*, March 16, 1972, p. 32]

1972 At the Bronx house of corrections, out of a total of 780 inmates, approximately 400 are given tranquilizers such as Valium, Elavil, Thorazine, and Librium. “‘I think they [the inmates] would be doing better without some of the medication,’ said Capt. Robert Brown, a correctional officer. He said that in a way the medications made his job harder . . . rather than becoming calm, he said, an inmate who had become addicted to his medication ‘will do anything when he can’t get it.’” [Ronald Smothers, Muslims: What’s behind the violence, *The New York Times*, Dec. 26, 1972, p. 18]

1972In England, the pharmacy cost of heroin is $.04 per grain (60 mg.), or $.00067 per mg. In the United States, the street price is $30 to $90 per grain, or $.50 or $1.50 per mg. [Wald et al. (Eds.) op. cit. p. 28]

Heroin was provided on prescription in what was known as ‘The British System’. Only a few hundred opiate dependent users receive it this way today.

1973 A nationwide Gallop poll reveals that 67 percent of the adults interviewed “support the proposal of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller that all sellers of hard drugs be given life imprisonment without possibility of parole.” [George Gallup, Life for pushers, *Syracuse Herald-American*, Feb. 11, 1973]

1973 Michael R. Sonnenreich, Executive Director of the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, declares: “About our years ago we spent a total of $66.4 million for the entire federal effort in the drug abuse area. . . . This year we have spent $796.3 million and the budget estimates that have been submitted indicate that we will exceed the $1 billion mark. When we do so, we become, for want of a better term, a drug abuse industrial complex.: [Michael R. Sonnenreich, Discussion of the Final Report of the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, *Villanova Law Review*, 18:817-827 (May), 1973; p. 818]

1972 Operation Intercept. All vehicles returning from Mexico are checked by Nixon’s order. Long lines occur and, as usual no dent is made in drug traffic.

1977 The Joint Committee of the New York Bar Association concludes that the Rockefeller drug laws, the toughest in the nation, have had no effect in reducing drug use but have clogged the courts and the criminal justice system to the point of gridlock.

1981 Congress ammends the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the armed forces to enforce civil law, so that the military could provide surveillance planes and ships for interdiction purposes.

1984 U.S. busts 10,000 pounds of marijuana on farms in Mexico. The seizures, made on five farms in an isolated section of Chihuahua state, suggest a 70 percent increase in estimates that total U.S. consumption was 13,000 to 14,000 tons in 1982. Furthermore, the seizures add up to nearly eight times the 1300 tons that officials had calculated Mexico produced in 1983. [the San Francisco Chronicle, Saturday, November 24, 1984]

1985 Pentagon spends $40 million on interdiction. By 1990, the General Accounting Office will report that the military’s efforts have had no discernible impact on the flow of drugs.

1986 The Communist Party boss, Boris Yeltsin said that the Moscow school system is rife with drug addiction, drunkenness and principles that take bribes. He said that drug addiction has become such a problem that there   are 3700 registered addicts in Moscow. [The San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 22, 1986, p. 12]

1992 AIVL – Australian IntraVenous League -who then changed the name to Australian Injecting and Illicit drug users League, of which it is currently known, was formally constituted in 1992 although they began in 1988. Having grown to be one of the world largest user orgs, AIVL is the national user organisation, with chapters in every Australian state. Government funded and peer run.

2002The Swedish Drug User Union is born

Swedish Drug Users Union Hep C campaign

(SDUU) and grows quickly adding many local chapters, the first one being Stockholm (S. The Swedish Drug Users Union (SDUU) is an NGO and was founded in October 2002 by drug users associated to the Swedish Opiate Substitution Treatment programs. They fight hard against Swedish conservatism in drug policy to ensure the voice and views of the drug user are included in every issue that affects their lives, following the user activist mantra ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’.

2008 INPUD (International Network for People who Use Drugs) is formally launched on International Drug Users day Nov 1st 2008 at the premises of the Danish Drug Users Union, where around 100 international activists came from around 30 countries. INPUD was established to represent the interests of drug users on the world stage, especially those who encounter human rights violations, are affected by blood borne viruses and encounter discrimination simply because of their personal drug use.

2012 The Netherland’s begins its crackdown on its much loved cannabis ‘coffee shop’ system’. Three areas begin a pilot programme on May 1st 2012 of excluding foreigners (except Belgians’ and Germans’) from buying dope in Amsterdam’s traditional Coffee Shops and introduce a ‘Weed Pass’ allowing only 2000 Dutch customers per establishment. The experiment is to roll out across the country on Jan 1st 2013 if successful. http://www.coffeeshopsamsterdam.com/home.html

2014  Toronto Harm Reduction Workers Union (THRWU) went public on 11 November 2014 with the world’s first ever Harm Reduction Workers’ Union. “Harm reduction saves lives. We are the workers that make harm reduction work.”