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https://americanaddictioncenters.org/blog/substance-abuse-by-city#:~:text=Omaha%20was%20ranked%20as%20the,any%20city%20in%20the%20US.

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https://www.clickondetroit.com/topic/Drug_Bust/

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https://bjs.ojp.gov/drugs-and-crime-facts/enforcement

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Arrests and seizures | Law enforcement operations

Arrests and seizures

Arrests

Federal, state, and local agencies share responsibility for enforcing the Nation's drug laws, although most arrests are made by state and local authorities. In 2007 the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) estimated that there were about 1,841,200 state and local arrests for drug abuse violations in the United States.
Description: Area chart with one line; total number of drug abuse violation arrests, 1980-2007.
For number of drug abuse violation arrests, the number began at 580,900 in 1980 and decreased to 559,900 in 1981. After 1981, the number increased to a high of 1,889,800 in 2006, before decreasing to 1,841,200 in 2007.
Click on the chart to view the data.
Source: FBI, Uniform Crime Reports,Crime in the United States, annually.

According to the UCR, drug abuse violations are defined as state and/or local offenses relating to the unlawful possession, sale, use, growing, manufacturing, and making of narcotic drugs including opium or cocaine and their derivatives, marijuana, synthetic narcotics, and dangerous nonnarcotic drugs such as barbiturates.

More than four-fifths of drug law violation arrests are for possession.

Description: Line chart of the number of drug law violations arrests with two lines: possession and sales/manufacturing violations, 1982-2007.
For drug sales/manufacturing violation arrests, the number of arrests began at 137,900 in 1982 then it increased to 441,200 in 1989. In 1990, the number decreased to 344,300. From 1991 to 1999, the number fluctuated dropping to 298,800. In 2000, it increased to 337,900 before it dropped to 322,200 in 2007.
For drug possession violation arrests, the number of arrests began at 538,100 in 1982 then it decreased to 515,200 in 1983. In 1984, it increased to 552,600 and fluctuated reaching 920,500 in 1989. In 1990, it decreased to 745,200 then it increased to 990,600 in 1994. After 1994, it continued to climb reaching a high of 1,559,100 in 2006. The number decreased to 1,519,000 in 2007.
Click on the chart to view the data.
Source: FBI, Uniform Crime Reports,Crime in the United States, annually.

The estimated number of arrests for drug abuse violations has been increasing. Arrests of adults increased in recent years, while arrests of juveniles decreased slightly. Juveniles are defined as persons under age 18. Adults are defined as persons age 18 or older.

In 1987 drug arrests were 7.4% of the total of all arrests reported to the FBI; by 2007, drug arrests had risen to 13.0% of all arrests.

Source: FBI, Uniform Crime Reports, Crime in the United States, annually.

In 2007, according to the UCR, law enforcement agencies nationwide made an estimated 14 million arrests for all criminal infractions except traffic violations. Among the specific categories, the highest arrest counts were --

1.8 million for drug abuse violations;

approximately 1.4 million for driving under the influence;

1.3 million for simple assaults; and

1.2 million for larceny-thefts.

Total arrests*
From 1987 to 1995 more drug arrests involved heroin or cocaine than other types of drugs. Since 1996 the number of arrests involving marijuana exceeded that for other types of drugs.
Description: Line chart with four lines: the number of drug law violation arrests for heroin/cocaine, marijuana, synthetic drugs, and other, 1982-2007.
For heroin/cocaine violations arrests, the number of arrests began at 112,900 in 1982 then it increased to a high of 732,600 in 1989. After 1989, the number decreased to 558,500 in 1991 before it increased to 565,200 in 1994. In 1995, the number climbed to 627,300 before it dropped to 599,500 in 1996. After 1996, the number of arrests fluctuated before it decreased to 541,300 in 2007.
For marijuana violations arrests, the number of arrests began at 455,600 in 1982 then it decreased to 287,900 in 1991. After 1991, the number increased to 734,500 in 2000 before dropping to 697,100 in 2002. In 2003, the number increased to 755,200 and continued to rise reaching a high of 872,700 in 2007.
For synthetic drug violations arrests, the number of arrests began at 24,800 in 1982 then it decreased to 19,500 in 1985. After 1985, the number increased to 31,200 in 1988 and fluctuated until 1997 when it increased to 41,200. In 1998, the number increased to 45,200 and continued to climb to a high of 92,600 in 2006. The number decreased to 88,400 in 2007.
For other drug violations arrests, the number of arrests began at 82,900 in 1982 then it decreased to 82,700 in 1983. After 1983, the number increased to 88,300 and continued to climb, reaching 200,200 in 1989. Then the number decreased to 148,200 in 1990 before it climbed to 411,700 in 2005, and dropped to 338,800 in 2007.
Click on the chart to view the data.
Source: FBI,Uniform Crime Reports,Crime in the United States, annually.

The Northeastern region had a higher proportion of sale/manufacturing drug arrests than the other regions.

Drug seizures

Many federal agencies are involved in the removal of illicit drugs from the market. The Federal-Wide Drug Seizure System (FDSS) contains information about drug seizures made within the jurisdiction of the United States by the FBI, DEA, U.S. Customs Service (USCS), and U.S. Border Patrol as well as maritime seizures made by the U.S. Coast Guard.

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) --

the federal government seized 16,270 illegal drug laboratories between fiscal years 1975 and 2003

in fiscal year 2003, of the 420 labs seized, 409 (97%) manufactured methamphetamines

in 2008 the DEA program for eradicating domestic marijuana resulted in the destruction of 8.0 million plants in 20,120 plots, 8,296 arrests, 5,305 weapons seized, and assets seized valued at $66 million.

Source: Data provided by U.S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration as reported in the BJS,Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics Online, Table 4.38, May 2008 revision and Drug Enforcement Administration's Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program, by State, 2008.

Law enforcement operations

Federal agencies

As of September 2004 federal agencies employed about 105,000 full-time personnel authorized to make arrests and carry firearms in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to data provided by agencies in response to a Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) survey. Compared with data reported by agencies for 2002, employment of such personnel increased by 13%.

The DEA employed about 4,400 officers with the authority to make arrests and carry firearms as of September 2004. These DEA agents primarily investigate major narcotics violators, enforce regulations governing the manufacture and dispensing of controlled substances, and perform various other functions to prevent and control drug trafficking.

The FBI employed 12,242 full-time personnel with arrest and firearm authority. These agents investigate more than 200 types of federal crimes. The FBI has concurrent jurisdiction with the DEA over drug offenses under the Controlled Substances Act.

Source: BJS, Federal Law Enforcement Officers, 2004, NCJ 212750, July 2006.

State agencies

Among those state agencies with 100 or more officers, 71% operated a full-time
drug enforcement unit in 2000.

Local agencies

Of those local agencies with 100 or more officers a large percentage operated a full-time drug enforcement unit in 2000.

In 2003 about 9 in 10 local police departments regularly performed drug enforcement functions. More than 90% of the departments in each population category of 2,500 or more had drug enforcement responsibilities, including all of those serving 250,000 or more residents. Departments with drug enforcement responsibilities employed 97% of all local police officers.

Source: BJS, Local Police Departments 2003, NCJ 210118, May 2006.

In 2003, 90% of sheriffs' offices regularly performed drug enforcement functions. More than 80% of the offices in each population category below 250,000 had drug enforcement responsibilities.

Source: BJS, Sheriffs' Offices 2003, NCJ 211361, May 2006.

Multiagency task forces

In 2003 an estimated 23% of local police departments had one or more officers assigned full time to a multiagency drug enforcement task force. About 65% of all local police officers worked for a department that assigned officers to a task force. About 5,959 officers were assigned full time to a drug task force.

The average number of officers assigned full time ranged from 39 in departments serving a population of 1 million or more to 1 or 2 in those serving fewer than 50,000 residents.

Source: BJS, Local Police Departments 2003, NCJ 210118, May 2006.

In 2003 an estimated 47% of sheriffs' offices had one or more officers assigned full time to a multiagency drug enforcement task force. An estimated 3,477 officers were assigned full time to a drug task force. The average number ranged from 9 in sheriffs' offices serving a population of 1 million or more to 1 in those serving fewer than 10,000 residents.

Source: BJS, Sheriffs' Offices 2003, NCJ 211361, May 2006.

In 1994, 46% of all prosecutors' offices indicated that at least one prosecutor has been a member of a multijurisdictional task force. Of offices on such a task force, 76% indicated drug enforcement to be the goal. In 1992, 30% of prosecutors' offices reported involvement with a multijurisdictional task force. Almost 80% of these offices also were involved with a drug task force.

Source: BJS, Prosecutors in State Courts, 1992 and 1994, NCJ 145319, June 1996.

Over 80% of full-time offices in large jurisdictions had at least one prosecutor who served as a member of a multijurisdictional task force. The percentages of full-time large offices with at least one prosecutor serving on a multi-jurisdictional task force were --

Drug testing for applicants

In 2000, 76% of state agencies with 100 or more officers use drug test screening
as one of their procedures for selecting new officer recruits.

Source: BJS, Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics, 2000: Data for Individual State and Local Agencies with 100 or More Officer, NCJ 203350, April 2004.

In 2003, at least 8 in 10 departments in each population category of 10,000 or more administered drug tests in the selection of new officer recruits. At least 7 in 10 departments serving a population of 2,500 to 9,999, and 6 in 10 departments serving fewer than 2,500 residents did also.

Source: BJS, Local Police Departments 2003, NCJ 210118, May 2006.

In 2003, sheriffs' offices serving a population of 100,000 or more were the most likely to administered drug tests in the selection of new officer recruits, with percentages in these categories ranging from 78% to 97%. Departments serving a population of under 10,000 (55%) were the least likely to test any officers for drug use.

Source: BJS, Sheriffs' Offices 2003, NCJ 211361, May 2006.

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Arrests and seizures | Law enforcement operations Federal, state, and local agencies share responsibility for enforcing the Nation's drug laws, although most arrests are made by state and local authorities. In 2007 the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) estimated that there were about 1,841,200 state and local arrests for drug abuse violations in the United States.

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https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-008-20%20Fentanyl%20Flow%20in%20the%20United%20States_0.pdf

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https://www.cato.org/blog/77-drug-traffickers-are-us-citizens-not-illegal-immigrants

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When people think of drug smugglers, they often imagine illegal immigrants sneaking into the United States across the southwest border. But the reality is that the vast majority of drug smuggling occurs at ports of entry (including airports), and the vast majority of traffickers are U.S. citizens. According to data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, U.S. citizens had 77 percent of federal drug trafficking convictions in 2018. This percentage has grown from 69 percent in 2012. As Figure 1 shows, the share of drug traffickers who were illegal immigrants fell from 21 percent in 2012 to 16 percent in 2018.

The reason that drug traffickers are largely U.S. citizens is because most drug trafficking occurs at ports of entry because most drugs-other than marijuana-are easier to conceal in legal luggage than while crossing the Rio Grande or the desserts in Arizona. Figure 2 shows the location where Customs and Border Protection seizes drugs by drug type. Port officers seized between 80 and 90 percent of every major drug type except for marijuana. Even there, officers at ports made nearly half of all the seizures so far in 2019.

Congress should not treat illegal immigrants as if they dominate drug trafficking nor should it focus drug interdiction resources between ports of entry where little drug trafficking takes place. The only thing that has reduced drug trafficking at all has been legalization of marijuana at the state level, which shifted supply away from Mexico and to the United States.

Note on comparisons: While 16 percent of trafficking convictions is about five times illegal noncitizens' share of the U.S. population, this is not an appropriate comparison because the criminal offense inherently involves movement between two countries, so the relevant population includes people residing on both sides of the border. This means that the potential pool of undocumented noncitizen drug smugglers is vastly greater than the 10.5 million illegal residents already living in the United States.

Any of the 7.5 billion undocumented noncitizens around the world could decide tomorrow to attempt to bring drugs into the United States. Only 2,910 were convicted of doing so. That's 0.00004 percent of all undocumented noncitizens worldwide. By comparison, 14,146 of the approximately 310 million U.S. citizens did so or 0.005 percent.

Obviously, this exercise doesn't really tell us much, but the bottom line is that these conviction figures cannot be used to say how likely it is for undocumented noncitizens who are in the United States to be convicted a drug trafficking offense. That is not the point of this post. The point is to dispel the myths that undocumented noncitizens control most drug trafficking to the United States and that traffickers rely primarily on illegal immigration between ports of entry to bring drugs to this country.

- Update added 7/8/2019

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77% of Drug Traffickers Are U.S. Citizens, Not Illegal Immigrants

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When people think of drug smugglers, they often imagine illegal immigrants sneaking into the United States across the southwest border. But the reality is that the vast majority of drug smuggling occurs at ports of entry (including airports), and the vast majority of traffickers are U.S. citizens. According to data from the U.S.

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https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/drug-seizure-statistics

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Official websites use .gov
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As of 15 December 2021 the Drug Seizures dashboard now includes seizures of all drug types.

To access the data used to build this dashboard, please visit the CBP Data Portal.

Note: Internet Explorer has problems displaying the following charts. Please use another browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge) to view. When using a mobile device, the charts are best displayed in landscape mode.

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As of 15 December 2021 the Drug Seizures dashboard now includes seizures of all drug types. To access the data used to build this dashboard, please visit the CBP Data Portal. Note: Internet Explorer has problems displaying the following charts. Please use another browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge) to view.

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https://harrishousestl.org/4-big-issues-in-americas-drug-rehab-clinics/

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It's no secret that drug rehab clinics have incredibly difficult jobs to do. Drug addiction treatment is a long, fraught road, and many people have to go through treatment multiple times for it to truly stick. While the clients experiencing drug addiction treatment have pretty obvious issues the center is trying to help them through, those drug rehab clinics are facing severe problems of their own.

Here, we've endeavored to break down the biggest issues plaguing American drug rehab clinics today. That's obviously no small task, and we may have missed out on some along the way. Even still, we think we've identified the core issues with the current addiction treatment system, and along the way, we've pointed out how you can avoid them or what could be done on a broader scale to help improve the system. Before we get started with all that, though, we want to give a big disclaimer: We're talking about systemic, industry-wide issues here, not any individual facilities. None of the problems we're about to point out is to say that you can't find a good program or that you can't get better. There are definitely still good options out there. If you need help, you can get the conversation started by reaching out to us .

Okay, with that out of the way, let's get into it. We've narrowed our focus to four of the biggest ways in which drug rehab clinics fall short: Ineffective treatment, rampant scams, insurance issues, and lack of regulation. Clearly, those are problems that individual clinics can't solve on their own, and they don't affect every facility. Nevertheless, here are the four biggest problems with drug rehab clinics and the drug addiction treatment industry in America.

1. Ineffective Treatment

We need to do some disclaimers here - no drug addiction treatment program is going to have a 100 percent success rate (and we'll talk more about how drug rehab clinics define success and the problems with that system a little later), and just because one individual doesn't have optimal results doesn't mean a facility has ineffective treatment. In fact, it's common for clients to need multiple treatments before something sticks.

What we mean with this point is that some drug rehab clinics will use treatment modes that aren't evidence-backed. Certain kinds of drug addiction treatment are well-proven and have years of research backing them up. Others do not. There are plenty of drug rehab clinics out there that use methods that aren't proven to work, and that's not going to do you any favors.

To avoid this one, be sure to ask about the science backing up the methods the facility uses. You can do your own research into their treatment models, but make sure you're consulting reputable sources. Look into the staff's credentials, and make sure they have legitimate authority in the field.

2. Rampant Scams

It's no secret that some drug rehab clinics can be predatory and harmful to the people they're supposed to be helping. Scams like the "Florida Shuffle" have been widely reported on, and there have been definite steps to combat them. However, there's still a long way to go before drug addiction treatment scams are fully weeded out.

That Florida Shuffle we mentioned is not actually unique to any one state - you see it all over. The basic idea is that bad-faith drug rehab clinics have financial incentives to keep their clients in treatment, so they don't do much of anything to help them get better. As a result, clients get shuffled from facility to facility, never making much progress and greatly suffering. It's a horrific cycle.

There are also plenty of treatment facilities that do not have the proper credentials, goals, or methods. For example, in some states you don't need a license to operate a sober living home, so pretty much anybody could advertise one. If you want to learn more about how these scams operate and the tremendous harm they've caused over the years, there's plenty of reporting on it, like we said. Here's one article to get you started.

Now that you're sufficiently frightened, let's switch gears a little and take a brief detour to talk about how to avoid scams in the drug addiction treatment industry. There are several red flags you need to look out for when searching for a facility. Here are some things to avoid:

Quick Programs

In this fast-paced modern age, there's going to be pressure from all sides to get patients in and out of rehab as fast as possible. You probably don't want to leave your life behind for an extended period, so you might be drawn toward programs that boast of a quick turnaround.

Don't fall for it. Like most things worth doing, drug addiction treatment takes major time and effort. You should be looking for programs that will take as long as you need to get healthy, not get-sober-quick schemes.

This includes looking for a program with options for care after you've completed an initial course of treatment. Most people do not see lasting effects from just spending a month in drug rehab clinics and then going on with their life. The best facilities will have aftercare options, like legitimate sober housing and outpatient treatment. If there's no talk of what happens after your initial inpatient stay, ask, and if they don't have a good answer for you, look elsewhere.

Overpromising

Nobody can guarantee you successful drug addiction treatment. If the drug rehab clinics you're considering are making all kinds of grandiose claims about what their methods will do for you, that's a big clue that you should be looking elsewhere.

This is a good spot to talk more about success rates, which we mentioned earlier. Basically, you need to know how different drug rehab clinics define and measure success. There are all kinds of different metrics they could be using - the percent of clients who complete the program and percent of clients who stay sober for a designated amount of time are some common ones. Also, what's considered a good success rate is going to vary greatly depending on what metric they're using and what kinds of clients they treat. So, if a center is touting some amazing success rate and promising the same for you, it might pay to be a little suspicious. At the very least, it doesn't hurt to ask some questions about how they determined that statistic.

This is all to say that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Don't believe any guarantees that a program is going to solve all your problems, and be skeptical of success statistics that seem overblown.

One-Size-Fits-All Approach

You want a drug addiction treatment plan as unique as you are. If one of the drug rehab clinics you're considering doesn't emphasize that point and instead wants to shoehorn everyone into a single sort of program, that's a massive red flag. Your treatment plan should be individualized to your needs, which includes the length of the program.

This relates back to our previous point about treatment programs that are too short - a month might be plenty of time for some people, but others need to be in residential treatment for longer. True drug addiction treatment professionals are going to be able to identify how best to help you, whatever form that takes.

This means they're going to want to know a lot about you before you ever get started on your program. If the intake process is super quick and you don't have any interviews or any discussions about an individualized treatment plan, that's a big red flag.

3. Insurance Issues

In many ways, this problem goes hand-in-hand with the numerous scams out there. Many of them are designed to capitalize on flaws in our insurance system.

For instance, lots of scamming drug rehab clinics will overbill their clients' insurance companies, charging for unnecessary and exaggerated services and treatments. Some have also committed insurance fraud, where they sign patients up for top-tier insurance plans without their knowledge or consent under phony addresses. That way, the drug rehab clinics receive more money than they would from other, less comprehensive plans. This sort of a scheme is obviously also a scam, so we could have put it under that header, too, but we think it belongs better down here.

There are also less dramatic but just as damaging insurance issues with drug addiction treatment. Under the Affordable Care Act, many health insurance plans are required to cover addiction treatment in some capacity. However, they might not cover the full cost, or they might not cover your preferred drug rehab clinics. And of course, if you don't have health insurance at all, you're going to be on the hook to pay for the cost of your drug addiction treatment all on your own. All of these factors make treatment very expensive for some people, which can limit them from getting the help they really need.

The other aspect of insurance issues here is that providers often do not monitor the quality of the care they cover the way they do in other fields. This lack of oversight segues nicely into our next point...

4. Lack of Regulation

This is a big one. Fixing this issue would likely solve all of the other ones we've listed, or at least drastically improve them. In many states, drug addiction treatment is vastly underregulated. There's not enough oversight on effectiveness of treatment, and there are few protections in place to prevent those scams we talked about from happening. They've been allowed to run rampant in some communities for a long time, and when they get flushed out of one place, many scammers will simply move to a new location, ready to prey on other people.

We should note that since the Florida Shuffle became widely known, there have been some changes for the better, and many drug addiction treatment scammers have faced criminal charges. However, there's still a long way to go before drug rehab clinics are properly regulated.

We're mostly talking about government regulation here, but as we previously discussed, insurance providers could step in with more oversight, as well. Insurers often can't determine what treatment is appropriate, or which programs are better and more effective than others. Changes in the insurance system to incentivize high-quality drug addiction treatment would completely change the game.

A Word of Reassurance

We've put a lot of ugly aspects of our current drug addiction treatment industry on display here, but we don't want you to get the wrong idea about drug rehab clinics in general. These are the issues the industry faces, and they're real, but there are also plenty of reputable and effective rehabs out there. It's absolutely possible to get the help you need. You just need to be willing and able to do some digging to find a treatment option that's going to work for you. Now that you know what to watch out for, there's an even better chance you'll get into the right program.

Don't let all these issues stop you from seeking treatment for yourself or for a loved one. Just know that you need to do your due diligence when selecting a program. Watch out for scams, and don't get lured in by practices that sound good but don't actually work. Even though there are plenty of programs out there that are devoid of scientific evidence, there are also lots that use evidence-based approaches - seek those out. Do plenty of research and ask plenty of questions so you know what you're getting into. While there's nothing you can really do to make the government regulate the industry more effectively, you can definitely watch out for scams on your own.

If you need a place to get started, we'd be more than happy to speak with you about whether one of the drug addiction treatment programs here at Harris House would be a good fit for you. You can contact us to start that conversation.

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4 Big Issues in America's Drug Rehab Clinics - Harris House

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It's no secret that drug rehab clinics have incredibly difficult jobs to do. Drug addiction treatment is a long, fraught road, and many people have to go through treatment multiple times for it to truly stick.

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https://drugabusestatistics.org/

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Homeless Man talks about heroin addiction 

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Homeless Man talks about heroin addiction 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6ZFzEW7_Q4

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Homeless man talks openly about being addicted to heroin. We have an opioid crisis in America.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24i8b-QG3o8

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Intervention: Caitlin Turned Full-Blown Drug Addict in the Blink of an Eye | A&E

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNQcrTGx2sk

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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0380268/

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Cocaine Cowboys is a great movie. A must see for sure. Never has a viewer gotten to experience the real cocaine world until now. Interviews with a top hit-man/enforcer, a pioneer pilot, kingpin, and tons of stock footage make this film completely unique.

The sequel, Cocaine Cowboys 2 - Hustlin With The Godmother,is going to be even better. It focuses around Griselda Blanco, Rivi (the enforcer/hit-man) and a character named Charles Cosby. There is an advance screening June 20, 2008 at the CineVegas Film Festival and this time around the documentary has worldwide distribution checkout www.charlescosby.com for some pictures of Griselda Blanco and Charles Cosby.

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Cocaine Cowboys: Directed by Billy Corben. With Jon Roberts, Al Sunshine, Sam Burstyn, Mickey Munday. The story of how Miami became the cocaine capital of the United States in the early 1980's and the police officers who turned the tide on crime.

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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12588416/

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The Business of Drugs (TV Mini-Series 2020) - IMDb

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With Amaryllis Fox, Yasmin Hurd, Rodrigo Canales, Mr. K. To understand the origins and true impact of the business of drugs, a former CIA analyst investigates the economics of six illicit substances.

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https://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs38/38661/movement.htm

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To Contents To Previous Page To Next Page To Publications Page To Home Page
Drug Movement Into and Within the United States

From January through November 2009, U.S. seizures of illegal drugs in transit exceeded 1,626 metric tons, indicating that DTOs succeed in moving several thousand tons of cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, heroin, and MDMA into the United States annually. There are unique smuggling and transportation methods associated with each drug type, but overall, drug seizure data and law enforcement reporting indicate that overland smuggling and subsequent transportation by vehicle exceed all other methods combined (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Seizures of Drugs in Transit, Within the United States, in Kilograms, 2009*

d-link

Source: National Seizure System.
* Data as of December 1, 2009; table includes seizures of cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, heroin, and MDMA.

Overland Smuggling Into the United States

Most foreign-produced illicit drugs available in the United States are smuggled into the country overland across the borders with Mexico and, to a much lesser extent, Canada (see Table 1). Overland smuggling methods are relatively consistent (see text box); however, DTOs often shift routes in response to law enforcement pressure, intercartel conflicts or other external factors. Such shifts were observed in 2008 and 2009.

Table 1. Drug Seizures Along the Southwest and Northern Borders, in Kilograms, 2005- 2009*

Source: National Seizure System.
*Data as of December 1, 2009; totals are rounded to the nearest kilogram.

Common Overland Smuggling Methods

Mexican DTOs dominate the transportation of illicit drugs across the Southwest Border. They typically use commercial trucks and private and rental vehicles to smuggle cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, and heroin through the 25 land POEs as well as through vast areas of desert and mountainous terrain between POEs. Asian traffickers, OMGs, and Indo-Canadian drug traffickers transport significant quantities of high-potency marijuana and MDMA into the United States across the U.S.-Canada border. They use commercial trucks and private and rental vehicles to transport these drugs through more than 100 land POEs. They also use all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), aircraft, maritime vessels, and couriers on foot to smuggle drugs through vast areas between POEs.

There have been significant and prolonged shifts in cocaine smuggling routes that most likely have been caused by a combination of factors, particularly decreased cocaine production in Colombia, but also enhanced counterdrug efforts in Mexico, high levels of cartel violence, sustained interdiction pressure, and cocaine flow to non-U.S. markets, especially Europe. In 2007, a decline in the amount of cocaine seized along the Southwest Border in the South Texas region--the predominant cocaine smuggling route at the time--resulted in a sharp decline in the amount of cocaine seized overall. As seizure totals for South Texas declined, seizure totals for California POEs began trending upward. Since 2007, cocaine seizures at California POEs have equaled or exceeded seizure totals at South Texas POEs; nonetheless, overall seizure totals remain lower than the seizure totals recorded before the significant decline was noted. Although no single cause for the decline in overall seizures can be identified, multiple factors--including a sharp decline in cocaine production in 2008 (see Figure 7 in Cocaine section) and enhanced GOM counterdrug efforts--likely contributed to the decrease in amounts being transported from South America to Mexico and ultimately to the Southwest Border. Moreover, several exceptionally large seizures of cocaine destined for Mexico from South America in 2007 may have initiated the trend. These seizures coincide with the decline in seizures along the Southwest Border and were followed by an unprecedented decline in cocaine availability in many markets in the United States.

Conversely, heroin seizures along the Southwest Border have been increasing, most likely as a result of the growing Mexican influence in heroin production and transportation. This increase in Southwest Border heroin seizures coincides with a decrease in heroin seizures from commercial airlines. In 2008, the total amount of heroin seized along the Southwest Border (556.1 kg) exceeded the total amount of heroin seized from commercial airlines (398.1 kg) for the first time (see Table 2). This shift appears to be directly related to production trends and the changing roles of DTOs. For the past several years, production estimates for Mexican heroin, which is transported primarily overland across the Southwest Border, steadily increased to record levels in 2008. Furthermore, Mexican DTOs have become increasingly involved in the transportation of South American heroin. Meanwhile, production estimates for South American heroin, historically transported into the United States via commercial air, have steadily declined (see Figure 2). This increased availability of Mexican heroin, coupled with increased involvement of Mexican DTOs in trafficking South American heroin, likely have resulted in significantly greater quantities of heroin being transported across the Southwest Border.

Figure 2. Potential Pure Heroin Production Estimates, Colombia, in Metric Tons, 2002- 2008*

d-link

Source: U.S. Government estimate.
*Estimated figure for 2007 based on partial data because of incomplete survey; estimates for 2005 and 2008 not available.

Methamphetamine and marijuana seizures have also increased along the Southwest Border, partly because of increased production. As with heroin, the increase appears to be specific to the drug. Methamphetamine production in Mexico appears to be increasing again after a sustained period of limited production resulting from laws that eventually banned pseudoephedrine in Mexico. Multiple factors may be contributing to an increase in marijuana smuggling, particularly decreased GOM cannabis eradication efforts, which have resulted in elevated production levels.

A review of the smuggling patterns for each of the major drug types reveals myriad factors--some of which are interrelated and some of which are unique to the drug--that affect modes and methods used to transport drugs into the United States. Nonetheless, it is possible that seizures of large quantities of cocaine en route to Mexico and counterdrug efforts may have impacted the ability of major DTOs to smuggle cocaine from South America to Mexico. These factors may also explain the decrease in seizures along the Southwest Border, the decline in cocaine availability in portions of the United States, and the lack of similar long-term declines in the availability of methamphetamine, heroin, and marijuana.

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Maritime Smuggling Directly Into the United States

Significantly lesser quantities of drugs are smuggled directly into the United States by traffickers using maritime conveyances than by traffickers using overland routes. In 2009, less than 3 percent of all arrival zone drug seizures occurred on commercial and noncommercial maritime conveyances. Nevertheless, some DTOs continue to use maritime smuggling methods to move illegal drugs into the United States (see text box), and like overland smugglers, some of these maritime smugglers shifted their operations in 2008 and 2009 in response to law enforcement pressure or gaps in interdiction coverage.

Common Maritime Smuggling Methods

Various DTOs--most notably Colombian but also Dominican, Jamaican, Puerto Rican, and Venezuelan--transport cocaine and lesser amounts of heroin and marijuana to the United States using a variety of conveyances, including container ships, cruise ships, commercial fishing vessels, recreation vessels, and go-fast boats. The drugs are typically concealed in hidden compartments, commingled with legitimate goods, or couriered by passenger or crew members on maritime vessels. Traffickers also have increasingly used self-propelled semisubmersibles (SPSSs) to transport cocaine from South America to Mexico. The use of SPSSs affords traffickers the ability to covertly transport large quantities of drugs.

a. Self-propelled semisubmersible vessels are maritime vessels used by traffickers to transport illicit drugs. These vessels typically protrude only a few inches above the surface of the water, making them very difficult to detect visually. SPSSs typically have a four-man crew and are capable of carrying multiton quantities of cocaine.

The primary threat from drug smuggling via private vessels is from Caribbean-based traffickers exploiting the Puerto Rico and Florida coastlines. Traffickers transported mostly cocaine from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico, although they smuggled lesser amounts of heroin and MDMA, sometimes commingled with cocaine loads. Caribbean traffickers also smuggled cocaine, heroin, and marijuana from the Bahamas to areas of South Florida between Miami and Palm Beach. Seizure totals and routes remained relatively constant compared with those of previous years.

Mexican traffickers seeking to avoid scrutiny along the Southwest Border used private vessels to smuggle marijuana and cocaine into the United States during 2009. Incidents involving kilogram packages of cocaine and marijuana washing up or being found abandoned along the South Texas coastline increased, particularly in the South Padre Island area, during the first half of the year. By the end of December, more than 114 kilograms of cocaine had been recovered in the region. In comparison, only 1 kilogram was recovered in the region during 2008. Federal investigators believe that the smugglers typically depart from Tamaulipas State in northern Mexico and make short hops to the Texas coastline. Mexican traffickers also used private vessels in 2009 to smuggle marijuana from the northern Mexico state of Baja California to southern California. In fact, in 2009, more than 3.1 metric tons of marijuana were reported to have been seized from private vessels arriving in southern California, primarily the San Diego area.

Traffickers use commercial maritime vessels to smuggle sizable quantities of drugs into the United States, but data suggest that other conveyance methods are preferred by smugglers. Traffickers often hide drugs among legitimate cargo in maritime containers, a fraction of which are inspected. Analysis of commercial maritime seizure data for 2004 through 2009 indicates that cocaine and marijuana are most often smuggled in commercial maritime vessels from Caribbean locations, such as the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica, into East Coast ports in Florida and New Jersey. Traffickers also use commercial vessels to smuggle cocaine from the Dominican Republic into Puerto Rico. Smaller amounts of heroin, typically 2 kilograms or less, are occasionally smuggled by cruise ship passengers working for Caribbean trafficking organizations into East Coast ports; however, this smuggling technique appears to have declined since 2006. Seizure data indicate that methamphetamine is rarely smuggled into the United States on commercial maritime vessels.

Despite the fact that sizable quantities of drugs are seized annually from commercial maritime vessels arriving in the United States, the dominance of Mexican trafficking organizations as the primary transporters of cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine to the United States results in commercial maritime seizure totals that are far less than Southwest Border seizure totals. Seizure data for 2009 show that the amount seized from commercial maritime vessels remains less than 1 percent (6,015 kg of 828,223 kg) of the amount seized at the Southwest Border. Law enforcement reporting confirms that Caribbean and South American traffickers are more likely than Mexican traffickers to take advantage of commercial maritime vessels as a smuggling conveyance to supply their much smaller U.S. distribution networks. Moreover, large quantities of drugs seized at U.S. ports are often destined for distribution in countries other than the United States. Many drug shipments concealed in commercial maritime containers by Caribbean and South American traffickers are intercepted by U.S. authorities as they transit the United States en route to markets in Europe and Asia.

The Logistics of Transporting Drug Shipments

DTOs have well-established transportation networks and often transport illicit drug shipments directly to drug markets throughout the United States. Some DTOs relinquish control by distributing illicit drugs from stash locations to traffickers who purchase these drugs and then transport the shipments themselves to distribution areas. DTOs often hire independent drug transportation groups to transport drugs, insulating themselves from law enforcement investigations and compartmentalizing trafficking operations. These transporters are hired for the sole purpose of moving drug shipments, and they operate in cells that are separate from other DTO operations. As a result, seizures of illicit drugs from transporters often yield little or no information to law enforcement officials about other DTO members or DTO operations. For example, Colombian DTOs often employ Mexican traffickers whose successful transportation networks allow these DTOs to circumvent the problems caused by law enforcement disruption of their own transportation routes.

Drug shipments are typically stashed in ranches, warehouses, residences, and trailers near primary points of entry into the United States for consolidation, distribution, and subsequent transport to drug markets throughout the United States. To transport drugs, traffickers primarily use commercial trucks and privately owned and rental vehicles equipped with hidden compartments and natural voids in the vehicles. Additionally, bulk quantities of illicit drugs are sometimes commingled with legitimate goods in commercial trucks. Many drug traffickers use postal and package delivery services to transport illicit drugs within the United States and, to a much lesser extent, use couriers and cargo shipments on aircraft, buses, and trains.

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Air Smuggling Into the United States

The amount of drugs smuggled into the United States by couriers and in cargo aboard commercial aircraft is significantly less than the amount smuggled by other means. In 2009, the total amount seized from commercial aircraft for cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana, and MDMA was less than for any other conveyance. Drug seizure data show that only 24 percent of heroin seizures, 15 percent of MDMA seizures, 6 percent of cocaine seizures, and less than 1 percent each of methamphetamine and marijuana seizures were from commercial air conveyances.

The amount of heroin seized at commercial air POEs decreased 56.2 percent (909 kg to 398 kg) from 2004 through 2008. The decrease is partially attributable to a shift in the smuggling of South American heroin by couriers on commercial flights to overland transportation across the Southwest Border as well as increased airport interdiction activities in Colombian airports. Colombian DTOs are now, to a large extent, relying on Mexican DTOs to smuggle heroin overland into the United States rather than conducting their own air courier smuggling operations. At the same time that heroin seizures decreased at commercial air POEs, heroin seizures at Southwest Border POEs increased 44.0 percent (386 kg to 556 kg), and preliminary seizure data indicate that Southwest Border heroin seizures reached a record high in 2009 (see Table 2).

Table 2. Heroin Seizures at Southwest Border Area and Commercial Air POEs, in Kilograms, 2004- 2009*

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009*

386

229

489

362

556

642

909

740

529

424

398

199

Source: National Seizure System.
*Data as of December 1, 2009.

The decline in commercial air smuggling for heroin is attributable to a number of factors, including decreasing South American heroin production and a shift to smuggling routes across the Southwest Border. Most of the heroin seized at air POEs in previous years was seized from South American heroin couriers. However, South American heroin production appears to have decreased sharply since 2003 (see Figure 2).

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The Flow of Drugs Within the United States

There are 327 official U.S. land, maritime, and air POEs; however, a relatively few POEs account for most of the drug flow into the United States. In fact, 88 percent of all drug seizures occurred at just 20 POEs. From these and other POEs, drug shipments are transported to dozens of national and regional distribution centers through eight principal corridors to the major drug markets within the United States. (See Figure 3.)

Figure 3. Drug Transportation Corridors in the United States

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Source: Federal, state, and local law enforcement data and reporting.

Among the eight principal drug corridors, Corridor A is particularly vital to DTOs. Corridor A is the primary route for DTOs transporting multiton quantities of cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine from the Southwest Border to eastern U.S. drug markets, many of the largest drug markets in the country. Within Corridor A, Interstate 10 as well as Interstates 8 and 20 are among those most used by drug couriers, as evidenced by drug seizure data showing that from 2008 through October 2009, nearly 19 percent of all reported interstate cocaine seizures and 7 percent of all reported interstate heroin seizures occurred on these routes.

Corridor B is also important to DTOs, especially those moving methamphetamine and marijuana produced in California or Mexico to major market areas in western, central, or eastern states. Interstates 15, 80, 70, and 40 are the leading routes through Corridor B, and seizures on these interstates accounted for 46 percent of all reported methamphetamine seizures and 31 percent of all marijuana seizures on interstates from 2008 through October 2009.

Drug couriers moving drugs through the various corridors are often destined for one of the relatively few primary U.S. drug markets, where there are large drug user populations and where drugs are further distributed to smaller markets. There are relatively little data available to objectively rank cities as leading or lesser drug markets. Nevertheless, analysis of national seizure data that identify the destination and origination of drug shipments shows that seven city areas (Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Miami, New York, and Tucson) are identified more often than any other cities as major points of both origination and destination for drug shipments (see Table 3).

Table 3. Metropolitan Areas Most Often Identified as Origination and Destination Points for Seized Drug Shipments, by Drug, 2008- 2009*

Cannabis

Cocaine

Heroin

Methamphetamine

MDMA

Source: National Seizure System.
*Data as of June 30, 2009.

Footnote

12. Excludes cities within the Southwest Border Arrival Zone area (within 150 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border).

UNCLASSIFIED

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(U) Drug Movement Into and Within the United States - National Drug Threat Assessment 2010 (UNCLASSIFIED)

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To Contents To Previous Page To Next Page To Publications Page To Home Page From January through November 2009, U.S. seizures of illegal drugs in transit exceeded 1,626 metric tons, indicating that DTOs succeed in moving several thousand tons of cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, heroin, and MDMA into the United States annually.

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https://www.wola.org/analysis/four-common-misconceptions-u-s-bound-drug-flows-mexico-central-america/

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If we could snap our fingers and halt all drug trafficking through Central America's "Northern Triangle" region, it would have no effect on the opioid crisis devastating communities across the United States. U.S. officials estimate that 90 to 94 percent of heroin consumed in the United States today comes from Mexico, which is now producing about 70 tons per year. Another four to six percent comes from Asia, principally Afghanistan, the origin of most heroin consumed elsewhere in the world. About two percent of heroin that reaches the United States comes from Colombia, and a negligible amount is made in Guatemala.

Central America is south of Mexico. Mexican heroin is unlikely to travel south on its way north to the United States. The only portion of U.S. heroin consumption that is likely to transit Central America is the roughly two percent produced in Colombia or Guatemala. The dynamic is similar for methamphetamine, which is overwhelmingly synthesized in Mexico, and fentanyl, which is mostly produced in Asia but passes through Mexico.

By far the main drug that does pass through Central America is cocaine, which is produced in the Andean nations of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. About 90 percent of cocaine seized in the United States in 2015 was of Colombian origin. Of cocaine trafficked to the United States, the State Department reported in March, about 90 percent "first transited through the Mexico/Central America corridor." Central America's relevance to the opioid crisis, however, is marginal.
Misconception 2: "Building a wall would greatly reduce heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and fentanyl trafficking."
Proponents of a border wall often claim that it would help the United States solve its opioid addiction problem by blocking heroin smugglers from Mexico. This reveals a misunderstanding of how cross-border smuggling works.

The vast majority of the drug that enters from Mexico does so through "ports of entry"-the 48 official land crossings through which millions of people, vehicles, and cargo pass every day. "Heroin seizures almost predominantly are through the port of entry and either carried in a concealed part of a vehicle or carried by an individual," then-U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske told a congressional committee last year. "We don't get much heroin seized by Border Patrol coming through, I think just because there are a lot of risks to the smugglers and the difficulty of trying to smuggle it through," he said.

"The most common method employed by Mexican TCOs [Transnational Criminal Organizations] involves transporting drugs in vehicles through U.S. ports of entry (POEs)," the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reported in its 2016 National Drug Threat Assessment. "Illicit drugs are smuggled into the United States in concealed compartments within passenger vehicles or commingled with legitimate goods on tractor trailers," according to the document.

Heroin is small in volume. "It's a relatively small amount-40-50 tons, we think-of heroin that feeds the heroin epidemic in the United States," Gen. John Kelly, then the commander of U.S. Southern Command, told a Senate committee in 2015. The amount has probably increased somewhat today, but still takes up little space: all the heroin consumed in the United States in an entire year could probably fit into two 40-foot shipping containers.

Now, imagine the contents of those containers broken up into tiny amounts and scattered across vehicles, luggage, and cargo shipments and sent through 48 land crossings, plus airports, over the course of 365 days. The difficulty explains why in 2015, the DEA reported that U.S. authorities managed to seize 6.8 tons of heroin, an amount equal to perhaps one-seventh of Gen. Kelly's demand estimate.

The dynamic is similar for other compact-volume drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine, and fentanyl, which are overwhelmingly seized at ports of entry. Cannabis, which is larger and bulkier, appears to be trafficked more frequently in the areas between the ports.

With a small, compact, and expensive product, and a six-sevenths chance of avoiding detection and seizure, it's unsurprising that most heroin smugglers don't bother to transport it between the ports of entry, in the sparsely populated or wilderness zones where proposed border fencing might be built.

The ports of entry are a big part of the picture. Yet while the Trump administration is loudly proposing ambitious, expensive wall-building plans, its budget requests would do very little to address the US$5 billion in documented needs, from renovations to staffing, at the ports of entry.
Misconception 3: "Gangs like MS-13 are moving a lot of drugs from Latin America into the United States."
Central America's hyper-violent street gangs, especially the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 organizations that originated in the United States, make their money primarily from extortion, in addition to other criminal activities like theft and human trafficking. While they do engage in street-level drug sales in the neighborhoods in which they are active, known as " narcomenudeo," these gangs are not the ones behind the multi-kilogram or even multi-ton shipments of cocaine that pass through Central America en route to the United States from Andean countries.

"Wholesale" cocaine transshipment is mostly the work of cartels. Amb. William Brownfield, the Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, makes the distinction:

"There are two driving factors that are creating a vast amount of corruption in Honduras, and quite frankly throughout the Northern Triangle. First are the organized-the transnational criminal organizations, largely drug trafficking. They are professional criminals, and their objectives are economic in nature. The second are the criminal gangs."

The first group, the drug-transshipment organizations (sometimes called " transportistas"), are also violent in areas that overlap with trafficking routes, but are largely not responsible for the high levels of crime and violence in urban centers. The investigative organization InSight Crime profiles some of those most active in Central America: El Salvador's Perrones and Texis Cartel; Guatemala's Illegal Clandestine Security Apparatuses and Lorenzana, Mendoza, and León crime families; Honduras's Atlantic cartel, Cachiros, and Valle family; the Reyes Aragón and Reñazco families in Nicaragua; and the Bagdad and Calor Calor gangs in Panama.

These transshipment groups can have a relationship with gangs like MS-13, sometimes hiring gang members as hitmen and providing them with the drugs they sell in the neighborhoods they control. But while the gangs may desire to participate more in large-scale international drug transshipment, they rarely get to do so.

Inside the United States, when Central American gangs sell drugs on the streets, they are not selling drugs that they have brought from the region on their own. Instead, they get their inventory from the cartels, the DEA reports: "The cartels remain the main source of drug supply for the gangs, while the street gangs, prison gangs, and OMGs [outlaw motorcycle gangs] generate street-level sales for the cartels."
Misconception 4: "Mexico seizes more cocaine than most Latin American nations."
With so much Andean cocaine flowing through the Mexico-Central America vector, one might expect Mexico to be finding and stopping a large amount of the drug. Seizure data, in fact, indicates otherwise: once smugglers reach Mexico, their probability of losing control of their cocaine drops.

The following list of reported 2016 cocaine plus cocaine base seizures is taken from the text of the State Department's March 2017 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. It's notable for a few things. First, Mexico and Honduras-two countries closely aligned with U.S. counter-drug efforts-appear far down the list. Second, these two countries, plus Venezuela, lack reliable current public reporting on cocaine flows and seizures. And third, proximity to Colombia seems to correlate with higher cocaine seizures, which may explain in part why Mexico is near the bottom.

These misconceptions show how complex it is to minimize the damage done by addiction, organized crime, and impunity all along the routes that lead from coca and poppy fields to U.S. neighborhoods. There is no magic solution, like eradicating farmers' plants, building high walls, cracking down on street gangs, or legalizing without tight regulation. The past 40 years' experience points to less flashy strategies, among them: breaking corrupt links between states and organized crime through judicial reform; creating economic and civic opportunities in violence-prone territories; bringing a civilian state presence to abandoned zones where illicit crops are cultivated; reforming police and prisons; and expanding access to treatment at home. Pursuing these strategies requires patience, a long-term commitment, and a willingness to measure the right indicators-without being led away by misconceptions.

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Four Common Misconceptions about U.S.-bound Drug Flows through Mexico and Central America - WOLA

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Misconception 1: "Central America is an important vector for heroin trafficking." If we could snap our fingers and halt all drug trafficking through Central America's "Northern Triangle" region, it would have no effect on the opioid crisis devastating communities across the United States. U.S.

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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7782022/
Shows the war on drugs from users, law, and dealer perspectives

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Dope: With Ronan Summers, Michael Beach. Ride along for an uncompromising look at the lives of those who sell, use and wage a war on drugs in the U.S. and Mexico.

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UN Human Rights Experts calling for end of drug war

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UN Human Rights Experts calling for end of drug war

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https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2022/06/end-war-drugs-and-promote-policies-rooted-human-rights-un-experts#:~:text=GENEVA%20(24%20June%202022)%20%E2%80%93,firmly%20anchored%20in%20human%20rights.

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When Aaron Hinton walked through the housing project in Brownsville on a recent summer afternoon, he voiced love and pride for this tightknit, but troubled working-class neighborhood in New York City where he grew up.

He pointed to a community garden, the lush plots of vegetables and flowers tended by volunteers, and to the library where he has led after-school programs for kids.

But he also expressed deep rage and sorrow over the scars left by the nation's 50-year-long War on Drugs. "What good is it doing for us?" Hinton asked.

As the United States' harsh approach to drug use and addiction hits the half-century milestone, this question is being asked by a growing number of lawmakers, public health experts and community leaders.

In many parts of the U.S., some of the most severe policies implemented during the drug war are being scaled back or scrapped altogether.

Hinton, a 37-year-old community organizer and activist, said the reckoning is long overdue. He described watching Black men like himself get caught up in drugs year after year and swept into the nation's burgeoning prison system.

"They're spending so much money on these prisons to keep kids locked up," Hinton said, shaking his head. "They don't even spend a fraction of that money sending them to college or some kind of school."

Hinton has lived his whole life under the drug war. He said Brownsville needed help coping with cocaine, heroin and drug-related crime that took root here in the 1970s and 1980s.

His own family was scarred by addiction.

"I've known my mom to be a drug user my whole entire life," Hinton said. "She chose to run the streets and left me with my great-grandmother."

Four years ago, his mom overdosed and died after taking prescription painkillers, part of the opioid epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Hinton said her death sealed his belief that tough drug war policies and aggressive police tactics would never make his family or his community safer.

The nation pivots (slowly) as evidence mounts against the drug war

During months of interviews for this project, NPR found a growing consensus across the political spectrum - including among some in law enforcement - that the drug war simply didn't work.

"We have been involved in the failed War on Drugs for so very long," said retired Maj. Neill Franklin, a veteran with the Baltimore City Police and the Maryland State Police who led drug task forces for years.

He now believes the response to drugs should be handled by doctors and therapists, not cops and prison guards. "It does not belong in our wheelhouse," Franklin said during a press conference this week.

Some prosecutors have also condemned the drug war model, describing it as ineffective and racially biased.

"Over the last 50 years, we've unfortunately seen the 'War on Drugs' be used as an excuse to declare war on people of color, on poor Americans and so many other marginalized groups," said New York Attorney General Letitia James in a statement sent to NPR.

On Tuesday, two House Democrats introduced legislation that would decriminalize all drugs in the U.S., shifting the national response to a public health model. The measure appears to have zero chance of passage.

But in much of the country, disillusionment with the drug war has already led to repeal of some of the most punitive policies, including mandatory lengthy prison sentences for nonviolent drug users.

In recent years, voters and politicians in 17 states - including red-leaning Alaska and Montana - and the District of Columbia have backed the legalization of recreational marijuana, the most popular illicit drug, a trend that once seemed impossible.

Last November, Oregon became the first state to decriminalize small quantities of all drugs, including heroin and methamphetamines.

Many critics say the course correction is too modest and too slow.

"The war on drugs was an absolute miscalculation of human behavior," said Kassandra Frederique, who heads the Drug Policy Alliance, a national group that advocates for total drug decriminalization.

She said the criminal justice model failed to address the underlying need for jobs, health care and safe housing that spur addiction.

Indeed, much of the drug war's architecture remains intact. Federal spending on drugs - much of it devoted to interdiction - is expected to top $37 billion this year.

The U.S. still incarcerates more people than any other nation, with nearly half of the inmates in federal prison held on drug charges.

But the nation has seen a significant decline in state and federal inmate populations, down by a quarter from the peak of 1.6 million in 2009 to roughly 1.2 million last year.

There has also been substantial growth in public funding for health care and treatment for people who use drugs, due in large part to passage of the Affordable Care Act.

"The best outcomes come when you treat the substance use disorder [as a medical condition] as opposed to criminalizing that person and putting them in jail or prison," said Dr. Nora Volkow, who has been head of the National Institute of Drug Abuse since 2003.

Volkow said data shows clearly that the decision half a century ago to punish Americans who struggle with addiction was "devastating ... not just to them but actually to their families."

From a bipartisan War on Drugs to Black Lives Matter

Wounds left by the drug war go far beyond the roughly 20.3 million people who have a substance use disorder.

The campaign - which by some estimates cost more than $1 trillion - also exacerbated racial divisions and infringed on civil liberties in ways that transformed American society.

Frederique, with the Drug Policy Alliance, said the Black Lives Matter movement was inspired in part by cases that revealed a dangerous attitude toward drugs among police.

In Derek Chauvin's murder trial, the former officer's defense claimed aggressive police tactics were justified because of small amounts of fentanyl in George Floyd's body. Critics described the argument as an attempt to "weaponize" Floyd's substance use disorder and jurors found Chauvin guilty.

Breonna Taylor, meanwhile, was shot and killed by police in her home during a drug raid. She wasn't a suspect in the case.

"We need to end the drug war not just for our loved ones that are struggling with addiction, but we need to remove the excuse that that is why law enforcement gets to invade our space ... or kill us," Frederique said.

The United States has waged aggressive campaigns against substance use before, most notably during alcohol Prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s.

The modern drug war began with a symbolic address to the nation by President Richard Nixon on June 17, 1971.

Speaking from the White House, Nixon declared the federal government would now treat drug addiction as "public enemy No. 1," suggesting substance use might be vanquished once and for all.

"In order to fight and defeat this enemy," Nixon said, "it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive."

Studies show from the outset drug laws were implemented with a stark racial bias, leading to unprecedented levels of mass incarceration for Black and brown men.

As recently as 2018, Black men were nearly six times more likely than white men to be locked up in state or federal correctional facilities, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

Researchers have long concluded the pattern has far-reaching impacts on Black families, making it harder to find employment and housing, while also preventing many people of color with drug records from voting.

In a 1994 interview published in Harper's Magazine, Nixon adviser John Ehrlichman suggested racial animus was among the motives shaping the drug war.

"We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the [Vietnam] War or Black," Ehrlichman said. "But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities."

Despite those concerns, Democrats and Republicans partnered on the drug war decade after decade, approving ever-more-severe laws, creating new state and federal bureaucracies to interdict drugs, and funding new armies of police and federal agents.

At times, the fight on America's streets resembled an actual war, especially in poor communities and communities of color.

Police units carried out drug raids with military-style hardware that included body armor, assault weapons and tanks equipped with battering rams.

"What we need is another D-Day, not another Vietnam, not another limited war fought on the cheap," declared then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., in 1989.

Biden, who chaired the influential Senate Judiciary Committee, later co-authored the controversial 1994 crime bill that helped fund a vast new complex of state and federal prisons, which remains the largest in the world.

On the campaign trail in 2020, Biden stopped short of repudiating his past drug policy ideas but said he now believes no American should be incarcerated for addiction. He also endorsed national decriminalization of marijuana.

While few policy experts believe the drug war will come to a conclusive end any time soon, the end of bipartisan backing for punitive drug laws is a significant development.

More drugs bring more deaths and more doubts

Adding to pressure for change is the fact that despite a half-century of interdiction, America's streets are flooded with more potent and dangerous drugs than ever before - primarily methamphetamines and the synthetic opioid fentanyl.

"Back in the day, when we would see 5, 10 kilograms of meth, that would make you a hero if you made a seizure like that," said Matthew Donahue, the head of operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration.

"Now it's common for us to see 100-, 200- and 300-kilogram seizures of meth," he added. "It doesn't make a dent to the price."

Efforts to disrupt illegal drug supplies suffered yet another major blow last year after Mexican officials repudiated drug war tactics and began blocking most interdiction efforts south of the U.S.-Mexico border.

"It's a national health threat, it's a national safety threat," Donahue told NPR.

Last year, drug overdoses hit a devastating new record of 90,000 deaths, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The drug war failed to stop the opioid epidemic

Critics say the effectiveness of the drug war model has been called into question for another reason: the nation's prescription opioid epidemic.

Beginning in the late 1990s, some of the nation's largest drug companies and pharmacy chains invested heavily in the opioid business.

State and federal regulators and law enforcement failed to intervene as communities were flooded with legally manufactured painkillers, including Oxycontin.

"They were utterly failing to take into account diversion," said West Virginia Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who sued the DEA for not curbing opioid production quotas sooner.

"It's as close to a criminal act as you can find," Morrisey said.

One of the epicenters of the prescription opioid epidemic was Huntington, a small city in West Virginia along the Ohio River hit hard by the loss of factory and coal jobs.

"It was pretty bad. Eighty-one million opioid pills over an eight-year period came into this area," said Courtney Hessler, a reporter with The (Huntington) Herald-Dispatch.

Public health officials say 1 in 10 residents in the area still battle addiction. Hessler herself wound up in foster care after her mother struggled with opioids.

In recent months, she has reported on a landmark opioid trial that will test who - if anyone - will be held accountable for drug policies that failed to keep families and communities safe.

"I think it's important. You know there's thousands of children that grew up the way that I did," Hessler said. "These people want answers."

During dozens of interviews, community leaders told NPR that places like Huntington, W.Va., and Brownsville, N.Y., will recover from the drug war and rebuild.

They predicted many parts of the country will accelerate the shift toward a public health model for addiction: treating drug users more often like patients with a chronic illness and less often as criminals.

But ending wars is hard and stigma surrounding drug use, heightened by a half-century of punitive policies, remains deeply entrenched. Aaron Hinton, the activist in Brownsville, said it may take decades to unwind the harm done to his neighborhood.

"It's one step forward, two steps back," Hinton said. "But I remain hopeful. Why? Because what else am I going to do?"

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After 50 Years Of The War On Drugs, 'What Good Is It Doing For Us?'

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When Aaron Hinton walked through the housing project in Brownsville on a recent summer afternoon, he voiced love and pride for this tightknit, but troubled working-class neighborhood in New York City where he grew up. He pointed to a community garden, the lush plots of vegetables and flowers tended by volunteers, and to the library where he has led after-school programs for kids.

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/dariosabaghi/2022/09/21/report-over-27-million-pounds-of-us-legal-marijuana-industry-will-be-cultivated-by-2030/?sh=4baff440bc15

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LAS VEGAS, NV - JULY 06: David Burr demonstrates removing leaves on marijuana plants to allow more ... [+]
Getty Images

U.S. medical and adult-use cannabis markets have been growing in recent years as new states are increasingly regulating the sale of legal products for medical and recreational use.

In such a scenario, cannabis cultivation plays an important key role in the market as it aims to guarantee the excellence of the products.

In order to understand the future trends of cannabis cultivation in the U.S., cannabis data company New Frontier Data recently published a report that aims to explore several issues which producers must consider when operating to serve newly expanding markets.

The report projects that over 27 million pounds of legal cannabis will be cultivated in the U.S. by 2030.

According to the report, indoor, outdoor, and greenhouse facilities produced 10.2 million pounds of cannabis in the country as of 2021.

But the launch of new legal markets on the East Coast and Midwest is expected to increase overall production significantly.

Between 2022 and 2030, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Virginia will collectively account for one-quarter of the legal cannabis produced in the country.

However, there are several factors to consider when assessing the growth of cannabis cultivation across the country.

Different climatic conditions are expected to favor controlled environments over outdoor cultivation but also can impact insulation, heating, and cooling requirements, especially in greenhouses that are more exposed to ambient conditions.

Furthermore, the consequences of climate change can produce longer and hotter summers that will require a higher energy demand to operate for more extended periods.

At the same time, acute droughts are likely to drive water shortages, increased water losses from evaporation, and higher water costs from municipal or community sources.

Another factor to take into consideration for cannabis facilities to operate in new legal cannabis states is odor control, as some East Coast states are the country's most densely populated.

In highly densely populated areas or neighborhoods with strong political opposition to cannabis, manufacturers may face odor complaints against any facilities in urban centers or suburbs.

According to the report's projection, New York will lead the national indoor cultivation by producing 12 million pounds of cannabis by 2030, while California will continue to increase its outdoor and greenhouse production.

But to achieve such a goal, the choice of how to equip cannabis businesses' facilities plays an important role.

Automation in the cultivation space has become an increasingly integral part of cannabis cultivation, and optimized technology integration into the cultivation environment can offer several benefits for cultivators.

Regarding the sale of cannabis products, New Frontier Data reports that although flowers remain the most highly demanded products in the market, vapes, edibles, topicals, and other cannabis-based products account for half of all legal product sales.

The data provided by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reported by New Frontier Data confirm this trend.

In 2021, flowers accounted for 44% of sales, vaping products 27%, and other cannabis-based products shared the remaining sales.

However, according to the report, wholesale prices will continue to fall as markets become more competitive.

For instance, in California, the number of cultivation licenses issued has risen faster than the number of retail licenses, and, as a consequence, prices decreased.

But even in more mature markets, such as Colorado, the average price per pound fell from over $2,000 in 2015 to $700 in 2022.

The report concluded that legal cannabis demand will grow from $31 billion in 2022 to $73 billion in 2030.

However, the new legal cannabis states will face competition with a sophisticated and highly efficient illicit market, which will be hard to eradicate, as seen in those states with years-long cannabis legislation, such as Colorado and California.

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Report: Over 27 Million Pounds Of U.S. Legal Marijuana Industry Will Be Cultivated By 2030

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U.S. medical and adult-use cannabis markets have been growing in recent years as new states are increasingly regulating the sale of legal products for medical and recreational use. In such a scenario, cannabis cultivation plays an important key role in the market as it aims to guarantee the excellence of the products.

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Notorious for fictionalized take on marijuana
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028346/

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I doubt that anyone still takes this movie seriously these days but it's funny seeing how people went paranoid about pot in the 30's. There are lots of wildly exaggerated or plain wrong comments and accusations in it. Best among them are that pot is more dangerous than Heroin, it will make you violent and eventually incurably insane.

The film details how smoking pot changes the lives of a couple of all-american teenagers. In fact, they're so clean cut, nice to their parents and just plain perfect that you're actually happy when their lives turn bad. On the way there we see some really funny overacting and the way that middle America thought people behaved after smoking pot. A single puff immediately has you in hysterics, after a couple of minutes it's down to pre-marital sex (hey, that's enough to get me hooked!), followed by a violent paranoia and finally of course, insanity.

The film is fairly standard propaganda stuff and follows the three important propaganda ingredients to a T. It's badly acted, exaggerated in hammering home a couple of points and frightening the uninformed about the fact that no one is safe from this great danger. It is however fairly lengthy for a propaganda movie and it's not as ridiculous as I expected. Although there are some really funny scenes that rightly make this a classic.

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Reefer Madness: Directed by Louis J. Gasnier. With Dorothy Short, Kenneth Craig, Lillian Miles, Dave O'Brien. Cautionary tale that features a fictionalized take on marijuana use. A trio of drug dealers lead innocent teenagers to become addicted to "reefer" cigarettes by holding wild parties with jazz music.

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https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/marijuana-hip-hop-culture/

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In 1989, scientists concluded that 1988 was the hottest year yet recorded in human history and panicked about the "Greenhouse Effect" that was contributing to global warming. Simultaneously, a different kind of green revolution was beginning to be stoked in hip-hop. During that historically searing spring and summer, a fleet of seminal, groundbreaking albums was released - this included, but was not limited to, Run-D.M.C.'s Tougher Than Leather, EPMD's Strictly Business, Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Eric B. & Rakim's Follow the Leader, Salt-n-Pepa's A Salt With a Deadly Pepa, 2 Live Crew's Move Somethin', Ice-T's Power, and both Eazy-E's Eazy-Duz-It and N.W.A's Straight Outta Compton; that's a short list limited to just a few months. This slew of albums did more than produce hits, it was possibly the strongest display yet of how hip-hop was influencing fashion, pop culture, politics, and even slang.

The tone of these summer jams ranged from hyper irreverent to hyper political, fit for clubs, cars, or headphone contemplation. But unlike the climate of today's rap, there's a topic missing from each of these albums: smoking marijuana. This was a pre- Chronic world where crack was still an epidemic, a world in which Ice-T (who had been one of the first rappers to brand himself as a former hustler) and several others released singles laced with explicitly anti-drug lyrics. Arguably the most important album released that year was Straight Outta Compton, and the project's third single, though not released until 1989, was "Express Yourself," a pivot towards abstinence for the otherwise confrontational group.

While the track remains a bit of an outlier in the band's canon, it's of note that it contains Dr. Dre rapping the following line: "I still express, yo I don't smoke weed or sess/ 'cause it's not known to give a brother brain damage/ and brain damage on the mic don't manage nothing." Of course, Dre would take a 180 on this stance a few years later, but in the context of the band it seems disingenuous, especially with Ice Cube proclaiming "since I was a youth, I smoked weed out," on the same album.

1980s rap had no problem talking about drinking, especially malt liquor, but any reference to drugs was staunchly against its ethos, exemplified in such tracks as Melle Mel's "White Lines (Don't Do It)" from 1983. In that sense, what N.W.A did on Straight Outta Compton was revelatory, as they embraced and exposed all the things that were authentic to their world, acting, as they often said, as "the TV news for the hood," instead of merely focusing on word play.

This was still a world where admittance of recreational drug use was scant, with various lyrical exceptions emerging in places like Beastie Boys' Licensed to Ill ("Rolled up a wolly" on "The New Style") and Run-D.M.C.'s Live at the Funhouse ("Keep a bag of cheeba inside my locker" from "Here We Go"). In looking at releases from the entire year, even albums by the least political artists dedicated at least one track to speaking out on the drug epidemic, even if it was followed by a song glorifying gun violence or using homophobic language - the 1980s and 1990s were confusing, and the still green genre was finding its footing.

Before we explore Generation Ganja, it's important to note that the 1980s were defined by cocaine, not marijuana. For rich whites it was a flex, and for the inner city impoverished it was a rampant crack epidemic that gripped the public. Smoking weed wasn't "cool" and was somewhat associated with the Baby Boomers, Cheech and Chong, or hippie-holder-oners emulating the 1960s in the parking lots of Grateful Dead shows - hardly anything seen as progressive or sexy.

Marijuana usage was almost retro, and even though people still did it regularly, it wasn't trendy, and wearing a pot leaf T-shirt was the easiest way to brand yourself a "stoner loser." In the suburbs during the '80s, weed culture was again associated with a dying breed of hippies and denim clad heavy metal kids. The minor exception would be the crossover of reggae culture, primarily linked to the popularity of Bob Marley, but that pollination failed to fully integrate Caribbean culture into the mainstream. In hip-hop circles, reggae and its steady rhythms were foundational, and it was perhaps the most outspoken champion of marijuana in widely accessible non-rock music.

As the decade turned, hip-hop's popularity and influence on culture was undeniable. The country was exhausted and frustrated by the "Just Say No" sloganeering of the Reagan-era and the music regulation of Tipper Gore and the PMRC. The confluence of these led to the freer feel of the '90s, with MTV and its legitimate programming and political coverage becoming a defacto beacon. MTV had shows devoted to hip-hop and coverage with those who had skin in the game. With major radio largely late on the genre, having Yo! MTV Raps air for two hours each weekday was massive.

The channel even pioneered the televised "town hall" with then presidential candidate Bill Clinton, which many credit to his popularity with younger voters and his eventual victory. Clinton, who famously "didn't inhale" when questioned about his marijuana experimentation, ushered in an ease once he took office, taking the country out of the panic of nuclear war. The excess and materialism of the '80s was being shaken out; or at least, how it was expressed began to change in both music and culture at large. Hip-hop and alternative music were becoming outwardly political, offering the social commentary that was relegated to punk, hardcore, thrash, and underground rap for most of the '80s on a bigger stage. In other words, there was a feeling of more freedom to voice dissent as the Bill Clinton's era began and, to some degree, optimism.

This leads us to 1991, the year when a West Coast gangster rap group adorned their debut LP with a skull adorned with a pot leaf and changed hip-hop. Cypress Hill's self-titled debut may not have sold as many copies as Dr. Dre's The Chronic, which followed a year-plus later, but its unabashed references to smoking and crime cast against a pastiche of rock, funk, soul, Latin rhythms, and reggae samples brought the term "blunted" to the masses.

The group's songs were potent and infectious, with Sen Dog and B-Real's contrasting voices narrating vignettes of getting stoned, killing people, hating the police, and getting really stoned. In the wake of the record's success, it seemed like every rapper who had previously felt obligated to bash crack on a record to change course and drop a track which referenced pot. It can be surmised that Dre expertly identified this and parlayed the phenomenon into The Chronic, upping things almost infinitely.

"I think marijuana/weed was always part of the culture, it was just underground," Sen Dog told Cuepoint. "We just wanted to make it cool again. After the War on Drugs that the Reagans had, when they classified marijuana as a Class One drug, it made it really uncool and made parents really concerned about smoking weed."

More than their multi-cultural appeal, vernacular, and record sales, Cypress Hill transformed the image of weed smoker from basement stoner to rock star, even making bongs appealing instead of being viewed as dated smoking apparati. In some ways, wearing their skull-leaf shirt was punk; a calling card that you were counterculture. It felt fresh, and that sentiment crept into the burgeoning streetwear movement, specifically in the cultish rise of the Phillies Blunt T-Shirts worn by Beastie Boys and others, designed by graffiti luminaries GFS (Gerb, Futura, Stash) Not From Concentrate.

This would expand to the simple yet recognizable pot leaf hats popularized by Dre and the throngs of weed-wear knockoffs. Through MTV and the mixed bill mastery of Perry Farrell's Lollapalooza festival that featured Cypress Hill and Ice Cube along with other hip-hop acts in the summer of 1992, smoking wasn't just spreading- it was weaving itself into every emerging American musical subculture and shaking out the tropes of the '80s.

Cypress Hill's debut remains a watershed moment in shifting the perspective of pot, but The Chronic and its six million-plus sales in the United States has effectively made it the Sgt. Pepper's of stoned hip-hop. In a faux-public domain world of sampling, Dre re-contextualized decades of genre-spanning instrumentation and melody for the album's 16 tracks and released three charting singles that have become pop staples, and simultaneously launched the career of rap's most infamous stoner, Snoop Doggy Dogg who he previously introduced on the Deep Cover soundtrack in 1992.

An homage to Zig Zag rolling papers, the album's cover immediately offered Dre's mission statement and overarching theme of high times, crime, and rampant misogyny. Detractors pointed to all those factors along with latent homophobia throughout the album's lyrical content in an attempt to disparage the entire genre of hip-hop, but it was difficult to derail Dre and the movement, especially in an era where the notoriously volatile and offensive Guns N' Roses were arguably the largest rock band in the United States.

There's more to the acceptance and integration of marijuana in hip-hop than products, slang, and even reform awareness; the seeds sown in the '90s introduced a concept and model that would later be monetized in rap. The fact that Cypress Hill had drawn so much attention to a mostly unknown cigar brand by calling out the name so often in their lyrics revealed the power of hip-hop branding. Like Band-Aid, Phillies' Blunt became the term for smoking weed in a cigar wrapper for years to follow, and Dre's repeated use of the term "the chronic" did the same for strains.

In 1992, Redman released the Pete Rock-produced track "How To Roll a Blunt," but despite blunts being a mainstay, weed terminology evolved through its usage becoming something of a challenge for rappers to one-up each other. Though he and Dre helped popularize the terms chronic and indo/endo, by 1996, Snoop had phased each out.

"No dirt weed, strictly chronic" was a mantra, but it contained a clear hierarchy that suddenly had everyone wanting to know what the their weed was called, eclipsing terms that actually spoke to the strain such as indica or sativa. Dank, dro, sticky, Mary Jane - throughout the '90s terminology would be a moving target, with every rapper aspiring to coin their own winning word or phrase, but Cypress Hill and Dre pioneered the game and owned the patents. It was around this time that Hollywood dug in too with the rebirth of stoner movies, reimagined with new characters, comedians, and rappers, most notably with Half Baked, How High, and the Friday franchise.

Genius went so far as to analyze drug references in hip-hop in 2016, getting so granular that they included several charts and statistics over 30 years. What's striking is that they reported that "By the mid-1990s, the percentage of rap songs with drug references increased from just four tracks in the early 1980s to 45 percent of all hip-hop tracks."

More than just celebrating its use, the new generation of hip-hop artists were making weed-brags a lyrical and transactional staple. Rather than crafting precautionary tales of fictional drug dealing, Notorious B.I.G., Snoop Dogg, and later JAY-Z drew from their experiences hustling, making it transparent that they were drug dealers before MCs. This became especially pivotal as these artists were dominating the charts and being unabashed about who they were, instead of playing the traditional game.

Of course, despite marijuana culture becoming a fully integrated and normalized part of hip-hop and society at large, it was still a novelty to some. Afroman's Grammy-nominated single from 2000, "Because I Got High," served as the best/worst example of when weed goes wrong, becoming an indelible hit in the ensuing decade. Despite the song's fratty, stoner appeal, it was a little more than a footnote, and it is perhaps more notable for being an early song to circulate on the internet via the Howard Stern Show.

It wasn't until 2004 that Dre's Chronic "model," received a refresh via New York City through The Diplomats' flamboyant man in pink, Cam'ron, and his 2004 album Purple Haze. Purple Haze 's impact wasn't as much about changing production styles, deliveries, or concept; instead, Cam's fourth album was a cocky declaration of excess, wit, anger, and, at times, the absolutely bizarre, all delivered with bombastic Harlem hustle.

With beats by The Heatmakerz, Just Blaze, and a rapidly rising Kanye West, the album dipped in and out of genres, often leveraging reggae, rock guitars, anthemic orchestral beats, synths, and celebratory soul. Purple Haze didn't need to go multi-platinum to have everyone in NYC chanting Dipset, because being "the" artist in New York was never about sales. Established in the streets by a flurry of mixtapes in the early-2000s, The Diplomats, along with G-Unit, not only brought NYC back into focus but resurrected the idea of a collective able to pump out solo albums with equal punch, much like Wu-Tang Clan did in the mid '90s.

In a sense, The Diplomats became a new iteration of a lifestyle brand. Rather than a group of individuals singularly focused on selling songs, they sold who they were, sometimes in the form of an off-brand liquor briefly named as Sizzurp. Ironically, frequent Cam rival 50 Cent cited purple haze (the strain) on his first album in 2002 during the track "High All the Time."

A testament to Cam's branding prowess, despite 50 selling over 15 million copies of Get Rich or Die Tryin', Purple Haze, with it's sardonic humor and complex word play, is forever Cam's intellectual property, at least in the realm of rap. Also, in perhaps the greatest manifestation of serendipity, both G-Unit and The Diplomats' rise coincided with one of the most trafficked times for weed delivery in New York City, ending with a massive $560 an ounce Purple Haze bust in 2006, the same year The Chappelle Show - known for several famous weed references - ceased production as well.

Pivoting from purple, fellow New Yorkers N.O.R.E. and Styles P collaborated in 2007 for "Sour Diesel," offering an almost anthemic endorsement of Sour, Sour D, or just Diesel. P soured on the straight in 2014 though, releasing a track titled "Sour," where he claims allegiance to purple haze, using the term to relay people being jealous of his success instead of the strain he previously praised. In what many consider his most productive year, 2008 saw Lil Wayne penning an ode to his favorite strain with "Kush." With its memorable chorus, "Kush" was a laid-back stand out on a masterpiece that drew attention to the strain and the name.

Tha Carter III became the year's best selling album, and Wayne established himself as the rapper of the moment by supplementing the album with a bevy of ganja-praising mixtapes that were anything but B-Sides and throwaways. While the album escalated Wayne's sky high status, an uneven and perhaps too transparent documentary titled The Carter was released in 2009, showing Wayne as more of a prolific smoker and lean sipper than musician.

Around this time, before Weezy started to smoke his way to rockstar status with the ill-conceived 2010 rock album Rebirth, Kid Cudi launched a path to stardom with his 2008 viral hit "Day 'n' Nite," which eventually made its way onto his debut studio album the following year.

It was noteworthy for its brooding electro minimalism as well as Cudi branding himself a "lonely stoner" - the polar opposite of the bravado associated with weed culture in rap thus far. Cudi may not have been the first rapper to present himself as vulnerable, but entering the industry as an introspective, emo rapper exploring the darker side of the hallucinogenic experience signaled a new lane opening that would later coalesce into its own subgenre. Not for nothing did Kanye West eventually dub him "one of the most influential artists of the last ten years" in 2016.

Though the path isn't quite linear, this somehow leads us into a world where Waka Flocka Flame is shilling vegan edibles and hosting VIP weed parties in Downtown Los Angeles. Flocka's introduction of Flockaveli OG in 2016 may not have parlayed his signature strain into a sustainable franchise, but the launch-held at Nexus Lounge and coordinated by the now defunct cannabis marketing agency Green Street was emblematic of weed culture and hip-hop's transition from unspoken to mainstream to, now, elite.

Additionally, legalization isn't the only factor that fueled the growth of pot in rap and culture. The emergence of vaping has not only made it easier to get away with smoking anywhere, but it has become an actual branding and visual device, with several rappers including A$AP Rocky having signature pens. A minor when he first broke, Lil Pump is credited as not only an epic vaper but also part of the rise of product placement e-cigs, which The Daily Mail claims is 80% of what appears in all rap videos. A parody of Pump's hit "Gucci Gang" spawned a video with the "vape girl," juxtaposed in the chorus in 2018, that's over one million views as of this writing.

While it's common for rappers such as Waka, Wiz Khalifa, and Snoop to have their own branded strains, it's still a young market that's as tricky as it is sticky, as there's still legal barriers and distribution model flaws. For example, MedMen - one of the most marketed and largest dispensary chains in the United States - has struggled to profit.

As reported by the New York Times, the company showed a net loss of $66 million on revenues of $21.5 million and lost $79 million the previous quarter. What is telling is that hip-hop artists - not rock bands - are setting the tone for marketing, and with icons including Snoop, The Game, and B-Real from Cypress Hill taking larger roles in the young industry, it's fair to project growth and profitability, because (much like streetwear) it's being operated by the direct market, not corporations.

What's undeniable is hip-hop's pivotal role in diversifying and revolutionizing the public's view, consumption, and acceptance of marijuana as a whole and on a level that no other genre can singularly claim. Of course, none of this was accomplished without all the negative factors that come with the commerce of illegal drugs, but the dramatic and rapid change in laws in just the last ten years - specifically the crucial decriminalization of marijuana that rampantly and unfairly targets African-Americans - is proof of concept that music can reshape the very tenets of society, even if the initial intent is nothing more than an homage to an herb.

"We had weed, the best weed, you know what I'm sayin'?," Snoop told the LA Weekly in 2012. "That's why we made The Chronic, because we had the chronic."
For a bigger hit of dank content, watch the video below.

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A History for the Blunted: How Weed Culture Evolved Through Hip-Hop

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In 1989, scientists concluded that 1988 was the hottest year yet recorded in human history and panicked about the "Greenhouse Effect" that was contributing to global warming. Simultaneously, a different kind of green revolution was beginning to be stoked in hip-hop.

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https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2023/04/05/the-future-of-cannabis-which-political-party-will-lead-the-way/

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Justice Department Drug Paraphernalia Facts

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Justice Department Drug Paraphernalia Facts

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https://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs6/6445/6445p.pdf

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https://www.vox.com/2014/10/29/7083371/swat-no-knock-raids-police-killed-civilians-dangerous-work-drugs

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Most of the time, when a person kills an intruder who breaks into his home, dressed in all black and screaming, the homeowner will avoid jail time. But what happens when the break-in was a no-knock SWAT raid, the intruder was a police officer, and the homeowner has a record?

A pair of cases in Texas are an example of how wrong no-knock raids can go, for both police and civilians, and how dangerously subjective the SWAT raid process can be. In December 2013, Henry Magee shot and killed a police officer during a pre-dawn, no-knock drug raid on his home. He was initially charged with capital murder, but he argued that he shot the police officer, who he thought was an intruder, to protect his pregnant girlfriend. In February 2014, a grand jury declined to indict him, and charges were dropped.

In May, a Texas man named Marvin Guy also killed a police officer during a pre-dawn, no-knock raid on his home. Guy, too, was charged with capital murder. Unlike Magee's grand jury, a grand jury in September 2014 allowed the capital murder charge against Guy to stand. His trial is likely to happen in 2016.

Guy, who is black, now faces the death penalty. Magee is white.
there are over 20,000 no-knock raids in america every year
Magee's case wasn't completely identical to Guy's - the latter had done prison time on robbery and weapons charges, while Magee's previous arrests were for marijuana possession and DUI. But the circumstances of the raids, if anything, made Guy's reaction more justifiable. Police were trying to enter McGee's house through the door when he shot at them, while, in Guy's case, they were trying to climb in through the window. And during the raid on McGee's house, the cops did in fact find a few pounds of marijuana plants. In the raid on Guy's house, they found nothing.

Advocates say these cases highlight racial bias in the criminal justice system, particularly when the victim is a police officer. But they also highlight the bizarre nature of no-knock raids, which have been criticized for causing unnecessary confusion and endangering innocent adults and children.

In theory, no-knock raids are supposed to be used in only the most dangerous situations. So what might be most surprising about them is how infrequently police officers get killed when they bust into suspected criminals' homes unannounced.

In reality, though, no-knock raids are a common tactic, even in less-than-dangerous circumstances. There are a staggering 20,000 or more estimated no-knock raids every year across America. By the numbers, it's clear that no-knock SWAT raids are far more dangerous to civilians than they are to police.

Here's what you need to know about why no-knock raids happen, why police think they're necessary, and what happens when things go wrong.

How did no-knock raids become a thing?

The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from "unreasonable search," meaning police can't bust into your home whenever they feel like it - they need a warrant, granted by a judge. Even a search warrant doesn't give police the right to enter your home by force - they're supposed to knock, announce themselves, and give you a chance to open the door.

But as the war on drugs ramped up in the 1970s and 1980s, police argued that criminals and drug dealers were too dangerous to be granted the typical courtesy of knocking first. In the early 1970s, the federal government made it legal for federal law enforcement agents to conduct no-knock raids - but the law was so widely abused that it was repealed a few years later.

Since then, though, a series of court decisions and state laws have carved out a set of circumstances that make it legal for police to raid a house without announcing their presence beforehand. This has happened at the same time that SWAT teams have proliferated around the country. (For more on the history behind SWAT teams and no-knock raids, check out Radley Balko's definitive book on the subject, Rise of the Warrior Cop.)
most swat teams spend their time carrying out home raids
Most SWAT teams spend their time carrying out home raids. The ACLU analyzed 818 records of SWAT exercises from police departments around the country in 2011 and 2012. They found that 80 percent of the time, SWAT teams were deployed to execute a search warrant - instead of crises such as hostage situations or active shooters.

Not all SWAT raids are no-knock raids; police are supposed to jump through an extra set of legal hoops before they can raid someone's house without knocking. But t he line between regular SWAT raids and no-knock raids can get a little blurry.

SWAT teams often use quick-knock raids during which they might not give the suspect a whole lot of time to answer the door after they announce their presence. The legal standards for no-knock and quick-knock raids are different, but to someone whose house is being raided, they can seem pretty similar.

Why do police use no-knock raids?

It's rare that police really need to raid a home in order to bust someone for drugs. They could always set up a drug buy on the street and surround the suspect there. But police have focused on drug busts in stash houses, or in dealer's homes, for a few reasons.

For one thing, in theory, busting the house where drugs are stored in bulk disrupts the drug supply chain. For another, if they can charge a dealer with not just the drugs he happens to have on him or in his car when he's arrested, but with anything he's keeping in his house, they can slap him with a longer prison sentence. And finally, thanks to civil asset forfeiture, raiding a home lets cops seize whatever drug money (or other illegal money) is being stored there - and perhaps even the home itself - and use it for their own departments.

Over the last few decades, police have also argued successfully that there are some circumstances in which a standard "knock and announce" raid would either jeopardize police safety or make it impossible for them to fight crime.

What are the rules for a no-knock raid?

To get a special no-knock warrant signed by a judge, police have to show that a standard "knock-and-announce" raid wouldn't work. There are two different arguments police can use for this:

1. The suspect is too dangerous. If police knocked and announced their presence, the suspect would have more time to get a weapon and fight.

2. If police knocked and announced their presence, the suspect would have time to destroy evidence of a crime before the cops got to him.

The first of those sounds pretty straightforward. The second is rather broad. If they think there are drugs in the house, and the drugs could get flushed down the toilet, police have a case for a no-knock raid. (It's been argued that this actually makes police more likely to use no-knock raids on small-time dealers rather than major ones, because major dealers would likely have too much product to flush down the toilet.)

For a more detailed, but easy-to-follow, explanation of the legal standards for raids, check out webcomic artist Nathan Burney's Illustrated Guide to Law.

Is it hard for police to meet those standards?

Nope. It's rare that judges deny warrants for no-knock raids.

Back in 2000, the Denver Post analyzed a year's worth of no-knock warrants and found that judges rejected five out of 163 requests. The Post also found that, 10 percent of the time, a judge would approve a no-knock raid even when police had simply asked for a standard warrant.
10 percent of the time, judges would approve no-knock raids that the police didn't even ask for
Unsurprisingly, proving that a subject is too dangerous for a regular warrant is pretty subjective - especially for drug searches. Often, police will assert that the suspect is "high-risk." Other times, they'll say that the suspect is "likely to be armed" because they think the suspect might have gang affiliations or because he has been convicted on weapons charges in the past or, sometimes, without any reasoning at all.

In other cases, police have said they need to conduct a no-knock SWAT raid when homeowners have legally registered guns - to the outrage of conservatives and libertarians. (It's unclear why police think that someone who is following gun-registration laws is likely to open fire on police officers, or why it's safer for them to burst into a known gun owner's house unannounced instead of knocking.)

In one case in spring 2014, police in Iowa conducted a no-knock SWAT raid on the home of people suspected of credit-card fraud, and tried to destroy the security cameras in the house. The police defended the raid afterward by saying that another person in the house - not the ones they were looking for - had a registered gun.

Even without a special warrant, if police at the scene have reasonable belief that they can't afford to knock, they're justified in barging in.

In fact, in a case that went to the Supreme Court in 2011, Kentucky police successfully argued that it was okay for them to bust down a door of an apartment they didn't have a warrant to search, because they smelled marijuana in the apartment and heard the sound of a toilet flushing. They'd been looking for a drug dealer in the building and assumed that the dealer must have lived in that apartment. He didn't, but they arrested the occupant for having marijuana and cocaine anyway.

Is there ever such a thing as an unjustified no-knock raid?

Sure. If police officers didn't get a warrant to conduct a no-knock raid, and there's no evidence on the scene that changes the situation, it's illegal for them to just bust in.

But when they conduct an unjustified raid, it doesn't really matter.

Usually, when police do something illegal in order to get evidence of a crime, that evidence can't be used in court. (Lawyers call this the "exclusionary rule.") That's pretty significant - it's not very easy to convict someone for having a few kilograms of cocaine in his house if the prosecutor can't mention the cocaine.

But about a decade ago, the Supreme Court decided that rule didn't apply to evidence collected during an unjustified no-knock raid - as long as police would have gotten hold of the evidence anyway, through a traditional raid.

The police who conducted an unjustified raid can still be disciplined by their department's internal affairs unit (though that's uncommon). And they can still be sued by the victims, though lawsuits against police don't succeed very often.

How often do civilians get injured or killed in SWAT raids?

The ACLU analysis found at least seven civilian deaths in the 818 SWAT reports they analyzed. In two of those cases, the suspect appeared to have committed suicide to avoid being taken by police. Forty-six civilians were injured. It's not clear whether any of these incidents were investigated by a prosecutor or the police department, or whether any of the officers were disciplined.

Other analyses have turned up more cases of civilian injuries; a collects cases of SWAT raids gone wrong throughout history. 2006 Cato Institute paper by Radley Balko

For family members of loved ones killed or injured during these raids, it can be very difficult to find justice. (For a more in-depth look at the legal latitude police have to use force against civilians, read this explanation of when it's legal for a cop to shoot you.)

In May 2014, police in Georgia threw a flash-bang grenade into the crib of a 19-month-old toddler during a SWAT raid. The toddler, Bounkham Phonesavanh, was burned so badly that he was placed into a medically-induced coma. In October, a grand jury decided the officers shouldn't be charged for injuring Phonesavanh. The grand jury accepted the police chief's explanation that the officers hadn't seen any evidence there was a child in the house (despite the fact that, according to Phonesavanh's mother, there were toys in the yard) and had needed to throw the grenade to distract the suspect (who was not home at the time). Phonesavanh's family settled a lawsuit against the sheriff's department for $1 million.

In another high-profile case, Detroit police killed seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones during a no-knock raid in 2010. Stanley-Jones was sleeping on the couch when a police officer's bullet hit her skull. (The raid was being taped for an A&E Cops-style reality show called The First 48.) The officer who killed Stanley-Jones was put on trial in October 2014, but the most serious charges against him were dismissed, and the jury deadlocked on whether to convict him for reckless use of a firearm - causing the judge to declare a mistrial.

How often do police find what they're looking for?

There isn't great data, but the ACLU's analysis showed that about 35 percent of SWAT drug raids turned up contraband, while 36 percent of them turned up nothing. (And 29 percent of SWAT reports didn't mention whether they found anything - a fact police are more likely to omit when they didn't find anything than when they did.) In forced-entry SWAT raids, the "success" rate of actually finding drugs dropped to about a 25 percent.

Not all drugs the SWAT team found were the ones they were looking for. In several cases, SWAT teams will raid a house looking for a large stash of drugs, only to find a small quantity of marijuana for personal use. But that counts as finding "contraband" in the raid report, and it's something they can arrest the homeowner for.

Sometimes, SWAT raids simply hit the wrong house. Either the address on the warrant is wrong (or police misread it), or the warrant itself is based on bad information. In the raid that killed Stanley-Jones in Detroit, for instance, police had entered the wrong apartment - the one they meant to raid was upstairs.

In 2003, the commissioner of the NYPD estimated that, of the more than 450 no-knock raids the city conducted every month, 10 percent were wrong-door raids. That estimate came after a wrong-door raid resulted in the homeowner's death: when police broke into the home of 57-year-old Alberta Spruill and threw in a flash-bang grenade, the shock gave her a fatal heart attack.

How often do police get injured or killed in SWAT raids?

The ACLU's analysis didn't include any cases of police getting injured or killed during a raid, which implies that it's more common for a civilian to get hurt than a police officer. But there are cases of police officers getting shot and killed during SWAT raids - such as the Guy and McGee cases in Texas.

In some of these cases, the target of the raid might reasonably claim self-defense; the law allows a homeowner to defend himself against someone he thinks is an intruder. But unlike when a cop shoots a civilian in a raid, a homeowner doesn't have a police chief on hand to tell a jury that the shooting was justified. So, as Guy's case demonstrates, even though civilians are more likely to get killed in SWAT raids than cops, civilians are the ones more likely to get brought into court for murder.

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Cops do 20,000 no-knock raids a year. Civilians often pay the price when they go wrong.

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Most of the time, when a person kills an intruder who breaks into his home, dressed in all black and screaming, the homeowner will avoid jail time. But what happens when the break-in was a no-knock SWAT raid, the intruder was a police officer, and the homeowner has a record?

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https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/dcf.pdf

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https://www.marijuanamoment.net/new-fbi-marijuana-arrest-data-riddled-with-inconsistencies-as-agency-touts-changes-to-reporting-system/#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20FBI%20reported%20in,on%20the%20public%2Dfacing%20data.

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https://www.history.com/topics/crime/history-of-marijuana

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Marijuana, also known as cannabis or pot, has a long history of human use. Most ancient cultures didn't grow the plant to get high, but as herbal medicine, likely starting in Asia around 500 BC. The history of cannabis cultivation in America dates back to the early colonists, who grew hemp for textiles and rope. Political and racial factors in the 20th century led to the criminalization of marijuana in the United States, though its legal status is changing in many places.

The cannabis or hemp plant originally evolved in Central Asia before people introduced the plant into Africa, Europe and eventually the Americas. Hemp fiber was used to make clothing, paper, sails and rope, and its seeds were used as food.

Because it's a fast-growing plant that's easy to cultivate and has many uses, hemp was widely grown throughout colonial America and at Spanish missions in the Southwest. In the early 1600s, the Virginia, Massachusetts and Connecticut colonies required farmers to grow hemp.

These early hemp plants had very low levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the chemical responsible for marijuana's mind-altering effects.

There's some evidence that ancient cultures knew about the psychoactive properties of the cannabis plant. They may have cultivated some varieties to produce higher levels of THC for use in religious ceremonies or healing practice.

Burned cannabis seeds have been found in the graves of shamans in China and Siberia from as early as 500 BC.

Medical Marijuana

In the 1830s, Sir William Brooke O'Shaughnessy, an Irish doctor studying in India, found that cannabis extracts could help lessen stomach pain and vomiting in people suffering from cholera.

By the late 1800s, cannabis extracts were sold in pharmacies and doctors' offices throughout Europe and the United States to treat stomach problems and other ailments.

Scientists later discovered that THC was the source of marijuana's medicinal properties. As the psychoactive compound responsible for marijuana's mind-altering effects, THC also interacts with areas of the brain that are able to lessen nausea and promote hunger.

In fact, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved two drugs with THC that are prescribed in pill form, Marinol and Syndros, to treat nausea caused by cancer chemotherapy and loss of appetite in AIDs patients.

Recreational Weed

An ancient Greek historian named Herodotus described the Scythians-a large group of Iranian nomads in Central Asia-inhaling the smoke from smoldering cannabis seeds and flowers to get high.

Hashish (a purified form of cannabis smoked with a pipe) was widely used throughout the Middle East and parts of Asia after about 800 AD. Its rise in popularity corresponded with the spread of Islam in the region. The Quran forbid the use of alcohol and some other intoxicating substances, but did not specifically prohibit cannabis.

In the United States, marijuana wasn't widely used for recreational purposes until the early 1900s. Immigrants from Mexico to the United States during the tumultuous years of the Mexican Revolution introduced the recreational practice of smoking marijuana to American culture.

Massive unemployment and social unrest during the Great Depression stoked resentment of Mexican immigrants and public fear of the "evil weed." As a result-and consistent with the Prohibition era's view of all intoxicants-29 states had outlawed cannabis by 1931.

Marijuana Tax Act

The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was the first federal U.S. law to criminalize marijuana nationwide. The Act imposed an excise tax on the sale, possession or transfer of all hemp products, effectively criminalizing all but industrial uses of the plant.

Fifty-eight-year-old farmer Samuel Caldwell was the first person prosecuted under the Act. He was arrested for selling marijuana on October 2, 1937, just one day after the Act's passage. Caldwell was sentenced to four years of hard labor.

Industrial hemp continued to be grown in the United States throughout World War II, when its domestic cultivation was encouraged after the Philippines-a major source of imported hemp fiber-fell to Japanese forces. The last U.S. hemp fields were planted in 1957 in Wisconsin.

Marijuana Legalization

As part of the " War on Drugs," the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, signed into law by President Richard Nixon, repealed the Marijuana Tax Act and listed marijuana as a Schedule I drug-along with heroin, LSD and ecstasy -with no medical uses and a high potential for abuse. It was identified in anti-drug programs like D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) as a "gateway drug."

In 1972, a report from the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse (also known as the Shafer Commission) released a report titled "Marijuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding." The report recommended "partial prohibition" and lower penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana. Nixon and other government officials, however, ignored the report's findings.

California, in the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, became the first state to legalize marijuana for medicinal use by people with severe or chronic illnesses. Washington, D.C., 29 states and the U.S. territories of Guam and Puerto Rico allow the use of cannabis for limited medical purposes.

As of June 2019, eleven states and Washington, D.C., have legalized marijuana for recreational use. Colorado and Washington became the first states to do so in 2012. Adults also can light up without a doctor's prescription in Alaska, California, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Vermont and Oregon.

Cannabis is still illegal under U.S. federal law, however, and the evolving legal status of marijuana is a subject of ongoing controversy in the United States and around the world.

Effects of Marijuana

Marijuana's side effects-both mental and physical-are partly responsible for its checkered legal status. Short-term effects can include euphoria or other mood changes, heightened sensory perception and increased appetite.

While many people experience a pleasant "high" feeling after using marijuana, others may experience anxiety, fear or panic. Negative effects may be more common when a person uses too much marijuana, or the cannabis is unexpectedly potent.

The amount of THC in marijuana-the chemical responsible for the drug's potency-has increased dramatically in recent decades. In the mid-1990s, the average THC content of confiscated weed was roughly 4 percent. By 2014, it was about 12 percent, with a few strains of pot containing THC levels as high as 37 percent.

States Where Marijuana Is Legal. Business Insider
History of Cannabis. National Institute on Drug Abuse for Teens.
The Illegalization of Marijuana: A Brief History. Origins: Ohio State University.
Marijuana. National Institute on Drug Abuse.
FDA and Marijuana: Questions and Answers. FDA.
Deep Dive: Marijuana. National Conference of State Legislatures.

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Marijuana, also known as cannabis or pot, has a long history of human use. Most ancient cultures didn't grow the plant to get high, but as herbal medicine, likely starting in Asia around 500 BC. The history of cannabis cultivation in America dates back to the early colonists, who grew hemp for textiles and rope.

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Ted Talk about violence and drug trafficking 

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Ted Talk about violence and drug trafficking 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYU25aJpg5o

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The deadly genius of drug cartels | Rodrigo Canales

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Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong | Johann Hari | TED

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https://www.drugusersbible.com/

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The Drug Users Bible documents vital harm reduction and safety data for over 150 recreational drugs.

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234755/

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David T. Courtwright

American narcotic policy has been highly variable, having passed through at least four major stages during the past 100 years. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, government involvement was minimal. Drug use was largely a private matter, as was drug treatment. Addiction was understood as either a personal or a medical problem, and various treatments were provided on a fee-for-service basis. In 1909-1923, however, the federal government became progressively more involved in the field as a series of important laws, court cases, and administrative decisions effectively criminalized nonmedical narcotic use and proscribed certain treatments, notably long-term maintenance and ambulatory detoxification. The following four decades, from 1923 to 1965, might be described as the classic era of narcotic control-"classic" in the sense of simple, consistent, and rigid. Few avenues of treatment were open to addicts, and American narcotic policy was unprecedentedly strict and punitive, both in comparison with other Western countries and with what it has become in our own time. During the 1960s the police approach was challenged and gradually superseded by a hybrid approach, combining traditional law enforcement with new treatment strategies, including methadone maintenance and therapeutic communities. Since 1965 drug abuse has been regarded as a medico-criminal problem, the likely pattern of the future, although there are signs that the pendulum is beginning to swing back in the direction of strict law enforcement.

The following narrative history of these events is based on written primary and secondary sources, as well as oral history interviews with former addicts, physicians, and police personnel. A good deal of attention is paid to the changing epidemiology and sociology of narcotic abuse because the changes in government policy (and hence in the array of medical treatments available) are unintelligible without knowledge of the changing demographic and social backgrounds of the users themselves. Although this narrative focuses primarily on opiate and cocaine addiction and treatment, there is also a brief discussion of other drugs, especially alcohol. Often told separately, the histories of drug and alcohol use in America are in fact intertwined, perhaps never more so than in the last decade.

The Social and Legislative Origins of Narcotic Control

During the nineteenth century there was virtually no effective regulation of narcotics in the United States. Various preparations and derivatives of opium were freely available and widely used. Several states had statutes governing the sale of narcotics, and many municipalities forbade opium smoking, but these laws were only sporadically enforced. In practice just about anyone could secure pure drugs with little bother and at modest cost. Pharmacists even delivered drugs, dispatching messenger boys with vials of morphine to houses of high and low repute. Some customers were actually unaware of what they were purchasing: proprietors of patent medicines were notorious for slipping narcotics into their products, which before 1906 bore no list of ingredients on their labels. Doctors, too, frequently overprescribed narcotics. Opiates were among the few effective drugs they possessed, and it was tempting to alleviate the symptoms (and thus continue the patronage) of their patients, especially those who were chronically ill.

The result of all this was a narcotic problem of considerable dimensions, with perhaps as many as 300,000 opiate addicts at the turn of the century, plus an unknown number of irregular users. Today there are perhaps as many as 500,000 narcotic (mainly heroin) addicts in the United States, but the country's population is also much larger. On a per capita basis, narcotic abuse was certainly as bad and probably worse in the late nineteenth century.

Victorian Americans were much less worried about drugs, however, than they were about drink. An influential reform coalition, consisting mainly of native-born, white, middle-class Protestants, attacked alcohol as the principal source of social problems. Drinking was wrong because it led to drunkenness, and drunkenness led to battered wives, abandoned children, sexual incontinence, venal voting, pauperism, insanity, early death, and eternal damnation. Drinking was also objectionable because it was associated with groups whose morality was highly suspect: Catholic immigrants, machine politicians, urban blacks, demimondaines, criminals, tramps, casual laborers, and others of the lower strata. Reformers sought to uplift and reform drunkards, but they were also frank in their desire to control their behavior and to minimize the social costs they generated. The more ardent among them fought for and achieved prohibition, first on a local and state level, and then, in January 1920, on a national basis.

Given the prevalence of narcotic use, why were Americans initially so much more agitated over the drink question? One answer lies in the comparative effects of opiates and alcohol. It was a commonplace that drink maddened whereas opium soothed. Alcoholics were notoriously obstreperous and often injured others as well as themselves. Their behavior was a public nuisance and a scandal. Addicts, by contrast, tended to be quiet and withdrawn. Although they might merit reprehension for their enslavement to a drug, theirs was a private vice, unlikely to affect anyone outside their immediate family-and in some cases even the family did not know. These distinctions were grounded in pharmacological reality, insofar as narcotics are potent tranquilizers, capable of producing a pacific and languid state. It is easier for an addict to remain inconspicuous than a drunkard.

Who the narcotic users were was as important as how they acted. There was what might be termed a "hard core" of opium smokers, mainly Chinese laborers and white criminals; they were contemptuously regarded and likely to run afoul of the law. Opium smokers, however, made up only a minority of regular users. Addicts were more often found among upper-and middle-class women, many of whom had begun using morphine to relieve the symptoms of various illnesses. Surveys taken in the late nineteenth century consistently showed that two-thirds of those addicted to medicinal opiates, such as laudanum or morphine sulfate, were female. Given that so many addicts were respectable women of ailing body and docile comportment, it is understandable that they occasioned less alarm than heavy drinkers.

Narcotic addiction was not entirely ignored by the medical profession. As the number of addicts grew in the 1870s and 1880s, some physicians began to specialize in treating addiction and to develop theories about it. They debated its etiology; whether it, along with alcoholism, was symptomatic of a more general neurological disorder; whether gradual or rapid withdrawal was to be preferred; whether withdrawal could or should be palliated with nonnarcotic drugs and, if so, which ones. A hundred years later, most of these issues are still not completely resolved.

Nineteenth-century physicians interested in addiction were handicapped by the embryonic state of medical science-they knew nothing of drug receptors or endorphins or narcotic antagonists-but they did have at least one advantage over modern researchers: almost total freedom. There were no federal regulations and no bureaucracy to deal with; moreover, medical institutions, such as they were, largely steered clear of the problem. Doctors were thus at liberty to experiment, to prescribe purges, baths, electric therapy, dietary regimens, and various exotic concoctions for their addicted patients. Many of the leading authorities in the field operated private asylums where treatment was tailored to their particular theories of addiction.

Addicts, too, had a fair amount of choice. They could stay at one of the private asylums or attempt withdrawal as an outpatient under the supervision of a physician. Some bought ''opium habit cures,'' patent medicines that were often laced with narcotics and hence no cure at all. Or they could do nothing and simply continue to use undisguised narcotics. Few addicts were legally committed to institutional treatment. When they made an effort to quit, it was generally motivated by a sense of disgust, combined with health and financial worries and pressure from family and friends. Addicts, in short, were far less likely than alcoholics to be involuntarily confined.

A handful of late-nineteenth-century medical specialists saw addicts in a less benign light. They argued that addiction and alcoholism were in fact related, that both were a manifestation of an underlying nervous disorder called inebriety, and that "inebriates" needed institutional care, against their wills if necessary. They failed, however, to carry this last point. The public thought of addiction as neither a crime nor a fit object for mandatory treatment. Whatever resentment existed against addicts was diffuse and lacked institutional expression.

Within 25 years these attitudes had dramatically changed. Even as the country was having second thoughts about alcohol prohibition, there was virtual consensus on the need to suppress narcotic addiction. (Some extremists in the 1920s and 1930s even proposed firing squads as a permanent solution for the drug problem, on the theory that the only abstinent addict was a dead one.) This pronounced attitudinal shift was related to changing perceptions of who drug addicts were, how they acquired their habits, and how they behaved under the influence of drugs. After the turn of the century there were fewer new cases of medical addiction as physicians became more conservative in their use of narcotics and the public became more chary of self-medication, thanks to the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) and the efforts of muckrakers like Samuel Hopkins Adams. Some existing medical addicts detoxified and remained abstinent, but the majority probably continued using morphine. Because many of them were old and ailing, however, they soon disappeared from the scene, leaving a residue of generally younger, less sympathetic users who had begun experimenting with drugs in such decidedly nonmedical establishments as brothels and saloons.

Opium smoking remained popular in the white underworld and continued to attract recruits, even though the number of Chinese living in America had begun to decline. Two powerful new drugs, cocaine and heroin, quickly spread outside medical practice and became popular euphorigenic agents. Cocaine, although not pharmacologically a narcotic, was often described as such and became associated in the public mind with crime sprees, particularly by black men. In the 1910s and early 1920s heroin use became widespread in the immigrant slums, where young men took to snorting small packets of the white powder. For some it was a passing fancy, but for others it became a lifelong preoccupation. In 1924 New York City Corrections Commissioner Frederick A. Wallis described what he took to be a typical case:

The young man, 16 to 20, leaves school because he won't study, he doesn't like discipline, and shows inclination toward truancy and dishonesty.

Out of school, his bad habits increase. He visits pool-rooms and dance halls, and chop suey restaurants and becomes one of the neighborhood rowdies or corner loafers. He goes with a gang and becomes reckless and is soon participating with the gang in neighborhood thefts. If he has a job, it becomes burdensome, and offensive to him. He then neglects his work, loses his job, and all his ambitions are in sympathy with criminal tendencies.

He is arrested first for a minor offense, spends five to ten days in prison, loses self-respect, is released and returns to society with less regard for law and constitutional authority. . . .

Having served a term in prison, he is now qualified by the gang for exploits in the underworld. . . . He soon learns. . . the easiest and most profitable way to get money with less personal hazard to himself and a lighter prison sentence, [and he] becomes a drug peddler and distributor. Before he realizes the danger he has been taught to use the drug. Soon he must have the drug at any price.

He resorts to shoplifting and indulges in other petty offenses to obtain the drug. The next step is prison again, and he returns to society again, and then is arrested for a more serious crime. The craving for drugs is growing all the time. He must have more drugs. The requirement of $2.00 a day has grown into $5.00 or $10.00 a day. In his intensified craving he becomes a bandit, a hold-up man, murder follows. A wreck, mentally, physically and morally, he is given a life sentence or the electric chair.

What is particularly interesting about this account is its harsh, judgmental tone. It was not just that the old-fashioned medical addicts were disappearing and being replaced by a new breed, it was how people felt about it. As had been the case with alcohol, disdain for users, tinged by ethnic and class prejudice, was an impetus for restrictive legislation. Change a very few words in Wallis's description and one finds the old stereotype of the drunkard as a menacing, irresponsible wretch.

Addiction thus went from being a pathetic condition to a stigmatized one. Like venereal disease, it came to be understood as something that was acquired through forbidden indulgence with evil associates. Also like venereal disease, it could afflict, or destroy, the lives of innocent others-the spouse, the family, the fetus, or the newborn child. Both diseases were, in a broad sense, communicable: addicts (and venereal patients) were alarming, not only because they had gotten themselves in trouble but because they might put others in the same situation. After inadvertent medical addiction ceased to be much of a factor, it was clear that the majority of new users were introduced to drugs by and often became part of a network of experienced users and dealers. A deviant subculture was in place and perpetuated itself through continuous recruiting.

Deviant groups in American history have sometimes been dealt with by informal, local means-harassment, exile, even lynching. But when such groups become large enough, or threatening enough, they often evoke a legislative response. The resultant laws serve a dual purpose. They are symbolic in that they define and reiterate majority norms; they are also instrumental to the extent that they employ the police power of the state to restrict or eliminate the objectionable behavior. There have been many instances of this, from the 1675 Massachusetts law attacking the "damnable haeresies" of the Quakers to the 1940 Smith Act, which was used to prosecute domestic communists and Nazi sympathizers. Narcotic control seems to fit neatly into this pattern. As the legal scholars Richard Bonnie and Charles Whitebread put it, "Once opiate use became identified with otherwise immoral or unliked populations, prohibition was almost automatic."

The word "almost" must be stressed, however. The negative social and behavioral connotations surrounding nonmedical narcotic use were not, in any meaningful historical sense, a sufficient cause of the ensuing prohibition and criminalization. There was still room for the play of expert judgment and legislative discretion, and it is well known that contemporaries in other developed countries, such as Britain, arrived at less Draconian solutions. It is fair to say, however, that the sinister transmogrification of narcotic addiction was a critical precondition for the legal developments that followed. It would have made no sense-politically, culturally, morally, or in any other way-to repress addicts if they had still consisted disproportionately of sick old women. Even after the laws were changed, physicians and law enforcement officers often tacitly permitted the dwindling number of iatrogenic addicts to continue their "medication."

Being ill, these patients were sympathetic figures and, because they were isolated from the street drug subculture, posed no threat to anyone.

The transformation of American narcotic laws, like the transformation of the addict population itself, evolved over a period of time. The catalytic event was America's growing involvement in Asia, a region long notorious for its opium trade. American military governors in the recently acquired Philippines, missionaries in China, and diplomats studied the problem and sought to coordinate international efforts to eliminate or reduce the traffic. As a result of their efforts an international opium commission met at Shanghai in February 1909. The American delegation, anxious to assume a leadership role but fearful that the laissez-faire narcotic market at home left them open to charges of hypocrisy, pressed for at least token congressional legislation. This they received in the form of a hastily enacted law forbidding the importation of opium "for other than medicinal purposes," that is, opium for smoking. Banning this form of the drug cost the federal government more than $800,000 in annual revenues, but it was politically feasible because opium smoking had such low-life connotations and few American firms had a large stake in its continued importation.

Reformers were not satisfied with this one measure, however. They continued to work for a more comprehensive narcotic law, both to address the domestic problem and to bring the country into line with the provisions of an international treaty then being negotiated. Their most forceful advocate was Dr. Hamilton Wright, American delegate to the Shanghai Commission and later the Hague Opium Conference (1911-1912). Wright compiled an official report for Congress, complete with authoritative references to drug-inspired rape and miscegenation, as well as statistics that seemed to show that narcotic use was outstripping population growth. (In fact it was not; per capita consumption was down after 1900, largely owing to increased therapeutic conservatism.)

Wright also played up the prevalence of lower-class and criminal use, as may be seen from his specific addiction estimates in Table 1. The percentages reproduced here are as unfounded as they are pretentious: Wright's research was highly unsystematic and hardly merited numerical expression, let alone two-and three-decimal-point precision. He was, however, magnifying an epidemiological reality: by 1910 criminals and prostitutes did have much higher rates of use than the general adult population and possibly (although this is not certain) higher rates than medical personnel, who historically had a serious addiction problem. Wright was, moreover, believed. His statements and statistics were given wide circulation in the popular press, medical journals, congressional committee reports, and other official documents.

Despite his skills as a propagandist, Wright got a bill neither as soon as nor as stringent as he wanted. He ran into opposition, especially from drug companies that did a large wholesale business in narcotics. He also encountered philosophical and constitutional difficulties, as the limits or even the existence of a federal police power were not then generally agreed upon. (Indeed, in 1918 and again in 1922 the Supreme Court would strike down something as seemingly proper and desirable as federal child labor laws.) The regulation of medical practice was a matter traditionally left to the states, and narcotics were still very much a part of medical practice.

The measure that finally passed, the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914, was a complex compromise. It required anyone who sold or distributed narcotics-importers, manufacturers, wholesale and retail druggists, and physicians-to register with the government and to pay a small tax. When they sold or otherwise distributed narcotics, they had to make a detailed record of the transaction, open to government inspection. Unregistered persons caught with narcotics in their possession were presumptively guilty of violating the law, unless the drugs had been "prescribed in good faith by a physician, dentist, or veterinary surgeon registered under this Act." If convicted, they could be fined and imprisoned for up to five years. It was anticipated that such sanctions would make the narcotic traffic transparent and confine it to legitimate medical channels.

Two features of the Harrison Act are of particular interest. One is the definition of narcotics as opium-and coca-based drugs. As previously noted, opium and coca are medicinally distinct. One is a central nervous system depressant, the other a stimulant. They were combined legislatively, however, because of the assumption that both were euphorigenic, potentially habit-forming, and associated with crime. It was for similar reasons that marijuana would also later be described as a narcotic.

The second point is the law's failure to address the question of whether an addict could receive, on an indefinite basis, a prescribed supply of narcotics. In retrospect, this was one of the most crucial lacunae in any federal statute enacted in the twentieth century. The Treasury Department officials who administered the law assumed a negative stance and initiated several prosecutions against addicts, physicians, and pharmacists for conspiracy to violate the Harrison Act. At first the Supreme Court rebuked the Treasury Department for attempting to stop physicians from prescribing for addicts; ultimately, however, it reversed itself and narrowly ruled in favor of the antimaintenance position. In two cases decided March 3, 1919, the Court sustained the constitutionality of the Harrison Act and ruled that a physician might not write prescriptions for an addict "to keep him comfortable by maintaining his customary use."

The circumstances of these cases, United States v. Doremus and Webb et al. v. United States, are revealing. Doremus was a physician who prescribed, for a price, large quantities of heroin to one Alexander Ameris, alias Myers, who was "addicted to the use of the drug as a habit, being a person popularly known as a 'dope fiend'." Ameris's ethnic surname, use of heroin, and large habit were all negatives, summed up in the epithet "dope fiend." Dr. Webb was similarly accused of gross overprescription; before he was arrested he averaged more than 80 morphine prescriptions a week, at 50 cents apiece. Government attorneys decried such unprofessional behavior, likening it to a barkeeper dispensing whiskey to a drunkard. Five members of the Court agreed, and Webb's original conviction was upheld. Had either case involved only small amounts of narcotics prescribed by a reputable physician, it is highly likely that the decision would have gone the other way. Six years later, in Linder v. United States, the Court unanimously reversed the conviction of a respected Oregon practitioner who had prescribed one tablet of morphine and three tablets of cocaine for a stool-pigeon addict.

The Prohibition Unit of the Treasury Department nevertheless treated Webb as the governing decision and pursued an aggressive antimaintenance policy. By threats and actual prosecutions they were able to drive a wedge of fear between the legal providers (physicians, pharmacists) and the addicts. Prosecutions of those who supplied addicts might fail, as they had with Dr. Linder-but they might also succeed, as they had with Dr. Webb and numerous others. Even if a defense were successful, the potential legal fees and loss of reputation made a physician think twice before reaching for his prescription pad. Doctors, moreover, were less and less favorably disposed toward nonmedical addicts, whom they perceived as devious, troublesome, and notoriously resistant to cure.

There were, however, some physicians who continued to write prescriptions for addicts, if only on an occasional basis. They were motivated by pity, or greed, or simply by a desire to get the users off their backs and out of town. Even at the height of its powers, the Bureau of Narcotics never completely succeeded in closing off all medical supplies to addicts. A small but significant gray market of pure drugs persisted as an alternative to the black market of adulterated heroin. Some users managed to develop extensive connections in the former and stay out of the latter altogether. Still, medical sources were chancy and could not be counted on indefinitely; doctors who wrote prescriptions too often or too openly were sure to be visited by a federal agent. That fact, as far as addicts were concerned, was the chief legacy of the Harrison Act and the 1919 Supreme Court decisions.

There was one other alternative to the black market, but it was short-lived. Following the Webb ruling, a number of cities and towns set up facilities to dispense narcotics to addicts. If private maintenance were disallowed, then organized, public maintenance might yet take its place. There were altogether 35 of these municipal "narcotic clinics," so named because they sold morphine cheaply to their registered patients. A few also sold cocaine or heroin. What is sometimes misunderstood about these clinics is that they were not homogeneous, that their methods of operation varied. Some were geared toward indefinite maintenance, others toward detoxification through gradual withdrawal. Some were run for profit, others merely to break even. Some were models of efficient administration, others fly-by-night operations.

One thing, however, they did have in common: all were eventually closed by the federal government, most within a year of opening their doors. Treasury Department officials, determined to eliminate both licit and illicit sources of narcotics for addicts, viewed the clinics as dangerous precedents and potential obstacles to the rigorous enforcement of the Harrison Act, as recently interpreted by the Supreme Court. Consequently, they moved to abort them through a combination of critical inspections, threats, and legal pressure. February 10, 1923, when the last clinic in Shreveport, Louisiana, was finally forced to break off maintenance operations, is as appropriate a date as any to mark the beginning of the "classic" police era of narcotic control.

The unprecedented nature of federal narcotic policy after 1923 is underscored by the fact that alcoholic beverage prohibition applied only to manufacture and sale. Neither the Eighteenth Amendment nor the law that implemented it, the Volstead Act, barred personal use and consumption by alcoholics or, for that matter, anyone else. National prohibition, moreover, was controversial from the start and lasted only 14 years. Large numbers of apparently normal people continued to drink; they resented both the prices they had to pay for bootlegged alcohol and the prohibitionists who meddled with their customary freedoms. The laws proved virtually unenforceable, as criminals manufactured or diverted alcohol and speakeasies spread across the land. The byproducts of Prohibition-gangsterism, corruption, and methanol poisoning-filled the front pages. Ardent supporters grew disenchanted. Powerful business and opinion leaders such as Pierre du Pont and William Randolph Hearst campaigned for repeal. A well-funded national organization, the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, maintained a drumfire of criticism and propaganda. The public was told that the noble experiment had backfired and was creating a nation of drunkards. The war against narcotics, by contrast, was thought to be successful in reducing nonmedical addiction and was so portrayed by government officials.

The onset of depression in 1929 handed the antiprohibitionists a new and decisive argument: money. "If the liquor now sold by bootleggers was legally sold, regulated, and taxed," one writer observed, "the excise income would pay the interest on the entire local and national bonded indebtedness and leave more than $200,000,000 for other urgently needed pur

Virtually no one spoke up for the narcotic user, however; there was no Association Against the Harrison Act. On the contrary, the national champions of repeal, including Hearst and Roosevelt, persisted in seeing drug use as a criminal menace and condoned restrictive measures. One "wet" argument, dating back to the early state prohibition battles, had been that frustrated drinkers would turn to narcotic drugs, which would madden and enslave them. Drink was the lesser evil. Hostile toward addicts anyway, it suited the purposes of the antiprohibitionists to maintain them as a negative reference point, the dead end of their ad horrendum stories.

As for the addicts themselves, they were too few and too marginal to carry much political weight. Many of them were convicted felons and thus could not even vote. There was little that they could do about the refusal to allow maintenance, a policy that lasted more than 40 years. When the antimaintenance regime was finally challenged, it was not by the narcotic users but by an elite group of professionals-mainly lawyers, physicians, and social scientists-who had become convinced that it was unjust and unworkable. In attacking the Bureau of Narcotics, they too invoked the alleged failures of Prohibition, arguing that it was useless and counterproductive to outlaw addictive substances. It also seemed a double standard to permit pathogens like alcohol and tobacco, while proscribing "narcotics" of lesser or unproven danger, without which regular users would become violently ill. This was a fair point but, like all rational arguments, it had its limits. There was still a powerful, visceral fear of narcotic addicts and all they stood for. It was the social and moral connotations of narcotic addiction that mattered, not just the mental and physical effects of the drugs themselves.

Life Under Anslinger

The personification of the antinarcotic regime was Harry Jacob Anslinger, head (or, to his critics, "czar") of the Bureau of Narcotics. Anslinger was a minor diplomat who in the 1920s became involved with efforts to prevent liquor from being smuggled into the country. He was a competent and honest functionary in a field not known for either trait, and in 1929 he was made assistant commissioner of prohibition. After Levi Nutt, boss of the Prohibition Unit's Narcotic Division was tainted with scandal and demoted, Anslinger took his place. When the Bureau of Narcotics was spun off as a distinct organization in 1930-partly to distance it from the furor over alcohol prohibition-Anslinger was named its first commissioner, a post he retained until 1962.

There was a peculiar, Jekyll-and-Hyde aspect to Anslinger's personality. The private man was humorous, cosmopolitan, fluent in several languages, musically accomplished, devoted to his wife, and loyal to his hometown friends. Anslinger also possessed a keen political intelligence. Like his contemporary Lyndon Johnson, he knew exactly whom to cultivate to advance his interests. Anslinger is remembered, however, not as a man of exceptional gifts or as a deft bureaucrat but as the ultimate tough cop. His appearance-bald, barrel-chested, square-jawed, and unsmiling, a sort of beefy Mussolini-had much to do with this. By all accounts Anslinger was intimidating. One visitor described him as "a man whose eyes seem to be cataloguing you-your features, build, clothes."

Yet even this was not enough. Anslinger understood that narcotic trafficking was international in scope and required diplomatic efforts as well as strict domestic enforcement. He tirelessly attended meetings sponsored by the League of Nations, seeking agreements that would make it more difficult to smuggle drugs. In 1931, for example, he took an active role in negotiating an international pact to limit the manufacture of narcotics. Nations ratifying the treaty, of which there were 25 by 1933, were to make or import no more narcotics than necessary for estimated annual medical use, thereby reducing the surplus available for diversion into the illicit market.

Like many American diplomats of his generation, Anslinger saw the world in black and white terms. Most nations were good in that they were willing to assist others in the international campaign against the drug evil. There were also bad states, however, that not only refused to cooperate but actually used narcotics as an instrument of subversion and conquest.

At the head of Anslinger's renegade list were Imperial Japan and Communist China. ''Wherever the Japanese Army goes," he charged, "the drug traffic follows. In every territory conquered by the Japanese, a large part of the people become enslaved with drugs." In the 1950s and early 1960s he attacked the leaders of the People's Republic of China, accusing them of narcotic sales to the West to support their invasion of Korea and later of joining with Castro's Cuba to create an illicit drug network. It is not coincidental that all of the bad nations were, at the time Anslinger assailed them, military and ideological rivals of the United States. Narcotic policy dovetailed with foreign policy, a fact that enhanced Anslinger's prestige as well as his bureau's budget.

The one eventuality that Anslinger had to guard against was the return of legal maintenance. This, he felt, would utterly defeat his plans to keep drugs out of the hands of addicts and their associates. The potential danger was great. The medical profession was enormously powerful and prestigious, having achieved what sociologist Paul Starr has called "sovereign" status by the 1930s. If physicians took seriously the idea that addiction was a disease and that, lacking a sure cure, the most favorable course of treatment was maintenance, then they might challenge, and ultimately defeat, the tenuous legal basis for narcotic prohibition. Fortunately for Anslinger, most practitioners were disinclined to rock the boat. Like the public at large, they tended to see drug users, especially heroin addicts and opium smokers, as vicious and declasse. Physicians were in any case oriented toward treating somatic disorders, and the dominant medical opinion of the day declared narcotic addiction to be a manifestation of psychopathology, that is, not a physical disease at all.

The psychopathy thesis was popularized by Dr. Lawrence Kolb, who was regarded as the leading addiction specialist of the mid-twentieth century. Like Anslinger, Kolb thought of addiction treatment as a process of institutionalization, detoxification, rehabilitation, and abstinence. Although Kolb occasionally complained to Anslinger of overly zealous law enforcement, the approaches of the two men were on the whole quite compatible.

Kolb and his coworkers at the U.S. Public Health Service oversaw two federal narcotic farms at Lexington, Kentucky, and Fort Worth, Texas. With the closure of the municipal narcotic clinics in the early 1920s, there were virtually no government facilities for the treatment of addicts. They either had to remain at large or silt up the nation's prisons, which were ill designed to deal with their problems. The solution proposed by Pennsylvania Representative Stephen G. Porter (and enthusiastically backed by the Hearst newspaper chain) was to construct special facilities to quarantine and rehabilitate addicts. These "narcotic farms" were to be set in rural areas so that addicts could be removed from the tempting cities and set to healthful work. Money was authorized in 1929. The first narcotic farm, officially known as the U.S. Public Health Service Narcotic Hospital, was completed at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1935. A second narcotic farm was opened in Fort Worth in 1938.

Of the two, Lexington was the larger and more prominent. It was to remain the single most important treatment and research facility in the country well into the 1960s. From the beginning Lexington had a mixed institutional character. Federal prison and narcotic officials saw it mainly as a penitentiary where troublesome addicts could be isolated and confined; Public Health Service physicians saw it as a hospital where mentally disturbed addicts could be treated and rehabilitated. Architecturally, Lexington reflected the official ambivalence: its beds and wards were secured with massive gates and intricate locks. As one doctor remembered it, Lexington was "more like a prison than a hospital and more like a hospital than a prison."

As a dual-purpose institution, Lexington had a dual system of admissions. Prisoner addicts could be sent there involuntarily for confinement and treatment, but voluntary patients were also permitted to check in on a space-available basis. The problem was that volunteers could leave at any time, whereas prisoners had to stay until they were paroled or completed their terms, which might be months or years after withdrawal was completed. The staff, in other words, had little or no control over the time of release.

The addicts who went to Lexington were of two minds about the place. To some it represented a haven, a clean and well-run institution where a user could detoxify, receive medical and dental care, and obtain counseling, decent food, work, and exercise. "When I would feel bad, or get mentally disgusted," one former user recalled, "I thought to myself, 'What am I doing? I'm a drug addict. I want to quit.' So I'd go to Lexington, and I'd come out feeling like a million dollars." Altogether he went six times. Others viewed this sort of behavior with disdain. "I never went to Lexington," boasted another addict.

You want my honest opinion of the people who went down there on their own? They never should have been on heroin. They didn't have the ability to support a habit: either they couldn't make enough money working, or they weren't thieves, or they were afraid to deal. [Laughs.] We used to tell them, "What are you doing, going down to get rescued?" I doubt if I'm mistaken, but if you'll look it up, you'll find that on average better than 75 percent of the people who went to Lexington on their own repeated. Every time things got bad-boom!-they were back. See, if you go down there once, I can understand it. Even twice, even three times I can understand, if a guy makes some kind of an effort to stay away from heroin when he comes out. But a lot of users go back to heroin immediately, and then use Lexington as a fall-back, a port in the storm.

The estimate of 75 percent is actually conservative. Several studies showed that 90 percent or more of those released from Lexington soon relapsed. These depressing figures gave rise to a controversy, muted at first but increasingly contentious by the early 1960s. Different theories of relapse were advanced, attributing it to everything from underlying personality disorders to conditioned responses to permanent metabolic changes. Some even argued that addicts returned to drug use because they missed the intense excitement of hustling and scoring drugs; once they were "in the life," everything else seemed boring by comparison.

Minorities and Narcotic Use: The Second Transformation

Anslinger may have exploited public antipathy toward narcotic dealers and users, but he did not invent it. The antinarcotic consensus had arisen from the earlier transformation of the addict population, a real demographic event helped along by imaginative statisticians and propagandists. During Anslinger's long tenure the addict population continued to evolve in a way that further strengthened his hand. The key change was the growing use of heroin by black men.

Blacks were not considered heavy drug users early in the century. They lived mainly in the rural South, were poor, and had less access to opiates than whites, who could afford doctors and patent medicines. Black workers occasionally used cocaine, as did prostitutes and petty criminals. A few field hands smoked marijuana, and some unemployed men drank excessively, but, with these exceptions, blacks had neither a disproportionate nor a very serious drug problem. On the contrary, the prevailing racial stereotype of the narcotic addict was white or Oriental.

After World War II the situation changed completely. Middle-class whites came to "imagine that ghettos [were] filled with black men mugging whites for money to pay for heroin and then injecting this evil drug so that they can spend the rest of the day nodding away in a blissful vacuum." Figure 1 displays the statistical basis for these fears. Not only were black addicts turning up more often in federal treatment centers but they were being booked more frequently by the police, to the point that, by the 1950s, half or more of all narcotic arrests involved blacks. Something similar was happening in the Hispanic communities. In 1936 only about 1 percent of the addicts treated at Lexington were Hispanic; by 1966 more than a quarter were-13.9 percent being Puerto Rican and 12.2 percent Mexican.

Data of this sort have been criticized as misleading because minorities are treated prejudicially and are hence more likely to end up in institutions or jails. They are particularly vulnerable during periods of racial or nativist tension, economic dislocations, or politically motivated crackdowns. Even in normal times it is tempting for the police to fill their quotas in the ghetto; it is easier to ticket, arrest, or prosecute those who are relatively powerless.

These biases are real but in one sense irrelevant. Statistics such as these, amplified and personalized by news stories and photographs, shape public opinion, regardless of their factual basis. Rightly or wrongly, the black junkie became a stereotype, and that made a difference. Moreover, even though these percentages may overstate the degree of involvement, there is no reason to doubt that minorities were using drugs in the 1940s and 1950s in a way they had not been before. Black narcotic arrests, for example, were increasing absolutely as well as relatively, rising from a mere 362 nationally in 1933 to 4,262 in 1950 to 11,816 in 1965. An increase of that magnitude, sustained over a long period of time, is due to something more than prejudice. Black writers and intellectuals were also sounding the alarm. Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land (1965) contains a bitter account of the "shit plague" that befell New York City's neighborhoods in the early 1950s. Not only Harlem, "but in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and everyplace I went, uptown and downtown. It was like horse had just taken over."

It is not hard to understand why this happened. Black narcotic use was a concomitant of urbanization. During 1915 to 1930, and again during 1940 to 1960, millions of blacks left the countryside for larger towns and cities. Jim Crow, disfranchisement, poverty, boll weevils, and agricultural mechanization made it difficult to stay, higher paying industrial jobs, especially during the war years, made it tempting to leave. Some migrants settled in southern cities; most eventually moved on to the North or West. Three major routes developed: from the south Atlantic seaboard toward the northeast urban corridor; from Mississippi toward Chicago; and from Texas and Louisiana toward California. In 1910 not a single city in the country contained 100,000 blacks. By 1960 New York City alone had more than a million. In 1910, 73 percent of the black population was rural. In 1960, 73 percent was urban.

The blacks who fled the South were mainly young, unattached adults whose futures lay before them. They left with high hopes, singing hymns like "Jesus Take My Hand" and "I'm on the Way." What actually awaited them, the ghetto slum, has been likened to the frying pan instead of the fire. Not only did they have to face the classic dilemma of an uprooted peasantry-how to adjust to the city when what they knew was the land-but to do so under the worst possible circumstances, crowded into stinking, overpriced tenements. They also had to cope with the usual array of urban vice figures: pimps, prostitutes, thieves, con men, numbers runners, and all manner of drug retailers, from marijuana distributors like the legendary white hipster Milton Mezzrow to black opiate users and dealers like Malcolm Little, later Malcolm X Disoriented and demoralized, the newcomers were exposed to narcotics in a way they had never been before. So were their children, particularly those who had left school, were out of work, and spent their time on the street. The result could easily have been predicted: a growing incidence of black heroin addiction, particularly among the traditional high-risk group of single males in their late teens or early twenties.

To say that such an event was predictable is not to indulge in historical hindsight. There was ample precedent for what happened to the black urban community. It had happened before to other immigrants living in the same or similar neighborhoods. White ethnic addicts who started using narcotics in the 1920s and 1930s had substantially the same experiences as blacks who began in the 1940s and 1950s. They grew up in or moved to neighborhoods where drugs could be procured; they were on their own or unsupervised; they had friends who were users; they yielded to curiosity or peer pressure and tried it for themselves. Thus, the ethnic slum, matrix of heroin use from about 1910 on, continued to spawn illicit narcotic use throughout the twentieth century. When the color of the faces in the tenement windows changed, so did the color of the addicts on the street.

Several factors, however, made the immigration-slums-narcotics tangle worse for blacks than for previous groups. First, because of their color, blacks had been and continued to be the objects of especially virulent racism. To the extent that this racism translated into educational and occupational handicaps, and to the extent that unemployment and poverty were conducive to drug and alcohol abuse, urban blacks were especially vulnerable. Living for the present made more sense for those who felt excluded from the future. Partly because of this legacy of racism, blacks had fewer political and organizational resources than other groups. There was, for example, no black counterpart to the New York Kehillah's Bureau of Social Morals, which monitored drug dealers in the Jewish immigrant community. Even the Mafia, the country's leading narcotic importer and wholesaler, kept the peddlers off its home turf. Ghetto blacks also had fewer familial resources. Why this was so has become a political and intellectual cause celebre; the fact remains that minority family dislocation did occur and it did contribute to addiction. The Road to H, a major study of young heroin users in New York City in the 1950s, found that 97 percent of addicts' families were characterized by "a disturbed relationship between the parents, as evidenced by separation, divorce, open hostility, or lack of warmth and mutual interest." The mother was the most important parent; about half the fathers often presented "immoral models through their own deviant activity with respect to criminality, infidelity, alcoholism, and the like." Keeping teenagers away from drugs in an environment in which they are plentiful requires especially active, watchful parenting. It is not likely to be done very well if parents are distracted, absent-or busy shooting up in the bathroom. Finally, there was the permanence of the black ghetto. Many of the white urban immigrants and their descendants were able to distance themselves from the tenements, moving to better quarters in safer neighborhoods and eventually to the suburbs. New York City's Jews, for example, went from Manhattan's chaotic Lower East Side, to Brooklyn and the Bronx, to Long Island, Westchester County, and New Jersey. Each step took them farther away from the primary illicit narcotic markets; indeed, to distance themselves from drugs and crime was one of the reasons suburbanites moved in the first place. Low-income blacks were not as fortunate. Even as the Civil Rights movement achieved its judicial and legislative triumphs, a collective decision was made to abandon blacks in the inner city, to leave them behind with inferior schools and inadequate services in an environment virtually assured to perpetuate poverty.

This was the result, not of a single grand conspiracy but of a thousand private, uncoordinated ones: restrictive covenants, realtors' whispered advice, bankers' lending practices. The federal government generously subsidized the fleeing whites through its tax, transportation, and mortgage policies. Urban abandonment soon developed its own momentum: as inner-city conditions progressively worsened, pressure grew on the remaining whites to escape beyond municipal lines, taking their tax dollars with them. Educated and upwardly mobile blacks were able to follow them to the suburbs, but those who were unemployed or underemployed had to stay behind. The decaying neighborhoods in which they lived were areas of heavy drug trafficking and use. Heroin became a staple in the ghetto economy, and black children grew up around older users who were both role models and potential initiators. Continued exposure, persistent discrimination, and progressive familial breakdown assured that subsequent generations of urban blacks would also suffer high rates of addiction. What began as an epidemic among black youth in the late 1940s and 1950s has long since become endemic to the urban underclass.

The growing involvement of blacks and Hispanics with narcotics and the consequent racial transformation of the addict population did not go unnoticed in high places. Anslinger himself emphasized this development. "Fifteen years ago, the Lexington and Fort Worth Hospitals had mostly white patients," he pointed out in 1957. "Today, they are filled with Negro addicts. What happened to the white addicts? You don't see them." Asked about the postwar rise in youthful addiction, Anslinger responded, "The increase is practically 100% among Negro people in police precincts with the lowest economic and social standards. . . . There is no drug addiction if the child comes from a good family, with the church, the home, and the school all integrated."

There was truth in what Anslinger said, however bluntly he expressed it. Historically, children who were not poor, who were raised in intact families and socialized by middle-class institutions, were impervious to heroin. He did not, however, advance to the conclusion implied by his analysis: doing something about black addiction meant doing something about black economic and social conditions. Instead, Anslinger fell back on what he knew best, enforcement. During the 1950s he pushed for ever tougher sanctions against traffickers, believing that the ultimate solution lay in choking off the illicit supply. Congress, alarmed by stories of teenage users, the darkening racial cast of institutionalized addicts, the postwar renaissance of the Mafia, and the alleged trafficking of nonwhite communist countries like China, was in a mood to agree. In 1951 it passed the Boggs Act and in 1956 the Narcotic Control Act, providing progressively stiffer, mandatory sentences for possession and sale. The inflexible provisions of these laws sometimes resulted in blatant mis-carriages of justice. In one instance a Chicano epileptic with an I.Q. of 69 was given two life terms for selling heroin to a 17-year-old provocateur; in another a black veteran with no previous record was sentenced to 50 years without parole for selling marijuana. Many states, nevertheless, followed suit, passing "Little Boggs Laws" that pegged minimum prison terms at or beyond the federal levels. A 1956 Louisiana statute provided mandatory sentences ranging from 5 to 99 years for persons who sold, possessed, or administered narcotics. In Texas possession of marijuana was punishable by 2 years to life. These were not isolated events; across the country nonfederal narcotic prosecutions were up sharply during the 1950s.

The End of the Classic Period, 1960-1965

Historians who have studied American narcotic policy are agreed that the 1950s marked the zenith of the punitive approach. The "new spasm of concern" felt during this decade translated into "increased regulation in familiar patterns," comments H. Wayne Morgan. "On the surface, the consensus against drug use and for enforcement seemed stronger than ever." Yet by 1965 the consensus had eroded and the old order, especially the categorical denial of maintenance, had been successfully challenged. Why did this happen?

Anslinger realized that the way out of this paradox was to simultaneously reduce demand by isolating and then curing addicts. Fewer customers would mean smaller profits for dealers, and at some point the illicit trade would cease to be worth the risk. The catch was that Lexington-style institutions failed to effect many permanent cures: as previously noted, addicts often went through several times, relapsing after every treatment. Narcotic wards were not without value: detoxification brought respite from the street grind and helped addicts keep their habits within manageable bounds. But the generally high relapse rates provoked skepticism and lent credence to the cliche, ''once a junkie, always a junkie."

Dissatisfaction with the big, revolving-door institutions eventually led to a search for other programs that might help addicts. One possible alternative was Synanon, a therapeutic community that evolved in Ocean Park, California, in the late 1950s under the direction of Charles Dederich, an ex-alcoholic. Dederich made no bones about the authoritarian nature of Synanon; he consciously recreated an autocratic family environment to keep people in line. He also relied heavily on group encounters led by a "Synanist," or experienced former addict. These encounters were intended to make the participants come to terms with their feelings, to assume responsibility for their own lives, and to learn to deal with their problems without recourse to drugs or alcohol. Once they could do that, they could theoretically return to the world and lead "straight" lives.

Synanon was a relatively small-scale operation. Its real significance was that it inspired several physicians, clergymen, and social workers to establish "second-generation" therapeutic communities throughout the country. These were patterned after Synanon but incorporated significant individual variations. Several of the most important of these programs, such as Daytop Village, Odyssey House, and Phoenix House, had their inception in the middle 1960s. They did not expand rapidly, however, until the later 1960s and early 1970s, when the Lexington approach was officially discredited, the country was in the midst of a youthful drug epidemic, and private and public funding for community drug treatment programs of all sorts was readily available.

It is important to point out that, although the leaders of the therapeutic community movement criticized the impersonality and ineffectiveness of existing addiction treatment programs, they shared the traditional assumptions that abstinence was the ultimate goal and that the police should suppress the illicit narcotic traffic. Some critics, however, began to question the very moral and political bases of American narcotic policies. Increasingly in the 1960s, liberal commentators asked why the country had a narcotic problem. Were drugs evil because they were physical and social pathogens? Or were they pathogens because illegal, hence adulterated and exorbitantly priced? Would addicts behave differently if the maintenance taboo were broken and they could receive cheap, pure medication? Specifically, would maintenance reduce the number of crimes addicts committed? Would it provide a way out of a destructive subculture and back into the productive world of family and work?

These were not new questions; they had been pointedly asked by the pioneers of organized maintenance, physicians like Charles Terry and Willis Butler. But now, after 40 years of apparently self-defeating police solutions, they were being raised again by such critics as the sociologist Alfred Lindesmith. Like most twentieth-century liberals, Lindesmith was a negative utilitarian. He believed that if a law produced many costs and few benefits, it was irrational and should be modified or abolished. This belief was the premise of his influential 1965 study, The Addict and the Law, in which he argued that American addicts were both more numerous and more "impoverished, degraded, and demoralized" than elsewhere in the Western world. He cited police estimates that up to 50 percent of big-city crime was due to addicts hustling to support their habits. By contrast, the British system of medical maintenance had resulted in neither serious crime nor an inordinate amount of addiction. Lindesmith and others essentially charged the Narcotics Bureau with benighted prohibitionism, resulting in huge costs to both users and society. "The American narcotics problem," summed up Marie Nyswander in 1965, "is an artificial tragedy with real victims."

If the crime issue was one fault line along which the narcotic consensus fractured, then marijuana was another. Marijuana had come under the Bureau of Narcotics' jurisdiction as a result of the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, passed by Congress at Anslinger's urging. Like cocaine, marijuana was identified with an internal minority (Mexicans) and alleged to produce insanity and violent, unpredictable behavior. Later, its prohibition was rationalized by what came to be known as the stepping-stone hypothesis: marijuana was not in itself habit forming, but its use led to drugs that were-like heroin. "The danger is this," testified Anslinger in 1951, "over 50 percent of those young addicts started on marijuana smoking. They started there and graduated to heroin; they took to the needle when the thrill of marijuana was gone."

What, in fact, was wrong with all the great American taboos? The ultimate basis for the suppression of nonmedical drug use lay in the realm of moral assumptions. Americans of the classic period were, to a degree unknown today, governed by a popular moral code, postulated on the self-evident correctness of patriotism, self-discipline, hard work, self-reliance, family stability, personal honesty, and self-restraint. However dishonored in practice, these virtues were consistently affirmed by religious and civil institutions and served to justify the proscription of drugs, just as they had earlier served to rationalize the prohibition of drink. During the 1960s, however, these traditional values-Harry Anslinger's values-were increasingly questioned. The principal challenges came from the mass media, the youthful counterculture, and skeptical "new class" intellectuals who were disenchanted by the status quo and optimistic that they could replace it with something better. Whatever the merits of their critique, American society did change, becoming noticeably more permissive and secular. Although this social revolution did not peak until the 1970s, it was well under way by the mid-1960s, and it did not augur well for strict narcotic control. Recall Anslinger's remark that maintaining addicts with drugs was like pandering to homosexuals. That analogy would be effective with a traditionalist, one who was instinctively homophobic. But for someone beginning to doubt the received wisdom, wondering if the suppression of homosexuality might not itself be unfair and counterproductive, the argument would not carry much weight. It might even backfire, lending credence to the belief that America (or Amerika, as it was soon to be called) was blindly opposed to all forms of social and political liberation, of which drug use was but one instance.

As for narcotic officials, they had more on their minds than the unfavorable turn of the zeitgeist. A more immediate problem, which Anslinger concealed but never resolved, was their shaky legal foundation. The denial of maintenance was predicated on distant and narrowly decided Supreme Court cases; there were also contrary precedents, like the Linder ruling. These weaknesses were not apparent to the general public, but they were known and discussed within the legal and medical communities, together with the more general question of the propriety of maintenance. The eventual outcome of this discussion was Narcotic Drugs: Interim Report of the Joint Committee of the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association on Narcotic Drugs (1958). Authored by a panel of physicians, lawyers, and judges, and based on three years of research in the United States and Britain, the Interim Report was a temperate critique of the police approach with suggestions for further research and trial programs. Doubting ''whether drug addicts can be deterred from using drugs by threats of jail or prison sentences," it recommended the establishment of an experimental outpatient clinic that might, under certain circumstances, supply addicts so they would not have to patronize illicit dealers.

Anslinger, who saw this guarded proposal as the hole that would sunder the dike, immediately plugged it with his fist. Denouncing the committee's plan as "so simple that only a simpleton could think it up," he launched a campaign of vilification against his opponents. The piece de resistance was Comments on Narcotic Drugs (1958), a rebuttal by the "Advisory Committee to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics" that Anslinger quickly assembled. Clinics were portrayed as proven failures, liable to spread addiction and to provide comfort to the nation's communist enemies. The solution was not less punishment but more: "Only under the impact of heavy prison sentences can we hope to rout the scum of the criminal world." And routing they deserved, because what they were really peddling was "murder on the installment plan." Experts who disputed this approach were feckless dreamers, or worse. As far as Anslinger was concerned, they ought to join the addicts in jail. His bureau spokesmen openly accused the critics of Hitlerian "Big Lie'' tactics and of endangering the health and morals of the nation.

It did not work. Anslinger not only failed to discredit or suppress the report-it was published in. 1961 as Drug Addiction: Crime or Disease? and went through seven printings by 1969-but his tactics backfired and brought unfavorable publicity to the bureau. "The whole tenor of the [rebuttal] document," wrote Stanley Meisler in The Nation, "indicates Anslinger does not want to win the discussion as much as he wants to eliminate it. Historian David Musto has commented, "the bureau's vituperative attack . . . can be seen as a desperate response to the belief that, regardless of congressional support and official bureau statements, its control of narcotic enforcement in America was beginning to slip."

The year 1962 brought further slippage. On June 25 the Supreme Court decided, in Robinson v. California, to strike down a California statute making addiction to the use of narcotics a misdemeanor, punishable by 90 days to a year in the county jail. The Court, recalling the language of Linder that addicts "are diseased and proper subjects for [medical] treatment," condemned prison as a cruel and unusual punishment for the sick. "It is unlikely that any State at this moment in history," Justice Potter Stewart wrote, "would attempt to make it a criminal offense for a person to be mentally ill, or a leper, or to be afflicted with a venereal disease.'' The decision did not do the appellant, Lawrence Robinson, much good-he had died in 1961-but it did scotch Anslinger's longstanding ambition to take addicts out of circulation simply because they were addicts.

The addiction-as-disease theme was being sounded elsewhere as well. In 1962 Lawrence Kolb published Drug Addiction, a collection of articles and essays pointedly subtitled A Medical Problem. Kolb, once Anslinger's wary collaborator, had grown increasingly disenchanted with punitive tactics. He now called openly for Americans to rid themselves "of the fury that propagandists have injected into our laws, administrative practices, and attitudes concerning addiction." Even as Kolb was airing his doubts, the chief perpetrator of the narcotic fury was being quietly eased from power. In 1962 Anslinger was forced to retire, having reached the age of 70. He was succeeded by the Narcotics Bureau's deputy commissioner, Henry L. Giordano. Anslinger did not disappear from the scene altogether; he put in an appearance at a large White House Conference on Narcotic Drug Abuse in September 1962 but seemed uncharacteristically subdued. This same conference recommended the establishment of a presidential commission, which met and issued its report the following year. Among its recommendations were more flexible sentencing, wider latitude in medical treatment, and more emphasis on rehabilitation and research.

Heresies were spreading about the land now, and these even bore the imprimatur of a presidential commission. The time was ripe for someone to heed the many calls for research and actually put together an experimental maintenance program. That task was accomplished in 1963-1964 by Marie Nyswander, a psychiatrically trained clinician who had experience treating addicts, and Vincent Dole, a metabolic disease specialist who had no such experience but who brought a fresh approach to the problem. Dole began what he was later to call "humdrum observational research" with several basic pharmacological and physiological questions: What effects do opiates actually have? Why are they bad for people? What is wrong with narcotic maintenance? The answer to the latter, he discovered, was that it was extremely difficult to stabilize the amount and frequency of the dose. Subjects to whom he gave morphine constantly badgered him for more. He was prepared to concede the wisdom of the antimaintenance philosophy when he made a chance discovery. The patients to whom he gave methadone, a long-acting, synthetic opiate, did not behave in an objectionable way. They were not preoccupied with drugs and began to turn their attention to conventional pursuits like sports or work or school. Although thoroughly addicted, their behavior appeared quite normal.

Ultimately, Dole and Nyswander hypothesized that addicts had undergone a permanent metabolic change, that they needed narcotics in a visceral way, the way a diabetic needs insulin. This explained relapse and why abstinence was not a realistic goal. But methadone maintenance could satisfy the underlying craving and enable the addict to lead a normal and productive life. Methadone could be taken orally once a day, so addicts would not have to constantly inject themselves with possibly contaminated needles. At a sufficiently high dose, methadone blocked the euphoric effects of a shot of heroin, so that addicts would not be tempted to continue using illegal narcotics. Nor would they need to because methadone, itself a narcotic, prevented withdrawal sickness. Finally, methadone was cheap and legal. Addicts could escape the grind of hustling and scoring, thereby improving their lives and reducing the amount of crime.

There was, inevitably, a reaction as both the premises and results of methadone maintenance were called into question. Critics said that the hypothesized metabolic change was mere speculation; that methadone was just a quick chemical fix, substituting one drug for another; and that it failed to significantly reduce criminal or antisocial behavior because it ignored the underlying problems of addicts-inferior or abnormal personalities, broken families, anomie, inebriety, ghetto squalor, deviant peers, structural unemployment, and so on down the list. Others charged that methadone did too much, that it was an insidious form of social control aimed at turning restive inner-city minorities into harmless zombies; or that it was dangerous-because large amounts of methadone were diverted into the black market and consumed by those who might not otherwise have used drugs. Probably the fairest and most accurate thing to say about these criticisms (and this is just a partial list) is that they arose from mixed motives. There were real and unresolved problems with methadone maintenance, but there were also vested interests to be defended, especially by those whose funding and prestige were tied to competing addiction theories and treatments. Medical controversies are seldom fought on purely scientific grounds, and methadone is a classic case.

The whole controversy might never have arisen if the Bureau of Narcotics had managed to block Dole's experimental research. This it failed to do. Dole defied the agents sent to harass him, at one point suggesting that they take him to court "so we can have a determination on this point." The bureau demurred. It might well have prevailed against an unscrupulous doctor writing prescriptions for cash, but its chance of winning against a distinguished scientist, backed by a major research institution, with a liberal majority on the Supreme Court and in a climate increasingly hostile to the police approach, was effectively nil. The bureau also failed to prevent the program from expanding. In 1965 a ward in the Manhattan General Hospital was given over to methadone maintenance, as Dole and Nyswander came under the sponsorship of the New York City health department. Although minuscule in comparison to what it would become in the early 1970s, methadone maintenance was by 1965 officially and permanently established. It was also beginning to attract widespread and favorable attention, both in medical journals and in popular periodicals such as Look, Time, Newsweek, and Science Digest. Marie Nyswander was even accorded a profile in The New Yorker. The antimaintenance regime was over.

Drug Policy and Drug Use Since 1965

American narcotic policy from the early 1920s until the middle 1960s had two key objectives: the quashing of legal maintenance and the suppression of illicit narcotic transactions through vigorous police enforcement. What has happened since then has been a qualified abandonment of the first goal, but not of the second. Substances like heroin are still outlawed. This result was intentional: the liberal supporters of maintenance never espoused, nor could they have achieved, a libertarian resolution of the problem. The government was not about to get out of drug enforcement and proclaim caveat emptor. Most liberals were perfectly willing to see addicts, whom they regarded as victims, treated in clinics, and traffickers, whom they regarded as criminals, sent to jail. This arrangement is at best paradoxical; some critics have described it as confused and contradictory. What about the addict who is also a dealer? Or the addict who is a predacious criminal, before, during, and after treatment? Or the addict who diverts methadone into the black market? Methadone programs have reduced the frequency with which their clients violate the law, but they certainly have not eliminated all of their legal or behavioral problems.

These difficulties are not unique to narcotic policy. In virtually every area in which liberals successfully challenged restrictive policies in the 1960s and 1970s, similar quandaries have arisen. Gambling is a good example. State-run lottery games and other forms of legal gambling are now freely available and widely advertised. But illegal gambling has not disappeared, as some liberals hoped or assumed; the police still have plenty of sports bookies and bolita operators with whom to contend. The public, meanwhile, gets a decidedly mixed message: some forms of gambling are acceptable, but others are not. The same is true of drug use. Classic-era narcotic policy, despite its faults, was at least consistent. Its message was unambiguous: drugs are bad for you. This was one reason why proponents of therapeutic communities remained deeply suspicious of methadone maintenance. It contradicted, both symbolically and actually, the traditional goal of abstinence. "It's just another political expediency," charged Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber, founder of the Odyssey House therapeutic community. "There's no reason to change a heroin user to methadone, just as there's no reason to change a scotch drinker to cheap wine. . . . People should not have a dependency disease. They should be able to make decisions without being controlled by their need for a substance."

It was ironic, then, that Richard Nixon, who styled himself a hardliner and a moral conservative, should have been the president to preside over the rapid expansion of methadone maintenance. On June 17, 1971, he delivered a special message to Congress on drug abuse prevention and control. Until the recent past, Nixon observed, narcotic addiction had been viewed as a "class" (i.e., minority) problem, but now it affected many groups, including soldiers in Vietnam. Heroin addiction was growing rapidly and was responsible for a costly wave of urban crime. He proposed to meet this national emergency with additional, federally financed efforts to reduce narcotic supply and demand. To ensure that the task of demand reduction was carried out in a coordinated manner, Nixon announced the creation of the Special Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP, pronounced say-oh-dap), to be located within the Executive Office and answerable directly to the President. SAODAP was given a remarkably broad charge: overall responsibility for drug treatment and rehabilitation, as well as prevention, education, training, and research programs. Only law enforcement and diplomatic efforts were outside its control.

SAODAP's first director was Dr. Jerome H. Jaffe. His selection was not coincidental. During 1970 and 1971 several White House staff members, including Jeffrey Donfeld, Egil Krogh, and John Ehrlichman, had become convinced that methadone maintenance offered the best prospect for reducing narcotic-related crime and that any such reduction would pay substantial political dividends in the upcoming election. It would also eliminate a political liability, insofar as Nixon, who had made domestic lawlessness the centerpiece of his 1968 campaign, was under some pressure to show a tangible reduction in urban crime. Jaffe was known as a methadone advocate. "The White House staff was quite aware of my view that the use of methadone could no longer be viewed as 'a little experiment,' but needed to be incorporated into an overall approach to reducing the social cost of heroin addiction," Jaffe recalled. "It may be that I was selected to articulate and give academic credibility to the conclusion the White House staffers had already reached." What Jaffe did in practice was to expand both maintenance and nonmaintenance programs, with the hope that narcotic addicts would avail themselves of one or the other approach. The result was that, while therapeutic communities and other nonhospital, abstinence-oriented programs were growing rapidly in the early 1970s, so too were their philosophically and clinically opposite numbers, the methadone maintenance programs. Between June 1971 and March 1973 the number of federally funded methadone patients doubled. Counting both federal and nonfederal programs, there were 80,000 persons enrolled in methadone maintenance by October 1973.

Despite SAODAP's imprimatur and increased funding, there was still a great deal of suspicion and hostility toward methadone within the federal bureaucracy. This attitude was manifest in a barrage of detailed regulations governing dosage, duration of treatment, and security. (Item: vaults containing the methadone supply shall have locks "resistive . . . to radiological attack for twenty manhours.") Frustrated methadone proponents argued that such micromanagement reduced the impact and effectiveness of the maintenance programs. The late Marie Nyswander, when interviewed in 1981, was amused to find herself "sounding like a Republican" on the issue of federal controls. "I don't think there's any question about it," she said. ''If we had decent treatment, in all the ways people could be treated-clinics, hospitals, doctors-then we'd probably take in the majority of addicts. But right now methadone is operating at only 30 to 50 percent of its potential.'' Why not, she urged, permit stable, long-term patients to simply receive several months' supply from a private physician? For Nyswander, contemporary narcotic policy was insufficiently reactionary. That is to say, the clock should have been turned all the way back to 1914, when doctors still had wide latitude in maintaining addicts, rather than to 1919-1923, when a handful of municipal programs struggled to treat patients in a hostile regulatory environment. Indeed, the 1970s and 1980s might be aptly described as the New Clinic Era, with methadone maintenance understood as the vehicle of a long-delayed but ultimately limited counterrevolution.

Not all of methadone's limitations were due to bureaucratic meddling, however. Dr. Robert Newman, who presided over the expansion of methadone maintenance in New York City from 1970 to 1974, also emphasized the strength of community opposition. The first twenty clinics breezed through, he recalled, but "the next twenty were pretty darn tough. . . . Finally, it became an insurmountable problem when the neighborhoods were given almost veto power. Since 1975 I think there's been one clinic opened in the City of New York, and that over tremendous opposition." Newman was chagrined to discover that methadone was a political lightning rod:

I remember trying to open one clinic up in the Bronx, and speaking at a community meeting. I talked for forty-five minutes about methadone and I thought I did an absolutely great job. I was sure I had everybody convinced. When I asked for questions, the first one was from some lady in the back who said, "Why don't you pick up our garbage?" I said, "What do you mean, pick up garbage?" I thought that the woman was crazy, or that I was in the wrong meeting. I said, "This isn't the Sanitation Department; we're talking about opening up a methadone clinic." She said, "You know what I mean. You're the City of New York, and you haven't picked up my garbage in two weeks.'' I said, Lady, that's another department." She said, ''Yeah, I know, you're always passing the buck; whoever we talk to, it's never their department, it's somebody else's. Well, by God, you haven't picked up my garbage and I'm not going to allow you to do what you want to do up here with this methadone clinic."

Then there was the hatred and the concern regarding addicts and addiction. It's a lot of things: it's race and class; it's fear, the realization that addicts have to commit crimes to support their habit; and it's a resentment that people are feeling that good three, four, five times a day. It's hard to express this hostility, because there's nothing to focus against. But a methadone clinic brought all these problems together. It was a building, in front of which you could picket, or wheel your baby carriages, or go to the press about. I think people really wanted to express their hostility against a problem that was so evanescent that they couldn't do it any other way.

Finally, there were the addicts themselves, many of whom balked at entering treatment programs. There were garbled fears about methadone, complaints that it would "get into the bones" or render patients dependent for life. "It's very, very hard to quit methadone," remarked one older patient. "When a guy gets to be my age, getting off methadone pret' near kills you. I think methadone's got me hooked until I die." He conceded, however, that methadone had its good points: "Like, I used to live in Harlem. I knew a whole lot of people that used to be tramps. They wouldn't clean up, or wouldn't try to do nothing for themselves, sleeping out there on the street. Since this methadone came out you see them nice and clean, with a tie on and shoes shined, and working every day."

This amounts to a summary of the original thinking behind methadone. The drug may be a powerful narcotic and treatment may be indefinite, but what does it matter if the patients turn their lives around? The problem, however, was that not all addicts wanted to turn their lives around, nor were they necessarily enamored of shiny shoes and daily work. They regarded methadone, or for that matter any other treatment program, as a form of surrender. An addict who sought treatment had to admit to himself and his peers that he no longer had enough spunk to stay on the street and support a habit. Ethnographic studies of untreated addicts have shown that their self-image is often that of an accomplished hustler, street-wise and disciplined enough to keep themselves in money and drugs.

The "righteous dope fiends" consider addicts in methadone programs ("methadonians," "zombies," "blimps,'' "meth-heads'' or "murdocks") to be losers, while those who enter therapeutic communities are totally infra dig. One long-time user started to have foot trouble as he approached his middle fifties. His hustling suffered, and in desperation he sought help at Synanon. He quickly left. "Synanon wasn't for me," he exclaimed. "I wouldn't stand being thrown down the shit bowl [degraded] by those foul garbage junkies, snitches, winos, and sissies." These attitudes have persisted and help to explain why more users do not take advantage of treatment opportunities. They also explain why, once in treatment, many patients leave or fail: they are constantly reminded of and tempted by their old self-image, the smooth operator leading a free and exciting life. There is more to becoming an ex-addict than detoxification.

For all of these reasons the treatment revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s has proved to be something of a disappointment. According to one 1987 estimate, only 7 percent of the approximately 2.5 million Americans who had a serious drug problem were in treatment. Many of those who remain untreated were "undergoing progressive and chronic physical deterioration, as well as committing crimes and being involved in accidents that lead to injuries to themselves and others." There was an economic cost associated with this, as well as a human one. It is far less expensive for an addict to be in a treatment program than in and out of hospitals and jails.

The period between initial exposure to HIV and development of full AIDS averages seven or eight years. This long latency period has permitted the rapid, unknowing spread of the virus within groups of intravenous drug users. The situation is especially bad in New York City, where there are both large numbers of cases of AIDS and high seroprevalence rates (a high percentage already infected) among intravenous drug users. By mid-1987 a third of the city's 10,000 AIDS cases were drug addicts; in nearby New Jersey and Connecticut, more than half of all diagnosed AIDS cases were addicts, their sex partners, or children.

Nationwide, nearly a quarter million intravenous drug users may already be infected.

It is difficult to say what the long-term effect of AIDS on narcotic addiction will be because developments in AIDS are occurring very rapidly, both in the spread of the epidemic and in research on ways of potentially controlling or treating it Nevertheless, several studies on the reactions of intravenous drug users to AIDS show that the epidemic has had an effect and hint at the possibility of reducing the practice of illicit drug injection, or at least of making it more circumspect. Death has always been common among intravenous drug users, but AIDS forces a radically different psychology of death in the group. Involving a protracted and painful death, often with stigmatization and social isolation, AIDS conjures up none of the escapist fantasies associated with overdose deaths. The virus may also develop long after a person has ceased injecting drugs; one cannot be certain that stopping drugs will prevent the development of AIDS. Finally, there is the possibility of infecting friends and family, through sexual or in utero transmissions of the virus. These considerations have apparently prompted changes in the behavior of intravenous drug users in the New York area, where addicts have increased their use of sterile needles and reduced the number of persons with whom they will share drug injection equipment. It is possible that "safer" needle use will become the norm for intravenous narcotic addiction in the future. Fear and natural selection are both operating in that direction.

Another potential for change in narcotic addiction may be in the recruitment of new intravenous drug users. Novices usually learn to mainline through contact with experienced users whom they admire and depend on for the equipment for their first injection. Over time, the fear of AIDS is likely to reduce both the admiration felt for experienced intravenous users and the willingness to borrow or experiment with their needles and syringes. No one wants to borrow death, especially death by AIDS.

The threat of AIDS could reduce illicit drug injection to the point where not enough new persons are recruited to replace those intravenous users who die or quit. This would not necessarily eliminate narcotic addiction, however. It would still be possible to become addicted by sniffing or (more rarely) smoking heroin, or by the regular use of a synthetic opiate. Thus, even if AIDS should virtually eliminate intravenous drug addiction, there is no guarantee that other forms of addiction will disappear. They may even expand, as has happened with cocaine smoking.

One last point about AIDS: although there is some evidence that intravenous drug users are motivated by fear of the disease to seek treatment, most addicts remain at large, as noted earlier. The danger they pose to themselves and to others underscores the fact that a large percentage of users remain outside of treatment programs. Any modality, whether geared toward maintenance, short-term detoxification, or long-term abstinence, is safer than street trafficking and use-especially if the patients do not "cheat" on the program.

Of course, patients could not cheat if street drugs were unavailable. That was a point Anslinger made repeatedly: get the addicts clean through institutional treatment and then keep them from temptation by drying up the illicit supply. Unfortunately, the strategy did not work particularly well for him, nor did it work at all well during the 1980s. Retail (street-level) drug transactions have exceeded $100 billion, up from an estimated $79 billion in 1980. Heroin imports, which generated $8 billion in 1980, grew 50 percent by 1986, from four to six metric tons per annum. Heroin purity levels were low in the early 1980s, in the 3 to 5 percent range, but they have sharply increased, owing to an influx of "China White," Mexican "black tar," and other highly potent varieties. Much of the Mexican heroin is smuggled by illegal aliens, whose chances of being caught crossing the border are as low as one in five.

Nor is Mexico the only source of the problem. Large amounts of heroin are also shipped from Southeast Asia, a region that became a major source of supply during the Vietnam era. A third source of supply, Southwest Asian heroin, emerged in the late 1970s and expanded rapidly during the early 1980s, in the wake of political and military turmoil in the region. The one signal law enforcement accomplishment, the disruption of the famous "French connection" in the early 1970s, proved to be a transitory victory. Turkish opium processed into heroin at Marseilles, the single most important illicit source for most of the classic era, became very scarce in the U.S. after 1973; this was of little strategic significance, however, because the combined Mexican, Southeast Asian, and Southwest Asian supplies have more than made up for the deficit.

The failure to stop the heroin traffic was by no means the only or even the worst setback for law enforcement since 1965. Officials have also had to contend with the emergence of several new street drugs, such as LSD and PCP; the diversion and abuse of licit drugs, such as Methedrine and methaqualone; and the increased popularity of illicit nonopiate drugs, such as marijuana and cocaine. Simply stated, more people from more different backgrounds have begun using more drugs.

The speed with which marijuana use and trafficking expanded was remarkable. In one state, California, marijuana arrests rose from 7,560 in 1964 to 50,327 in 1968. Nationwide, federal seizures of marijuana increased more than 10-fold between 1969 and 1973, hashish seizures more than 20-fold. By 1979 an estimated 50 million Americans had tried marijuana at least once, including two-thirds of all young adults. Marijuana use has declined somewhat during the 1980s, but it remains a popular illicit drug and a source of huge profits for both international traffickers and, increasingly, domestic cultivators.

This was a portentous development, not only because the young marijuana smokers might "burn out" with daily use but because they were also more likely to experiment with other illicit substances. Marijuana, like tobacco and alcohol, was a gateway drug. A pattern emerged: first beer or wine, then tobacco or hard liquor, then marijuana, then another illegal drug, like LSD or cocaine. Some progressed all the way to the opiates, thereby contributing to the heroin epidemic of the early 1970s, but they were exceptional. Most marijuana smokers, if they went on to other drugs, chose pills, hallucinogens, or stimulants. It was in the ghetto that the ultimate graduation to heroin was still most likely to occur. Epidemiological studies continued to show that minorities, especially black and Hispanic males, were heavily overrepresented among narcotic users. What happened after 1965, in short, was the superimposition of a new pattern of largely recreational, largely youthful, largely white, and largely nonopiate drug use on the existing pattern of inner-city narcotic use and addiction.

Today cocaine seizures are measured by the ton. Virtually all indicators of use-admissions to treatment programs, overdose deaths, student surveys, and chemical analyses of urine samples-have shown a marked increase in its consumption. By 1985 an estimated 40 percent of graduating high school seniors had tried the drug at least once. Illicit sales are so vast that the transportation and processing of money have become as difficult for cocaine traffickers as smuggling the drug itself. One dealer went to the point of removing the play money from several Monopoly games, replacing it with real money, sealing the boxes back up, and then shipping them to Colombia. A portion of such fabulous profits is naturally plowed back into production. Between 1982 and 1986 the world's supply of cocaine was roughly doubled by the planting of new coca bushes in South America, and it has continued to expand since then.

In reality, methadone patients made up only a fraction of the new cocaine users. Several other forces were also at work. One of them was the waning popularity and availability of amphetamines. "Contra speedamos ex cathedra," pronounced Allen Ginsberg, a warning seconded by various counterculture notables. Speed killed. It also incarcerated, with the advent of stricter production regulations. Fear and short supplies of amphetamines made cocaine attractive as a "safe" alternative stimulant-at least until 1986, when the death of college basketball star Len Bias made it abundantly clear that cocaine could also kill.

The highly publicized troubles that black athletes and celebrities had with cocaine were, in one sense, misleading. Because the Willie Wilsons and Richard Pryors of the world had huge amounts of disposable income and worked in high-pressure occupations, their cocaine consumption fit into what might be thought of as the traditional show-business pattern. What was different about the 1970s and 1980s was the spread of cocaine beyond these rarefied circles to the middle and professional classes, notably among baby boomers who had gone to college, flirted with the counterculture, smoked marijuana, and learned to discount official warnings about drug abuse. They also had the money and the disposition to become users, albeit on a lesser scale than the superstars. After 1982, when a glut of South American cocaine dropped wholesale prices by a third or more, those of modest means could partake. With vials of "crack" (potent, smokable cocaine) retailing for as low as $5, no one was priced out of the market. By the late 1980s, crack had supplanted heroin as the drug of choice in the nation's ghettos.

Crack caught on because it was easy to smoke, requiring no complicated preparations with dangerous chemicals, as had been the case with "free basing." Crack delivered the rush of intravenous injection without the risk of AIDS and other infections. A few users have experimented with smoking crack and heroin, a combination likened to "firing both barrels at the brain's pleasure centers." Two barrels or one, this method is likely to produce dependence because the powerful doses soon disrupt the brain's chemistry, creating a depressed, anhedonic state that can only be overcome by more and more cocaine. Some users have also been drawn into a secondary dependency on tranquilizers and depressants, such as diazepam and barbiturates, which they take to combat the hyperstimulation and nervousness resulting from the cocaine. Awareness of its addictive potential, together with concern over its relation to street crime, has hardened public attitudes toward the drug and altered the tone of press coverage. Since 1965, cocaine has gone from complete obscurity to Public Enemy Number One.

Like many historical changes, the altered pattern of use has left linguistic traces. Prior to the 1960s government officials, when describing their task, spoke unselfconsciously of combating the narcotic traffic. This was technically inaccurate-cocaine and marijuana were not narcotics-but it made practical sense because most of their arrests and the bulk of their seizures involved opiates. Since then, however, the word "narcotic" has been replaced by the more general term "drug," as in drug problem, or the still more capacious adjective "substance," as in substance abuse. This change was forced by the growing prominence of marijuana and cocaine, as well as the development of novel practices like glue sniffing or eating hallucinogenic plants and mushrooms. It made no sense, pharmacologically or otherwise, to lump these things together as ''narcotic use,'' let alone "narcotic addiction." Some researchers sought to expand the concept of addiction itself when they saw that dependence could develop with nonopiate drugs. "We should define addiction in terms of the compulsion to take the drug rather than whether it causes withdrawal," Dr. Michael Bozarth explains. "In this sense, cocaine is at least as addictive as heroin."

Or, one might say, as addictive as alcohol. Even as new patterns of nonopiate dependence were emerging, there was distressing evidence that the nation's oldest psychoactive nemesis was strengthening its grip on the population. Per capita consumption of alcohol rose steadily, from 2.1 gallons per capita in the early 1960s to 2.8 gallons in the late 1970s. One 1977 poll revealed that seven out of ten Americans drank, and that nearly one in five considered liquor the cause of trouble within their families. Although health concerns and adverse publicity have reduced alcohol consumption somewhat during the 1980s, it is still higher than at any time during 1920-1965.

If the complex and shifting pattern of multiple drug use forced government officials to change the language they used to describe the problem, the same was true of treatment providers. The 1980s were marked by the emergence of "chemical dependency" treatment centers, many of them associated with private hospitals. These programs did not sharply differentiate between drug and alcohol abusers, as had been the rule in the past. Rather, they treated conventional alcoholics, drug abusers, and patients who manifested symptoms of both disorders. (Cocaine and alcohol were the most important combination.) Most patients treated in chemical dependency units were middle-class workers or their spouses and children who could finance their stays with employer-provided insurance benefits. Unemployed or self-employed workers of modest means, by contrast, had access only to publicly financed programs, which were becoming progressively more overcrowded and understaffed as the decade wore on.

The simultaneous, sustained increases in several types of drug abuse and the consequent growth in the number of addicted persons requiring treatment raise some important questions, particularly about law enforcement strategies. Why were the police and customs agents collectively unable to contain the importation and use of illicit drugs after 1965? Why did substances once comparatively rare become increasingly common? Why, despite larger budgets, expanded personnel, and more arrests, did the responsible agencies utterly fail to stop the influx of drugs?

The huge profits to be made in the United States not only provided incentives to drug wholesalers but also bought protection for the traffickers through the familiar expedient of bribery. The extent of the corruption became clear in the early 1970s, when Detective Frank Serpico started talking to reporter David Durk of the New York Times. Durk's articles led to the formation of an investigative commission headed by Whitman Knapp. The Knapp Commission's 1973 Report on Police Corruption, which highlighted problems with narcotic enforcement, made headlines for months. Its revelations, however, seem minor in comparison to what was subsequently learned about graft at the other end of the drug pipeline. Theoretically, it is much easier to choke off the commerce at its point of origin, before the drugs are concealed, shipped, and dispersed. Yet it is in those countries where drugs are grown and processed that corruption is most deeply entrenched. The bribes are actually calibrated: $10 a kilo for marijuana smuggled across the border at Tijuana, for example, with the local police commander earning upwards of $150,000 a week. Not only do Mexican authorities look the other way, they provide armed escort service for major shipments. They have also been known to torture, possibly to kill, interloping American narcotic agents. Some trafficking organizations, like the Shan United Army, which operates along the Burma-Thailand border, are so large and well armed that they do not need to infiltrate governments; they are themselves autonomous political entities. Worldwide, the illicit narcotic industry has revenues estimated by some at a half-trillion dollars a year; it is easy and expedient to divert a fraction of the cash flow to protecting exports. Anyone who can stock Monopoly games with real money can afford a few strategically placed government officials. It is simply a matter of rationalizing risk.

The problems of enforcement in the drug-producing countries are compounded by the global economic and political situation. Many of these nations are poor and, like Mexico, burdened by international debts. Drugs are a vital source of revenue, not only for their governments, but for the peasants who can earn more by cultivating poppies, coca, or marijuana than by producing licit commodities. In Bolivia, for example, lawful exports now produce only a fraction of the revenue brought in by cocaine, which is responsible for half of the country's gross national product.

The sense that illicit drug trafficking and use were out of control led to the present war on drugs. The formal declaration came on August 4, 1986. President Ronald Reagan delivered a major speech "not to announce another short-term government offensive but to call instead for a national crusade against drugs-a sustained, relentless effort to rid America of this scourge-by mobilizing every segment of society against drug abuse." He called for the elimination of all drugs from workplaces and schools; voluntary (or, for key government personnel, mandatory) drug testing; improved treatment and rehabilitation programs; greater public intolerance of drug abuse; and stepped-up enforcement against domestic and international traffickers. In remarks to Republican congressmen before the address, Reagan set as his overall goal a 50 percent reduction in drug use and promised that his escalating war would mean "Pearl Harbor for the drug traffickers."

A little more than a month later, on September 14, 1986, the President made a nationally televised address, accompanied by First Lady Nancy Reagan. Again Reagan relied on martial metaphors, drawn from World War II. Americans would have to swing into action, he explained, the way they did in the 1940s, when men and women rolled up their sleeves, built tanks and planes, and planted victory gardens. "We're in another war for our freedom, and it's time for all of us to pull together again," he said. The First Lady was equally adamant. This was a total war, a war in which there could be no middle ground. Do not use drugs, and do not tolerate those who do. Firm, private refusals would create an "outspoken intolerance for drug use" and would influence by example young people who might otherwise experiment with drugs.

There is some truth in this insight. Peer disapproval is more powerful than remote, impersonal laws; the host or hostess who says no is more effective than the prosecutor downtown. The difficulty lies in engineering such a massive change of attitudes and behavior, particularly among young adults accustomed to and tolerant of drug use. Many legislators, although willing to fund educational programs toward that end, have also resurrected the Anslingerian tactic of stiffer penalties for dealers, up to and including execution. The death penalty was, in fact, the most widely discussed aspect of the 1986 omnibus antidrug bill. Although capital punishment for major traffickers convicted of murder (a transparently political provision favored by House members up for reelection) was blocked by the Senate, the bill that did pass nevertheless specified longer prison sentences for those who recruited juveniles to sell drugs or those who sold drugs near schools. The law also authorized $1.7 billion in additional expenditures, with most of the money to go for law enforcement and drug education. Two years later, just before the 1988 general election, Congress passed a second omnibus bill. This time a capital punishment provision was included, as well as substantial new civil penalties for personal use and possession. The get-tough tone has continued into the Bush administration: the White House's 1989 National Drug Control Strategy was unapologetically martial in tone and stressed the need to win back the streets from users and dealers. The pendulum seems to be swinging back to the 1950s; we may be entering a "neoclassic" era of drug control.

Is this a wise departure? Or, to put it another way, was the medicalization of the narcotic problem, the legitimatization of a hybrid approach in the 1960s and 1970s, a bad idea? Would the country have been better off if Anslinger had not retired, if he and his successors had been permitted to maintain an unwavering hard line?

The answer is almost certainly no. Although it may be true that superimposing a clinical treatment model on a criminal justice base signaled official ambivalence to the public, it is doubtful that this produced many new users. There is one school that argues just the opposite, that criminalization inevitably glamorizes a drug. The use of LSD, for example, peaked five years after it was made illegal; a few thousand users in 1966 swelled to an estimated 5 million by 1971. This does not prove that criminalization caused increased use-that would be post hoc, ergo propter hoc reasoning-but it does suggest that the laws made little concrete difference.

The point can be generalized. Drug policy is best understood as a congeries of a society's history, values, and prejudices. It is not, in and of itself, the key variable governing the extent of drug use at a given point in time. Prevalence is more likely to be determined by outside events. These include wars, epidemics, population shifts, new technologies and pharmaceutical discoveries, physician behavior, economic conditions, media coverage, and changes in moral attitudes and religious beliefs. It should be remembered that Anslinger was head of the Bureau of Narcotics at a time when Americans were firmly opposed to narcotic use, when the press acted as his claque, smugglers lacked high-powered racing boats and Lear jets, and LSD, DMT, PCP, and other acronymic drugs were as yet unfamiliar to the public. These were far greater advantages than the Boggs Act. When circumstances changed, when the antinarcotic consensus eroded, the underclass grew and festered, new drugs became fashionable on campus, and hundreds of thousands of American troops were sent to fight in opium-rich Southeast Asia, then the scope of the problem was bound to widen. One factor alone, the coming of age of the nearly 80 million Americans born between 1946 and 1965, ensured an upsurge in drug use; in epidemiological terms, there was an unusually large number of susceptibles in the population immediately after the classic era.

Although government policy does not solely determine the prevalence of drug use, it does affect the health and behavior of the users themselves. The most important impact of punitive drug laws is on consumers, especially those who are addicts. Their hustling activities, patterns of association, routes of administration, risks of illness, and prison histories have all been shaped by the prohibition policy and its corollary, the black market. Mainlining, for example, was unknown before 1915, when addicts did not have to purchase adulterated narcotics. It is true that the preaddiction characteristics of users took a turn for the worse during the early twentieth century and that numerous addicts would have led difficult, unhealthful, and crime-filled lives with or without the assistance of the Bureau of Narcotics. The point is that their troubles, and those of the people they victimized, were exacerbated by legal strictures. Policy analyst Mark Kleiman has called this exacerbating tendency the paradox of vice control:

We make something illegal because it's a vice-bad for its devotees and bad for people around them. But for those who indulge anyway, prohibition and enforcement make the vice more dangerous; they also make these people more dangerous to the rest of us. Think of wood alcohol during Prohibition, the violence and disease associated with prostitution, the gambling debts collected by muscle rather than collection agencies.

That this paradox exists does not mean we should legalize everything-it seems to me that society is better off with 400,000 very dangerous heroin addicts obtaining the drug illegally than with 5 million addicts obtaining the drug from their doctors, even though each of them would be a little better off and a little less dangerous. It does mean that we don't get a free shot at drug dealing.

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Address delivered at Syracuse, New York; copy forwarded to Katharine Bement Davis, November 22, 1924, Papers of the Bureau of Social Hygiene, Series 3, Box 3, Folder 126, Rockefeller Archive Center, North Tarrytown, N.Y.

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The correspondence and questionnaires that Wright assembled before making these estimates may be found in the Records of the United States Delegation to the International Opium Commission and Conference, 1909-1913, Record Group 43, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

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The purpose of the tax was less to raise revenue than to justify the constitutionality of the bill by making it seem an expression of the congressional taxing power in Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution. This was one of two standard gambits, the other being an evocation of the commerce clause. Those who drafted major social and economic reform legislation could be almost certain of constitutional challenges, and the Supreme Court had a reputation for frequently voiding such laws, at least prior to the "constitutional revolution" of 1937.

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249 U.S. 90; Transcript of Record . . . The United States of America . . . vs. C.T. Doremus (filed 1918), 2.

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249 U.S. 98; W.S. Webb and Jacob Goldbaum v. The United States of America ... Brief on Behalf of the United States, 34-35. The choice of metaphor is interesting and reveals the extent to which the stereotypes of the addict and the alcoholic had become intertwined by 1918.

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The Shreveport closure was bracketed by two other noteworthy legal developments. In 1922 Congress passed the Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act, placing further restrictions on the international narcotic trade and strengthening provisions against unauthorized possession; in 1924 it outlawed heroin altogether. In both practical and symbolic terms, however, it was the elimination of organized maintenance in 1923 that most clearly demarcated the classic period of narcotic control. The 1922 and 1924 statutes were essentially refinements or expansions of the established policy of forbidding certain drugs to nonmedical users.

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Anslinger and Chapman, "Narcotic Addiction," 182, 189-190.

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Drug Addiction: Crime or Disease? Interim and Final Reports of the Joint Committee of the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association on Narcotic Drugs (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961; seventh printing in 1969), 19, 104-105.

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"Federal Narcotics Czar," 162.

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370 U.S. 660; quotation at 666. Stewart's language reminds us again of addiction's status as a stigmatized disease. By the early 1960s, however, the Court, as well as the medical research establishment, was placing more emphasis on the disease aspect and less on the stigma.

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Interview with Densen-Gerber, August 5, 1981.

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Interview with Nyswander, June 22, 1981.

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Interview with Newman, July 24, 1981.

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H.W. Cohen et al., "Behavioral Risk Factors for HTLV-III/LAV Seropositivity among Intravenous Drug Abusers," paper presented at the International Conference on the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), Atlanta, April 14-17, 1985.

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C.f. Thomas J. Spira et al., "Prevalence of Antibody to Lymphadenopathy-Associated Virus among Drug-Detoxification Patients in New York," New England Journal of Medicine 311 (1984), 467-468; Jrog Schupbach et al., "Antibodies to HTLV-III in AIDS and Pre-AIDS and in Groups at Risk for AIDS," New England Journal of Medicine 312 (1985), 265-270; Giacchino Angarano et al., ''Rapid Spread of HTLV-III Infection among Drug Addicts in Italy," Lancet (1985, Part 2), 1302; and J. R. Robertson et al., "Epidemic of AIDS-Related Virus (HTLV-III/LAV) Infection among Intravenous Drug Users," British Medical Journal 292 (1986), 527-529. See also Lawrence K. Altman, "New Fear on Drug Use and AIDS," New York Times, April 6, 1986, Sec. 1, pp. 1, 30; Ronald Sullivan, ''New York State Rejects Plan to Give Drug Users Needles," New York Times, May 18, 1987, Sec. 1, p. 38; Lionel C. Bascom, "AIDS Shift Seen from Gay Men to Drug Users," New York Times, July 19, 1987, Sec. 11, pp. 1, 19; and Philip M. Boffey, "Spread of AIDS Abating, but Deaths Will Still Soar," New York Times, February 14, 1988, Sec. 1, pp. 1, 36.

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Edward M. Brecher et al., Licit and Illicit Drugs (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), 422; U.S. Senate, Marijuana-Hashish Epidemic and Its Impact on United States Security: Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974), 7-8; Institute of Medicine, Marijuana and Health (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1982), 36; Glenn Collins, "U.S. Social Tolerance of Drugs Found on Rise," New York Times, March 21, 1983, Al, B5; James Mills, The Underground Empire: Where Crime and Governments Embrace (New York: Doubleday, 1986), passim; Christine Russell, "One-Third of College Students Try Cocaine... Use of Marijuana and Other Drugs Appears to Have Declined," Washington Post, July 8, 1986, A3.

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Interview with Peter Santangelo, August 23, 1982.

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Table 1 in Kandel, above; 1982 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse data reproduced in Collins, "U.S. Social Tolerance," B5. It is also of interest that, among those who did progress to heroin, many apparently took precautions to avoid full-blown dependence. Heroin's reputation as an addicting drug preceded it. See Norman E. Zinberg, "Nonaddictive Opiate Use," in Criminal Justice and Drugs, especially 15.

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Thomas L Dezelsky et al., "A Ten-Year Analysis of Non-Medical Drug Use Behavior at Five American Universities," Journal of School Health 51 (January 1981), 52-53; "The Growth of Cocaine Abuse: A Report by the Strategic Cocaine Unit of the DEA Office of Intelligence," Drug Enforcement 9 (Fall 1982), 18-20; Charles Blau, "Role of the Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section in the Federal Government's Fight Against Drug Trafficking," Drug Enforcement 11 (Summer 1984), 17; Peter Kerr, "Rising Concern on Drugs Stirs Public to Activism,'' New York Times, August 10, 1986, Sec. 1, p. 28; Joel Brinkley, "Experts See U.S. Cocaine Problem as Continuing Despite Big Raids,'' New York Times, August 24, 1986, Sec. 1, p. 1; Louis L. Cregler and Herbert Mark, "Medical Complications of Cocaine Abuse," New England Journal of Medicine 315 (1986), 1495-1500; Elaine Sciolino with Stephen Engelberg, "Drive Against Narcotics Foiled by Security Fears," New York Times, April 10, 1988, Sec. 1, p. 1; and Rensselaer W. Lee, III, The White Labyrinth: Cocaine and Political Power (New Brunswick, NJ., and London: Transaction Publishers, 1989).

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"Special Report: Black Tar Heroin in the United States," 19; the shotgun analogy is from Dr. Frank Gawin, remarks made at "The Cocaine Epidemic: A Symposium on Assessment and Treatment Approaches," University of Hartford, June 13, 1986.

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Quoted in "What is Our Drug Problem?" Harper's 271 (December 1985), 51.

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David T. Courtwright is professor and chair of the Department of History, University of North Florida, and a member of the Committee for the Substance Abuse Coverage Study.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
David T. Courtwright American narcotic policy has been highly variable, having passed through at least four major stages during the past 100 years. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, government involvement was minimal. Drug use was largely a private matter, as was drug treatment.

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https://www.ted.com/talks/ethan_nadelmann_why_we_need_to_end_the_war_on_drugs

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Ethan Nadelmann: Why we need to end the War on Drugs

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Is the War on Drugs doing more harm than good? In a bold talk, drug policy reformist Ethan Nadelmann makes an impassioned plea to end the "backward, heartless, disastrous" movement to stamp out the drug trade. He gives two big reasons we should focus on intelligent regulation instead.

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https://www.marijuanamoment.net/three-new-polls-confirm-a-strong-majority-of-americans-support-marijuana-legalization/

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Minnesota Legalization of Recreational Marijuana

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Minnesota Legalization of Recreational Marijuana

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https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/recreational-marijuana-minnesota-house-set-to-vote-on-legalization-bill-monday/

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/ CBS Minnesota

ST. PAUL, Minn. - The Minnesota House is set to debate and vote Monday on a 300-page bill that would legalize marijuana for recreational use.

The proposal would create a new state Office of Cannabis Management, tasked with oversight. The law would allow people 21 and older to buy, sell - if approved for state business licenses - and use marijuana.

MORE: The business of marijuana - What would it look like if Minnesota passes a law legalizing it?

It would also automatically expunge low-level cannabis convictions and set up an expungement board to consider felony offenses.

There was a bill in 2021 that passed the House, where Democrats held a majority, but went nowhere in the GOP-led Senate. Now, lawmakers are near a vote in that chamber with a final committee stop expected this week.

The legislation this session is the culmination of hours of testimony and changes from its original drafting - it received 16 committee hearings, which is more than typical.

Advocates have been pushing for legalization for years. If it passes, Minnesota would join 21 other states that have taken the same step. Marijuana is still a Schedule I drug that is illegal at the federal level.

Monday's floor session begins at 11:30 a.m., though debate and a vote will likely happen later in the day.

MORE: Hemp farmers, retailers concerned with direction of Minnesota marijuana legalization bill

Caroline Cummings

First published on April 23, 2023 / 8:23 PM

© 2023 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Recreational marijuana: Minnesota House set to vote on legalization bill Monday

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
CBS Minnesota ST. PAUL, Minn. - The Minnesota House is set to debate and vote Monday on a 300-page bill that would legalize marijuana for recreational use. The proposal would create a new state Office of Cannabis Management, tasked with oversight.

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https://www.dea.gov/factsheets/marijuana

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Official websites use .gov
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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Mind-altering psychoactive drug. Dry, shredded, green/brown mix of flowers, stems, seeds and leaves from the cannabis sativa plant. THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) is the main ingredient that produces the psychoactive effect. Addictive.

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National Institute on Drug Abuse Marijuana info

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National Institute on Drug Abuse Marijuana info

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Cannabis (Marijuana) | National Institute on Drug Abuse

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Marijuana refers to the dried leaves, flowers, stems, and seeds from the hemp plant, Cannabis sativa.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khSO7qEKbvo

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Heroin(e) | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix

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https://casapalmera.com/blog/the-history-of-illegal-drugs-in-america/

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Drug abuse and addiction has been a social problem in America for nearly a century. What may be surprising is that many of these illegal drugs were first introduced by doctors as legal over-the-counter and prescription medications. Here's more about the history of illegal drugs in America. [ Courtesy of PBS.org]

History of Marijuana in America

Perhaps one of the oldest drugs in American history is marijuana, which was grown by the Jamestown settlers around 1600. Before the Civil War marijuana was a major source of revenue for the U.S., and marijuana plantations flourished during the 19th century. Marijuana was widely used as a medicinal drug from 1850 to 1937 and could even be purchased over the counter in pharmacies and general stores. Marijuana became an attractive alternative to alcohol after the price of alcohol was raised in 1920.

In the 1930s, studies began to emerge that linked marijuana use by lower class communities to crime and violence, leading to the eventual banning of marijuana in 1937. In the 1960s, marijuana use became a popular drug of choice among white Beatniks, and stricter penalties for marijuana offenses were passed under the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. Since then, citizens and politicians alike have pushed to have marijuana decriminalized, but it remains an illegal drug in the U.S. Marijuana was, however, legalized for medical use in California in 1966 for people with serious illnesses, and medical marijuana still remains legal in some states.

History of Methamphetamine in America

The stimulant amphetamine first became popular in the medical community in the 1920s, where it was used for stimulating the central nervous system, raising blood pressure, and enlarging nasal passages. Amphetamines were widely distributed to soldiers during World War II to combat fatigue and improve endurance and mood, and were prescribed by doctors after the war to help fight depression.

Amphetamine abuse began during the 1930s when it became an over-the-counter inhalant drug marketed under the name Benzedrine. As more and more people legally used amphetamines, an illegal black market began to emerge. Illegal amphetamines were used commonly by truck drivers who wanted to stay alert on long commutes and athletes looking to improve their performance. Students also began taking illicit amphetamines to help them study.

The practice of injecting amphetamines gained popularity in the 1960s, which led the emergence of underground labs that were mainly controlled by outlaw motorcycle groups. During the 1970s, amphetamine use began to decline due to increased public awareness of its dangers and remained on a decline until the 1990s when crystal methamphetamine, a smokable form of methamphetamine, emerged. Since then, crystal meth has remained a popular drug of choice for three main types of users: high school and college students; blue-collar Caucasians; and unemployed persons in their 20s and 30s.

History of Cocaine in America

Cocaine was a popular medical drug in Europe for decades before it became popular in America. In 1886, "Coca-Cola" was introduced and contained syrup derived from coca leaves. That same year the Surgeon-General of the United States Army endorsed medical use of cocaine. Over the next few decades various unregulated medicinal "tonics" were sold in the U.S. containing cocaine, and hundreds of Hollywood silent movies depicted scenes of cocaine use. By 1902 there were an estimated 200,000 cocaine addicts in the U.S.

Cocaine was finally outlawed in 1914 and declined in usage over the decades until it regained popularity in the 1970s as a recreational, glamorized drug, eventually reaching its peak in 1982 with 10.4 million users. Some U.S. media declared cocaine as non-addictive and it was viewed as a relatively harmless drug until the emergence of crack in 1985.

History of Crack Cocaine in America

Crack, a form of cocaine that is sold as "rocks" and smoked, first appeared in large U.S. cities around 1985. Crack became a popular alternative to cocaine in urban and working-class areas because it was much cheaper than cocaine. This led to a dramatic increase in crack use known as the "Crack Epidemic of the 1980s." A major crackdown on crack abuse was launched, leading to its eventual decline in usage.

History of LSD in America

LSD first emerged on the American scene during the 1950s, when the U.S. military and CIA researched the use of LSD as a "truth drug" that could be used to make prisoners talk. This led the psychiatric community to become interested in LSD for its possible therapeutic capabilities for depressed, psychotic and epileptic patients.

Illegal use of LSD began to escalate during the late 1950s and 1960s as mental health professionals and research study participants began to distribute the drug among their friends. LSD was only available through connections to the medical field until 1962, when a black market for LSD emerged in America. LSD was made illegal in 1966 and, soon after, an LSD black market emerged. Users began experiencing growing problems with the "new" LSD, which was contaminated and of a poorer quality than the medical-grade LSD they were used to. Despite its poorer quality, LSD was a popular drug of choice for "hippies" during the mid- to late-1960s. LSD use declined in the 1970s and 1980s, but reemerged in the 1990s in the rave subculture along with other hallucinogens.

History of Heroin in America

Opiates were popular in the United States throughout the 19th century, particularly among upper- and middle-class women who were prescribed tonics and elixirs containing opium to cure "female problems." The practice of smoking opium was introduced in the 1850s and 1860s by Chinese laborers who came to the U.S. to work on railroads.

The opiate-based drug morphine was created in 1803 and widely used during the American Civil War as an injectable pain reliever, leading to the first wave of morphine addiction. Interestingly, the drug heroin was created in 1895 and marketed three years later as a potential solution to the increasing problem of morphine addiction. The charitable St. James Society even mailed free samples of heroin to morphine addicts as part of a campaign against morphine addiction. As a result, heroin addiction began to take root and grow.

The second major wave of opiate addiction in America began in the 1930s and 1940s Harlem jazz scene, and again during the Beatnik subculture of the 1950s. During the Vietnam War, heroin abuse became rampant among U.S. soldiers stationed abroad, with an estimated 10% to 15% of servicemen addicted to heroin. Heroin users began smoking and snorting heroin after improvements were made in the purity of street heroin in the 1980s and 1990s. As a result, heroin usage rose significantly in the 1990s.

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Drug abuse and addiction has been a social problem in America for nearly a century. What may be surprising is that many of these illegal drugs were first introduced by doctors as legal over-the-counter and prescription medications. Here's more about the history of illegal drugs in America.

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https://www.history.com/topics/crime/the-war-on-drugs

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The War on Drugs Begins

Drug use for medicinal and recreational purposes has been happening in the United States since the country's inception. In the 1890s, the popular Sears and Roebuck catalogue included an offer for a syringe and small amount of cocaine for $1.50. (At that time, cocaine use had not yet been outlawed.)

In some states, laws to ban or regulate drugs were passed in the 1800s, and the first congressional act to levy taxes on morphine and opium took place in 1890.

The Smoking Opium Exclusion Act in 1909 banned the possession, importation and use of opium for smoking. However, opium could still be used as a medication. This was the first federal law to ban the non-medical use of a substance, although many states and counties had banned alcohol sales previously.

In 1914, Congress passed the Harrison Act, which regulated and taxed the production, importation, and distribution of opiates and cocaine.

Alcohol prohibition laws quickly followed. In 1919, the 18th Amendment was ratified, banning the manufacture, transportation or sale of intoxicating liquors, ushering in the Prohibition Era. The same year, Congress passed the National Prohibition Act (also known as the Volstead Act), which provided guidelines on how to federally enforce Prohibition.

Prohibition lasted until December, 1933, when the 21st Amendment was ratified, overturning the 18th.

Marijuana Tax Act of 1937

In 1937, the "Marihuana Tax Act" was passed. This federal law placed a tax on the sale of cannabis, hemp, or marijuana.

The Act was introduced by Rep. Robert L. Doughton of North Carolina and was drafted by Harry Anslinger. While the law didn't criminalize the possession or use of marijuana, it included hefty penalties if taxes weren't paid, including a fine of up to $2000 and five years in prison.

Controlled Substances Act

President Richard M. Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) into law in 1970. This statute calls for the regulation of certain drugs and substances.

The CSA outlines five "schedules" used to classify drugs based on their medical application and potential for abuse.

Schedule 1 drugs are considered the most dangerous, as they pose a very high risk for addiction with little evidence of medical benefits. Marijuana, LSD, heroin, MDMA (ecstasy) and other drugs are included on the list of Schedule 1 drugs.

The substances considered least likely to be addictive, such as cough medications with small amounts of codeine, fall into the Schedule 5 category.

Nixon and the War on Drugs

In June 1971, Nixon officially declared a "War on Drugs," stating that drug abuse was "public enemy number one."

A rise in recreational drug use in the 1960s likely led to President Nixon's focus on targeting some types of substance abuse. As part of the War on Drugs initiative, Nixon increased federal funding for drug-control agencies and proposed strict measures, such as mandatory prison sentencing, for drug crimes. He also announced the creation of the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP), which was headed by Dr. Jerome Jaffe.

Nixon went on to create the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1973. This agency is a special police force committed to targeting illegal drug use and smuggling in the United States.

At the start, the DEA was given 1,470 special agents and a budget of less than $75 million. Today, the agency has nearly 5,000 agents and a budget of $2.03 billion.

Ulterior Motives Behind War on Drugs?

During a 1994 interview, President Nixon's domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, provided inside information suggesting that the War on Drugs campaign had ulterior motives, which mainly involved helping Nixon keep his job.

In the interview, conducted by journalist Dan Baum and published in Harper magazine, Ehrlichman explained that the Nixon campaign had two enemies: "the antiwar left and black people." His comments led many to question Nixon's intentions in advocating for drug reform and whether racism played a role.

Ehrlichman was quoted as saying: "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did."

The 1970s and The War on Drugs

In the mid-1970s, the War on Drugs took a slight hiatus. Between 1973 and 1977, eleven states decriminalized marijuana possession.

Jimmy Carter became president in 1977 after running on a political campaign to decriminalize marijuana. During his first year in office, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to decriminalize up to one ounce of marijuana.

Say No to Drugs

In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan reinforced and expanded many of Nixon's War on Drugs policies. In 1984, his wife Nancy Reagan launched the " Just Say No " campaign, which was intended to highlight the dangers of drug use.

President Reagan's refocus on drugs and the passing of severe penalties for drug-related crimes in Congress and state legislatures led to a massive increase in incarcerations for nonviolent drug crimes.

In 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which established mandatory minimum prison sentences for certain drug offenses. This law was later heavily criticized as having racist ramifications because it allocated longer prison sentences for offenses involving the same amount of crack cocaine (used more often by black Americans) as powder cocaine (used more often by white Americans). Five grams of crack triggered an automatic five-year sentence, while it took 500 grams of powder cocaine to merit the same sentence.

Critics also pointed to data showing that people of color were targeted and arrested on suspicion of drug use at higher rates than whites. Overall, the policies led to a rapid rise in incarcerations for nonviolent drug offenses, from 50,000 in 1980 to 400,000 in 1997. In 2014, nearly half of the 186,000 people serving time in federal prisons in the United States had been incarcerated on drug-related charges, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

A Gradual Dialing Back

Public support for the war on drugs has waned in recent decades. Some Americans and policymakers feel the campaign has been ineffective or has led to racial divide. Between 2009 and 2013, some 40 states took steps to soften their drug laws, lowering penalties and shortening mandatory minimum sentences, according to the Pew Research Center.

In 2010, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), which reduced the discrepancy between crack and powder cocaine offenses from 100:1 to 18:1.

The recent legalization of marijuana in several states and the District of Columbia has also led to a more tolerant political view on recreational drug use.

Technically, the War on Drugs is still being fought, but with less intensity and publicity than in its early years.

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War on Drugs - Timeline in America, Definition & Facts | HISTORY

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The War on Drugs is a phrase used to refer to a government-led initiative in America that aims to stop illegal drug use, distribution and trade by increasing and enforcing penalties for offenders. The movement started in the 1970s and is still evolving today.

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History of America's most popular drugs 

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History of America's most popular drugs 

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https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/buyers/socialhistory.html

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First synthesized in 1887, the stimulant amphetamine became popular in 1920s in the medical community, where it was used for raising blood pressure, enlarging the nasal passages, and stimulating the central nervous system. Abuse of the drug began during the 1930s, when it was marketed under the name Benzedrine and sold in an over-the-counter inhaler. During World War II, amphetamines were widely distributed to soldiers to combat fatigue and improve both mood and endurance, and after the war physicians began to prescribe amphetamines to fight depression. As legal usage of amphetamines increased, a black market emerged. Common users of illicit amphetamines included truck drivers on long commutes and athletes looking for better performance. Students referred to the drug as "pep pills" and used them to aid in studying.

The earliest references to the practice of injecting amphetamines (particularly methamphetamine) occurred during the 1950s, but the practice did not spread until the 1960s(1). In 1962 a crackdown on San Francisco pharmacies which sold injectable amphetamines drew national attention to the problem of amphetamine "mainlining." and led to the emergence of underground production facilities referred to as "speed labs"(2). While many of these labs, primarily located on the West Coast, were small "Mom and Pop" operations, the amphetamine trade was historically dominated by outlaw motorcycle groups(3). Amphetamine use began to decline in the 1970s, due to increased public awareness of its dangers, as well as FDA scheduling of the drug(4).

During the 1990s, the popularity of crystal methamphetamine, a smokable form of methamphetamine commonly referred to as "ice", began to increase in the United States. In addition to the traditional local "mom and pop" labs, in 1995 Mexico-based trafficking groups began to enter the methamphetamine market and now dominate the trade(5). In the 1990s, clandestine "Mom and Pop" labs have sprung up throughout the Midwestern United States, and as a result the Mexican traffickers have also targeted the region. There are two current basic profiles of methamphetamine users: students (both high school and college) and white, blue-collar and unemployed persons in their 20s and 30s(6).

Cocaine is derived from the coca plant native to the Andean highlands of South America. Pure cocaine was first isolated in the mid-nineteenth century, but its effects weren't recognized in the medical world until the 1880s. In 1883, Dr. Theodor Aschenbrandt, a German army physician, prescribed cocaine to Bavarian soldiers during training to help reduce fatigue(7). In July, 1884, Sigmund Freud published Uber Coca, a hymn of praise to the drug which, along with "Vin Mariani," a coca wine manufactured by a Corsican chemist, helped lead to the drug's popularization in Europe. In 1886 John Pemberton of Atlanta, Georgia began to market "Coca-Cola," a syrup derived from coca leaves and African kola nuts. The same year Dr. William Alexander Hammond, the Surgeon-General of the U.S. Army endorsed the medical use of cocaine at a meeting of the New York Neurological Society(8). Throughout the early 1900s unregulated medicinal "tonics" were sold containing ingredients including cocaine and opium(9). By 1902 there were an estimated 200,000 cocaine addicts in the United States, and by 1907, U.S. coca leaf imports were three times their 1900 levels(10). Hundreds of early Hollywood silent films depicted scenes of drug use and trafficking(11).

In 1914, the Harrison Narcotic Act outlawed cocaine in the United States and usage declined throughout the 1940s through the 1960s(12). In the 1970s cocaine regained popularity as a recreational drug and was glamorized in the U.S. popular media. Articles from the time proclaimed cocaine as non-addictive. The drug was viewed as harmless until the 1985 emergence of crack.

Cocaine usage peaked in the United States 1982 with 10.4 million users. The 1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse reported that cocaine was used by 3.8 million Americans. As of 1999, Colombiaremained the world's leading producer of cocaine, producing three quarters of the world's annual yield(13).

Crack cocaine is a free-based form of cocaine made by cooking cocaine powder, water, and baking soda until it forms a solid that can be broken down and sold in individual "rocks." Crack cocaine first appeared in large cities such as LA, Miami, and NY around 1985. Where cocaine was expensive to purchase, crack could be bought at affordable prices and became prevalent in working class and poorer neighborhoods. Crack cocaine was highlighted by the media in the controversy surrounding the 1985 death of college basketball star Len Bias, who at the time was thought to have died from an overdose of crack cocaine (although later it was discovered that Bias had in fact overdosed on powder cocaine).

In 1986 and 1988, as the public furor surrounding crack increased, Congress imposed mandatory sentencing laws which dramatically increased the penalties for possessing or trafficking in crack, which was perceived to be a much more serious problem than powder cocaine. The ratio between sentences for crack and powder cocaine offenses was set at 100 to 1. As a result, a low level crack dealer may be subject to harsher penalties than a higher level powder cocaine dealer.

In 1994 the United States Sentencing Commission began studying the effects of these differing penalties, and found that the harsher sentences for crack cocaine were imposed primarily on black citizens. A study revealed that while almost 2/3 of crack users in the US were white or Hispanic, 84.5% of those convicted for crack possession were black, while 10.3% were white and 5.2% were Hispanic. Similarly, of those convicted for crack trafficking in 1994, 88.3% were black, while 4.1% were white and 7.1% were Hispanic. The statistics for those convicted of powder cocaine offenses were much more racially mixed. The Sentencing Commission concluded that the dramatic difference in penalties, combined with the racial disparity in enforcement, resulted in black men and women serving longer prison sentences than those of other ethnicities. In 1995 the US Sentencing Commission recommended eliminating this disparity in a report to Congress; however both Congress and the Clinton administration rejected the recommendation.

LSD was accidentally discovered and ingested by Dr. Albert Hofmann, a Swiss chemist working for Sandoz Laboratories, who found himself embarking on the first LSD "trip" in history in 1943. Soon after Hofmann's initial experimentation with LSD, he provided samples of the drug to psychiatrists at the University of Zurich for further testing into possible uses. In the 1950s, the U.S. military and CIA researched LSD as a possible "truth drug," which could be used for brainwashing or inducing prisoners to talk. However, after military interest in LSD waned in favor of other drugs, the psychiatric community began to research and issue reports on the drug's possible therapeutic capabilities for psychotic, epileptic, and depressed patients.

Non-therapeutic use of LSD increased throughout the late 1950s and 1960s. Among the first groups to use LSD recreationally were research study participants, physicians, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals who later distributed the drug among their friends. Prior to 1962, LSD was available only on a small scale to those who had connections in the medical field, as all the LSD was produced by Sandoz Laboratories, in Basel Switzerland, and then distributed to health professionals. However, the drug was not difficult to produce in a chemical laboratory. The formula could be purchased for 50 cents from the US patent office, and the LSD itself could be stored inside blotting paper. Soon a black market for LSD in the US emerged.

In 1966 the Grunsky Bill was passed by Congress, which prohibited the possession, manufacturing, sale and importation of LSD. Illegal manufacturing of LSD continued despite the new law, but soon LSD users experienced growing problems with contaminated or adulterated LSD produced by amateur chemists and not of the same quality as that produced by Sandoz..

Dr. Timothy Leary, who had earlier conducted experiments with hallucinogenic psilocybin was introduced to LSD in 1961. His personal use of the drug helped lead to his dismissal from a teaching position at Harvard in 1963. Writers such as Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg and Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters were known for their use of LSD, and the 1967 "Summer of Love" in San Francisco linked the drug to counterculture music and the philosophy of "sex, drugs and rock and roll"(14).

While use of LSD declined in the 1970s and 1980s, the drug has made a resurgence in the 1990s, particularly in the rave subculture. It is typically manufactured in clandestine laboratories in Northern California, and it is believed that a limited number of chemists manufacture nearly all available LSD, although at a potency almost ninety percent weaker than the typical dose of the 1960s(15).

Marijuana cultivation began in the United States around 1600 with the Jamestown settlers, who began growing the cannabis sativa or hemp plant for its unusually strong fiber that was used to make rope, sails, and clothing. Until after the Civil War, marijuana was a source of major revenue for the United States. During the 19th century marijuana plantations flourished in Mississippi, Georgia, California, South Carolina, Nebraska, New York, and Kentucky. Also during this period, smoking hashish, a stronger preparation of marijuana derived from the dried resin of the plant, was popular throughout France and to a lesser degree in the US.

Between 1850 and 1937 marijuana was widely used throughout United States as a medicinal drug and could easily be purchased in pharmacies and general stores. Recreational use was limited in the US until after the Mexican Revolution of 1910, when an influx of Mexican immigrants introduced the habit. The Volstead Act of 1920, which raised the price of alcohol in the United States, positioned marijuana as an attractive alternative and led to an increase in use of the drug. "Tea pads," where a person could purchase marijuana for 25 cents or less, began appearing in cities across the United States, particularly as part of the black "hepster" jazz culture. By 1930 it was reported that there were at least 500 of these "tea pads" in New York City alone. During the Great Depression as unemployment increased, resentment and fear of the Mexican immigrants became connected to marijuana use. Numerous research studies linked marijuana use by lower class communities with crime and violence. In 1937, Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act which criminalized the drug. From 1951 to 1956 stricter sentencing laws set mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related offenses. In the 1950s the beatniks appropriated the use of marijuana from the black hepsters and the drug moved into middle-class white America in the 1960s.

The increasing use of marijuana by mainstream white Americans helped lead to the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, under which mandatory penalties for drug offenses were repealed by Congress and marijuana was categorized separately from other narcotics. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) was founded the same year. In the late 1970s, President Carter's administration, including his assistant for drug policy, Dr. Peter Bourne, pushed for decriminalization of marijuana, with the president himself asking Congress to abolish federal criminal penalties for those caught with less than one ounce of marijuana. A grassroots parents' movement responded by lobbying for stricter regulations and was instrumental in changing public attitudes. In 1986, President Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, reinstating mandatory minimums and raising federal penalties for possession and distribution. In 1996, California enacted Proposition 215, which legalized medical marijuana use for people suffering from AIDS, cancer, and other serious illnesses and a similar bill was passed in Arizona the same year. Current domestic marijuana cultivation trends are towards indoor production due to law enforcement efforts to curtail outdoor cultivation. The majority of foreign marijuana is supplied by trafficking organizations in Mexico, although countries in the Far East, such as Thailand and Cambodia, also supply the United States.

Opiates were popular in the United States throughout the 19 th century, particularly among women(16). Tonics and elixirs containing opium were readily available in drugstores, and doctors commonly prescribed opiates for upper and middle class women suffering from neurasthenia and other "female problems." Chinese laborers who came to work on U.S. railroads in the 1850s and 1860s brought with them the practice of opium smoking. While a San Francisco city ordinance passed in 1875 banned smoking opium within city limits, by the turn of the century opium dens were commonplace throughout the nation(17). In the l890s, tabloids owned by William Randolph Hearst published stories of white women being seduced by Chinese men and their opium to invoke fear of the "Yellow Peril."(18).

The synthesis of morphine by Friedrich Sertuerner of Germany in 1803 led physicians to label the drug as "God's own medicine" for its reliability, long-lasting effects, and safety(19). The mid-nineteenth century invention of the hypodermic syringe and the use of injectable morphine as a pain reliever during the American Civil War led to the first wave of morphine addiction. In 1895, Heinrich Dreser, working for the Bayer Company in Germany, synthesized heroin. Bayer began to market the drug in 1898. In the early 1900s heroin was seen as a potential solution to the increasing problem of morphine addiction, and the philanthropic St. James Society mounted a campaign to mail free samples of heroin to morphine addicts. Heroin addiction grew, particularly in northern industrial slums.

In the second major wave of American opiate addiction, heroin was integrated into the new cultural identity of the "hipster"(20), first through the Harlem jazz scene in the 1930s and 1940s and then through the Beatnik subculture of the 1950s. During this period the major supply of heroin entering the U.S. came through the "French Connection"--a collaboration between Corsican gangsters in Marseille and the Sicilian Mafia. In April 1971, Congressman Robert Steele (R-CT) investigated reports of rampant heroin abuse among U.S. servicemen in Vietnam. His fact-finding mission estimated an addiction rate of 10 to 15%. This alarming statistic, combined with emerging evidence linking heroin addiction to crime, pushed the heroin problem to the front of Nixon's drug policy agenda.

Improvements in purity of street heroin in the 1980s and 1990s led to the potential of the drug being effectively smoked and snorted(21). Usage of heroin increased significantly in the 1990s. Historically the majority of the drug entered the U.S. through the French Connection or the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia (Burma, Thailand, Laos), however since 1993 South American drug organizations have been expanding from the cocaine market into the heroin market.

Brecher, Edward M., and the editors of Consumer Reports. Licit and Illicit Drugs: The Consumers Union Report on Narcotics, Stimulants, Depressants, Inhalants, Hallucinogens, and Marijuana--including Caffeine, Nicotine, and Alcohol. Boston: Little Brown, 1972.

Jonnes, Jill. Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams: A History of America's Romance with Illegal Drugs. NY: Scribner, 1996.

Kuhn, Cynthia, Swartzwelder, Scott and Wilson, Wilkie. Buzzed: The Straight Facts About the Most Used and Abused Drugs from Alcohol to Ecstasy. New York: Norton, 1998.

Musto, David F. The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control, Third Ed. New York: Yale UP, 1999

(1) Licit and Illicit Drugs, 282.
(2) Licit and Illicit Drugs, 282.
(3) www.usdoj.gov/dea/concern/meth.htm
(4) www.acnp.org/G4/GN401000166/CH162.htm
(5) www.usdoj.gov/dea/concern/meth.htm
(6) www.kci.org/meth_info/faq_meth.htm
(7)Licit and Illicit Drugs, 272.
(8) Hep Cats, 22.
(9) Buzzed, 198., www.cocaineaddiction.com/cocaine_hist.html
(10) Hep Cats, 25, 33.
(11) Hep Cats, 60., www.cocaineaddiction.com/cocaine_hist.html
(12) Licit and Illicit Drugs, 276.
(13) www.usdoj.gov/dea/concern/cocaine.htm
(14) Hep Cats, 234.
(15) www.usdoj.gov/dea/concern/lsd.htm
(16) Licit and Illicit Drugs, 17, HC, 18.
(17) Hep Cats 30.
(18) www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/heroin/etc/history.html
(19) www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/heroin/etc/history.html
(20) Hep Cats, Ch. 7
(21) www.usdoj.gov/dea/concern/heroin.htm

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The Buyers - A Social History Of America's Most Popular Drugs | Drug Wars | FRONTLINE | PBS

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First synthesized in 1887, the stimulant amphetamine became popular in 1920s in the medical community, where it was used for raising blood pressure, enlarging the nasal passages, and stimulating the central nervous system. Abuse of the drug began during the 1930s, when it was marketed under the name Benzedrine and sold in an over-the-counter inhaler.

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Summary of Federal and State Drug Laws via Seattle Pacific University

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Summary of Federal and State Drug Laws via Seattle Pacific University

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https://www.dea.gov/documents/2022/2022-12/2022-12-14/complexities-and-conveniences-international-drug-trade

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Complexities and Conveniences in the International Drug Trade

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This report delves into the activities of these criminals and their methods. Drug trafficking operations benefit from a number of different actors, such as brokers, cooks, envoys, intermediaries, and money laundering service providers. Examples of the methods used by the criminals include the corruption of officials in the public and private sectors and the exploitation of legal business structures.

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https://www.dea.gov/documents/2022/2022-12/2022-12-21/growing-threat-xylazine-and-its-mixture-illicit-drugs

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The Growing Threat of Xylazine and its Mixture with Illicit Drugs

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Xylazine, reported as an adulterant in an increasing number of illicit drug mixtures, has also been detected in a growing number of overdose deaths. It is commonly encountered in combination with fentanyl but has also been detected in mixtures containing cocaine, heroin, and a variety of other drugs.

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https://www.dea.gov/drug-information/drug-scheduling

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Drug Schedules Drugs, substances, and certain chemicals used to make drugs are classified into five (5) distinct categories or schedules depending upon the drug's acceptable medical use and the drug's abuse or dependency potential.

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https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Rb3RnR2XhdhOthIOQAx2n?si=e1b3654d39cb4d14

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Listen to this episode from The Dr. Junkie Show on Spotify. Power works, in part, through the creation and sustainment of cultural myth, and the US has no shortage of mythological identities which don't pan out when closely examined.

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https://open.spotify.com/episode/4BBh2wcYr3l177UhYcAnHR?si=b61a712e5ad84a03

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Listen to this episode from The Dr. Junkie Show on Spotify. Drugs were not always illegal in the USA. For a good deal of our history you could walk into your local pharmacy and buy cocaine, heroin or cannabis right off the shelf, without a prescription.

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https://open.spotify.com/track/5cW3DEWYYv0tXZMwcUZNRg?si=c25741ef8b5e4c7b
https://open.spotify.com/track/2PieESXphabz5AkALFS08X?si=97dbc519620b4b0f
https://open.spotify.com/track/3DFjTEueCBYqg7YE05eUJP?si=c7c53b7f58e64feb

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Episode deals with the effects and actions of people with severe drug addictions