Certainly drug use was widespread. Drug use has ALWAYS been widespread. Our species has been using drugs since before we were homo sapiens sapiens (poppy straw has been found at homo erectus sites). But that doesn't make it a 'crisis'.

For something to be 'abuse' it has to have some sort of detrimental effect on a persons life. For drug use to constitute a 'drug crisis' there has to be a detrimental effect on society as a whole. Certainly around the turn of the century there were many drug users and some drug abusers, but prior to prohibition there was no 'crisis'. The 'crisis' didn't come untill after drugs were outlawed.

It was not the police who lobbied in 1914 for the passage of the Harrison Act, which first criminalized drugs. It was the protestant missionary societies in China, the Women's Christian Temperance Union and other such organizations that viewed the taking of psychoactive substances as sinful. These groups gradually got their religious tenets enacted into penal statutes under which the "sinners" go to jail.

Now that doesn't mean there weren't issues. Many civil war soldiers came back from the war addicted to morphine. The biggest problem with being addicted to morphine is... that you are addicted to morphine. As long as an addict gets his daily dose he is quite capable of functioning perfectly well as a citizen, husband, and father etc. etc. but try to take that dose away and you will see an ugly sight.

That's not any different from any of the addictions we are born with. We all need our daily 'fixes' of food, water, oxygen etc. The difference for an opiate addict is they have one more thing on thier list. As long as that 'one more thing' is readily available and inexpensive there is no major problem. They go about thier lives. They function. They live.

As you mentioned, opiates were indeed put into many patent medicines of the day, but that is no different from today. Lorocet, percocet, darvocet, dihydrocodone, codine, vicodan, demoral, oxycontin, immodium AD, and many more, are all opiate based medicines. Open the average medicine chest around the country and you will find one or more of those products, all perfectly legal.

With the prevalence of cholera, dysentery and malaria around the turn of the century it is probable that the prevalence of opiate based products saved many lives. Opium is still used today as a primary treatment for severe dysentery, which fact explains why it is schedule II instead of schedule I.

So yes, there were indeed problems, but all in all you cannot call the situation prior to the passage of the Harrison act a 'crisis'. It quite simply was not.

But look what happened after the passage of that act-- Because the penalties were no different, street dealers switched from the more bulky less easy to conceal opium to the 50-100 times more potent heroin, and opiate addicts switched right along with them. Many times more addictive and many many many times more dangerous, heroin became the last resort for the opiate addict. Now the real 'crisis' begins.

What was once a legal clear light of day market was suddenly driven underground into the shady realms of the black market. Prices per dose skyrocketed, and for the first time crime became genuinely associated with the opiate trade. Addicts who had previously been readily able to afford their fix now found themselves in a situation where they had to choose between junk sickness and committing robberies to sustain their habit.

While there were 'problems' before criminalization, the 'crisis' was created by the war on drugs. A relatively miner public health issue was transformed over the next hundred years into the 'drug crisis' we know today.

The solution to this 'crisis' is relatively simple and straightforward. The first thing we have to do is get it through our thick American skulls that you cannot make something go away by outlawing it. Never in history have we successfully made something go away by passing a law, and it's not going to magically start working now. Drugs are here to stay. They are a part of life for us just as they were a part of life for our ancestors. Individuals might choose to refrain from drug use, but people in general will not.

So the choice is, do we choose to have clean drugs sold by prescription in pharmacies? Or do we choose to sell dirty drugs on street corners to our children? That's really the choice we have to make. So far we are choosing street corners and children.

Too many people see this as a black and white issue, as if by decriminalizing drugs we would be forced to see heroin sold over the counter in convenience stores. Not so. IMO alcohol could (and should) be more strictly regulated. There is no reason alcohol needs to be sold in supermarkets. There is no reason alcohol needs to be sold anywhere children are permitted. In many southern states hard liqueur is sold in ABC stores only, but I see no reason why beer and wine should not have the same restrictions placed on them. If an adult wants to purchase any sort of alcohol they would have to make a special trip to a special store, and they would have to leave their kids at home. As long as the restrictions don't rise to the severity level where we would risk creating a new black market then I see no problems with it.

Both schedule I and schedule II should be eliminated. There are no substances on either schedule which do not have potentially valid uses, and by valid uses I include 'recreational uses'. Some of the substances on schedule I are extremely harmful and dangerous (such as MDMA) and should only be administered under close medical supervision. Some of the substances on schedule I are only dangerous to those with pre-existing psychological disorders (such as LSD) and should be administered to anyone who requests them after a medical history check to rule out such pre-existing disorders.

Other substances, such as methamphetamine (schedule II) should be administered in small doses to those with ADD, and only on an occasional basis for anyone else.

What I'm saying is this--let's allow doctors to fill a supervisory role in terms of recreational drug use in exactly the same way they fill a supervisory role in other sorts of drug use today. Recreational use of drugs is no less valid than using drugs for pain relief, to get rid of skin blemishes, to stop snoring, to stop sneezing, to lose weight, to gain weight, to stay awake, to get to sleep, to grow more hair, to remove wrinkles, or any other of the countless non life-threatening uses for drugs we take for granted.

And if what I am suggesting came to pass? The black market would vanish virtually overnight. The crime rate would drop like a rock into an empty well. The rate of drug addictions and overdoses would shrink like a wool sweater in boiling water. And we could convert all these new prisons we are building into low cost housing. (You know... fix em up first... make em nice...)