Medical Drug Use versus Recreational Abuse

Abstract

Abstract Moral aversion to mind-numbing pleasure and the excuse of necessity also shaped the nation’s opium laws. Eaten opium served recognized medical needs—suppressing pain, dysentery, and coughing—and won moral sanction for those purposes. Smoked opium and opium dens, introduced by Chinese laborers who immigrated to the West in the mid-nineteenth century, claimed no recognized medical need. Because observers portrayed opium smoking as inducing mindless pleasure, the practice drew moral condemnation. In 1875, acting on reports that respectable white youths patronized the dens, San Francisco’s supervisors criminalized keeping or visiting opium dens, the nation’s first ban of a nonalcoholic intoxicant. Other Western cities and towns enacted similar bans, often after reports of white youths visiting the dens, and statewide prohibitions followed. The old tradition of self-medication with eaten opium slowed full-scale opium bans, but they eventually followed. State lawmakers distinguished acceptable medical use from disfavored recreational abuse by banning unprescribed sales.