In 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act, that was years in the making was finally passed under President Roosevelt. This law reflected a sea change in medicine-- an unprecedented wave of regulations. No longer could drug companies have a secret formula and hide potentially toxic substances such as heroin under their patent. The law required drug companies to specify the ingredients of medications on the label. It also regulated the purity and dosage of substances. Not by mere coincidence was the law passed only about five years after Bayer, a German based drug company began selling the morphine derivative, heroin. Thought to be a safe, non-habit forming alternative to morphine, heroin quickly became the “cure-all drug” that was used to treat anything from coughs to restlessness. Yet, just as quickly as it became a household staple, many began to question the innocence of the substance. While the 1906 law had inherent weaknesses, it signaled the beginning of the end for “cure-all” drugs, such as opiate-filled “soothing syrups” that were used for infants. By tracing and evaluating various reports by doctors and investigative journalists on the medical use of heroin, it is clear that the desire for this legislative measure developed from an offshoot in the medical community-- a transformation that took doctors out from behind the curtain, and brought the public into a new era of awareness.
To understand the foundation of this transformation in medicine it is important to look at the change in medical reports by doctors. Comparing Dr. Charles Lang’s to Dr. John Quackenbos’ assessment of heroin one can see the shift from casual observation and opinions to systematic evaluation during the turn of the 20th century. Lang’s medical evalu...
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...pprentice,” in Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern. World Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2002.
Lang, Charles J. “Heroin” Medical Times and Register, March 1899.
“Pure Food and Drug Act 1906.” 34 U.S. Stats. 768, quoted in Medicine in the Americas, Bethesda, Maryland: National Library of Medicine, 2004. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22116/.
Quackenbos, John Duncan. “Drug Habits: Morphinomania, Heroin Habit, Cocaine Addiction,” in Hypnotic Therapeutics In Theory And Practice: With Numerous Illustrations of Treatment by Suggestion. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1908.
"Restricting the Sale of Drugs." The Washington Post, September 9, 1910.
Scott, Ian. “Heroin: A Hundred-Year Habit.” History Today 48, 1998.
"Soothing Syrups." New York Times, August 30, 1910.
"The Right to Poison." New York Times, January 24, 1906.
Dr. John Abramson’s book Overdosed America debunks the myths about the excellence of American medicine. Abramson backs up this claim by closely examining research about medicine, closely examining the unpublished details submitted by drug manufacturers to the FDA, and discovering that the unpublished data does not coincide with the claims made about the safety and effectiveness of commonly used medicines. Abramsons purpose is to point out the flaws of the pharmaceutical industry in order to warn the readers about the credibility of the drugs they are buying. Given the critical yet technical language of the book, Abramson is writing to an audience that may include academic physicians as well as those who want to learn about the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry.
This is because the Supreme Court made a ruling that did not allow the state government the ability to regulate interstate commerce. This ruling eventually changed when the invention of automobiles became interstate crime. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was the beginning effort in preventing the expansion of narcotics and falsified labels on drugs during 1912. However, the most important act of legislation occurred in 1914 with the Harrison Tax Act. This act-imposed taxes on importation, manufacturing, distribution, and sale of opium, cocoa leaves and substances used to prepare these
Back then, people were convinced that heroin was not as addictive as morphine and was safer for people to consume. Obviously that’s not the case. The scary thing is heroin isn’t that different from morphine, yet doctors are okay with giving patients morphine. I think with a drug that is so addictive, doctors need to be more vigilant on who they use morphine on, even when it comes to medical procedures. Back in the early 1900’s, when people weren’t truly aware of the effects of heroin, it might have been okay for them to use it to help people suffering from severe pain. In this day and time, heroin is widely abused and not used for its’ original intentions. Heroin has become a recreational drug of choice for people, not something they use to treat
Before the mid 1900’s the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act was formed to tax those making, importing or selling any derivative of opium or coca leaves. In the 1920s, doctors became aware of the highly addictive nature of opioids and started to avoid treating patients with them (Center, 2004). In 1924 heroin became illegal. However according to a history published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2003, anesthesiologists opened "nerve block clinics" in the 1950s and 1960s to manage pain without having to resort to surgery (Meldrum, 2003). This push for treating pain without surgery was a major factor in the opioid epidemic we see today. In 2008 the overdose death rate was almost four times the rate in 1999, and the sales of prescription pain relievers in 2010 were four times higher than in 1999 (Paulozzi et al, 2011). The substance use disorder treatment admission rate is also greater than in 1999, with it having been six times higher in 2009. Chasing Heroin’s claims surrounding the fear of prescribing pain medications is accurate as you see an increase in public policies surrounding opiate use in the early 1900’s. The climbing rates of overdose deaths and the increased amount of people seeking addiction treatment suggests that the fear of prescription opiates was
Almost one hundred years ago, prescription drugs like morphine were available at almost any general store. Women carried bottles of very addictive potent opiate based pain killers in their purse. Many individuals like Edgar Allen Poe died from such addictions. Since that time through various federal, state and local laws, drugs like morphine are now prescription drugs; however, this has not stopped the addiction to opiate based pain killers. Today’s society combats an ever increasing number of very deadly addictive drugs from designer drugs to narcotics to the less potent but equally destructive alcohol and marijuana. With all of these new and old drugs going in and out of vogue with addicts, it appears that the increase of misuse and abuse is founded greater in the prescription opiate based painkillers.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994". December 1, 1995.
Toates, F. (2010) ‘The nature of addictions: scientific evidence and personal accounts’ in SDK228 The science of the mind: investigating mental health, Book 3, Addictions, Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp. 1-30.
"Regulatory Information." Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 20 May 2009. Web. 14 Apr. 2014. .
Altered States: A History of Drug Abuse in America, Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities, c1993, 1 videocassette (57 min.)
Smith, Tony. "How dangerous is heroin?" British Medical Journal 25 Sept. 1993: 807. Academic OneFile. Web. 30 Nov. 2013.
Drug use and abuse is as old as mankind itself. Human beings have always had a desire to eat or drink substances that make them feel relaxed, stimulated, or euphoric. Wine was used at least from the time of the early Egyptians; narcotics from 4000 B.C.; and medicinal use of marijuana has been dated to 2737 B.C. in China. But it was not until the nineteenth century that the active substances in drugs were extracted. There was a time in history when some of these newly discovered substances, such as morphine, laudanum, cocaine, were completely unregulated and prescribed freely by physicians for a wide variety of ailments.
Law, Marc. The determinants of progressive era reform: the pure food and drugs act of 1906. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2004. Print.
Anti-drug legislation has had an extensive and fascinating record in the United States. The initial drug that showed prevalent use in the nation was Opium, which came primarily from China. Opium was utilized as a recommendation drug by doctors, but the growing cases of addiction led to laws alongside this drug. The greater part of the opium addicts were girls due to the doctors tend to recommend the drug for many women’s particular problems. In 1875, a law was approved in California barring individuals from smoking opium. While the law pertained generally to Chinese immigrants it was the first place in anti-drug provision is the Unites States. At the Federal stage, the prohibition of importation of opium by Chinese nationals happened in 1887 and in 1905 opium smoking was constrained in the Philippines (Harrison). While these regulations were the initial steps, they did not have any absolute provisions to decrease drug supply and use in the country. The laws beleaguered the lessening of delivery of drugs in the country and do not deal with the problem of treatment of a true illness.
The 1906 Food and Drugs Act, also known as the Wiley Act, was legislation that was passed as a result of efforts from Peter Collier and Dr. Harvey W. Wiley. Peter Collier was the one of the h...
Drugs are used to escape the real and move into the surreal world of one’s own imaginations, where the pain is gone and one believes one can be happy. People look on their life, their world, their own reality, and feel sickened by the uncaringly blunt vision. Those too weak to stand up to this hard life seek their escape. They believe this escape may be found in chemicals that can alter the mind, placing a delusional peace in the place of their own depression: “Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly halucinant,” (52). They do this with alcohol, acid, crack, cocaine, heroine, opium, even marijuana for the commoner economy. These people would rather hide behind the haze than deal with real problems. “...A gramme is better than a damn.” (55).