When and what was the first drug/narcotic made illegal in the United States? Are newly formed dirivatives of existing illegal drugs implied also to be illegal?
From… http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/1234/wod.html
This site claims that The Harrison Act (1914) was the first to outlaw the non-medical use of coca derived drugs and to regulate the medical use of these drugs.
A much more thorough site with earlier attempts at drug regulation, particularly opium.
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/govpubs/amhab/amhabc4.htm
“Are newly formed dirivatives of existing illegal drugs implied also to be illegal?”
yup. any derivative of an existing, and illegal, drug is also illegal by US law.
The earliest anti-drug ordinance I’ve found was an 1875 San Francisco law against opium use.
In 1883 Congress raised the tariff on opium to $6, then $10 and finally $12 before lowering back to $6 again when they realiized the tariff was stimulating smuggling.
The 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act required patent medicine makers to clearly label the opium content of their concoctions, the hope being that an informed public could better avoid the more addictive elixirs.
As mentioned above, the legal point of no return arrived with passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act in 1914. Innocuous appearing in its simple call for the registration and licensing of those who dealt in or dispensed narcotics, when its clause providing that a physician dispense these drugs “…in the course of his professional practice only…” was combined with the prevailing view that, once detoxified, an addict was no longer an addict, it was soon established that it was outside the course of professional practice for a physician to prescribe an opiate for habit maintenance or avoidance of withdrawal. In 1922, in U.S. v. Behrman, the Supreme Court ruled that, regardless of medical intent, such treatment was illegal under the Act.
As long as we’re on the subject, the Marijuana Tax Act came along in 1937.
Comments?
None of them are illegal, they’re just scheduled. Possession is regulated, permission must be obtained.
Not only newly formed derivatives, in various classes, ( are ‘illegal’ ) but also the pre-cursor chemicals necessary for manufacture.
You could look up the current scheduling restrictions (somewhere)under title 21 USC, or perhaps in the indices to Shulgins’ TIHKAL.
Nah, that pretty much summed up the first page of my second link pretty well.
How clear is the law on this matter? After all, almost any chemical, bearing little of the functionality associated with the end product, could be used to manufacture these substances, given sufficient time, expertise and imagination. If you look at some of the early syntheses of, for example, morphine and lysergic acid, you find that the starting materials are invariably cheap and readily available, as they had to be in the first half of this century.
id like to kno ur thoughts on legalizing marijuana
now thats some good dope
ripnip try looking in these places:
Is it “OK” to smoke marijuana?
Pot legalization - a new twist
Legalization of Controlled Substances