Harrison Narcotics Tax Act 14210 223200857 2008-07-03T00:53:09Z WriterHound 266293 copyedit The '''Harrison Narcotics Tax Act''' (Ch. 1, {{USStat|38|785}}) was a [[United States federal law]] that regulated and taxed the production, importation, and distribution of [[opiates]]. The act was proposed by [[United States Representative|Representative]] [[Francis Burton Harrison]] of [[New York]] and was approved on [[December 17]], [[1914]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/heroin/etc/history.html |title=Opium Throughout History |publisher=PBS Frontline |accessdate=2006-10-22 }}</ref> "An Act To provide for the registration of, with collectors of internal revenue, and to impose a special tax on all persons who produce, import, manufacture, compound, deal in, dispense, sell, distribute, or give away [[opium]] or [[coca]] leaves, their salts, derivatives, or preparations, and for other purposes." The courts interpreted this to mean that physicians could prescribe narcotics to patients in the course of normal treatment, but not for the treatment of addiction. Although technically illegal for purposes of distribution and use, the distribution, sale and use of cocaine was still legal for registered companies and individuals. ==History== ===International background=== Following the [[Spanish-American War]] the U.S. took the [[Philippines]]. Confronted with a licensing system for opium addicts, a Commission of Inquiry was appointed to examine alternatives to this system. The Brent Commission recommended that narcotics should be subject to international control. This proposal was supported by the [[United States Department of State]] and in 1906 President [[Theodore Roosevelt]] called for an international opium conference, the [[Shanghai Commission]] in 1909. In 1906 an imperial edict, had been published prohibiting the cultivation and smoking of opium in the Chinese Empire over a period of ten years. This was being implemented with greater success than had been anticipated<ref>[http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bulletin_1959-01-01_1_page006.htmlm UNOCD:The Shanghai Opium Commission]</ref> The British Empire had since the [[Opium war]] in the 1840s by military means forced China to allow a large import of opium from [[India]]. A second conference was held at [[The Hague]] in 1911, and out of it came the first international drug control treaty, the [[International Opium Convention]] of 1912. ===Domestic Background=== In the 1800s opiates and cocaine were mostly unregulated drugs. In the 1890s the [[Sears & Roebuck]] catalogue, which was distributed to millions of Americans homes, offered a syringe and a small amount of cocaine for $1.50.<ref name="white"/> Addicts of opium were very frequent. It has been estimated that one US. citizen of 400 was an addict of opium in 1914, much more frequent than today, and the number had increased fast for a number of years.<ref name="hamilton">[http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/e1910/worstfiend.htm Edward Marshall: UNCLE SAM IS THE WORST DRUG FIEND IN THE WORLD, New York Times 1911] </ref> The opium addicts were mostly women who were prescribed and dispensed legal opiates by physicians and pharmacist for ”female problems,” probably mostly pain at menstruation, or white men and Chinese at the [[Opium den]]s. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of these addicts were women.<ref name="kand">[http://www.nida.nih.gov/PDF/DARHW/033-052_Kandall.pdf Stephen R. Kandall, M.D.:Women and Addiction in the United States—1850 to 1920]</ref> :"Of all the nations of the world, the United States consumes most habit-forming drugs per capita. Opium, the most pernicious drug known to humanity, is surrounded, in this country, with far fewer safeguards than any other nation in Europe fences it with."<br/> :-- Dr. Hamilton Wright, United States first Opium Commissioner, New York Times, 1911<ref name="hamilton"/> At the beginning of the 20th century, cocaine began to be linked to crime. 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'." Some newspapers later claimed cocaine use caused blacks to rape white women and was improving their pistol marksmanship. 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". By 1914 forty-six states had regulations on cocaine and twenty-nine states had laws against opium, morphine, and heroine.<ref name="white"/><ref name = "book"> {{cite book | last =Levinson | first =Martin H. | year =2002 | title =The Drug Problem: A New View Using the General Semantics Approach | publisher =Greenwood Publishing Group | id =027596129X }} p. 14-15. Mentions New York Times article about drug crazed blacks.</ref><ref name = "time"/><ref name = "meet"> {{cite book | year =September 1902 | title =[http://books.google.com/books?id=eEpLAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA567&lpg=PA567&dq=%22ommittee+on+the+Acquirement+of+the+Drug+Habit%22&source=web&ots=Iwx1Z8fx2T&sig=KbKmd7XfL8FqN5uEdJad9-ywTFY&hl=en#PPA572,M1 Proceedings of the American Pharmaceutical Association at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting] }} p. 572 (Google Print) </ref> The , Dr. [[Hamilton Wright]], appointed by [[Theodore Roosevelt]], stated that "Cocaine is often the direct incentive to the crime of rape by the Negroes of the South and other sections of the country," even though there was no evidence to support this claim. Wright 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".<ref name = "Cora"> {{cite book | last =Wetherington | first =Cora L. | coauthors =Alan I Leshner | year =1999 | title =Drug Addiction Research & the Health of Women | publisher =DIANE publishing | id =0788180533 }} Wetherington states that the 1909 Shanghai Commission made this comment. </ref><ref name = "time"> {{cite journal | first = Evan | last = Thomas | year =1986 | month =September 15 | title =America's Crusade | journal =Time Magazine | url =http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,962287-7,00.html }} "A 1910 federal survey reported that "cocaine is often the direct incentive to the crime of rape by the Negroes in the South and other sections of the country. Southern sheriffs believed cocaine even rendered blacks impervious to .32-cal. bullets (as a result many police departments switched to .38-cal.)." </ref> ===Debate=== In 1914, the [[United States Senate|Senate]] considered the Harrison bill. The act was supported by the [[United States Secretary of State|Secretary of State]] [[William Jennings Bryan]] who urged that the law be passed to fulfill the obligation of the new international treaty. Several authors have argued that the debate was merely to regulate trade and collect a tax. However, the committee report<ref name="com">Committee on Finance (Ways and Means Committee, Senate Reports, vol. 1, of the 63rd Congress, 2nd session on Senate Bill 6552, report #258, pp. 3-4)</ref> 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."<ref name="rat">{{cite book | last =Rowe | first =Thomas C. | year = 2006 | title = Federal Narcotics Laws and the War on Drugs: Money Down a Rat Hole | publisher = Haworth Press | id = 0789028085 }} p. 14-15</ref> The drafters played on fears of “drug-crazed, sex-mad negroes” and made references to Negroes under the influence of drugs murdering whites, degenerate Mexicans smoking marijuana, and “Chinamen” seducing white women with drugs.<ref name = "drugs"> {{cite journal | year =2001 | month =July 26 | title =How did we get here? | journal =The Economist | url = http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_SDGVRP }} "The drafters of the Harrison Act of 1914, the first federal ban on non-medical narcotics, played on fears of “drug-crazed, sex-mad negroes”."</ref><ref name="h">{{cite journal | first =Joseph D. | last =McNamara | year =2004 | title =The Drug War:The American Junkie | journal = The Hoover Digest | url =http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3042936.html }} </ref> Dr. [[Hamilton Wright]], testified at a hearing for the Harrison Act. Wright alleged that drugs made blacks uncontrollable, gave them superhuman powers and caused them to rebel against white authority. Dr. Christopher Koch of the State Pharmacy Board of Pennsylvania testified that "Most of the attacks upon the white women of the South are the direct result of a cocaine-crazed Negro brain".<ref name = "white"> {{cite book | last =Cockburn | first =Alexander | authorlink = | coauthors =Jeffrey St. Clair | year =1998 | title =Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press | publisher =Verso | id =1859841392 }}</ref> Before the Act was passed, on February 8, 1914 [[The New York Times]] published an article entitled "Negro Cocaine 'Fiends' Are New Southern Menace:Murder and Insanity Increasing Among Lower-Class Blacks" by Edward Huntington Williams which reported that Southern sheriffs had increased the caliber of their weapons from .32 to .38 to bring down Negroes under the effect of cocaine.<ref name = "white"/><ref name = "book"/><ref name = "time"/> ===Effect=== The act appears to be concerned about the marketing of opiates. However a clause applying to doctors allowed distribution "in the course of his professional practice only." This clause was interpreted after [[1917]] to mean that a doctor could not prescribe opiates to an addict, since addiction was not considered a disease. A number of doctors were arrested and some were imprisoned. The medical profession quickly learned not to supply opiates to addicts. In 1919, the Supreme Court ruled in ''Doremus'' that the Harrison Act was constitutional and in ''Webb'' that physicians could not prescribe narcotics solely for maintenance.<ref name ="kand"/> The impact of diminished supply was obvious by mid-1915. A 1918 commission called for sterner law enforcement. Congress responded by tightening up the Harrison Act-the importation of [[heroin]] for any purpose was banned in 1924. After other complementary laws (for ex. implementing the [[Uniform State Narcotic Act]]), and other actions by the government the number of addicts of opium started to decrease fast from 1925 to a level that in 1945 that was about one tenth of the level in 1914. The use of the term '[[narcotic]]s' in the title of the act to describe not just opiates but also [[cocaine]]&nbsp;— which is a central nervous system stimulant, not a narcotic&nbsp;— initiated a precedent of frequent legislative and judicial misclassification of various substances as 'narcotics'. Today, law enforcement agencies, popular media, the [[United Nations]], other nations and even some medical practitioners can be observed applying the term very broadly and often pejoratively in reference to a wide range of illicit substances, regardless of the more precise definition existing in medical contexts. ==Challenge== The Act's applicability in prosecuting [[physician|doctor]]s who prescribe narcotics to [[addict]]s 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. ==References== <references/> ==External links== *[http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/law/law_fed_harrison_narcotics_act.shtml The Harrison Narcotics Act (1914) at Erowid.com] *{{cite book | last =Musto | first =David F. | year =1999 (3rd edition) | title =The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control | publisher =Oxford University Press | id = 0195125096 }} [[Category:1914 in law]] [[Category:United States federal taxation legislation]] [[Category:United States federal controlled substances legislation]] [[Category:Drug control history]] [[fr:Harrison Narcotics Tax Act]]