 In the beginning
In a Report to submitted to Congress in 1910 Dr. Hamilton Wright said "it has been authoritatively stated that cocaine is often the direct incentive to the crime of rape by the Negroes of the South and other sections of the country"(9 ).
The the Harrison Anti-Narcotic Act of 1914 was enacted this was passed in part, as part of the international efforts to control the flow of Opium into the Philippines (10 ).
Another driving force behind the Narcotics Act of 1914 (38 Stat. 785), was an attempt to improve relations with China. America took control of the Philippines after the Spanish American wars in 1898. The strict Opium laws that had been in place during the Spanish were gone. At the time America had no laws restricting Opium. The Philippines opium output increased. An in 1906 After a Chinese Episcopal bishop Charles Henry Brent, met with President Roosevelt to convene an international meeting with nations that has an interest in the Far east. The State Department chose Charles Henry Brent, Dr. Hamilton Wright, Dr. Charles C. Tenney to be delegates at the opium conference in Shanghai in 1909.
(11 ).
A Democrat Francis Burton Harrison agreed to sponsor the Narcotics Act of 1914, this is the reason why it is also called the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914. Passage of the Bill was not a sure thing. One of the opponents was National Drug Trade Conference (NDTC). The Bill was altered with NDTC suggestions to gain passage in the House. But the Bill Stalled the Senate. The Bill gained Renewed Strength when President Woodrow Wilson came to Office. President Wilson requested that the Treasury Departments with NDTC and the Medical profession to get an acceptable Bill this was accomplished and the Bill passed Congress on December 14, 1914 (12 ).
Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914 allowed doctors establish "maintenance clinics" where addicts could receive legal prescriptions heroin, morphine, and cocaine. This could give us a look at drug use or at least drug abuse for that time period. Cities in the south had 65 percent higher rate of addiction, than urban centers of the North and West.
Records from a clinic in Jacksonville Florida ran by Dr. Charles Terry, showed that out of 646 addicts 416 were white (249 women and 167 men) and 230 were black (131 women and 99 men). "Our population," Terry wrote, "is composed about equally of whites and colored so that it is seen that, with us at least, the whites are far more prone to drug addictions than the blacks." Records from the State of Tennessee show that of the 2,370 drug addicts who registered with clinics in 1913, women comprised over two-thirds of the addicts and over 90 percent were white(13 ).
The media has always had a false bias of minorities and drugs. As a New York Times Story (1908) of Cocaine use which claimed Cocaine use was "much more widely spread" among blacks. They even cite Dr. Graeme Monroe Hammond and he said "There is nothing that we can do for the confirmed user of the drug," and concluded "The best thing for the cocaine fiend is to let him die." (14 ).
Soon the raced based lies Would be kicked into overdrive. The insanity is shown by the fear of "Negro Cocaine Fiends" or "Cocainized Niggers" posing a threat to white women (15 ).
A quote from a newspaper is how marijuana was portrayed in the 1920's "All the vicious tendencies in the makeup of humans are brought to the fore by indulgence in the dread marihuana weed that grows in Mexico. Victims of the habit will shut themselves up in a small, tightly closed room and place a quantity of the weed in a pot over a bed of coals. The fumes drive the occupants into frenzy" (16 ).
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