When and How Did Drugs Become Stigmatized in America?
Question by carbonnstar: When and how did drugs become stigmatized in America?
I am not taking a stance on anything here– I was just curious how the culture changed so rapidly.
I know that drugs were legal and over the counter at one point– and even in everyday products that are still used today (ex. Coca Cola had cocaine etc)
I find this shockingly amazing how a whole culture was able to change in such a short amount of time– and I wonder who was able to do this– and how they did it.
Any information would be great— or referals to books or documentaries as well.
Thank you.
Best answer:
Answer by Terry Antoniewicz
Drug policy as we know it today is a creature of 20th Century policy development. Until the last third of the 19th Century, America’s legal policy regarding drugs was limited to alcohol distribution, restrictions on smoking tobacco, and the restrictions on distribution of “poisons” which in the nineteenth century vocabulary was simple and direct: arsenic, tobacco, alcohol, morphine and opiates. Until the Civil War, distribution of opium and morphine was substantially unregulated. Gradually, reliance was on the health professions to police the distribution of these drugs. Pennsylvania enacted what may have been the first prescription law in 1860. Many other states followed suit over the next three decades, with alcohol included with the former mentioned drugs.
During the Civil War, morphine was widely used to treat pain and gastrointestinal ailments. The drug was only minimally controlled or restricted, and now, with the use of the hypodermic needle to administer the drug, the ease of treatment from the doctor by leaving a syringe with the patient allowed the medical profession to relieve the symptoms of pain and not the cause, so there was no pressure to minimize drug use. This did not become a concern outside of the medical profession for several decades.
Public response was finally triggered by the use of these same drugs and cocaine in another social context: Beginning with the increase of Chinese immigration after the Civil War, the practice of smoking opium took root on the West coast and quickly spread across the country in urban areas.
At this time, the practice was confined mostly to the Chinese and underworld figures in the cities.
In 1875, San Francisco enacted an ordinance prohibiting the smoking or possession of opium and related products and places (opium dens).
By the turn of the 19th Century, the nation became aware of the large opiate dependent population, which included “medical” and “street” dependence. In 1906, Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, which required labeling of all preparations that contained habit forming drugs.
By 1900, the medical profession was attuned to the dangers of chronic drug use and used the platform of education to retard the drug dependency, but heroin was introduced and used in cough suppressants as well as a substitute for morphine, so the success of the educational efforts was undermined.
By 1910, the medical profession was seriously concerned about the habit forming properties of heroin and used publicity to plea for legislative controls. The Harrison Act became the national policy for curtailing habit forming drugs. The previous failure to recognize the addictive qualities of the drugs and alcohol caused physicians to be very cautious about the dependency issue and new drugs were carefully scrutinized for habit forming behaviors.
The Prohibition Act was a reaction to specifically control the use and distribution of alcohol, but the law came during the Great Depression and did more to hurt the economy than it did to curb drinking.
In time, other substances were introduced into the practice of medicine but they did not enter the illicit marketplace until the 1960’s. Marijuana and psychedelic drugs were the beginning of a new drug problem of that time and clearly identified with children of the middle and upper classes and associated with youthful defiance of the established order, campus unrest, communal living, protests, etc.
Ads for smoking cigarettes up to this same time promoted how tobacco calmed a person down, and it was not unusual for some doctors to even prescribe smoking for high-strung teenagers, Today we know so much differently.
This is just a small glimpse into the history of the social attitude changes of acceptable use of narcotics, tobacco and alcohol. If you are interested in learning more, look up Drug Use in America, Defining the Issues which takes in the full scope of the medical and legal issues. Also read about Prohibition. While it appears on the surface that attitudes about narcotics did an about face in a short period of time, the work was started decades earlier. Until the federal government began to address the issues of addicted societies, consistent education and laws controlling the use did not come until policies were enacted that involved the whole country.
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