Heroin and the Media

From the beginning, the media did not hesitate to play up the dangers of heroin. In the late 1890s and early years of the twentieth century, there was a national hysteria over opium dens run by Chinese immigrants. Although many Americans were addicted to non-prescription medicines containing morphine and heroin, opium addiction was branded a “Chinese vice” threatening to subvert society.

One of the early opponents of heroin, Richmond Pearson Hobson, exploited the media's tendency toward sensationalism, publicizing his views in lectures laced with questionable facts and statistics. He started out as an advocate of prohibition, the banning of alcohol. “Ninety-five percent of all acts and crimes of violence are committed by drunkards,” he declared, as quoted in Julian Durlacher's Heroin. Prohibition failed, and by 1928, he had changed his focus: “Most of the daylight robberies, daring hold-ups, cruel murders, and similar crimes of violence are now known to be committed chiefly by drug addicts.” Hobson helped convince Americans that heroin use was causing a national crisis.

Hobson also argued that “drug addiction is more communicable [easily spread] and less curable than leprosy.” This view still held sway in 1956, when heroin was made illegal by the passage of the Narcotic Control Act. Senator Price Daniel was one of the first supporters of the act. During the hearings, he repeated Hobson's quote about heroin and suggested that for incurable addicts, “it is just as humane to put them in some kind of colony.”