SEP 25 '88 16:42 VALE PUBLIC INFO DF Musto, MD -3 Testimony 29 Sept. 1988 P.4 But it was not just morphine or, after 1898, heroin that worried Americans. A new drug, a powerful stimulant, had arrived in the 1880s: cocaine. At first cocaine was considered harmless. Experts in the drug and medical areas assured Americans that cocaine not only safely energized the weary and cheered the melancholy, but that there was no such thing as cocaine addiction. Sometimes the praise was slightly tempered by the advice that cocaine should be taken "in moderation," at other times this bow toward common sense was lacking. Cocaine rapidly spread through American society. At first it was rather expensive, but in about ten years or so the price of cocaine had dropped enough that it was available to almost everyone. It became a standard remedy for sinusitis and hay fever. It had been in Coca-Cola from the beginning until about 1900 when cocaine's reputation began plummeting. Its damage, especially among young people, was most visible in the cities. In Chicago, Jane Addams was appalled by the effect of cocaine on children she and her co-workers were trying to help. One example she gave: "He had been in our kindergarten as a handsome merry child, in our clubs as a vivacious boy, and then gradually there was an eclipse of all that was animated and joyous and promising, and when I last saw him in his coffin (at the age of seventeen), it was impossible to connect that haggard shriveled body with what I had known before." Jane Addams succeeded in getting a stronger state law in Illinois in 1907, eighty-one years ago. SEP 25 '88 16:43 YALE PUBLIC INFO DF Musto, MD -4 Testimony 29 Sept. 1988 P.5 Chicago's poor neighborhoods did not differ much from the worst inner-city areas of today. One observer called Chicago "first in violence, deepest in dirt; loud, lawless, unlovely, ill-smelling, new..." Cocaine was everywhere, from soda pop to sniffing powders. But Ms Addams, who would later become the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, did not abandon these difficult neighborhoods to cocaine. She was spurred to action by the effect of cocaine on the minds and bodies of young people. And eventually, after years of struggle, she and the neighborhoods won. As a result of the anti-cocaine attitude expressed in several state laws, such as the Al Smith anticocaine law of New York in 1913, and then at the national level the Harrison Anti-narcotic Act of 1914, the attack on cocaine eventually succeeded, although more slowly than an impatient America wished. Cocaine's availability in the 1930s was far less than in 1910 and by the 1940s and 1950s, cocaine had become a memory for the vast majority of Americans. In the time from 1885 to about 1905, twenty years, cocaine had moved from a harmless tonic to a drug which was seen as dangerous to take even once. This is a fundamental shift in popular attitudes that underlay the decline in demand. Such a changed perception of a drug from being a help to a hindrance occurred in the United States in other cycles of drug use. SEP 25 '88 16:44 ALE PUBLIC INFO DF Musto, MD -5 Testimony 29 Sept. 1988 P.E In fact, the United States has a long history of slowly alternating attitudes toward drugs. If we include alcohol, these cycles of tolerance and intolerance toward drugs extend back to the earliest days of our nation. What can I say briefly about these cycles? That a drug is initially seen as being a tonic, a stimulant to the body, and helpful in attaining insight or relaxation. The claims for drugs are positive and their use, if someone knows nothing more than the claims, seems reasonable. The road from this initial positive attitude to refusing to try drugs, is a long one. We find any reason to reject the dangerousness of drugs and overlook or explain away the bad effects. Because the use of drugs is in general an individual decision, a lot of minds must change in order to reduce demand. This move toward seeing drugs as harmful to achieving productive goals in life affects all the institutions of society. Schools, the police, courts, churches, and other institutions cooperate and reinforce one another in the rejection of drugs. In the first stage of drug use these institutions may not have taken the problem very seriously or not even have seen drug use as a problem. Gradually, the pressure of these institutions makes drug use less easy, less desirable and less approved. Peer pressure can be as much against drugs as for them. Slowly, drug use declines. SEP 25 88 16:45 YALE PUBLIC ÍNFO DF Musto, MD -6 Testimony 29 Sept. 1988 F.T The last time this happened, about 1920 to 1950, we strove to erase the memory of the earlier drug epidemic from our minds and our textbooks. With a very natural response to a scourge Americans hoped would never recur, we settled on three strategies: extreme punishment, silence or exaggeration. The effect of these measures may have been sadly and paradoxically to create new generations coming of age in the 1960s knowing nothing of the reality of drugs. The official information contained such exaggerated descriptions of their dangers that the government lost all credibility among young people discovering they had been grossly misled. I believe we have moved in the current epidemic, as in the last, toward rejection of drugs as helpful and harmless. We can see signs of this in many areas from the decline in approval of marijuana since 1978 to a more recent drop in cocaine among highschool seniors. Public opinion polls on the legalization of marijuana have paralleled these changes. With this shift from seeing a drug like cocaine being relatively harmless in the mid1970s to our current perception, legalizing the drug is a proposal simply out of step with public attitudes. The first cocaine epidemic shows that widespread use should not lead us to helplessness and hopelessness: use can be reduced. Further, the actual physiological and mental effects of cocaine as well as the actual effects of heroin are destructive to neighborhoods, SEP 25 '88 16:47 YALE PUBLIC INFO DF Musto, MD -7 Testimony 29 Sept. 1988 P.3 community organization and to families as well as to the individual addicted. It is not just the price of drugs or turf wars that create problems although those are an easily visible side of the drug question. It is the slowly, quietly destructive effect of the drugs on social cohesion that is the greatest and most lasting destruction of all. The question arises: does the great profit from illegal drugs make demand reduction impossible? Is the damage done by fighting for turf between gangs worth the legal restraints on drugs? This is a decision Congress and the nation must make. My belief is that the popular attitude which is growing so powerfully against drug use in this country is in the long run more determinative than profits or even foreign supply. Coca bushes grew in Bolivia and Peru before, during and after the first cocaine epidemic. As for profits, there were profits in the past, both legitimate when cocaine was legal and by pushers when illegal. Eventually, the fear engendered by cocaine along with the legal and institutional restraints did bring the epidemic under control. I believe legal sanctions are as necessary and appropriate to support this shift of attitude toward drugs as in the struggle against racial discrimination. |