by Martin Booth
Between 1945 and 1970, the penalties for drug dealing in the USA underwent a series of sea changes. At first, capital punishments were levelled: the federal penalty for the sale of heroin by someone over eighteen to a buyer under eighteen was death at the jury’s discretion. Drug dealers were sent to the electric chair or the gas chamber but this penalty and others created a strong reaction in society and the onus of responsibility for the control of drugs was passed to doctors and psychotherapists. The threat of Death Row had not had the desired effect. Addiction rates steadily rose, fuelling crime against property. With a new faith in medical and psychological treatment, penalties under federal laws were reduced to mandatory minimum gaol sentences, obligatory participation in detoxification programmes, flexible sentences and even the maintenance of addiction under medical supervision.
The demographic nature of addiction altered, too. In the immediate post-war years to 1950, there was a sharp increase in heroin abuse in the black and Latino ghettos of northern cities to which southern blacks had migrated over the previous two decades and to which Latin Americans had flocked during the war. This development so worried the FBN that, in 1951, a mandatory minimum sentence of two years was instituted for a first conviction of narcotics possession.
This minimum sentence entered the statute books just as the dread of Communism and Soviet aggression was growing to the mania of McCarthyism. It was a natural progression of Senator McCarthy’s rabid zeal that narcotics be linked to the Communist conspiracy.
The FBN associated China’s need for foreign currency with her determination to destroy Western society and the trafficking of heroin into the USA. Claiming most heroin in North America was of Chinese origin, the US government frequently complained in the UN. Harry Anslinger, Director of the FBN, declared in 1954 that the Chinese had a twenty-year plan to finance political activities and spread addiction in the USA. Although he continued to voice this opinion into the 1960s, he was wrong. FBN reports in the 1960s showed China was neither exporting any opium or opiates nor producing them, except for her exact pharmaceutical requirement.
By 1965, the heroin epidemic had spread into suburban middle-class neighbourhoods. The post war ‘baby boomers’ had come of age, the population in the 15–24 age group increasing by 50 per cent over five years. It was these white middle-class youngsters who began experimenting with heroin on the campuses and street corners of America. The culture of permissiveness, free love, pot and rock ‘n’ roll promoted experimentation: the catchphrase was ‘be cool’. Between 1960 and 1970, the number of heroin users rose from approximately 50,000 to 500,000.
Many of the new youth sought heroes: most found them in sports personalities, political activists and pop stars but for a significant number, particularly those with a modicum of education, the hero was a writer – Jack Kerouac.
An American of French-Canadian and Mohawk-Caughnawaga Indian extraction, Kerouac was the archetypal addict writer who described himself as a strange, solitary, crazy, Catholic mystic. A university drop-out with a good education and a sharp intellect, he was a rebellious drifter who wandered America like a hobo, rejecting, commenting upon and criticising the safe foundations of the American dream. He started his drug career with benzedrine then moved to marijuana. When he fell under the influence of another American writer, William Burroughs, he was introduced not only to the underworld characters of his stories and poetry but also to morphine and heroin. It was Burroughs who called his apartment a ‘shooting gallery’ – his friends could shoot up there: the phrase entered every addict’s dictionary. Later, in Mexico, Kerouac experimented with mescaline, peyote, and goof-balls (barbiturates): he was also an alcoholic.
Most of Kerouac’s innovative writing was done under the influence of drugs. He abandoned accepted literary techniques, turning to hallucinatory and stream-of-consciousness styles, using words as jazz musicians used musical phrases. His novel, On the Road, was published in 1957 and it is arguably the most influential American novel of the twentieth century. The hero is a young man, Dean Moriarty, a foot-loose traveller who became the archetypal American hero, a spiritual extension of the pioneers of old who lived free. Criticised for its hedonism, degeneracy and disregard for established social mores, young people saw it as an adventure. It started a whole new youth culture of which drugs were an accepted part: it might be said to have caused the birth of the modern drug ‘culture.’
The drastic rise in addiction in the 1960s was met with a massive programme for the building of mental health centres throughout America which heralded new attitudes. The mental health establishment had a different view of addiction from the one held by the FBN: addiction was a physical or psychological disease requiring treatment and, as law enforcement had failed, it was perhaps time to try a new approach. Gradually, it was accepted that crime and drug abuse were widespread throughout society, cutting across class and ethnic boundaries and that the real criminals were the pushers, dealers and organised crime bosses, not the addicts.
Outpatient clinics offering methadone maintenance created a favourable response to the medical treatment of heroin addiction and led to the 1963 Presidential Commission on Narcotic and Drug Abuse which supported relaxing mandatory minimum sentences and increasing funding for research into all aspects of narcotic and drug abuse. Three years later, the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control of the Food and Drug Administration was set up under the umbrella of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Then, in 1968, both it and the FBN were abolished and the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) established with international responsibilities and contacts. Funding was increased, agents were trained and a long-term programme of enforcement and regulation begun. New legislation, such as the Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 and the Controlled Substances Act, strengthened the resolve of the authorities.
In June 1971, President Nixon launched a war on drugs campaign, the USA leading a large scale offensive against opium producers and traffickers. In a long, televised speech, Nixon said, ‘America has the largest number of heroin addicts of any nation in the world … The problem has assumed the dimension of a national emergency … If we cannot destroy the drug menace in America, then it will surely in time destroy us.’ Drugs rose to the top of the political agenda. Famous public figures joined the crusade, including Elvis Presley who, by now, was probably America’s best-known (yet – at the time – least realised) junkie.
The BNDD and US Customs received substantially larger budgets. Agent numbers increased severalfold. Political pressure was applied to other governments to adopt a more hard-headed attitude towards opium production and trafficking. Nixon augmented a Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention and, a year later, the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement and the Office of National Narcotics Intelligence. So many different organisations were unwieldy so, in 1973, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was created with all the functions of the various agencies rolled into one.
The DEA’s mission included – and still includes – enforcing federal drugs laws, freezing and seizing drug traffickers’ assets, liaising with Interpol and foreign enforcement agencies and furthering co-operation and co-ordination of international, federal, state and local law enforcement programmes. It is, furthermore, established on a world-wide footing with agents in overseas offices.
Before 1940, American narcotics agents operated only inside America. In the late 1940s, a few agents started to work overseas out of American embassies and consulates. By 1995, the DEA had over seventy-five offices in fifty countries. In those from which opium or heroin originate, DEA agents are almost paramilitary personnel who actively participate with local enforcement agencies, dressed in camouflage combat clothing and armed with the latest automatic weapons. Their role is to arrest opium traffickers and producers, seize evidence and destroy heroin laboratories. The DEA is also at the forefront of the scientific war against drugs: for example, the Heroin Signature Program is capable of identifying the geographic source of a heroi
n sample by the recognition of specific chemical characteristics. The organisation has an official annual budget of nearly $1000 million: it has been estimated though by some observers that, in total, counting every aspect of its work both nationally and internationally, the US war on drugs is a $13.3 billion dollar a year effort.
Initiatives created by the DEA have proved to be as effective as they have been innovative. One of these is called asset-sharing. When DEA agents succeed in seizing a drug trafficker’s assets, the income is shared with those countries which assisted in the case on the condition the sum earned (which can be substantial) is spent on furthering the fight against drugs. This system of co-operation has proven very popular with almost every participating country. Only Britain has ever rejected the share offer, saying the money earned would be placed in the general exchequer and spent as the government saw fit: on that occasion, the DEA withheld what amounted to several million dollars. Another initiative, within the USA, is the Demand Reduction Program, based on the obvious fact that demand drives the drug business – if no one was buying, then no one would be selling. The user is targeted, not with custodial penalties but with social ones which strike home harder. For example, in Tennessee, a juvenile convicted of a drug offence loses his driving licence, even if the drug offence was unconnected to a motor vehicle.
For a while, in the 1970s, the DEA had some outstanding successes which resulted in the American addict population dropping from 500,000 to 200,000. But then, in 1979, there was a new heroin importation explosion. Even the DEA was swamped. Addiction soared to former peaks. New laws were passed with mandatory prison terms, including an Anti-Drug Abuse Act (1986), and the American police forces stepped up arrests and convictions of traffickers, doubling the country’s prison population in the 1980s.
Today, the DEA operates what is called its Kingpin strategy. This concentrates American and international law enforcement against key personnel and organisations in the global drug underworld, deliberately seeking to destabilise their businesses and generally making it difficult for them to operate at full efficiency: in other words, they legally hassle them and keep the illegal trade on the hop.
Additionally, the USA has a National Narcotics Intelligence Consumers Committee (NNICC), set up in 1978 to collect, analyse, disseminate and evaluate drug related intelligence from both foreign and domestic sources. NNICC plays a seminal part in providing the data which informs the development of drug policy, the deployment of anti-drug resource and operational tactics.
Despite all the efforts of the DEA, the USA has a huge drugs problem, exacerbated by the number of street pushers who are themselves addicts. It is a known fact when heroin addiction reaches a certain stage, the addict finds it advantageous to become a dealer rather than feed his habit with other criminal activity. The trade therefore has to expand to self-perpetuate itself: a vicious circle is formed. Heroin addiction has declined amongst the middle class but it is rampant in inner-city areas amongst the poor, blue-collar workers and unskilled labourers. In Harlem, New York City, where over 60 per cent of households have incomes below the federal poverty line, it is hardly surprising heroin is rife for it not only alleviates the drudgery of life but it also affords a lucrative way out of the poverty trap. Many poor youths turn to the drug trade to make a living for heroin, whilst it will not make a street dealer rich, will bring him in more than many a legitimate wage packet might.
Urban drug dealing inevitably leads to high crime rates. Gangs fight for territory. Automatic weapons are readily available. Drug related murders are commonplace. By 1989, the situation was so bad President Bush followed Nixon’s example. He announced a new $7.8 billion programme, declaring war on Latin America’s Narcos, the narcotics barons, raising the budgets of the DEA, the US Coast Guard, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other agencies and giving hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. In December of that year, he ordered US troops into Panama to capture General Manuel Noriega who was taken to Miami to face cocaine smuggling charges. This was a new and important development for it was the first time regular military units had overtly joined the battle.
It has been reckoned at least 50 per cent of all crimes committed in American cities are drug related: this figure may be considerably higher in inner-city zones, although in rural areas it is significantly lower. An article in Newsweek as far back as 1971 stated that New York was in a virtual state of siege. The city, the article declared, was being killed by heroin and there were other cities on the death list. The situation is little changed today. Drugs are still at the forefront of the American consciousness, as opinion polls show: most Americans consider drugs the greatest problem facing their nation.
11
DORA, Isabella and Olivia
Over the Atlantic in Britain, the rate at which the problem developed had been slower and the manner different.
A shifting Chinese community, mainly seamen on leave between vessels, had existed in Britain since the eighteenth century, centred almost entirely upon the London East End boroughs of Stepney and Poplar, close to the docklands, where it occupied just two streets, Pennyfields and Limehouse Causeway. Its numbers were insignificant. By 1861, the resident Chinese population of the entire country was 147, rising to 665 over 20 years. Several opium dens existed but they catered exclusively for Chinese.
Few non-Orientals ever went into a den. Indeed, as with modern London Chinese gambling establishments, outsiders were positively discouraged. The only foreigners to enter them were Victorian sensationalist press journalists looking for sleaze, corruption and vicarious excitement or exotic danger. What they wanted to find, they found. Dens were described quite uncensoriously as humble, wretched places but they were not regarded as sinister: they were objects of curiosity and opium smoking was considered as little more than an exotic foible of John Chinaman.
This concept is well described in an essay about a London den at Palmer’s Folly, published in the Daily News during 1864, which reads:
A dreadful place … We become conscious of a peculiar smell of burning, the aroma from which is not unpleasant … We push at a half open front door, and at once find ourself in a small, half-lit, shabby room on the ground floor, in which a large French bedstead occupies the most conspicuous place. The smell has grown in intensity as we neared this house, and, once here, it becomes trying both to eyes and head … On the bed, which is devoid of sheets or counterpane, and has its pillows and bolster placed lengthwise along its sides, are three Chinamen, sprawled round a small japan tray, in the centre of which is a tumbler half full of a thick brown syrup, of the consistency of treacle, some brass thimbles, one or two bits of wire about the size known as ‘blankets’; a burning taper and some pipes … The old Chinaman on the end of the bed nearest the window seems in a half trance, though he smokes vigorously, and in his cadaverous face, painfully-hollow cheeks, deeply-sunken eyes, open vacuous mouth, and teeth discoloured, decayed, and, it seems, loose as castanets, you read the penalties of opium smoking. This is the proprietor of the house, whose preparation of the drug is so exceptionally skilful that Chinamen come from all parts of London to patronise him. Before you hastily form a judgement as to the wreck of vitality you think you see, learn that the old man is seventy-five years old, that he lives quite alone, and is his own housemaid, scullion, and cook; that he is diligent in his business, such as it is; rises daily at 5 a.m., and is celebrated throughout his dingy neighbourhood for the energetic particularity with which he scrubs and washes pots, pans, and house, and for the scrupulous care wherewith he purchases and prepares his food … Beside the bed, there are chairs, a table, cooking utensils, and a clothes-line stretching from one corner of the room to the other. On this hang the coats and waistcoats, collars, and cravats of three young fellows … They are evidently of a respectable class of Chinamen, they are clean in their persons, and both socks and shirts are of commendable purity … The young fellow with the particularly jolly smile … shows us how a pipe is ch
arged, lighted, and smoked. One of the blanket pins is thrust into the syrup, and then twisted round and round in the flame until all the stringiness hardens down, and a pill-like globule can be inserted in the small hole in the thick barrel of the pipe. This is lit, and finished in a series of vigorous puffs, which are apparently continued for about a minute. The half-tumbler of black-brown syrup is opium duly prepared for smoking, and is worth twenty-five shilling, while the thimbles at its side each hold a shilling’s worth … Each man helps himself, potters about the little place and lounges on the bed with perfect freedom … The club-night at, say, the ‘Three Jolly Pigeons’, when the grocer, the baker, the parish clerk and the small farmer meet to chat over the gossip of the week, with pipe and glass, is a fair English illustration of the manners, demeanour, and general free-and-easiness of this batch of smokers.
A dreadful place it might have been yet malefic and vice-ridden it was not: the opium den was, as the writer put it, little more to the Chinese than the public house was to his English working-class contemporary.
Yet, as in America, attitudes began to change with the start of legislation, with the Pharmacy Act of 1868 and the establishment of the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade. Public opinion was swayed, equating opium with something evil.
This attitude was latched on to by a number of popular authors. In Charles Dickens’s last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, published in 1870, there is a powerful indictment of opium. The main character – one cannot call him the hero, for he becomes one of Dickens’s most fascinatingly dislikeable characters – is John Jasper, the choirmaster of Cloisterham Cathedral and an opium addict. The novel was unfinished, but the way in which it was developing shows how Jasper’s double life was catching up with him and highlights his despicable side. He courts the fiancée of his disappeared and presumed dead nephew, Edwin Drood, whom it is likely the novel would have proved Jasper had killed.
