Pros And Cons Of The Harrison Act Of 1914

Ultimately, problems from the use of drugs caused Congress to get involved, even when the states discouraged their involvement. Multitudes of laws have been enacted to combat the drug problem in the United States. By the second decade of the twentieth century, calls for expanded drug regulation were prompted in part due to a growing prejudice against minority groups in America that were involved in drug abuse. The Harrison Act of 1914 can be traced back to an issue with the foreign trade. In addition, many Americans disliked the Chinese and their habit of smoking opium, simultaneously, the United States government wanted to open up trade with China. However, China refused to purchase American products due to the poor treatment of the Chinese

In response, Congress passed the Harrison Act, which was designed to regulate drug abuse through government taxation and became the basis for narcotics regulation in the United States. Furthermore, the act required anyone importing, manufacturing, selling, and dispensing cocaine, and opiate drugs to register with the Treasury Department, pay a special tax and keep records of all of their transactions. Officially, the Harrison Act did not make opiates and cocaine illegal, physicians could prescribe these drugs in the course of their professional practice only, which left a good deal of interpretation, and many physicians found themselves to be in violation of the law. Eventually, physicians stopped prescribing the drugs that were covered under the Harrison Act, which resulted in a new kind of criminal, driving individuals to seek drugs through a black market. Subsequently, the Harrison Act failed to reduce the drug-taking behavior and created a new market for organized

White laborers banded together and formed groups such as Key Men of America, and American Coalition whose goal was to Keep America American, so leaders of these groups believed that Mexican immigration and marijuana abuse was closely connected and newspaper articles began to circulate stating that marijuana made users become sexually excited and violently insane. Moreover, the first commissioner of the newly formed Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), Harry Anslinger, saw marijuana use as a way to gain national attention. Congressional committees heard testimony from Anslinger, who relied on extraordinary tales from movies, which depicted young people committing horrendous acts under the influence of marijuana. The result was the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which did not outlaw the marijuana but required a hefty tax to be collected on its manufacturing and sale of the drug. Every time marijuana was sold, the seller had to pay a tax of one-hundred-dollars pe3r ounce for a transfer stamp, failure to possess the stamps that were rarely issued was a federal