Narcotic Drug Laws and Enforcement Policies

Abstract

Repressing the narcotic drug traffic by criminal sanctions is a comparatively recent innovation in the United States. Addicted persons have enjoyed the appellation dope fiend for only some forty years,' while the pusher of pre-World-War-I society was usually the local pharmacist, grocer, confectioner, or general-store-keeper.2 In fact, until the turn of the twentieth century, the use of opium and its derivatives was generally less offensive to Anglo-American public morals than the smoking of cigarettes.3 In many significant features, the patterns we have evolved to deal with this problem are atypical. First, the problem itself is viewed by most other civilized nations as one involving health rather than criminality, and it is virtually nonexistent in the view and experience of some. Moreover, although the ingestion and injection of narcotic substances seem patently to be matters primarily of local concern, the federal government has innovated our repressive policies, almost sua sponte, and a federal agency has been the dominant enforcement instrument from the very outset; even the initial impetus came, in part at least, from a treaty commitment undertaken by the federal government-far removed from considerations of state police power or local public policy. Furthermore, Congress has never, before or since, relied upon the federal tax laws to achieve an objective so remotely connected with the collection