The United States and international drug control, 1909-1997 - David R. Bewley-Taylor - 2001 - edition: reprint - Continuum International Publishing Group - 9780826458131 - pp. 242 - ch. Drug prohibition in the United States and the evolution of international narcotic control, 1909-1945 - ch. 1 pp. 16
p. 17: In the USA the first legislation, in individual states, was passed in 1875 and targeted opium. The USA railroad system had been build mainly by imported Chinese labor, but then became unwelcome competition. Anti-Chinese opinion was strengthened by images of "yellow fiends" corrupting white women and the youth. Few white middle-class (WASP) Americans smoked opium, but used beverages laced with the drug. Anti-opium campaigners thought that any recreational use of opium was "not at all consistent with their duties as Capitalists or Christians."
p. 17-18: The population of China widely used opium in the nineteenth century, and the UK made large profits from importing opium into China, and frustrated the Chinese authorities' attempts to control the use of the drug. Opinion within the UK turned against this trade, an Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppresion of the Opium Trade was formed in 1874, and in 1905 the House of Commons adopted a resolution that the Indo-Chinese opium trace was "morally indefensible." These actions did not extend into an energetic global campaign. America campaigners, influenced by reports from missionaries working in the Far East, thought it their moral duty to eradicate the "opium menace."
p. 18-19, 23: The USA's earlier efforts to build up trade with China had not been very successful, and had slightly antagonized the Chinese government. The Americans calculated that campaigning against the opium trade would make the USA the Chinese government favorite trading partner and weaken the UK's position.
p. 19: The USA acquired the Philippines in 1898, and a few years later President Theodore Roosevelt, who believed in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race, strove to "free" the colony from opium smoking. Prompted by this and other rhetoric of the time the United States Congress passed an Act in 1905, implemented in 1908, to impose an absolute prohibition against the use of opium in the Philippines.
p. 19-20: In 1900 the USA contained about 250,000 opium addicts.
p. 21: In the USA, the Pure Food Act of 1906, which may be the first domestic legislation influenced by international concerns, required precise labeling of all products that contained narcotic drugs and their derivatives, and those that contained cannabis. In 1909 a Act banned the importing of opium into the USA.
p. 23: The 1910 report to the US Senate on the International Opium Commission mentioned that "the cocaine vice ... has proved to be the creator of criminals and unusual forms of violence, and it has been a potent incentive in driving the humbler negroes all over the country to abnormal crimes."
p. 25-26: The Harrison Act, which took effect on March 1, 1914, aimed to "prohibit the importance of opium for other than medical purposes" and "regulate the manufacture of smoking opium within the United States."
p. 26: The 1919 Volstead Act enforced the Eighteenth Amendment enacting the Prohibition of Intoxicating Liquors. [On December 5, 1933, Utah became the 36th state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, rendered the Volstead Act unconstitutional, and restored control of alcohol to the states.]
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The American Junkie - Joseph D. McNamara - Hoover Digest - 2004 - no. 2 - Hoover Institution, Stanford University - "Why the drug war has amounted to one long and costly mistake"
