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Monday, July 24, 2023

Harrison "Narcotics" Act sponsor Yale Skull & Bones

 according to wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Burton_Harrison#Early_life

Harrison was born in New York City, to Burton Harrison, a lawyer and private secretary to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and Constance Cary Harrison, novelist and social arbiter. Through his mother, Harrison was great-grandson of Virginia-planter, Thomas Fairfax, 9th Lord Fairfax of Cameron. Through Fairfax in birth and marriage, Harrison was also relative to United States founding fathers: Gouverneur Morris (his great-great-uncle), Thomas Jefferson, the Randolphs, the Ishams, the Carters, and Confederate General Robert E. Lee

Harrison graduated from Yale College in 1895, where he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and the secret society Skull and Bones,[1]: 166 and from the New York Law School in 1897. From 1897 to 1899, Harrison was an instructor in the Evening Division at New York Law School. He later left to serve in United States Army during the Spanish–American War, as an assistant adjutant general with the rank of captain.



A member of the Democratic Party, Harrison was elected to the 58th United States Congress, and served from March 4, 1903, to March 3, 1905. In 1904, Harrison ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor of New York. Afterwards, he resumed the practice of law. He was again elected to the 60th, 61st, 62nd and 63rd United States Congresses, and served from March 4, 1907, to September 3, 1913, when he resigned to become governor-general of the Philippines. His Harrison Narcotics Tax Act was eventually passed on December 17, 1914. 

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Narcotics_Tax_Act

The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act (Ch. 1, 38 Stat. 785) was a United States federal law that regulated and taxed the production, importation, and distribution of opiates and coca products. The act was proposed by Representative Francis Burton Harrison of New York and was approved on December 17, 1914.[1][2]

"An Act To provide for the registration of, with collectors of internal revenue, and to impose a special tax on all persons who produce, import, manufacture, compound, deal in, dispense, sell, distribute, or give away opium or coca leaves, their salts, derivatives, or preparations, and for other purposes." The courts interpreted this to mean that physicians could prescribe narcotics to patients in the course of normal treatment, but not for the treatment of addiction.[when?]

What it actually did was to prohibit sale and possession outside the regimen of a non refillable prescription, with the decision making upon what constituted legitimate medical practices for such to the dictatorial powers of the U.S. Treasury Department.  

It so banned Opium, Coca leaves and any mixture, preparation containing any amount of cocaine, and any opiate preparation containing per fluid ounce amounts of more than 2 grains Opium, 1/4 grain morphine or 1/8th grain heroin, in any over the counter product without a prescription.  The absolute ban on cocaine in any detectable amount reflected the protection of markets for Tobacco/nicotine.  This act was timed with the completion and opening of the Panama Canal, which would have significantly improved importing Coca leaves to North Atlantic markets.  The US had acquired the canal project in 1903, months prior to the USDA taking a sharp uptick in interest in blocking Coca, which the USDA had feared as a market competitor to Tobacco- e.g. the fear over "Tobacco Habit Cures" espoused in the infamous 1910 USDA Farmers Bulletin article Habit-forming Agents their sale and use a menace to the public welfare (which was strangely silent upon that of  mass machine produced Tobacco cigarettes..


U.S. Cigarette production spiked with drug prohibition: 1906, 1914,1937;
coinciding with the crackdowns on Opium, Coca and Cannabis
(p230 Licit & Illicit Drugs Breecher)
 
 



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