"During the 1950′s, a number of stimulant and sedative drugs were widely used and were promoted in the mainstream media. At the time, many amphetamines were available over the counter without a prescription, including Benzedrine."
I find this to be quite interesting, as this means that what are now illegal drugs had been legal for about 20 years before the Controlled Substances Act of 1970[1]. This means that there was a fairly established industry selling what are now controlled drugs, a fact that I hadn't really thought through before.
It makes me wonder whether if at the time if the Drug industry was simply not that important, or if the 1970 law was similar to the Farm Bills, where by accepting more regulation, the drug companies would receive less competition. If that's the case, there might be an interesting story to be told (probably mostly wrong) about how the Drug War brought about the current power of the Pharmaceutical Companies, unrelated to the patent laws involved. In any case, it looks like a part of history that I haven't paid too much attention to, that I should look at. Fun times!
> It makes me wonder whether if at the time if the Drug industry was simply not that important, or if the 1970 law was similar to the Farm Bills, where by accepting more regulation, the drug companies would receive less competition.
Or there was continuing evolution in our understanding of what various drugs do to the body and their (possible) long term side-effects and harm and a strengthening of consumer rights and protection protection.
The Controlled Substances Act was not the first legislation outlawing various drugs and it's creation occurred along with the creation of the FDA. You ended up with drugs considered too dangerous of or no medical use outlawed and the rest regulated for health and safety. Along with that companies couldn't make whatever claim of health benefits they wanted to.
Stimulants were indeed widely available, but by 1970 this was perceived as a major social problem, as documented in this (thoughtful) 1969 article: http://nymag.com/news/features/48874/ In turn, you could follow the references back to the Japanese amphetamine epidemic of the mid-50s.
I am an unapologetic proponent of legalizing all drugs, however, I'm not sure what the best way is to sell them.
The freedom to conduct business runs into the moral responsibility of selling compounds that can serious have potential for abuse. Should advertising be allowed at all?
The UK has a pretty bad problem with alcohol. More people are dying of alcohol related illnesses, especially young people. Liver disease which used to be rare among young people is rising. Alcohol costs A&E units about £1bn per year. (1 ambulance is called every 14 seconds to deal with an alcohol related problem.) Alcohol costs hospitals about £2.3bn per year. We have 'drunk buses' - paramedic vehicles that only deal with alcohol related illnesses in city centres at night times. Some hospitals have set up "drunk tanks" to ease the pressure on A&E units by giving drunks a cot to sober up on, with mild supervision, without taking up the resources of a real A&E bed.
We only have about 70m people in the country.
I strongly support legalising all drugs, but we failed pretty hard with alcohol.
If we take the recently publicized Rat Park addiction study as a guide, the problem isn't so much with the alcohol as with the social environment. If these people are abusing alcohol to seek refuge from excessive stress in their daily lives then it won't really matter all that much how the drugs are sold - we'll need to address the root problem of so many people feeling like "rats in a cage."
The social environment in the UK has evolved to create "vertical drinking environments".
You take tables and chairs out, so that you can get more people in. This also means that people are holding their drinks, which makes them drink quicker.
You play loud music. It's hard to talk. So people drink quicker.
You offer drink promotions, and stay open for long hours. This means that people drink more.
The culture promotes it - EastEnders and Coronation Street alone show people's lives revolving around pubs and "having a pint". Roy Cropper is the only one shown not drinking alcohol, and he's hardly held up as a status symbol on the show :)
So that's about £47 per person. What percentage of alcohol spending is that?
(I'm don't really mean to suggest that a low percentage would justify wanton drunkenness or invalidate what you are saying about doing a poor job, more that comparing the adverse consequences to the consumption is probably more useful than examining the big totals)
It is true that the drug control we have now is based on the 1970s legislation, laws governing drugs of abuse go back much further than that.
It's not accurate to say that sedatives and stimulants were widely available in the 1950's. Laws controlling benzedrine were mostly in place by WW2 and opium laws back in the 1920s.
Maybe you misunderstood me. What I meant was that they were still controlled, prescription drugs during that time. They weren't available over the counter.
You article supports that with the quote: "mainly iatrogenic"
I did read it, from what I saw the Benzedrine inhaler was available until the 1950s, not the 1970s.
That was one source of amphetamine that wasn't tightly controlled. The rest of it was prescription only. In fact, "In 1959, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made it a prescription drug."
Well, the are more recent examples that. Before 2004 you could buy ephedrine pills (Max Alerts & Mini Thins) in many gas stations (let alone pharmacies).
The old Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse stories are quite amazing. I have a volume of reprints where Mickey gets jealous of another dude going after Minnie Mouse, and tries to kill himself with a gun, jumping off a bridge, drowning and with gas.
"During the 1950′s, a number of stimulant and sedative drugs were widely used and were promoted in the mainstream media. At the time, many amphetamines were available over the counter without a prescription, including Benzedrine."
I find this to be quite interesting, as this means that what are now illegal drugs had been legal for about 20 years before the Controlled Substances Act of 1970[1]. This means that there was a fairly established industry selling what are now controlled drugs, a fact that I hadn't really thought through before.
It makes me wonder whether if at the time if the Drug industry was simply not that important, or if the 1970 law was similar to the Farm Bills, where by accepting more regulation, the drug companies would receive less competition. If that's the case, there might be an interesting story to be told (probably mostly wrong) about how the Drug War brought about the current power of the Pharmaceutical Companies, unrelated to the patent laws involved. In any case, it looks like a part of history that I haven't paid too much attention to, that I should look at. Fun times!
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act