It’s not early, and not addiction per se, but The Gene Krupa Story (1959) tells the story of how the famous big band leader/drummer derailed his career and hit bottom due to his use and abuse of (duh duh duuuuhhhh)…marijuana.
Mystery of Edwin Drood
Choirmaster John Jasper is an opium addict in Dickens’ last, unfinished novel. First filmed version of the story was done as a short in 1909, followed by a feature in 1914. Claude Rains stars in the best-known version in 1935.
Broken Blossoms (1919)
This is something of an anomaly because while opium is part of the story, no one gets addicted or suffers any adverse consequences as a result of smoking it; indeed, opium serves a useful purpose by offering the characters a respite from the everyday misery of their lives.
Heroes for Sale (1933)
The protagonist lets someone else take credit for his WWI heroics, then gets hooked on morphine while recovering from his wounds. A better title for this flick might be Chumps for Sale.
The Invisible Man (1933)
Monocaine!
A Hatful of Rain (1957)
Bland Hollywood treatment of addiction.
Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962)
Awful, yet it does contain an opium trip sequence.
Which is NOT how it’s portrayed in the original story the movie is based on (which has a totally different ending, too). In the original, people use opium because their lives are miserable. They are good people who have a lot to offer, but because they suffer a lot of racial prejudice and no one wants their talents, they end up in dead-end jobs, smoking opium to relieve their boredom.
It’s a fascinating piece. It’s a mixture of horrible racism of its time (the title is “The Chink and the Child”), and weird enlightenment. It’s in a collection of short stories set in Limehouse, London’s Chinatown just before WWI, and all the villains are white people. It’s written by a white guy, whose style is imitative of English translations of Asian literature.
Even Betty Boop cartoons mentioned drug addiction, such as Minnie the Moocher (1932)
Starting 5:00
*She messed around with a bloke named Smokey
She loved him though was cokey
He took her down to Chinatown
And he showed her how to kick the gong around [smoke opium]
*
The first time I saw Modern Times (decades ago) it really surprised me. They never said “cocaine” of course. They called it “nose candy.”
Victim (1962)
“Spring Night, Summer Night” – taboo, but no exploitation at all. Very cinema-verite.
Heh. I used to know a farmer/trucker who was the most straitlaced guy I’d ever met. He worked really hard, managing a small farm and driving a truck, putting in long days and longer weeks. One day he told me he’d lost his truck due to “nose candy”. He actually used that term.
A Pipe Dream is kind of stretching it, since it’s just a 43-second movie of a woman smoking a cigarette and imagining the smoke as being a man dancing on her outstretched hand.
Shoes (1916)
Does Shoes actually contain any references to drugs? Have you watched it? I couldn’t find a copy of it online. It’s supposed to be a fascinating film for its time. It’s about poverty and prostitution, for instance, but I couldn’t find any mention of it discussing drugs.
Alice’s Restaurant (the movie), 1969, contains themes dealing with drug addiction (not included in the original song).
OP asks for “taboo in general”. So also consider Oh, Calcutta!, a long-running Broadway revue started in 1969 I think, later made into a movie in 1972. This was a series of skits on sex topics, much more explicit than was commonly considered acceptable in those days.
No drugs, but a girl selling herself for a pair of shoes was pretty taboo for 1916. I just didn’t want to “spoil” it and figured whoever was curious would find out… I just saw this yesterday on TCM (and I think its still available On-Demand) and it reminded me of this.
Madchen in Uniform
In 1916, Douglas Fairbanks spoofed Sherlock Holmes in THE MYSTERY OF THE LEAPING FISH, where he
An article about early drug addiction movies is The Cokey Comedies of the Silent Screen Era | Features | Roger Ebert.
Days of Wine and Roses. Depressing and thought provoking.
Less that Zero is another but it was basically an 80’s film.