The Narcotics Bureau and the Harrison Act: Jailing the Healers and the Sick

Abstract

This issue of the JOURNAL contains two studies of the narcotics problem.A Comment, beginning on page 751, presents a general survey of narcotics regulation.Mr. King's Article focuses on the interpretation and enforcement of the Harrison Act, and the resulting impact upon addicts and physicians.]AT last there are faint stirrings to suggest that this nation's policies towards its narcotic drug traffic may soon be exposed to a full critical re-examination and review.'Nearly forty years have gone by since Congress passed the Harrison Act, 2 intended partly to carry out a treaty obligation, 8 but mainly to aid the states in combatting a local police problem which had gotten somewhat out of hand. 4 In other areas of law enforcement, when Congress has thrown federal power into the balance, these local problems have usually diminished or disappeared. 5 In the case of narcotics control, however, the indications are all quite to the contrary.It must be conceded that there are large gaps in what we know about narcotics addiction and the illicit traffic.The Comment elsewhere in the JOURNALO presents a dispassionate collection of information and authorities.Yet there is simply not much to go by.When the federal authorities took over, we entered a forty-year eclipse; for years on end there has been nothing but the "official line" for those who wished to inquire into the subject.But enough information is available to convince this writer, along with a handful of other ' Special Counsel, Subcommittee of House Committee on the Judiciary to Investigate