2007 ACADEMIC WRITING

Learning Outcomes demonstrated by this exhibit:

1. Research 2. APA citation

This project was required for one of my political science classes. The topic had to be a relatively obscure law and the public policy process it went through.

I was able to learn more about the public policy process, the champions and advocates of various bills, and the difficulty (or ease) of getting a specific bill to pass given the stealth of the statesman or even the susceptibility of public opinion.

___JTB___

This exhibit reflects my best work in the areas noted above.

___JTB___

This exhibit reflects a high degree of professionalism in general writing skill, grammar and organizatio

FROM FREEDOM TO PROHIBITION

On the Unforeseen Consequences of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914

By, Jeremiah Bannister

When first told that I was responsible for writing a twelve-page paper dealing with public policy, I figured that it would be in my best interest, for convenience sake, to deal with more recent public policies that were well known, controversial, and not lacking in accessible information. After considering the matter for a few days I decided that going this route was not the path I wanted to take. The last ten years of my life had been spent studying well known policies such as the New Deal, the Great Society, abortion laws, the Patriot ACT, and many others. Instead, I wanted research a relatively unknown public policy that, while being relatively obscure, had major ramifications on future public policy.

Little did I know that I would find myself researching a public policy enacted in 1914 which received virtually no discussion in the Congress and absolutely no mention whatsoever in the media. The more I read about this policy, the more I became aware that public policies can be as far reaching in their effect as they are subtle in their being put into place. This policy, in my estimation, has had massive consequences, both seen and unseen. I believe that this policy was the first step on a slippery slope that has resulted in (amongst many other things) an erosion of personal freedom, the creation of large and intrusive bureaucracies, an extremely dangerous black market, increased crime rates, and an overpopulated prison system. The public policy I am speaking of is the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act (HNTA) of 1914.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

In “America’s Longest War: Rethinking Our Tragic Crusade Against Drugs,” Steven Duke and Albert Gross argue that from the dawn of history to 1914 there were very few civil regulations on the use of drugs. These few experiments in prohibition and regulation (i.e. Asia’s tobacco prohibition in the early 17^th century) were short-lived. The authors refer to these years as the pre-prohibition epoch. The only regulations during this time were cultural norms, religious doctrines, and personally held beliefs pertaining to self-government and health.

Enter the industrial revolution. This posed Americans with many problems, not least of which was the diversity of foreign drugs coming into the country. Another factor brought on by this revolution was the breakdown of cultural norms due to the decentralization of the community. People began moving from the countryside to the city. This created an entirely new demographic which could not provide an adequate regularity concerning social and cultural norms.

ADVOCATES OFTEN MAKE FOR STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

The early 1900’s was a time of vast reform in America. America’s abolition of slavery half a century before instilled an optimistic fervor within many Americans that they could lobby the government to make reforms which they or their groups believed to be in the best interest of the republic. This was certainly not the first time in American history that we had seen the influence of special interest groups on the republic, but the advocates behind the NHTA were unique due to their being made up of a vast array of interests. Those lobbying for drug reform included foreign trade lobbyists, those in the field of medicine and psychiatry, and those who were part of what was know as the temperance movement. To make matters even more interesting is the fact that some advocates had interests which were not confined to just one of these three categories.

THE FOREIGN TRADE FACTOR

The early years of the 20^th century saw a growing interest in opening up otherwise closed foreign markets. At the top of the list was China. American involvement was made easy due to the Chinese having need of someone helping alleviate the burdensome opium problem that their nation faced. Doing this would show America to have a moral concern for their country, which would be advantageous towards potential trade and military alliances.

Mike Gray, author of “Drug Crazy: How We God Into This Mess & How We Can Get Out,” writes that this was meant to “pull the rug out from under the British, who had created the problem in the first place.” According to Gray, the British East India Company had been forcing China to purchase Indian opium in payment for Chinese silk and tea. Making a move such as this would effectually open up the doors to American access to Chinese markets while simultaneously slamming the door on British control of that market.

THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY FACTOR

The medical community was relatively small at the turn of the century. Cures for ailments were hard to come by, yet the need for this was certainly not in want. The market for people in need of medical assistance became a serious issue during and after the Industrial revolution. Not only were accidents and injuries becoming more common, but so was depression.

The problem facing the medical community was that the most doctors could normally do was to prescribe substances which simply made their patients “feel better” rather than actually curing the problem. Of course, the physicians could do the exact same thing. Technically the grocery store manager up the road could do the exact same thing as the physician and pharmacist. The reason for this was that drugs such as those containing opium were completely legal in the U.S., except for the few regulations placed on the drug trade in various states.

American pharmacists and physicians saw the increase in drug use and dependency as being favorable forces in pushing legislation regulating drug use. The medical community also took advantage of the fact that Britain had also passed something along these lines in 1868 with their Pharmacist and Poisons Act. Pushing for similar legislation in America would not only give the medical community a monopoly on the selling and distribution of drugs, but would also give way to medical and psychological categories of addiction and abuse. This would give the medical community unprecedented power over the “who, what, where, when, why, and how” of diagnosis, drug creation, and distribution.

THE TEMPERANCE FACTOR

During this time there was a very powerful religious movement known as the Temperance Movement. This movement was primarily made up of Methodists, Quakers, Baptists, and Congregationalists. Temperance advocates also had members from among the Pentecostals (i.e. Charles Grandison Finney), the Mormons, and the liberal neo-orthodox. Interestingly, many of these forces were also behind the abolition movement of the nineteenth century.

The years following the Industrial Revolution marked a change in the way Americans perceived the saloon. What once was a middle class meeting place had become in the eyes of many a den of robbers, thieves, drunks, prostitutes, and racial minorities. Some theorists also believe that this was used by Protestants to retain power over newly arriving Roman Catholic immigrants.

THE INTERNATION OPIUM CONVENTION

The U.S. State Department had been pushing for an international convention dealing with the opium issue and international trade. In 1909, the United States got their wish by holding the International Opium Convention in Shanghai. This convention is also known as the Hague Opium Convention due to it being signed at The Hague in Shanghai. On January 23, 1912, the treaty was signed by the United States, China, Italy, Great Britain, Japan, Persia, the Netherlands, Portugal, France, Siam, Germany, and Russia.

While the convention was not officially implemented by the United States until after the HNTA, we shall see that it played a major role in the rationale behind the move towards regulation. Part of the language agreed upon at the convention concluded that, “The contracting Powers shall use their endeavors to control, or to cause to be controlled, all persons manufacturing, importing, selling, distributing, and exporting morphine, cocaine, and their respective salts, as well as the buildings in which these persons carry such an industry or trade.”

The United States put the terms of the Convention in force domestically in the year 1915, within a year of the HNTA. In 1919 it was incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles, making it almost global in its jurisdiction. A revised version of the Convention was put into effect in 1928 and later superseded by the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1961.

THE PROHIBITIONIST JUGGERNAUT

The United States had sent three delegates to the convention: The Episcopal bishop of the Philippines, a man from the American legation at Peking, and a certain Dr. Hamilton Wright. Dr. Wright would become a primary player in the crusade against narcotics. Wright would not only be considered an advocate, but a champion of the cause underlying the HNTA.

Wright was a graduate of McGill University, the one who famously (though incorrectly) identified beriberi as a bacterial infection, and most importantly the son-in-law of a very powerful Senator from Minnesota. With his notoriety and connections, he found it relatively easy to get a position in the U.S. State Department.

While with the State Department he worked on the opium crisis. He began traveling from city to city in order to see just how widespread the opium issue had become. In a March 12, 1911, edition of the New York Times he made the claim that opium use in the United States was not only bad, but was worse than China.

Mike Gray claims that this was nothing more than spin put out by a man on a crusade. He insists that the average addict at the turn of the century were middle-aged Southern women addicted to laudanum, an opium-alcohol mix, rather than the opium fiends described by Wright. He went on to say that vast amount of users were using it as medication for pain. Furthermore, Gray says that the evidence indicates that addiction had been on the decline after 1906 due to the Pure Food and Drug Act which required companies to label their product with active ingredients.

Either way, Wright won the day. Regardless of a British report indicating that opium addiction was no worse than alcoholism, Wright managed to get what he needed. He convinced the nations involved of what is now known as Resolution 5 which required all signatories to begin establishing regulations against opium, its derivatives, manufacturing, and sale. Having gained this victory, knowing the long-term ramifications of this resolution, he became what Gray described as a “one-man Washington pressure-group, pitching to Congress, threatening and cajoling foreign ambassadors, twisting arms, and drafting model narcotics laws for the people of the United States.”

Regardless of his success, he certainly had hurdles to overcome, most importantly was the need for a national police force. It did not take him long to realize how difficult this would be given the existence of the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In “The American Disease: Origins of Narcotics Control” David Musto quotes Wright as saying that getting his prohibitionist legislation through Congress was “a difficult business… [because] the Constitution is constantly getting in the way.”

It did not take long though before Wright saw a crack in the system. The Supreme Court had ruled in Fensenheld v. U.S. that the government had the right to regulate anything that it was taxing. So, as Gray writes, “By the winter of 1909, he [Wright] had drafted a model bill that would require anyone who dealt with drugs- doctors, druggists, manufacturers- to register, pay a license fee, and keep scrupulous records of transactions.” It was here, in Gray’s estimation, that government obtained a monopoly over drugs for the first time in human history. It was also here that Wright begins taking a spiral for the worse.

SECRETARY OF STATE & INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS

Then Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan had joined with Wright on the crusade against drugs. Bryan was a Presbyterian, a prohibitionist, a prominent leader in the Progressive Movement, and a three-time Democrat Presidential nominee. With a resume like this it would be hard to fathom that he is probably most known for his staunch opposition to Darwinism during the now-notorious Scopes “Monkey” Trial. Secretary of State Bryan supported the HNTA on the grounds that it would fulfill the agreement made at Shanghai.

The Secretary of State eventually ousted Wright after he smelled liquor on Wrights breathe one too many times. Turns out, while Wright was on a crusade against opium addiction, he was becoming an addict to rum. Wright never returned to his position. He later left for France to join the war effort as an ambulance driver. He died three years later from injuries incurred from a car accident.

LOSING THE BATTLE; WINNING THE WAR

While Wright may have lost his place at the head of the Prohibitionist table, his works continued to win the day. The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, named after the Congressman who pushed it through the Congress, Francis Burton Harrison (D-NY), actually was written by Wright. The HNTA was approved on December 17, 1914, with little debate or discussion.

Congress thought that the bill was relatively harmless and that believed that it would only mandate everyone involved in the drug trade to purchase a license and keep a complete sales record. The little amount of debate that took place on the floor revolved around the moral issue, rather, it focused on the need to implement the Hague agreement. Evidence of how low-profile this bill was considered to be is the fact that the New York Times, America’s “paper of record,” did not even cover the passage of the bill.

CONSEQUENCES: UNEXPECTED v. UNINTENDED

The passage of this bill brought with it a series of unexpected consequences. The medical profession had backed the passage of this bill, knowing the power and profit it would give their profession, but had no clue as to what one single word in the Act would do. The word: Only. As Mike Gray points out, “Although the medical profession had largely been brought around in support of the act, they were in for a rude awakening. Hamilton Wright had installed a couple of land mines in the bill, and the trip wire was hidden in a clause that the doctors thought was supposed to protect them. There was one extra word in the sentence. A physician could prescribe narcotics ‘in the course of his professional practice only.’ The interpretation of this phrase was left to the Treasury Department, and to the revenue agents, who determined that giving dope to an addict was not ‘professional practice.’ It was simply feeding a bad habit- not only immoral, but now illegal.”

In fact, it appeared that even the Surgeon General of the United States was unaware of the consequences this little word would have. During a conversation he had with an elderly morphine addict, he said that the act was meant for no other reason than for gathering information. Little did he know that within a relatively short period of time, this revolutionary law would be the cause of disrupted families, increased theft, the creation of a black market, the destruction of careers, and an enormous anti-drug task force! The bill called for $150,000.00 to be appropriated annually for enforcement; by 1994, the cost of enforcement required that this much be paid out every three minutes.

FINALLY GETTING AROUND THE CONSTITUTION

Wright had been trying to overcome the Constitutional hurdle for many years. So when he drafted the HNTA he had learned a thing or two. He knew that it would have to be put together as a tax act if it were to have any legs. He had many setbacks but, as any good politician would do, he used these to his advantage. He worded it in such a way that it would pass muster with virtually no discussion. It appeared relatively innocent as it was shrouded with good intentions.

All of this aside, it did not take long before it was in the courts. In 1916, the Supreme Court heard the first case dealing with the new tax act. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., believed that the act was unconstitutional. The Court voted seven-to-two in favor of a doctor who had sold narcotic prescriptions to a drug addict. It was upon this verdict that other doctors, pharmacists, and drug addicts who had been convicted of crime under the tax act were let free.

Rufus King, in his book, “The Drug Hang-Up: America’s Fifty-Year Folly,” reports that the Narcotics Division used strong-arm tactics against those in the medical community in order to force them to comply with the least amount of public knowledge. One tactic they used was to indict people, 35,000 in two-years time, without bringing them to court. King argues that this would coerce the medical community to comply with the Narcotics Division interpretation of the act without a verdict or interpretation from the Court.

It was not long before the Treasury had found a case that would cause the Court, and public opinion, to side with them. In 1919, the Treasury found a man who had been selling narcotics for $0.50 to any and all comers without any examination or sales record. This was the slam-dunk case the Treasury had been hoping for. The Treasury prosecuted the man as if he were the run-of-the-mill pharmacist and called on the Court to adopt an understanding of the tax act that was more in line with their own. In Webb et al. v. U.S., the Holmes Court which formerly ruled against the Treasury now ruled in the Treasury’s favor.

THE ENFORCERS

Since 1914, federal drug enforcement agencies have gone through quite an evolution. What began in 1914 as the Bureau of Internal Revenue became known as the US Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, in 1973. The fifty-nine years between the two had witnessed a change in name, as well as moderate changes in responsibility, 8 times. The DEA began as a department within the Treasury. It later came under the mast of the Department of Health Education and Welfare, the Department of Justice, the Executive Office of the President, back to the Department of the Treasury, only to return back to the Department of Justice. The Department also works closely with U.S. Customs Service.

The annual cost of the DEA is staggering. The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) says that the federal government spent over $20,000,000,000.00 on the drug-war during fiscal year 2005. According to ONDCP, the federal government spends over $600 per second in their crusade against drugs. The DEA admits to a cost of operations at $2,415,000,000.00 for fiscal year 2006. They operate with 10,891 total employees, 5,320 of which are special agents.

Cities and States are also actively involved in the drug war. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, state and local governments around America spent over $30,000,000,000.00 in fiscal year 2001, and the cost has gone up every year since.

The DEA has created Mobile Enforcement Teams (MET) that work with local and state agencies in cracking down on drugs. The DEA boasts of having had 13 MET deployments in the State of Michigan since the inception of the program.

The High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) is based upon trafficking trends. The districts currently included in Michigan HIDTA accounts for 60% of Michigan’s total population. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, “Currently, the following agencies participate in the Michigan HIDTA: Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service, Bureau of Immigration & Customs Enforcement, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Marshall Service, Michigan State Police, Detroit Police Department, Grand Rapids Police Department, Kalamazoo Police Department, Flint Police Department, Sheriff’s Departments from the nine HIDTA counties, Michigan National Guard, Michigan Office of Drug Control Policy and many other local law enforcement agencies.”

AMERICA’S LONGEST WAR

Since the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act we have seen an alarming amount of continued regulation. Here is a list of the most important acts and amendments in drug war history since 1914:

• The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 affected marijuana in the same way as the HNTA had affected narcotics.
• The Food and Drug Cosmetic Act of 1938 was radical in that it gave the FDA complete power over the drug issue. This gave them the power to define what a drug is, establish which are permitted for prescription, and safety requirements.
• The Boggs Amendment to the HNTA (1951) established mandatory minimums for narcotic violations.
• The Drug Abuse Control Amendments (DACA) of 1965 places severe restrictions on the use of amphetamines, LSD, barbiturates, etc.
• The 1966 Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act allowed for rehabilitation as an alternative to jail time for those addicted to narcotics.
• The Analogue (Designer Drug) Act of 1986 makes use of a substance with similar effects and structure to existing illicit drugs illegal. This was specifically damaging to MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy.

SOURCES

1. Ted Gottfried, Should Drugs Be Legalized?. Connecticut: Millbrook Press, 2000.

2. David Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotics Control. New York: Yale University Press, 1973.

3. Mike Gray, Drug Crazy: How we got into this mess & how we can get out. New York: Random House, 1998.

4. Douglas Husak, Legalize This! The Case for Decriminalizing Drugs. New York: Verso, 2002.

5. Steven Duke and Albert Gross, America’s Longest War: Rethinking our tragic crusade against drugs. New York: Putnam, 1993.

6. http://www.druglibrary.org

7. http://www.drugsense.org

8. http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov

9. http://casacolumbia.org

10. http://www.usdoj.gov

11. http://www.leap.cc

12. http://www.drugwarfacts.org

NARRATIVE

This project was one of the more exciting, and interesting, assignments I have had to do. My choice of this particular public policy was on account of both its obscurity as well as the far reaching, and grossly overlooked, affect this particular policy has had on America and specifically the American legal system.