Harrison Immigration Act Research Paper

Yolanda James
11/15/2010
Lea 201
84171
Research Paper
The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act
Of (1914)

In the 1800s narcotics was mostly unregulated drugs. In the 1890s the (S&R) Sears and Roebuck sent out catalogs which offered a syringe and a small amount of narcotics to millions of homes for 1.50. The first American anti-drug law was an 1875 San Francisco ordinance which outlawed the smoking of opium in opium dens. It was passed because of the fear that Chinese men were luring white women to their "ruin" in opium dens. "Ruin" was defined as associating with Chinese men. It was followed by other similar laws, including Federal laws in which trafficking in opium were forbidden to anyone of Chinese origin, and restrictions on the importation
The Harrison Act which "outlawed" these drugs was a simple licensing law which simply required sellers to get a license if they were going to handle the opiates and cocaine. As the Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs has said, it is doubtful that very many members of Congress would have thought that they were passing what would later be regarded as a general drug prohibition. The law even contained a provision that nothing in the law would prohibit doctors from prescribing these drugs in the legitimate practice of
For comparison, see the history of the constitutional amendment which was required to prohibit alcohol. There is no fundamental reason why an amendment should be required to prohibit one chemical and not another. The trick was to lead the people into believing that the bureaucrats were going to authorized licenses, but never did so, and there was a heavy penalty for not having the license. This heavy penalty required that the enforcing bureaucrats needed more staff and, more power, which, in turn required tougher laws. Over the years, through a series of court rulings, they gradually got the courts to change what had been well-established constitutional law. They got the courts to accept the notion that it really was a tax violation when people got arrested for drugs, and that the fact that the government would not issue any licenses was not a defense. They also got the courts to bypass the old issue of whether the Federal Government had the right to control what an individual puts into their own bodies by creating the fiction that whatever the person puts into their bodies must have come as a result of some form of interstate commerce, which is regulated by the Federal Government in the form of taxes and licenses and, since the Federal Government