Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America, 1776-1914 Gray Elizabeth Kelly

Habitual drug use in the United States is at least as old as the nation itself. Many Americans used opiates and other drugs medically and became addicted. Habit Forming traces the history of unregulated drug use and dependency before 1914, when the Harrison Narcotic Tax Act limited sales of opiates and cocaine under US law.

After the Civil War, American presses published extensively about domestic addiction. Some tried Hasheesh Candy, injected morphine, or visited opium dens, but neither use nor addiction was linked to crime, due to the dearth of restrictive laws. Later in the nineteenth century, many used cocaine and heroin as medicine.

As addiction became a major public health issue, commentators typically sympathized with white, middle-class drug users, while criticizing such use by poor or working-class people and people of color. When habituation was associated