Recent Responses to Drug Use
Research into the mechanisms of drug addiction and dependence has greatly increased in the past quarter-century. In the nineteenth century, research centered on modes of delivery, the development of the hypodermic syringe, and the nature of opiate addiction.
The pattern of withdrawal was described and treatment for opiate addiction sought. Cocaine was offered, for example, as a cure for morphinism and alcoholism. Other cures were drawn from popular medical theories of the time, autointoxication, and other aspects of immunological response.Confidence in treatment was equaled only by enthusiasm for research, until after World War I when, especially in the United States, a powerful reaction against drug use caused both professionals and the public to reject current treatments — which, in fact, were of little value - and to lose interest in research. The battle against drug abuse came to rely primarily on law enforcement. Research again found support in the late 1960s and the 1970s when consumption rose and there was a certain toleration of “recreational” or “experimental” drug use among youth. However, as fear of drugs and drug users increased, the public grew impatient with treatment and toleration of any drug use and, again, funding for research fell. In recent decades, significant advances have included the discovery of opiate receptor sites in the brain, of the existence of naturally produced opiates, endorphins, and of the existence of chemicals that block opiate receptor sites. Specific treatment for cocaine dependence has eluded investigators.
On an international level, attempts have been made to interdict drugs coming from producing areas; persuade local growers of poppies, coca bushes, and marijuana to grow other crops; arrest local dealers; and spray illicit crops with herbicides. Crop substitution as an international policy dates to the 1920s, when the League of Nations sought to persuade opium growers in Persia to grow other crops, and continues today in major opium-producing areas, such as the “Golden Triangle” in northern Burma.
This scheme has not yet cut into the world supply of opium and coca and, of course, is irrelevant to the control of manufactured drugs such as synthetic opiates and stimulants like amphetamine. Spraying the crops of producing nations and other policies advocated by consuming nations raise sensitive questions of sovereignty. Furthermore, producing nations claim, as they did during the first U.S. campaign to control production before World War I, that the problem is not production but the consuming nations’ demand for drugs.In its worldwide campaign against addiction, the United States early in this century asserted that the use of narcotics for anything other than strictly medical treatment was dangerous and morally wrong. This attitude represented the thinking of most North Americans at the time, but it was not a universal view and is not a view always held by the United States. The vicissitudes of moral attitude toward addiction over the past two centuries illustrate that the response to addiction is intimately bound to the social history and mores of a nation or region at any given time. The history of addiction has a medical element, but it is also a reflection of nations’ characteristic approaches to individual and social problems. Integration of the history of addictive substances with the social history of nations and regions remains a fertile area for research.
David F. Musto