Harrison Narcotics Tax Act

Following the Spanish–American War and the Philippine–American War, the Philippines saw a proliferation of opium use. A cholera outbreak in 1902 further strengthened this tendency due to the astringent properties of opium.^[6]

Charles Henry Brent was an American Episcopal bishop who served as Missionary Bishop of the Philippines beginning in 1901. He convened a Commission of Inquiry, known as the Brent Commission, for the purpose of examining alternatives to a licensing system for opium addicts. Although Governor William Taft supported this policy, Brent opposed it "on moral grounds".^[7] The Commission recommended that narcotics should be subject to international control. The recommendations of the Brent Commission were endorsed by the United States Department of State and in 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt called for an international conference, the International Opium Commission, which was held in Shanghai in February 1909. A second conference was held at The Hague in May 1911, and out of it came the first international drug control treaty, the International Opium Convention of 1912.

Between 1895 and 1900 there were probably more morphine addicts in the United States than today on a per capita basis.^[8] Opium usage peaked in 1896 and then began to decline gradually. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., then dean Harvard Medical school, blamed the prevalence of opiate addiction on ignorance. As awareness of the addictiveness of morphine and patent medicines grew public opinion in the 1890s was in favor of state laws restricting morphine.^[9] Demand gradually declined thereafter in response to mounting public concern, local and state regulations, and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which required labeling of patent medicines that contained opiates, cocaine, alcohol, cannabis and other intoxicants.^[10] By 1914, forty-six states had regulations on cocaine and twenty-nine states had laws against opium, morphine, and heroin.^[11]

In the 1800s opiates were mostly unregulated drugs. Morphine addiction had spread rapidly during and after the Civil war. The consumption of household remedies and marketed syrups containing morphine was commonplace and mostly associated with the upper and middle class of society.^[12] Many women who were prescribed and dispensed legal opiates by physicians and pharmacist for "female problems" (probably pain at menstruation) became addicted.^[13] It's likely many who became addicted initially did not know what the syrups and concoctions contained.^[14][8]

Although morphine syrups were easily available, opium smoking was already banned by many municipalities.^[8] There was more hostility to opium smoking than laudanum and other widely available tonics because of anti-Chinese sentiments and accusations that proprietors lured young white girls to opium dens.^[15] Chinese immigrants were blamed for importing the opium-smoking habit to the U.S. The 1903 blue-ribbon citizens' panel, the Committee on the Acquirement of the Drug Habit, concluded: "If the Chinaman cannot get along without his dope we can get along without him."^[16]

Heroin use became widespread among low-income immigrants in the early 20th century.^[17] In the 1890s, the Sears & Roebuck catalogue started offering a syringe and a small amount of cocaine or heroin for $1.50.^[18][19]

Cocaine was first isolated in 1855. Within a few decades public opinion had associated cocaine use with crime sprees committed by black men.^[17] There were many hysterical news reports in the early 20th-century about cocaine-fueled rampages using hyperbole like "cocaine-crazed negro" and others exaggerating the addictiveness of cocaine saying it quickly reduced users to "another entry in Satan's ledger".^[20][21] In 1900, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an editorial stating, "Negroes in the South are reported as being addicted to a new form of vice – that of 'cocaine sniffing' or the 'coke habit.'" A well-known article published in The New York Times on February 8, 1914 claimed cocaine use caused blacks to rape white women.^[22] The article titled Negro Cocaine 'Fiends' Are a New Southern Menace is remembered for its portrayal of "the cocaine-crazed negro" who was invulnerable to bullets. The use of the term "fiends" by Dr. Edward Huntington Williams, the author of the article, is understood to connote the demonization of the non-white drug user.^[22][23]

According to historian David F. Musto public opinion about cocaine turned negative as newspapers and even Good Housekeeping scapegoated the drug to explain rising crime in the South:^[24]

Thus the problem of cocaine proceeded from an association with Negroes in about 1900, when a massive repression and disenfranchisement were under way in the South, to a convenient explanation for crime waves, and eventually Northerners used it as an argument against Southern fear of infringement of states's rights.

Despite the extreme racialization of the issue that took place in the buildup to the act's passage, contemporary research in Northern cities found relatively few cocaine users compared with alcoholics and opium addicts overall and no significant concentration among blacks. Blacks did use "patent medicines" containing opiates and cocaine for pulmonary conditions. It's possible that higher rates of disease among blacks in the early 20th century may explain why blacks consumed patent medicines more than whites.^[25][26]

Theodore Roosevelt appointed Dr. Hamilton Wright as the first opium commissioner of the United States in 1908.^[27] Wright testified at the hearing about the dangers alleging that drugs made blacks uncontrollable, gave them superhuman powers and caused them to rebel against white authority.^[28] He said cocaine was often "the direct incentive to the crime of rape of white women by Negroes".^[29] He also stated that "one of the most unfortunate phases of smoking opium in this country is the large number of women who have become involved and were living as common-law wives or cohabitating with Chinese in the Chinatowns of our various cities".^[30]

Dr. Christopher Koch of the State Pharmacy Board of Pennsylvania testified of the dangerous "cocaine-crazed" blacks in the South: "Most of the attacks upon the white women of the South are the direct result of a cocaine-crazed Negro brain".^[24][28][31]

Writing in 1953 Rufus G. King explained that the Harrison Act was "intended partly to carry out a treaty obligation, but mainly to aid the states in combating a local police problem which had gotten somewhat out of hand."^[32]

The committee report^[33] prior to the debate on the house floor and the debate itself, discussed the rise of opiate use in the United States. Harrison stated that "The purpose of this Bill can hardly be said to raise revenue, because it prohibits the importation of something upon which we have hitherto collected revenue." Later Harrison stated, "We are not attempting to collect revenue, but regulate commerce." House representative Thomas Sisson stated, "The purpose of this bill—and we are all in sympathy with it—is to prevent the use of opium in the United States, destructive as it is to human happiness and human life."^[34]

Enforcement began in 1915.^[35]

The act appears to be mainly concerned about the marketing of opiates. However, a clause applying to doctors allowed distribution "in the course of his professional practice only." Physicians believed relieving the suffering of physical dependance was within the "professional practice" exception. King says "there is not the slightest suggestion that Congress intended to change this". He says the public hysteria surrounding contemporaneous press reports about violent "dope fiends" probably distorted the Congressional intent and turned addicts into criminals.^[36]

The "professional practice" clause was interpreted after 1917 to mean that a doctor could not prescribe opiates to an addict. Addicts and doctors were jailed for decades under theories adopted by the Narcotics Division that addiction could not be successfully treated in a clinical setting.^[36] A number of doctors were arrested and some were imprisoned.^{[citation needed]} The medical profession quickly learned not to supply opiates to addicts. In United States v. Doremus, 249 U.S. 86 (1919), the Supreme Court ruled that the Harrison Act was constitutional, and in Webb v. United States, 249 U.S. 96, 99 (1919) that physicians could not prescribe narcotics solely for maintenance.^[13]

The impact of diminished supply was obvious by mid-1915. A 1918 commission called for sterner law enforcement, while newspapers published sensational articles about addiction-related crime waves.^[37] Congress responded by tightening up the Harrison Act—the importation of heroin for any purpose was banned in 1924.^{[citation needed]}

The act also marks the beginning of the criminalization of addiction and the American black market for drugs. Within five years the Rainey Committee, a Special Committee on Investigation appointed by Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo and led by Congressman T. Rainey, reported in June, 1919^[38] that drugs were being smuggled into the country by sea, and across the Mexican and Canadian borders by nationally established organisations^[39] and that the United States consumed 470,000 pounds of opium annually, compared to 17,000 pounds in both France and Germany.^[38] The Monthly Summary of Foreign Commerce of the United States recorded that in the 7 months to January 1920, 528,635 pounds of opium was imported, compared to 74,650 pounds in the same period in 1919.^[38]

The act's applicability in prosecuting doctors who prescribe narcotics to addicts was successfully challenged in Linder v. United States in 1925, as Justice McReynolds ruled that the federal government has no power to regulate medical practice.

• Arguments for and against drug prohibition
• Prohibition of drugs

• Cockburn, Alexander; St. Clair, Jeffrey (1998). Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press. Verso. ISBN 1-85984-139-2.
• Courtwright, David (1992). Treating Drug Problems: Volume 2: Commissioned Papers on Historical, Institutional, and Economic Contexts of Drug Treatment.
• Duster, Troy (1970). The Legislation of Morality: Law, Drugs, and Moral Judgment. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-0-02-908680-3.
• Fisher, George (2024). Beware Euphora. Oxford University Press.
• Gray, Elizabeth Kelly (2023). Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America 1776-1914. Oxford University Press.
• Kennedy, Joseph (1985). Coca Exotica: The Illustrated Story of Cocaine. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
• King, Rufus G. (1953). "The Narcotics Bureau and the Harrison Act: Jailing the Healers and the Sick" (PDF). Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository.
• Musto, David F. (1999). The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-512509-6.

• "The Harrison Narcotics Act (1914)". Psychoactives ~ Law. Erowid.org. (full text)