Criminalization of Heroin Changed U.S., Speaker Says

The public’s perception of heroin users and addiction has changed drastically n the last century, according to the medical director of the Oklahoma Center for Alcohol and Related Studies. Dr. Gary Borrell, who is also a staff psychiatrist for the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, was the guest speaker for the Drug Policy Forum of Oklahoma on Wednesday.
The pivotal point in the American perception of opiates was the signing of the Harrison Act in 1914—the act that tried to create a tightly controlled market of opiates. The Harrison Act had been passed primarily to fill America’s role in the Hague Convention of 1912, which tried to solve opium trade wars between China and Great Britain, according to “The Harrison Narcotic Act”, written by Edward M. Brecher and the Editors of Consumer Reports Magazine, 1972, found at www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cu8.html. China had been incensed at Britain’s shipping opium into its country, which competed with its homegrown opiates, and two “opium wars” had ensued. Ironically, the Prohibitionist movement in American was strong at the time and continuing to gain momentum, the anti opiate force as weak in 1911, yet the Harrison Act was pushed through Congress five years before Prohibition. Borrell said in American at the turn of the century, the use of opiates was legal and widespread. Morphine, a concentrated from of the active ingredient in opium, was discovered in 1806 and became widely used during the Civil War by suffering soldiers; heroin was first made by a chemist in 1875 and became widely used in remedies for coughing tin the age of tuberculosis outbreaks. The number of women who used opiates regularly outnumbered men by as much as 3 to 1, according to the Schaffer Library of Drug Policy website. It was not as socially acceptable for women to go to the saloons and have alcohol as it was for men; the drugs were also often used to treat menstrual pain. By 1900, an estimated 1% of the population was addicted to opiates—the highest level ever, Borrell said. Even then, an addiction to heroin or other opiates was not considered antisocial behavior; while it was not really approved of, Borrel said, it was thought to be a weakness or a vice. But that perception changed in 1914, with the Harrison Act. “By the stroke of a pen, it was converted from a medical to a legal problem,” Borrell said.

Opiates, which had been affordable and readily available up to that point, became a black market product; what had once been available on grocer’s shelves and apothecaries became a highly expensive, illegal product. From then on, opium and heroin users were considered criminals rather than addicts. Borrell said. Because they could no longer afford the opiates that had been so easily available before, addicts found they had to steal to support their now expensive habits. “Typically, heroin addicts don’t commit crimes if they can have their heroin,” Borrell said. “They’re over in the corner, on the nod,” he said, referring to the sleepy, lethargic state opiates produces in users. It has now become a criminal act to become addicted…users become base, vile people, deserving nothing more than moral outrage,” he said. The addicted brain is a changed brain, and the tendency to become addicted to opiates may well be genetic, Borrell said. “Our species is particularly susceptible to chemical dependency because we use chemicals to carry messages,” he said. He relayed the story of a high school quarterback who was at the top of his class, from a good family and popular; during a football game, the quarterback injured his knee. In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, he was given morphine. The student later told Borrell that from that moment, “the rest of my life was getting more morphine.” He didn’t care about his family, his girlfriend, his studies, anything.

In the 1950s, two doctors began administering methadone as a treatment for heroin addicts. Methadone is taken orally and puts the addict in a functioning range, above withdrawal symptoms but below euphoria. The addicts on methadone became functional again, Borrell said: they held jobs and began to rebuild relationships with their families. Heroin addicts have a hard time keeping a job because the amount of time they’re between euphoria and withdrawal is relatively short; treating heroin addicts with methadone stretches out that functional period of time. In the areas around methadone clinics, crime has gone down because addicts no longer have to steal to keep up an expensive heroin habit. Using methadone as a treatment for heroin addicts, Borrell said, treats those patients as someone with a medical problem as opposed to someone who is a criminal. “The truth is, opiates are remarkably benign t the human body,” he said. If used in a controlled manner and used in a pure form,”not one cell of the human body will be damaged.” Borrell said throughout history, societies seem to pick a drug that it thinks it needs to have: marijuana, alcohol, opiates, coffee or cocaine. “Each society picks one and says we all need this to get by. Here, it’s alcohol,” he said.

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