I wrote this article a few months ago for another publication, but I think the readers of this forum will find it interesting and enlightening:

We can safely say that the history of drug addiction has been part of our country since the original colonies used opiate medications that they brought from London. Whether or not the health of any of our ancestors were compromised by opiate addiction isn’t totally revealed in our history, but with the ease by which one can become addicted to opiates with only casual use, and the easy availability of opiate concoctions, one can assume that addiction was in America from the beginning of its time.

The documentation of drug use can be traced to the 1700’s when over-the-counter, patent medications were introduced for sale to the public. According to James A. Inciardi in his book “Handbook of Drug Control In the United States”, opium was the most common ingredient in most of these medicines that were marketed for soothing pain from ailments such diarrhea, colds, fever, tooth aches, cholera, rheumatism, pelvic disorders and even athlete’s foot and baldness. These remedies were advertised as “painkillers,” “cough mixtures,” “women’s friends” and other such enticing labels.

Dr. William Buchan’s “Domestic Medicine”, which as first published in Philadelphia in 1784 as a practical handbook on simple medicines for home use, recommended the tincture of opium (paragoric) for the treatment of common ailments. Dr. Buchan gave the readers a recipe to make their on tincture of opium to have around the house to handle common medical problems and other discomforts.

The shipping of medicines from London ended with the Revolutionary War and the American manufacturers of medicines were the first business entrepreneurs to seek national markets through widespread advertising. These medicines could be purchased in modest quantities from physicians, apothecaries, grocers, postmasters, and printers. One can find advertisements for these elixirs in every form of printed news and entertainment publications.

It is easy to see how quickly these “medications’ grew from the following accounts: A New York catalog listed some ninety brands of elixirs in 1804 and by 1857, a Boston periodical included almost 600 and in 1858, one newspaper account totaled over 1,500 patent medicines, and by 1905 the list had grown to more than 28,000. One can assume that these “remedies” were being used at a level that was bound to have been causing some opiate addiction in America. Remember, in these times, there were no government regulations on any of these addictive opiate concoctions.1

In 1803, a German pharmacist isolated the chief alkaloid of opium, which was basically morphine. (Morphine was named after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams.) Around the same time, the hypodermic needle was invented and by the time of the Civil War, morphine was injected as a potent painkiller. Many German chemists played with the alkaloids of opium to create more and more potent opiate painkillers. Friedrich Bayer, of the famous Bayer Aspirin, invented diacetylmorphine in 1898, to treat pneumonia and tuberculosis and named it Heroin, from the German “heroisch” meaning heroic and powerful. Even though Bayer’s Heroin was promoted as a sedative for coughs and as a chest and lung medicine, it was advocated by some as a treatment for morphine addiction, since heroin was introduce as being non-addicting, and we have the origins of “non-addictive” drugs being originally recommended to treat addiction and subsequent paradox of creating many more addicts as a result. We also find our first literature regarding the need for a treatment for drug addiction.

The availability of immediate pain relief was becoming part of the American culture and in 1900 it was estimated that the small state of Vermont sold 3.3 million does of opium a month. These were the times of the “snake oil” salesman. They were the first hucksters to use psychological lures to entice customers to buy their merchandise.1 From the drug ads on television today, we can see that the hucksters are content with this effective level of marketing.

There were no legal restrictions on the importation or use of opium until the early 1900s. So by the turn of the 20th century there was unrestricted availability of opium, the influx of opium-smoking immigrants for East Asia, and the invention of the hypodermic needle, all of which were contributing to widespread compulsive drug abuse in America.