The disdain for Chinese immigrants in the 19th Century and their association with drugs coloured social perceptions considerably. Following the development of morphine in 1803 and the creation of the hypodermic needle in 1853 (Hoffman, 1990) opiate use increased during the civil war due to morphine's analgesic properties. Though dependence was not uncommon, it was not until drug usage was recognised in unwelcome minority groups such as Chinese immigrants that the push for prohibition began. The Californian Gold Rush marked the migration of 70,000 Chinese inhabitants between 1852 and 1870 and though, as the Chaplain to the US Senate Dr JP. Newman remarked candidly in 1867, they were intitially necessary as domestic 'servants, washermen, labourers and miners' (Booth, 1996) the American public now resented their independent emergence in the work force. Inevitably, Chinese opium smoking habits became the object of official condemnation leading to a series of legislature outlawing the practice which began in San Francisco in 1875 (Booth, 1996).
Along with the contempt felt for Chinese immigrants and their drug habits, the increasing awareness of drugs and their addictive qualities meant opiates came to be considered undesirable. Affected by the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 that required pharmaceutical companies to specify their ingredients, there was a distinct decrease in the typical white American opiate user: one whom ingested the drug orally and was mostly restricted to middle and upperclass females (Bewley Taylor, 1968). Opiate users were now the social outcasts, the blacks, poor, Chinese and increasingly young males. The widespread use of heroin in the United States by 1910 lead to the belief by many drug prohibition advocates such as Dr Hamilton Wright that the only solution was "prohibition for America in the use of opium except for medicinal purposes, and for the principle of prohibition for all other nations."(Bewley Taylor, 1968 pp22). In 1912, an international forum, the Hague Convention, took the American concept of the drug problem to an International level and stressed the importance of medical regulation and enforcement, preferably total prohibition.
Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, doctors in Britain began debating whether addiction was a medical disease or a moral problem, and in a precautionary measure opiate prescription was restricted. Britain's drug morphology foregoing the Hague Convention was not cause for British authorities to approach it with the same urgent fervour that the US adopted (Lart, 1990). The political situation was comparatively steadier: in 1911 there were just 1300 Chinese (Booth, 1996), criminal drug activity was absent (Lart, 1990), and there was no minority group equivalent to America's black population struggling for significance. Following the Hague Convention in 1912, Britain was obliged to accommodate America's fixation on drug control and agreed to 'some form of regulative policy, as opposed to outright prohibition' (Bewley Taylor 1968 pp 22). When America passed the 1920 'Volstead Act' prohibiting alcohol, the Rolleston Committee was immediately formed to investigate the legitimate biological origin of addiction, releasing a report maintaining the inaptitude of the legal system to deal with a social and health dilemma (Booth, 1996). British law remained relatively unconcerned by drug use up until 1964 with the exception of acts 'directly implemented because of international agreements' (Bean 1964 pp 8). Britain's health policy, with it's emphasis on treatment and cure, shaped the social understanding of drug addiction nationally and contrasted dramatically with the growing American perception of drug addicts as immoral and criminal. Britain's medical regulation prevailed.
America's stance on opiates during the beginning of the 20th Century set the precedent for all ensuing laws, permanently changing American society's attitude towards drugs and drug users.
US leaders following the Hague Convention, no longer viewed drug users as victims but 'self indulgent, irresponsible, lower-class members on society's periphery' (Booth, 1996 pp200). Anti drug sentiment heightened so that by 1914 the 'Harrison Narcotic Act' was passed. This act outlawed most medical use of opium and resulted in the prosecution of 25,000 doctors for prescribing to addicts (Hoffman, 1990). The Federal Bureau of Narcotic was created in 1930, and the general consensus on drug related crime centred, as described by a former deputy police commissioner, on the individual drug users failings, "Whether an addict becomes a criminal or a criminal becomes an addict matters not- they spring from the same soil; namely a group of mental, moral and psychical inferiors" (Courtwright, 1952). The stigma attached to opiate addicts during this period endures through the rest of the twentieth century, firmly alienating drug users from the rest of civil society.
When considering the events that marked the commencement of the 'war on drugs', arguments inevitably ensue as to whether the USA exacerbated a social issue in to the realm of the criminal.
Booth (1996, pp198) infers foul play on the part of prohibitionist leaders in the transformation of public opinion, stating 'from 1910 to 1940 attitudes towards opiate addiction verged on the hysterical, and were profoundly influenced by erroneous and deliberately manipulated figures.'
During the 1920's, propaganda instigated by figures like Hamilton Wright circulated, emphasising fundamentally: the addict as a criminal, that addiction was a 'socially infectious disease' , and the general abhorrence of the addict population. Courtwright (1952) details the argument that the addict is not inherently criminal, but it is the law that, by it's very definition, makes drug users criminals. Similiarly, it is the existence of these laws that has created a profitable criminal commodity in the drug black market, leaving addicts with no option but crime to afford their drugs.
Hoffman (1990, pp60) concludes in his article on the phenomenal social transformation of drugs, that the prohibition of drugs has its foundations in racial, social and economic discrimination. Berridge and Edwards concur, (1981, pp 269) reasoning that the ill founded rigid punitive approach only succeeds to criminalise its own population and believe that the increasingly inappropriate 'war on drugs' is 'no longer responding to context, but has in some sense itself gone out of control'.
As testament, perhaps, to the ineffectiveness of America's drug laws, Britain remained relatively unperturbed by drug addiction without adopting the strict legal prohibition of the USA. Following the Second World War there was an increase in drug use partly due to a new civil situation that saw an influx of immigrants, however drug addiction, according to Booth (1996), was restricted to two groups, namely those in the medical profession and those in the 'alien populace': Chinese and black immigrants on London's fringes. He also documents the sudden 'American- style addiction' involving drug pushers creating a new market in Britain that occurred in the 1960's that is adequately attributed to the arrival of drug law escapees from America and Canada following another 'clamp down' in the US legal system (Booth, 1996). At the close of world war two, America had become the driving force behind international anti- narcotic legislation that embraced 'strategies focused on halting the supply of drugs to the US, rather than the demand created by American society' (Bewley Taylor, 1968, pp44). As Lart (1990) notes, it can be reasonably concluded that the cause of Britain's drug problems and the need for legislation was symptomatic of American policy and it's failure to anticipate this 'ripple effect'.
Beginning with the emergence of heroin epidemics in the 1960's, the drug situation in Britain began to resemble that of the US. A number of events including the 'hippie' era in the 60's and 70's, improved access to travel and relocation, media, American cinema and the 'emergence of teenagers as a fierce entity' (Booth 1996 pp220), all contributed to a change in the global drug scene. Britain was unable to cope with the features of a larger, diversified population and the 'Dangerous Drugs Act of 1967' began its law enforcement approach, with as much success as the US. All things considered, by 1985 Britain alarmingly declared that opiates were the nation's most damaging peace time menace, furthermore between 1989 and 1990 heroin addiction increased by twenty percent and crimes became associated with drugs in British media- most notably the 1985 Handsworth riot in Birmingham (Ibid). Britain moved away from medicalisation of drug addicts to criminalisation in much the same pattern as America, demonstrated in data discussed by Lart (1990 pp8): In 1985, 4,300 new patients were admitted to drug addiction out-patient clinics, compared to over 26,000 users who were convicted or arrested for drug offences. This illustrated the new dominance of police and the judicial system.
The prevalence of drug addiction as a social crisis prompting legal intervention in today's society is undeniably a result of social perspective and its manipulation. Despite a history of harsh drug laws, a study by the Office of National Drug Control Policy estimated 980, 000 Americans were addicted to heroin in 1999, a similar study was performed in 1996 and it is estimated there are between 100 000 and 200 000 opiate addicts in Britain. In its entirety, the methods to counter drug addicts in Britain and America have failed and perhaps it is the punitive measures of the latter which markedly: changed the nature of addicts, determined the climate of drug users, and created greater problems than there is cause for in its alienation of the addict population. The profile of the drug addict escalated from the 1900's attitude of 'victim' to its current status as 'dangerous criminal'. Whilst the nature of opiates has remained constant throughout a history of prevalence, prohibition, medicalisation and even stricter legal enforcement, it is precisely this history which has lead drugs to not only be considered a major social and economic crisis, but to become one.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hoffman, John P., 1990- "The Historical Shift in the Perception of Opiates: From Medicine to Social Menace" in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Vol 22: New York
Courtwright, David T., 1952- "Dark Paradise" Harvard University Press., chapter 5: The transformation of the heroin addict
Booth, Martin T., 1996- "Opium- A History" London: Simon & Schuster Ltd., chapter 4: Poverty, potions and poppy-heads, chapter 10: Junkies and the living dead, chapter 11: DORA, Isabella and Olivia
V. Berridge & G. Edwards (1981) "Opium and the People: Opiate Use in Nineteenth-Century England, London and New York", Allen Lane/ St Martin's Press., chapter 18: Changes of scene
Lart, R., 1990 "Changing Images of the Addict and Addiction" at Bristol University
Peele, S, (1985), "The Meaning of Addiction. Compulsive Experience and Its Interpretation." Lexington: Lexington Books. Pp. I-26
Bewley Taylor, David R., 1968- "The United States and international drug control, 1909-1997" London: Wellington House, Pp 16-53
Bean, Philip., 1974- "The Social Control of Drugs".
New York: Wiley.