Harrison Narcotics Tax Act

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Representative Francis Burton Harrison

Proposed by Representative Francis Burton Harrison of New York, the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 was a federal law passed in the United States to regulate and tax the production, importation, and distribution of opiates. The law includes heroin, opium, and morphine, as well as cocaine. The main proponent for the act was William Jennings Bryan, the Secretary of State, who was a man of deep prohibitionist and missionary convictions. With his backing, it was approved December 17, 1914.

1 Interpretation and Regulation
2 Criticism
3 Misclassification
4 Related Topics
5 External Links

[edit] Interpretation and Regulation

The courts interpreted the law to mean that physicians could still prescribe the narcotics for medical treatment, but not to treat addiction. This interpretation was meant mainly for the use of morphine with patients in need of extreme pain medication.

The Law was passed with minimal debate since public opinion considered it's passage a necessity to combat the "evils" of drugs.

"Congress regulated drugs by imposing licensing requirements on manufacturers, distributors, sellers, importers, producers, compounders, and dispensers. The Harrison Act required these parties to register with the director of Internal Revenue, within the Treasury Department, and to pay a gradually increasing occupational tax. Congress wanted to monitor the flow of opium and COCA leaves so that government authorities would have records of any transaction involving these drugs. They would be allowed only for limited medical and scientific purposes. Those individuals found in violation of the act faced a maximum penalty of five years in jail, a 2,000 dollar fine, or both." (BookRags)

[edit] Criticism

Some critcize the act because it failed to prohibit the sale and distribution of marijuana, even though it is not a narcotic. Also, the act did not specify if drug addicts were to be treated as criminals or patients in need of medical assistance.

One large problem with the act, was that addicts could no longer be weened off the drugs with doctor's prescriptions. A May 1915 editorial said, "As was expected ... the immediate effects of the Harrison antinarcotic law were seen in the flocking of drug habitues to hospitals and sanatoriums. Sporadic crimes of violence were reported too, due usual1y to desperate efforts by addicts to obtain drugs, but occasionally to a delirious state induced by sudden withdrawal...."

6 months later, an editorial in American Medicine reported:

"Narcotic drug addiction is one of the gravest and most important questions confronting the medical profession today. Instead of improving conditions the laws recently passed have made the problem more complex. Honest medical men have found such handicaps and dangers to themselves and their reputations in these laws . . . that they have simply decided to have as little to do as possible with drug addicts or their needs. . . . The druggists are in the same position and for similar reasons many of them have discontinued entirely the sale of narcotic drugs. [The addict] is denied the medical care he urgently needs, open, above-board sources from which he formerly obtained his drug supply are closed to him, and he is driven to the underworld where lie can get his drug, but of course, surreptitiously and in violation of the law...."

"Abuses in the sale of narcotic drugs are increasing. . . . A particular minister sequence . . . is the character of the places to which [addicts] are forced to go to get their drugs and the type of people with whom they are obliged to mix. The most depraved criminals are often the dispensers of these habit-forming drugs. The moral dangers, as well as the effect on the self-respect of the addict, call for no comment. One has only to think of the stress under which the addict lives, and to recall his lack of funds, to realize the extent to which these . . . afflicted individuals are under the control of the worst elements of society. In respect to female habitues the conditions are worse, if possible. Houses of ill fame are usually their sources of supply, and one has only to think of what repeated visitations to such places mean to countless good women and girls unblemished in most instances except for an unfortunate addiction to some narcotic drug-to appreciate the terrible menace."

[edit] Misclassification

Another issue pertaining to the Act, is the mis-use of the word "narcotics" in the title. The Act not only deals with opiads, but cocaine, a central nervous system stimulant, not a narcotic. The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act initiated a precedent of frequent legislative and judicial misclassification of various substances as "narcotics."