Records of history show that when dependence-producing drugs are socially acceptable and easily available, they are widely consumed, and their use is associated with a high incidence of individual and social damage.

The use of cannabis in the Islamic-dominated world surfaced only in the eleventh century when the Moslem Empire extended from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Arabic historians of the twelfth to the sixteenth century have clearly documented the damage done by the widespread use of hashish In the Moslem world. A scholarly account of their voluminous writings has been compiled by Dr. Franz Rosenthal, Sterling Professor of Near Eastern Languages at Yale University in his book THE HERB: HASHISH VERSUS MOSLEM MEDIEVAL SOCIETY. The reader learns that a controversy similar to the one raging today divided the ancient Islamic world. For several centuries the partisans of the “grass which gives joy and repose” battled the detractors of the “weed which impairs body and mind, and damages society.” At one time, in the first years of the 15th century, restrictions against hashish were set aside, resulting in general availability, acceptance, and abuse. The historian of the era, Al Magrizy, wrote that as a result, a general debasement of the
people was apparent. Finally all the scholars and religious leaders of the time condemned the weed - not from religious fervor, but because of the harm it had done to their society. It was too late. Says Rosenthal: “The conflict between what was felt to be right and socially good, and what human nature craved in its search for play and diversion went on” . . . until this day.

In Peru, the chewing of the coca leaf by the Indians and their leaders the Incas, was limited by religious ceremonies. After the Spanish conquest, this habit spread among the farmers and laborers who were paid in coca leaves that they chewed nearly continuously. As a result they were in a state of continuous low-grade intoxication. They have since maintained this custom. The farmers and miners of the Andes thus are able to work under most adverse conditions with only limited food intake. As a result, their social condition has not changed in centuries and their general health and life expectancy are poor.

In 1858, the legal trade of opium and Opium Wars were imposed on China by British mercantilism. By 1900, ninety million Chinese were addicted to opium. It took a national revival and the support of the United States and the international community, as well as fifty years of coercive measures, for the country to become opium-tree. Today opium and other dependence-producing drugs are banned from Mainland China as well as from Nationalist Taiwan and socialist Singapore.

In the 1920’s, the unrestricted commercial availability of cocaine and heroin in Egypt resulted in a massive epidemic abuse of these drugs which, as in China, was also curtailed in the thirties following national and international interdiction, and punitive measures meted out to all addicts.

In the 1950’s Japan experienced a major epidemic of intravenous and amphetamine use involving half a million addicts. A national campaign aimed at restricting demand and supply with sanctions applied against users and traffickers brought the number of addicts down to a few thousand within four years. An epidemic of heroin was curtailed in the same manner in the sixties.

In contrast, the British adopted, in 1925, a medical model allowing physicians to prescribe heroin to heroin addicts, which was dubbed “the British system.” It worked satisfactorily as long as addicts were few in number: 500 per year between 1930 and 1960. It became unmanageable after 1960 when heroin had to be dispensed to more than 1,000 users of the drug. Indeed, each addict had to be provided with daily doses of heroin as well as the syringes and needles required for administration of the drug four to Six times a day. Because of this logistic problem and because of the potential for diversion of the drug to non-registered addicts which is inherent in such a scheme, heroin began to be progressively replaced by methadone maintenance (methadone, a long-lasting opiate, needs to be absorbed only once a day, by mouth); in 1980, six percent of the 2,800 registered British addicts were treated with heroin compared to the thirty-one percent of the 1,400 addicts in 1973. In 1985, there were an estimated 80,000 heroin addicts in Britain. Despite this failure of the “British system,” it is still advocated by some in the U.S.

The lessons of history are clear: the social acceptance of dependence-producing drugs appears to exacerbate rather than alleviate all of the problems associated with drug addiction.