Drug Abuse

After the meetings at The Hague the next international conference on the narcotics drugs problem was held at Geneva in 1924-1925 under the auspices of the League of Nations. In the interim the United States gave its attention in varying degrees to three aspects of that problem: her own domestic predicament, the situation in China, and the question of whether and to what extent the United States should cooperate with the League of Nations in the solution of the problem. Because the drug problem transcended national boundaries, these aspects of the problem were closely interrelated.

Paradoxically, just as the United States began to ascertain the full dimensions of her internal problem, claims were made that the problem, in numbers of people involved, was already contracting in scope. Although there could be no accurate statistics on the extent of drug addiction in the United States, the best estimates submitted at different periods indicated that more people in total numbers and in proportion to the total population suffered from drug addiction prior to 1908, when the situation was first brought into general focus, than after that period. Estimates of the number of drug addicts in the United States between 1900 and 1924 ranged from a low of about 1 oo,000 to an obviously inaccurate and extreme figure of 4,000,000. The American commission to the Shanghai conference also overestimated the problem. In his report on the Shanghai Opium Commission, Hamilton Wright estimated that 150,000 Americans, excluding Chinese, were habitual opium smokers, and that of the medicinal opium imported, 75 percent was manufactured into morphine, of which 8o percent went to habitual users.'

In 1918 the Secretary of the Treasury appointed a special narcotics committee to investigate the drug problem in the United States and to recommend remedial measures and administrative changes in the narcotic laws. Their report confirmed previous statements that there was a very serious narcotics problem in the United States. Their findings were very largely based on information received from police officials, physicians, and local and state public health officials. They reported that between 1910 and 1915 at least 75 percent of the opium and coca leaves and their derivatives imported legally and consumed in the United States was used for other than medical purposes, and that there was consumed in the United States ten times as much opium per capita than in the largest consuming country in Europe. They maintained further that the smuggled supply was just as great as the legitimate. They estimated the number of addicts at about 1,000,000. The committee found that addiction was acquired primarily in two ways: by association with drug addicts, in which case the principal drugs used were heroin and cocaine, and through physicians' prescriptions, in which case the principal drugs used were morphine and opium preparations. Drugs used by addicts, in order of their frequency, were morphine, heroin, the various forms of opium, and cocaine. Codeine, laudanum, and paregoric were used in equal amounts. Addiction cut across all racial, social, and economic barriers and was discovered to be equally prevalent among both sexes.2

An interesting feature of the report was the prominence given to liquor prohibition as a cause of drug addiction. In the responses from police officials, prohibition stood third behind physicians' prescriptions and association with other addicts as a cause of drug addiction. In reports of state and local health officials it stood third in order of frequency behind physicians' prescriptions and use of drugs for chronic diseases. The prohibition referred to was that on the state and local level, since nationwide prohibition had not yet come into effect. Without committing themselves on the matter, the committee held that the increased sales of narcotics and patent medicines containing opiates in the Southern states, where liquor prohibition had been long in effect, supported the consensus of opinion that nationwide prohibition would result in an increase of drug addiction.3 This was an argument that the "wets" could well use, and they did. Paradoxically, missionaries and other reformers were claiming at the same time that American liquor interests were seeking to foster the drink evil in China to replace the opium vice which was then being suppressed.

In its recommendations the Committee urged (ï) the enactment of legislation on the national, state, and local levels providing care and treatment of addicts; (2) that the State Department urge the signatories of the Hague Opium Convention to enact enforcement measures; (3) that the cooperation of Mexico and Canada be secured to suppress smuggling; (4) that an educational campaign against the drug traffic be initiated throughout the country; (5) that research be undertaken by both public and private medical organizations into the nature of drug addiction and the means of treatment; and (6) that there be absolute prohibition of the use of heroin and the traffic in it, as its evil effects far outweighed its medical benefits.4

The next and by far the most scientific and comprehensive study of the extent of the drug evil in the United States was that completed by two officials of the United States Public Health Service, Lawrence Kolb and A. G. Du Mez, in 1924.3 They based their conclusions on analyses of a number of surveys made on the state and national level after 1914, on reports of agents of the Bureau of Internal Revenue and others, on various reports of narcotic clinics in existence from 1919 to 1921 in the United States, on personal interviews with physicians, and on statistics on the dose of addiction, the world production of narcotics, and quantities of narcotics imported into the United States. They concluded that on the basis of narcotic surveys, reports from clinics, and other sources, there could have been about 215,000 addicts in 1915 and about 110,000 in about 1922. They maintained that if the entire quantity of opiates imported had been used solely for addiction, it would have supplied at no time over 246,000 addicts, a development which would have occurred in the period from 1890 to 1909. They estimated that on the basis of imports of the coca leaf and its derivatives the highest possible number of cocaine addicts would be 18,000, and thus the highest possible number of drug addicts at any one time would have been 264,000. Taking into account both legitimate and illicit imports of opium and coca leaves and their derivatives for the years 1920 to 1923, they declared that between 120,000 and 140,000 addicts could have been supplied. Their final conclusion was that at the time of the completion of their report the maximum estimate would place the number of addicts at 150,000. Their estimate of the probable number was 110,000.6 They further noted that by 1924 the character of drug addiction had changed. Prior to the enactment of federal legislation regulating the drug traffic, smoking opium, gum or crude opium, and laudanum were the principal drugs used by addicts. By 1924 the alkaloids and derivatives of opium and cocaine were almost solely responsible for addiction. Taking note of the steady decrease since 1900 in the number of addicts, they ended their report with the optimistic conclusion that in the not too distant future the only users of opium would be psycopathic delinquents and persons suffering from incurable disease.'

On the basis of the foregoing questionable estimates, the equally questionable claim was made that an increase in the general population had been accompanied by a decline in the number of addicts. In 1915 there was perhaps about t addict in every 460 persons; the claim for 1924 was x in every 1,000 of the general population.

It was presumed that the major factor in this assumed decline was the passage of both state and federal, but particularly federal, legislation regulating and restricting the traffic in and use of these drugs. As stated earlier, prior to the Opium Exclusion Act of 1909 the only federal legislation controlling such traffic and use were the Internal Revenue Act of 1890, which placed a tax of $10 per pound on smoking opium manufactured in the United States and restricted such manufacture to American citizens, and the Food and Drug Act of 1906, which required that the label on the package specify the quantity or proportion of morphine, heroin, opium, and their products contained in the substances in the package, and prohibited the movement of misbranded drugs in interstate and foreign commerce. None of the federal laws controlled the importation and use of narcotic drugs in the United States. The Opium Exclusion Act, however, dealt with only one aspect of the drug problem, that of smoking opium. It did not touch the great excess of medicinal opium imported which was used illicitly, nor did it affect the interstate traffic in the various forms of such opium. The cocaine traffic likewise remained uncontrolled. The situation was compounded by the weakness of many state laws. In some states, habit-forming drugs could be bought without a prescription, some such as laudanum and paregoric and preparations containing opiates being sold in grocery stores. The laws of many states requiring the sale of drugs by prescription only were easily evaded, as illegal possession was not considered evidence for conviction, and illegal sale was therefore often hard to prove. Furthermore, in the absence of federal legislation controlling the interstate traffic in narcotics, even the states with stringent laws could not effectively deal with the problem.8 Thus, even after 1909 there was a pressing need for federal action to meet the domestic situation and also to carry out the country's international obligations, both moral and legal, which it had had so great a part in formulating through the Shanghai Opium Commission and the Hague Opium Convention.
In his report on the Opium Commission submitted by the President to Congress in I 910, Hamilton Wright urged the passage of legislation so as to confine the opium problem in the United States to a "triangle." The Opium Exclusion Act of 1909 would constitute one side of the triangle. A bill taxing and regulating the production, manufacture, and distribution of the various narcotic drugs would constitute another side. The third side would consist of a prohibitive internal revenue tax on the manufacture of smoking opium which Wright feared would take place because of the rise in price of smoking opium as a result of the Opium Exclusion Act, from $13 to $6o per pound. As smoking opium could not legally be manufactured from imported medicinal opium, Wright believed that poppy cultivation for the purpose of producing smoking opium might be resorted to in the United States in the states which did not prohibit it. In addition to these measures he proposed that a bill regulating the practice of pharmacy and the sale of poisons in the consular districts of the United States in China should be enacted to carry out our moral obligations to that nation. Drafts of the proposed legislation were contained in the same report.9

The responsibility for drafting and garnering public and congressional support for the proposed legislation was placed largely in Wright's hands. This was a difficult, exasperating, and complex task, especially in view of Wright's desire to see such legislation passed or at least well on its way to passage by the time of the First Hague Conference. In this he was unsuccessful. The only measure of significance enacted by that time was a law which became effective on January t, 1910, empowering the Postmaster General to prohibit the transportation of cocaine and other drugs through the mail. Thus the United States went into both the First and the Second Hague Opium Conferences with narcotics legislation in many respects considerably inferior to that of a number of European powers, as well as inferior to that of China and Japan. Because of objections by the drug interests to many features of the proposed legislation and the preoccupation of Congress with other matters, the desired legislation was not passed until 1914, in spite of the general sentiment in favor of the measures and the support given them by such leading congressional figures as Henry Cabot Lodge, John Sharp Williams, Elihu Root, and Furnifold M. Simmons and by both the Taft and Wilson administrations.

In January 1911 the Secretary of State recommended to Congress enactment of the desired legislative program in the form of the following measures: (i) amendments to the Opium Exclusion Act of 1909 so as to prohibit vessels trading between the United States and its possessions and foreign ports and places from carrying smoking opium, and to prohibit the exportation from the United States and areas under its jurisdiction of opium and cocaine and their products to countries regulating or prohibiting their entry unless the exporter conformed to the regulations of the importing country; (2) amendment of the Internal Revenue Act of 1890 so as to prevent the manufacture of smoking opium from opium that might be produced in the United States by the imposition of a prohibitory tax on the opium manufactured, and requirement of a prohibitory bond on the part of the manufacturer; and (3) the enactment of legislation to control the importation, manufacture, and distribution in interstate commerce of opium, morphine, cocaine, and other habit-forming drugs." Much of the proposed legislation was already before Congress.

The first two acts made their way through Congress with little or no controversy and were passed in their final versions by the Senate on December 20, 1913, and by the House on January 12, 1914, and signed by the President on January 17, thus becoming law before the Third Hague Conference. The Opium Exclusion Act was amended substantially as recommended, while the Internal Revenue Act of 1890 was revised by raising the tax on manufactured opium to $300 per pound and by increasing the manufacturer's bond from $600 to $Too,000 and also including the use of the residue from smoked opium (yenshee) for the further production of smoking opium in the term manufacture," a use which the Supreme Court had earlier held did not constitute manufacture under the act of i890."

Much more difficult to pass was the bill designed to control the domestic manufacture of and traffic in narcotics, primarily because this affected directly American dealers in the drugs. The drug interests in question did not object to the principle of the bill, which was to control the drug traffic so as to restrict consumption to medicinal uses. They objected to the details of the bill, especially the administrative features requiring the keeping of numerous records of transactions by wholesalers, retailers, and manufacturers, as imposing an intolerable burden. Some of the drug interests suggested that the control measures be confined to opium, morphine, and cocaine and their various products since the production of other narcotics such as eucaine, chloral, and cannabis (Indian hemp) was so small as not to justify restrictive measures. On the other hand, those in favor of the administrative measures defended their onerousness as the means of effecting the desired restriction of the traffic."

The congressional committees gave the bill their warm endorsement, the Senate Finance Committee adopting the report of the House Ways and Means Committee as its own except for minor amendments. They maintained that such legislation was necessitated, even if the United States had no problem of its own, by the role of the United States in the international drug movement and by the obligations resulting from the International Opium Commission and the Hague Opium Convention." But the complex details of the bill delayed passage. Hearings in the committees took up considerable time. The House-passed version of the bill was not reported from the Senate Finance Committee until February 18, 1914. Discussion of amendments recommended by that committee delayed Senate passage until August is. The most controversial issue was Section 6 of the House bill, which exempted preparations containing not more than two grains of opium, one-fourth grain of morphine, one-fourth grain of heroin, and one grain of cocaine to the fluid ounce from the bill's regulations. Senator Harry Lane of Oregon claimed that preparations containing less than these quantities of opiates were responsible for the deaths of io,000 children under a year of age annually. Nevertheless, the provision was not deleted by the Senate. The Senate did throw out, however, a proviso in the House-passed bill requiring physicians to keep a record of the drugs they dispensed. This deletion was a principal reason for the refusal of the House to accept the bill as amended by the Senate. Whereas physicians had pushed for the Senate deletion, druggists opposed such action on the grounds that it would prevent the restriction of the sale of thedrugs as intended and would give the physicians special privileges which were denied to druggists. It was not until mid-October that the two bodies were able to resolve their differences. The compromise formula provided that only physicians personally attending patients to whom they administered drugs were exempted from keeping a record of the drugs dispense d.15

The bill as finally passed on December 17, 1914, and popularly referred to as the Harrison Narcotics Act, was the most comprehensive relevant federal legislation passed up to that time. It required the registration of all persons engaged in drug transactions, from production to dispensation, with the collector of internal revenue in their districts. The sale or exchange of drugs in any way—except by a physician, surgeon, dentist, or veterinarian in personal attendance upon a patient, or by a pharmacist to a consumer on the prescription of a physician—could be made only in pursuance of a written order of the purchaser or receiver on forms issued by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. The transportation of the drugs, except by common carriers and on physicians' prescriptions, was restricted to persons registered under the Act, and possession of the drugs by unauthorized persons was to be regarded as presumptive evidence of violation of the Act. Preparations and remedies containing so small a proportion of narcotics as to make them insufficient to cause addiction were exempted from the provisions of the Act. The maximum penalty for violation of the Act was set at a $2,000 fine or five years imprisonment or both.16

The Harrison Narcotics Act constitutes the basic narcotics law of the United States although it has been amended and supplemented by other legislation several times. It was first amended in 1919. And although after considerable congressional debate, a provision was included in the Act permitting physicians to prescribe and dispense drugs for legitimate medical use to patients they personally attended, the determination of what is legitimate medical use has been made in the final analysis by federal enforcement officials, who through administrative regulations and enforcement practices have made the Act a prohibition measure. Thus as administered, the Act is representative of the attitude and establishes the policy toward narcotics in the United States that still prevails today.

The prevailing attitude, which was fully developed during the period under study, regards the use of narcotics as morally wrong, physically and morally debilitating to the human body and personality, contagious in its growth, and a menace, both physically and morally to society. The policy that stems from this attitude, and as represented in the enforcement of narcotics legislation, both federal and state, views the use of narcotics not only as morally wrong but as a criminal activity. Thus possession of the drug is regarded as presumptive evidence of illegal traffic or use. The only effective way to deal with the problem, it is held, is to make transactions in and use of such drugs for nonmedical and nonscientific purposes illegal. The only way to stop illicit use is to cut off the source of illicit supply, which can only be accomplished by limiting world production, manufacture, and traffic to quantities needed for medical and scientific uses. Today, both the attitude and the policy are being increasingly challenged in the United States. As in the period under study, controversy rages on all aspects of the narcotics situation— from cause, development and treatment to methods of control. The whole issue is beclouded by uncertainties, and opposing authoritative opinions render synthesis impossible!'

The next major legislation on narcotics was passed in 1922. This was the Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act which replaced the Opium Exclusion Act of 1909 as amended. The Act restricted the importation of crude opium and coca leaves to quantities which the Federal Narcotics Control Board, established under the Act and consisting of the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Commerce, deemed to be required for medicinal and legitimate needs; prohibited the importation of all derivatives of these drugs; and repeated the prohibition on the importation and exportation of smoking opium. Manufactured drugs were to be exported only on an import certificate from the importing country. In 1924 the Act was amended to prohibit the importation of opium for the manufacture of heroin." Thus by 1924 the basic narcotics legislation of the United States had been enacted. Other legislation to follow included an act of Congress approved on January 19, 1929, providing for the establishment of two Public Health Service hospitals for the treatment of narcotics addicts; an act of Congress approved onjuly 3, 1930, establishing a Bureau of Narcotics headed by a Commissioner of Narcotics under the Treasury Department and replacing the Federal Narcotics Control Board; the Marihuana Tax Act of August 2, 1937, which brought the traffic in marihuana under regulations similar to those of the Harrison Narcotic Act; an act of Congress in 1939 as amended in 1950 which made illegal the transportation of contraband drugs upon or by means of any vehicle, vessel, or aircraft; and the Opium Poppy Control Act of 1942, which in effect prohibited the growth of the opium poppy in the United States." Subsequent legislation has been passed to tighten up the system through penalties for violations and to bring new drugs under control."

The United States considered its legislation as enacted by the end of 1924 to be a model for other countries to follow. The American drug interests, put at a disadvantage by the legislation in competing in the world drug market, pressured the government to urge other powers to adopt similarly stringent measures. Thus, from a position behind several European nations as well as China and Japan up to 1914, the United States had again forged ahead to leadership rank in meeting both its international obligations and domestic needs. From this position it was able to appeal to other powers to take similar steps and thereby meet their international obligations, and at the same time help to make the American legislation more effective. So comprehensive was this legislation that the United States saw no need to enact additional measures to carry out subsequent international conventions which were formulated in the 1920's and 1930's, and the government even refused to adhere to some of these conventions on the grounds that they were several steps behind the existing regulations of the United States.

Having instituted the international movement to control the drug traffic in order to help China, the United States was naturally interested in the progress China was making in solving her internal problem. To an extent the American position on control of the traffic—that prohibition was the best if not the only effective method—was being tested in China. China's success or failure would strengthen or weaken the validity of the American concept. By 1913 China was making such progr8's in suppressing opium cultivation that in May of that year the Indian government declared that if such progress continued it would cease the shipment of opium to China.21 Thus for all practical purposes the opium trade between India and China came to an end in 1913.

China's remarkable achievement was applauded in the United States. Problems remained, however. Aside from the task of complete suppression of the native drug there was the problem of excess stocks of Indian opium held by merchants in China who could find no market for the drug. They owed their plight to the new revolutionary government in China, which declared all trade in the drug illegal, while provincial officials barred the entrance of the foreign drug into the provinces of China, including those which had not completely ended native cultivation. The action of the provincial officials was contrary to the Anglo-Chinese agreement of 1911. Nevertheless, by 1915 the British government had ceased to insist on the entrance of this opium, and it was left up to an opium combine of merchants in India and China to secure an outlet for their stocks of opium held at Hong Kong and Shanghai. This they did in an agreement with the government at Peking on May 1, 1915, whereby they were to be permitted to sell their stocks of opium in the provinces of Kiangsu, Kiangsi, and Kwangtung until April I, 1917." This agreement was never consummated, however, and as a result, a new contract was entered into in January 1917 whereby the Chinese government promised to purchase the remaining 2100 chests of opium held by the Shanghai combine at 82,00 taels per chest to be paid for by 6 percent Chinese government bonds guaranteed and secured by revenue from the stamp duty and tax.23 Two months later the Chinese parliament passed a bill prohibiting the government from purchasing the opium, but the president refused to sign it. Nevertheless, the agreement fell through, and a new one was signed in 1918 providing for the transfer of 1700 chests of opium in bond at 6,000 taels per chest to the Chinese government. These chests were theruto be resold to a Chinese opium syndicate consisting of certain leading officials of the Peking government and former Canton opium monopolists who were to sell their own stocks of opium as well as other foreign opium. It was claimed that the opium purchased would be used only for medical purposes.24

In the eyes of most observers, Chinese and foreign, the deal, involving as it did transactions in opium for profit by Chinese officials, was a scandalous affair. Protests from both domestic and foreign sources poured in on Peking. The United States had already defined its attitude as early as 1913 toward the plight of the opium merchants. It had ordered its consuls not to forward to the diplomatic corps at Peking the letters and petitions of these merchants and the foreign banks—including the International Banking Corporation, an American concern—which had financed their shipments from India, requesting the ministers at Peking to protest to the Chinese government the practice by provincial officials of prohibiting the sale and use of opium in their provinces, and thus closing the market for the Indian drug. The State Department took the position that the forwarding of such communications was contrary to the American policy expressed in the treaty of 1880.25 It was therefore natural that the United States, after being prodded by Mrs. Hamilton Wright, would join in the condemnation of the deal. Upon ascertaining that the British government had no part in the transaction and that furthermore it highly disapproved of it, the United States secured the cooperation of that government in making almost simultaneous and very strong protests against the transaction on the grounds that it would jeopardize the progress already made in the national and international reform movement as well as that contemplated under the Hague Opium Convention which the United States and China had already put into effect.25 Faced with vigorous opposition from various quarters and groups in China as well as the representations of the British and American legations, the Chinese government decided to burn the opium it had purchased from the Shanghai combine. The burning was carried out with great ceremony and fanfare from January i8 to January 25, 2929, at Shanghai, an affair to which various interested individuals were invited. Symbolic of United States interest was the fact that the American consul general at Shanghai was the only member of the consular body present at the ceremonies. About 24 million dollars' worth of opium was thus destroyed.27

While the foreign opium was burning at Shanghai, China was experiencing a recrudescence of poppy cultivation which both accompanied and was the result of the outbreak of civil strife throughout the provinces. Military governors in the various provinces permitted and even encouraged poppy cultivation in order to enable the farmers to pay taxes to finance their troops. The efforts of the central government to enforce prohibition were of little avail, as its authority was not respected. In 1924 the International Anti-Opium Association of Peking reported that opium was being produced in seventeen of the eighteen provinces of China proper and that in fourteen of these provinces the cultivation was extensive. 2s It was estimated that by 1925 China was producing half as much opium as in 1905 and that she was probably the largest opium producer in the world."

There was very little that the United States could do in this situation. China's retrogression was naturally regrettable and embarrassing. The United States found its efforts to persuade the European powers to suppress the traffic in prepared opium in their Far Eastern territories undermined, for these powers claimed that no effective measures could be taken in this regard until China had curbed her production and thereby ceased to be a major source of the Far Eastern illicit traffic in the drug. Given the political chaos in China, this was manifestly impossible, and when World War II broke out, the situation in regard to opium smoking in the Far East was virtually the same as prior to the First World War. The United States found its ability to influence the situation in China reduced to alternately protesting to and encouraging the central government on the problem. The American legation was instructed to impress continually on the Chinese government the American expectation that China would fully comply with her treaty obligations.3° From time to time the legation as well as American consuls protested against the conduct of military officials in the provinces in forcing Christian Chinese farmers to plant the poppy on the grounds that this was contrary to treaty provisions granting Christian converts immunity in the practice of their religion."

The American government also made known its opposition to a proposal backed by the British suggesting the establishment of an opium monopoly by the Chinese government.33 It will be recalled that such a system for China had been seriously considered in the State Department prior to the Hague Opium Conferences. The United States had reversed its attitude on the wisdom of this step and now subscribed to a policy of strict prohibition. This was also the official policy of the Chinese government. The American view was that as the central government was actually too weak to bring the cultivation of the poppy and the trade in opium under its exclusive control, the effect of the monopoly would be merely to add another agency to the military governors promoting such activities. Over a decade was to elapse before China decided to establish the monopoly.

One result of the revival of opium production in China was the quieting of a growing agitation on the part of missionaries and other reformers who had been urging the United States to take action to prevent American liquor interests from establishing firms in China to supply the Chinese with a substitute for the opium habit. It was charged that as a result of national prohibition in the United States, American brewers were seeking to relocate themselves in China, and that they were conducting a massive propaganda campaign in the treaty ports and some interior ports as to the profitability of the liquor business. As an inducement to the Chinese they were even advertising beer as a "sure cure for opium."33 Church groups, prohibition societies, and reformers in general protested vigorously against these developments, declaring that the United States should not allow its brewers, whom it would not tolerate on its own soil, to set up the business in China. In the absence of any antiliquor action on the part of the Chinese government, it was by no means clear what the American government was to do except to instruct its consuls, as suggested by a former consul general to Shanghai and Hong Kong, not to promote or encourage the trade." The United States took no action, however, because the renewal of the opium traffic in China claimed its attention.

Another issue touched by the Chinese opium question was the remission of the Boxer indemnity. In 1924 Stephen G. Porter, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, suggested to the State Department, at the instigation of T. Z. Koo, a representative of the National Anti-Opium Association of China, that a portion of the remitted Chinese indemnity funds be given to the Association to help finance the antiopium educational campaign in China.35 In 1925 and 1926 Porter repeated the request," and great pressure was put on the China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture, the organization established by the Chinese government to handle the funds accruing from the indemnity. The State Department took the position that the United States should not interfere with the way the Chinese disposed of the fund, thereby avoiding the possibility of the charge that the United States government was imposing conditions on the remission of the fund.37 Another consideration advanced in opposition to the proposal was the fear that it might create the impression that the Anti-Opium Association was an agent of the American government designed to discredit Great Britain, Japan, and other countries in China allegedly connected with the opium and narcotic traffic, for opium was smuggled from India while morphine and cocaine came from Japan and Japanese-held territory.38 Since the matter of the appropriation for the indemnity fund was taken up in Congress as an item in a deficiency appropriation bill, no new legislation was required, and the matter therefore went before the appropriation committee instead of before Porter's committee. The State Department was thus able to sidestep the issue and avoid taking action on it."

Although by 1918 China had, for the time being, virtually-ended native poppy cultivation and the legal importation of foreign opium, at no time were Chinese consumers lacking in a supply of narcotics. Another dimension to China's drug problem was the illicit traffic in manufactured drugs, especially morphine and cocaine, whose main sources were western Europe, the United States, and Japan. Thus with the resumption of poppy cultivation in 1918, only one aspect of the old drug problem since 1900 remained expunged from the Chinese drug picture: the legal Indian-Chinese trade. Since early in the century attention had been drawn to the traffic into China of the manufactured drugs. After the putting into effect, in 1909, of the antimorphine clauses of the treaties of 1902 and 1903 with Britain and the United States, the traffic in morphine was illegal in China. Nevertheless the traffic continued. Japan and territory under Japanese control were the immediate sources of the drug. As early as 1913 it was intimated to the State Department that there appeared to be a concerted movement by the Japanese to spread morphine throughout China." From 1917 on, increasing reports of the illicit traffic in morphine in China, under the auspices of the Japanese, came from both official and unofficial sources.4' Private observers and American consuls in China reported that China was being flooded with opium and opium products through the medium of Japanese post offices, drugstores, shopkeepers, and Chinese, Korean, and Japanese peddlers in China, and that in the Japanese concessions opium dens were flourishing under Japanese protection. In Korea it was reported that the Japanese were encouraging opium cultivation for the specific purpose of smuggling it into China, and that Manchuria was fast becoming a center of the dope traffic. In China the port of Tsingtao was held to be the chief center of the Japanese trade from which morphine and opium were distributed throughout the provinces of Shantung, Anhui, and Kiangsu. This was made possible through control of the customs and military domination of the area.

Paul S. Reinsch, American minister in China, saw the Japanese activity as part of a general scheme "to aggravate all weakness and corruption so that instead of being helped to pass the dangerous transition from old to new the Chinese people are to be rendered utterly helpless by having the disorganization incident upon that transition deepened into actual demoralization of every part of social and political life."42 He str9ngly denounced the Japanese action as "criminal," "vicious," "in defiance of humanity and treaty obligations," and as "a nefarious scheme to corrupt a nation." Other actions of Japan along the same fine included the "debasing of currency," "ruining of credit," "complicity with bandits," and the encouragement of the most corrupt elements in the Chinese government. He suggested that the State Department ask the Japanese government to explain the situation.43

But Japan was not alone responsible for the situation in China. John Dewey, the American educational philosopher, who was visiting China in i9r9, reported that the United States and Great Britain were both directly and indirectly involved. The United States was indirectly participating in the traffic through permitting the shipment of drugs, especially morphine, from Britain to the United States which were placed in bond and then subsequently transshipped to Japan and smuggled by the Japanese into China. America's direct involvement was through the shipment by American manufacturers of large quantities of morphine to Japan which subsequently found its way into China. He reported that Japanese customhouse returns for the first five months of 1919 showed 25,000 ounces of morphine reaching Kobe from American ports and that a Japanese newspaper in Kobe stated that 90,000 additional ounces entered the port which were not registered in the customs returns. Great Britain was by far the larger participant in the traffic. Prior to 1912 the annual export of morphine from Great Britain to Japan was 30,000 ounces. By 1917 this had increased twenty times over. It was obvious that this morphine was destined for China, as Japan was manufacturing more than enough morphine for her own medical needs." To remedy the situation the British government, after representations from various missionary and antiopium groups in both China and England, publicly announced in late 1917 that the exportation of opium products to Japan and Manchuria would be conditioned upon the receipt of a certificate from Japanese officials stating that the drugs were for actual consumption and for medical use only in Japan and Manchuria (Darien) .45 This effected a significant reduction in the export to Japan, but as Japan actually needed no morphine from abroad for her own domestic needs, any quantity at all shipped from abroad was destined for China.

Not until several years later did the United States take steps to end its complicity in the traffic. By the Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act of 1922 a strict system of control designed to restrict the exportation of manufactured narcotic drugs to medical use was established." Other than this measure, the United States took no direct action aside from urging the parties to the Hague Convention to carry out their obligations under the Convention to stop the illicit Sino-Japanese traffic. No direct approach was made to Japan by the American government, and the repeated urgings of the International Reform Bureau and other interested persons to the Chinese and American delegates to the Washington Naval Conference of 1921 that the opium question should be brought up at the conference were rejected. The American delegates said it was up to China or Japan to introduce the question. The Chinese refused to act on the grounds that the program of the conference was already crowded.47

In the meantime the world public outcry against the situation was having repercussions in Japan. The issue was extensively debated in the 1922-1923 session of the Japanese diet, and members of the opposition party demanded suppression of the illicit traffic. The Japanese public, having become aware of the situation, condemned official connivance at the traffic. By the end of the Geneva Opium Conferences of 1924 the Japanese government had become extremely sensitive to the criticism." Although Japan made some efforts to correct the situation, the problem remained and in the 8930's added to the friction between the United States and Japan on other issues.

After the First World War the opium question became more and more involved in the political relations of the United States. The degree and manner in which the United States participated in the international campaign often depended to a large extent upon the country's current political relations with other nations and particularly the prevailing official attitude toward the League of Nations. The opium problem even figured to a small degree in the controversy in the United States over the ratification of the League Covenant.

That the peace treaties ending the war might furnish a convenient vehicle by which most of the nations of the world could be brought into the antiopium movement was realized long before the war ended. Sir William Collins, a member of the British delegation to the Hague Opium Conferences, had suggested in his final report on the Hague Conference that the peace conference might be the means by which the nations could be committed to the Hague Opium Convention." In identical notes addressed to the American ambassadors in Tokyo, London, Paris, and The Hague in the spring and early summer of 1918, the State Department urged the powers to ratify and put into effect the Hague Opium Convention despite the exigencies of the war." At that time only the United States, China, the Netherlands, Honduras, and Norway had put the Convention into effect. Belgium and Luxembourg put it into effect on May 14, 1919.

The American representation evoked from the British Foreign Office the suggestion that to secure wider adhesion to and enforcement of the Convention the question should be raised at the Peace Conference with the idea of the adoption of a resolution binding all the belligerents to enact legislation immediately to carry out the terms of the Convention." The special advantage in this procedure would be the securing of the effective cooperation of the important producing and manufacturing countries, including especially such defeated states as Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Turkey, whose recalcitrance was largely responsible for the refusal of other governments to ratify and put the Convention into effect. It was felt that if all the belligerents were brought within the purview of the Convention, the neutral states would eventually be forced to follow suit. In a surprisingly shortsighted reply, the State Department disagreed with the British suggestion on the ground that the conference should deal only with questions growing out of the war,52 but fortunately it decided not to object to the proposal. Jealous, however, for the American position of leadership in the antiopium movement, the State Department cabled the American peace mission in Paris to the effect that while it still adhered to its belief regarding the British suggestion, "it would. . . seem unfortunate for any other country to receive the sole credit for bringing this matter to the attention of the Peace Conference."53 In Paris, Secretary of State Lansing took the position that while believing that the narcotics question did not belong in the Peace Conference, the United States should not commit itself in advance on the point, but should await the actual bringing up of the matter in the conference."54

Nevertheless, the British and American delegations to the Peace Conference subsequently agreed that the time and occasion were quite opportune for taking steps to put the Hague Convention into operation.55 By that time China had already raised the question by demanding that Germany and Austria ratify the Convention as a condition of making peace with her." Thus when on April 15, 1919, the British presented to the Council of Ministers a draft of an article concerning the opium traffic for insertion in the peace treaty, the American mission was ready with a substitute.57 The significant differences between the two drafts were that in the British draft article the powers would promise to ratify the Convention immediately and put it into effect, while the American draft provided for the signing and ratification of the Convention by the very act of signing the peace treaty. Another difference lay in the fact that the British draft called for bringing the Convention into force immediately after its ratification by the signing of the Special Protocol of the Third Hague Opium Conference and the passage of the necessary legislation, while the American draft called for the passage of legislation giving effect to the provisions of the Convention not later than three months after the deposit of ratifications of the peace treaty. Thus the American draft was subject to being construed so as to make the effectuation of the Convention await the exchange of ratifications of the peace treaty with the last depositing power. To iron out the differences, the two drafts, on Lansing's suggestion, were referred to the Drafting Committee, whose draft was read and accepted without controversy by the Council of Foreign Ministers on April 19 for insertion into the peace treaty. The draft became Article 295 of the Treaty of Versailles:

Those of the High Contracting Parties who have not yet signed, or who have signed but not yet ratified, the Opium Convention signed at The Hague. . . agree to bring the said Convention into force, and for this purpose to enact the necessary legislation without delay and in any case within a period of twelve months from the coming into force of the present Treaty.

Furthermore, they agree that ratification of the present Treaty should in the case of the Powers which have not yet ratified the Opium Convention be deemed in all respects equivalent to the ratification of that Convention and the signature of the Special Protocol which was opened at The Hague in accordance with the resolutions adopted by the Third Opium Conference in 1914 for bringing the said Conventions into force.

For this purpose the Government of the French Republic will communicate to the Government of the Netherlands a certified copy of the protocol of the deposit of ratifications of the present Treaty, and will invite the Government of the Netherlands to accept and deposit the said certified copy as if it were a deposit of ratifications of the Opium Convention and a signature of the Additional Protocol of 1914.58

An identical article was inserted in the peace treaties with the other defeated powers. Thus the war which had interrupted the international antiopium movement served to give renewed impetus to that movement. It is doubtful whether Germany could have been persuaded otherwise to ratify and put the Convention into effect. Without action by Germany, other powers would undoubtedly have refused to put the Convention into effect.

In still another way the war resulted in a new momentum for the antiopium campaign. Article 23C of the Covenant of the Leigue of Nations gave the League general supervision over the execution of agreements dealing with opium and other narcotic drugs. Thus the problem was placed within the purview of virtually the whole community of nations.

The drug problem figured in two other aspects in relation to the Treaty of Versailles and the attitude of the United States. Those who opposed the Covenant of the League and United States entrance into the League naturally seized upon any aspect of the peace treaty which might discredit it. One of the more controversial provisions of the treaty was that relating to the granting of German rights in Shantung to Japan. Most Americans thought this unfair to China and therefore opposed it. Even those favoring the peace treaty generally, but interested in the drug question, pointed to the Japanese flooding of China with morphine, using the town of Tsingtao as a base for the traffic, as sufficient reason for not allowing the province to come under Japanese domination.59 In the debate in the Senate on the Treaty, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge castigated the Shantung provision as one of the many ways in which Japan was trying to get control of all of China.

Another method, he declared, was Japan's deliberate fostering of the opium traffic in China in order to weaken China physically and morally. He inserted in the Record under the title "Shantung and Opium" the testimony of W. E. Macklin, a long-time resident of China and head of the College of Nanking, before the Foreign Relations Committee concerning Japanese complicity in the drug traffic in China. He pointed to this situation along with other factors in the Shantung question as sufficient reason why the United States should not consent to the peace treaty."

The other way in which the traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs was involved in the debate on the peace treaty was the inclusion of this subject in the fourth of the Lodge reservations by which that traffic and a host of other issues were declared to be domestic matters solely within the jurisdiction of the United States and not to be brought within the province of the League or any other power." Since the United States, including Senator Lodge, had repeatedly emphasized the necessity of international action to control the narcotics traffic and had stressed the fact that no country through its own laws could effectively meet its own internal drug problem, the inclusion of the narcotics traffic in the reservation was something of a contradiction. To withdraw what was considered this nonpolitical matter from the League's competence was a graphic expression on the part of the League's-opponents of their lack of confidence in that body. It is therefore not surprising that the United States cooperated only hesitantly with the League on the drug question throughout the nineteen-twenties.

1. U.S. Department of State, Opium Problem. Message from the President of the United States Transmitting from the Secretary of State A Report on the International Opium Problem . . . Senate Doc. 377. 61st Cong., znd Sess., 1910, pp. 44-45. Hereafter cited as Senate Doc. 377. For the reliability of these estimates, see above, Chapter III, note 29.

2. U.S. Special Narcotic Committee, Traffic in Narcotic Drugs. Report of Special Committee of Investigation Appointed March 25, 1918 by the Secretary of the Treasury, June, 1919 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1919), pp. 8-9, 19-27.

3. /bid., pp. 14, 18, 22.   

4. Ibid., pp. 28-29.

5. Kolb and Du Mez, The Prevalance and Trends of Drug Addiction in the United States and the Factors Influencing It (Treasury Department, United States Public Health Service; Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1924).

6. Ibid., pp. 24-25.

7.1bid., p. 25. It should be observed that all of the estimates suffered from miscalculations, some grievously so. There was a tendency to exaggerate the number of addicts for the pre-World War I period and to underestimate the number for the years thereafter. See Alfred R. Lindesmith, The Addict and the Law (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1965), pp. 104-122.

8 For discussion of this situation, see Senate Doc. 377, pp. 18-19, 54-60.

9. Ibid., pp. 59-60, 75-79.

10. U.S. Department of State, The Opium Traffic. Message from the President of the United States Transmitting Report of the Secretary of State Relative to the Control of the Opium Traffic, Senate Doc. 736. 6ist Cong., 3rd Sess., iii, p. 6.

11. Congressional Record, 63rd Cong., znd Sess., 1914, LI, Part 2, 12881 1543; Part 3, 2329. A convenient collection of American opium legislation down to 1955 is Elmer Lewis (compiler), Opium and Narcotic Laws (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1955). For the text of these laws see pp. 2-3, 5.

12. United States V. Alfred Shelly, 229 U.S. 239 (1913).

13. For the conflicting views on the measure see U.S. Cong., House, Committee on Ways and Means, Hearings on H.R. 25240, H.R. 25241, H.R. 25242, and H.R. 28911, Importation and Use of Opium, 6ist Cong., 3rd Sess., 1911, pp. 49-96.

14. U.S. Cong., Senate, Committee on Finance, Registration of Persons Dealing in Opium, 63rd Cong., znd Sess., 1914, S. Rept. 258 to Accompany H.R. 6282, p. 3.

15. For the progress of the bill through Congress after being reported out by the Senate Finance Committee see Congressional Record, 63rd Cong., znd Sess., LI, Part 4, 3591; Part 6, 5670-71; Part 7, 6786-6788; Part 10, 9936-38.

16. Lewis, op. cit., pp. 6—ii, 12-15.

17. For the principles on which the traditional American attitude and policy on narcotic drug addiction are based and some of the myths underlying those principles, see William B. Eldridge, Narcotics and the Law: A Critique of the American Experiment in Narcotic Drug Control (New York: The American Bar Foundation, 1962), pp. 9-34. Among other representative criticisms of American drug policy are Alfred R. Lindesmith, The Addict and the Law and Edwin M. Schur, Narcotics Addiction in Britain and America: The Impact of Public Policy (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1962).

18. Lewis, op. cit., pp. 16-18, 25.

19. For the text of these laws in the order listed see ibid., pp. 29-33, 34-36, 47-53, 71-73: 74-78,

20 see ibid p.p. 37, 43, 54.

21. Owen, op. cit., p. 348.

22. For the dealings of the Chinese government with the opium combine see "Summary of Correspondence re Opium and Morphine Situation in China," memorandum of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs, Dec. to, 5918, SDR 893.114/19o.

23. Ibid.   

24. Ibid.

25. Minister William J. Calhoun (Peking) to the Secretary of State, July 8, 1912, NA, RG 43, E 40. Secretary of State Knox to the American Legation (Peking), Feb. 13, 1913, SDR 893.114/41.

26. "Summary of Correspondence re Opium and Morphine Situation in China," op. cit. Also Foreign Relations, 1918, pp. 209-13.

27. Consul General Thomas Sammons (Shanghai) to the Secretary of State, Jan. 29, 1919, SDR 893.114/211.

28. Foreign Policy Association, Committee on Traffic in Opium, "Opium Production in China," Opium Series, No. s (July, 1925), pp. 6-7, enclosed in Helen Howell Moorhead to Nelson T. Johnson, Oct. 30, 1925, SDR 511.4A2/409.

29 Ibid p 7

30. Secretary of State to the American Legation (Peking), Oct. 15, 1924, SDR 893.114/487.

31. Jacob Gould Schurman (Peking) to the Secretary of State, April 5, 1924, ibid.

32. Acting Secretary of State Norman Davis to the American Embassy, London, Dec. r, 1920, SDR 893.114/266a; Consul General G. E. Gauss (Tientsin) to the Secretary of State, July 6, 1922, SDR 893.114/407, and Feb. 24, 1924, SDR 893.114/522.

33. Silas Bent, "American Beer in China," Asia, XIX (June, 1919), 597-598. Shailer Mathews, "Shall We Make the Chinese Drunkards?" The Independent, CIV (Nov. 5, 1920), 186; Charles Stelzle, "Uprooted in the United States the Brewery Interests Turn to China," World Outlook, V (Nov., 1919), 16-17.

34. Amos P. Wilder, "The Danger of Strong Drink in China," Missionary Review of the World, XLII (July, 1919), 530-31.

35. Porter to the Secretary of State, Dec. 11, 1924, SDR 51 r .4A2/1346 and 493.11/ 1160.

36. Porter to the Secretary of State, May 26, 1925, SDR 51 r4A2/347 and 493.11/1159; also memorandum by Nelson T. Johnson of a conversation with Porter, April 9, 1926, SDR 493.11/1233.

37. Secretary of State Kellogg to Porter, June 5, 1925, SDR gi, .4A2/34o.

38. Memorandum, Johnson to the Secretary of State, April 10, 1926, SDR 493.11/1233.

39. Memorandum, Johnson to Wilbur Carr, April 30, 1926, SDR 493.11/1233.

40. Yamei Kin to Hamilton Wright, Sept. 29, 1913, SDR, RG 43, E 36.

41. See, for example, "Summary of Correspondence re Opium and Morphia in China: Illicit Trade in Opium and Morphia in China under Protection of Japanese," Memorandum in the State Department, Dec. 19, 1918, SDR 893.114/190; also "A Chinese Charge Against Japan," Literary Digest, LXI (April 12, '919), zo; "Poisoning the Chinese," ibid., LXVIII (Feb. 26, 1921), 30.

42. Reinsch to the Secretary of State, Dec. 21, 1918, SDR 893.114/195.

43. Ibid.

44. John Dewey, "Our Share in Drugging China," New Republic, XXI (Dec. 24,1919), 114-117.

45. /bid. See also J. H. Oldham, Secretary of the Conference of Missionary Societies (Edinburgh) to Bishop Brent (Edinburgh), Oct. i, 1917, and Jan. 22, 1918, Brent Papers, Box 14.

46. See above, p. 132.

47. Paul Lee, "Drug Addiction in America and China," Zion's Herald (Feb. 15, 1922), 203.

48. Jefferson Caffery, Chargé d'Affaires ad interim (Tokyo) to the Secretary of State, Sept. 20, 1924, SDR 511.4A2/1o3.

49. Matthew Bodson to Bishop Brent, Yorks, Feb. 15, 1917, Brent Papers, Box 13.

50. Acting Secretary of State Adee to Roland S. Morris (Tokyo), June 14, 1918, SDR 511.4A1/1529a; Acting Secretary of State Frank L. Polk to Walter Hines Page (London), William G. Sharp (Paris), and John W. Garrett (The Hague), July 16, 1918, SDR 511.4A1/153oa, roc, and 153ob, respectively.

51. Irvin Laughlin, American Embassy (London) to the Secretary of State, Dec. 14, 1918, SDR 511.4A1/1535.

52. Polk to the American Embassy (London), Jan. 25, 1919, ibid.

53.Polk to the American Peace Mission, Feb. 4, 1919, SDR 5 I .4A I/I 538a.

54. American Peace Mission to the Secretary of State, Feb. 6, 1919, SDR 511.4A1/ 1539. See also Foreign Relations, Paris Peace Conference, zsup, XI, 18.

55. American Peace Mission to the Secretary of State, March 31, 1919, SDR 511.4AT /1545.

56. American Peace Mission to the Secretary of State, March 18, 1919, SDR 511.4A1/ 1544.

57. Foreign Relations, Paris Peace Conference, 1919, IV, 552-53.

58. Ibid., p. 595.

59. Elizabeth Washburn Wright, "The Injustice to China," The Outlook, CXXII (Aug. 20, 1919), 601-602.

60. Congressional Record, 66th Cong., 1st Sess., toio, LVIII, Part 7, 6877-6878. 61. Ibid., Part 9, 8773, 8777.

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