The Control of Fuddle and Flash: A Sociological History of the Regulation of Alcohol and Opiates

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ISSA.Gerritsen.76.vw

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Pagina 1

THE CONTROL OF FUDDLE AND FLASH


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Pagina 2

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

IN

SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY Editor

S. ISHWARAN

VOLUME LXXVI

JAN-WILLEM GERRITSEN THE CONTROL OF FUDDLE AND FLASH


25-04-2000 14:41

Pagina 3

JAN-WILLEM GERRITSEN

THE CONTROL OF

FUDDLE AND FLASH

A Sociological History of the Regulation of Alcohol and Opiates

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON • KÖLN 2000


25-04-2000 14:41

Pagina 4

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme The Control of Fuddle and Flash : a sociological history of the regulation of alcohol and opiates / by Jan-Willem Gerritsen – Leiden ; Boston ; Köln : Brill, 2000. (International studies in sociology and social anthropology ; Vol. 76)

ISBN 90–04–11640–0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gerritsen J.-W. (Jan-Willem) [Politieke economie van de roes. English] The control of fuddle and flash : a sociological history of the regulationof alcohol and opiates / Jan-Willem Gerritsen. p.cm. -- (International studies in sociology and social anthropology, ISSN 0074-8684;v.76) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 9004116400 1. Alcoholism--Economic aspects. 2. Alcoholoism--Social aspects. 3. Narcotic habit-Economic aspects. 4. Narcotic habit--Social aspects. I.Title. II. Series. HV5101 .G4713 2000 363.4'1--dc21

00-03828

ISSN 0074-8684 ISBN 90.04.11640.0

© Copyright 2000 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, U.S.A. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

Table of Contents

Preface ...................................................................................................... VII

Introduction .............................................................................................

1

1. A taxonomy of intoxicants ................................................................ An alternative classification ................................................................ Developments in neurophysiology ...................................................... The mechanism of alcohol .................................................................. The action of opiates ........................................................................... The lessons of ethology .......................................................................

11

14

15

17

18

19

2. The supply side: alcohol .................................................................... The control of yeast ............................................................................. Beer, wine and strong liquor ............................................................... Commercialization and increased scale of operations ........................

23

23

24

29

3. The supply side: opiates .................................................................... 41

The domestication of Papaver somniferum ......................................... 41

The three markets for opium ............................................................... 51

4. The colonial opium trade .................................................................. 57

Britain and the Netherlands: a profitable trade .................................... 57

The global regulation of opiates: the role played by the United

States ............................................................................................... 78

5. Excise taxes on alcohol: three countries .......................................... The sociology of taxation .................................................................... Alcohol excise and state formation in the Netherlands and Britain .... Alcohol excise and state formation in the United States .....................

87

88

94

106

6. Physicians as suppliers ...................................................................... 117

The origins of national medical regimes for opiates ........................... 124

Morphine and the hypodermic syringe ................................................ 135

7. Industrialization and the war on alcohol ........................................ Three paces of industrialization .......................................................... The temperance movement and its origins .......................................... The anti-alcohol struggle: three variants ............................................. Coda .....................................................................................................

Gerritsen p.V-VIII v3

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141

141

142

153

187

CONTENTS

[VI]

8. Physicians as detoxifiers .................................................................... Alcoholism: from sin to syndrome ...................................................... Medical practitioners and opiate addiction: a history of

delayed reaction ............................................................................... From sin to sickness—and back again?

The modern addiction syndrome .....................................................

189

189

195

204

9. The dynamics of prohibition and illegal supply ............................. US Prohibition: 1920-1933 ................................................................. The illegal market for opiates: 1912 to the present day ...................... Illegal drug markets: global features ...................................................

209

209

217

234

10. Summary and conclusions ................................................................ State formation and the regulation of intoxicants ............................... Physicians as suppliers ........................................................................ Industrialization and the anti-alcohol movement ................................ Physicians as detoxifiers ...................................................................... The dynamics of prohibition and illegal supply .................................. Coda .....................................................................................................

241

242

245

247

250

252

254

Bibliography ............................................................................................. 256

Update ....................................................................................................... 268

Credits ....................................................................................................... 272

Index ......................................................................................................... 274


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Preface

The publication of this book in English pleases me enormously. Not only be cause it makes a real contribution to the debate on the regulation of alcohol and opiates, but also because my husband, Dr Jan-Willem Gerritsen, who sadly died in 1993, very much wanted to see his book appear in English. I should like to thank drs Nico Oudendijk, former Director of the Depart ment of Mental Health Care, Addiction Affairs and Consumer Policy of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, and Professor Johan Goudsblom, chair man of the Norbert Elias Foundation, for the translation subsidies they grant ed, which followed naturally from their enthusiasm about the book. I would like to thank Dr D. Korf, Phd, associate professor at the ‘Bonger’ Institute of Criminology at the University of Amsterdam, for making the Update. I should also like to thank the translator, Beverley Jackson, for the commitment to the project and for our pleasant collaboration on the translation. Finally, I should like to thank Dr Han Israëls, Dr Annet Mooij and Dr Geert de Vries for their assistance in preparing the book for publication in English. Drs Henriëtte Oudshoorn


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fig. 1. The social regulation of the use of intoxicants among the Yanomami


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Introduction

Intoxicants and controls The use of intoxicants occurs in all human societies and in all ages, and it has also been observed among numerous animal species. In human societies, it is characteristic for this use to be subjected to social regulation: the location and time of use, the type and quantity of substance, the mode of its preparation and consumption, who may and who may not use it; all these aspects are socially regulated. Social regulation varies from one intoxicant to the next. At one end of the scale are tea and coffee, which are nowadays regulated along informal channels; legislation scarcely plays a role. At the other end we find substances such as cocaine and heroin, the use of which is subject to a far stricter regime.1 Here, repressive laws and sanctions are prominent, with every effort being made to curb consumption. Different types of responses are formulated in different societies. Most notably, alcohol, a common and legal drug in most societies, is prohibited in countries whose state religion is Islam. Looked at through time, a single soci ety may have modes of regulation that vary from one age to the next. This book deals with such modes of regulation of intoxicants in different societies, and the ways in which they change. In modern Western societies, organized as sovereign states and characterized by a far-reaching division of labour, people have grown increasingly interdependent.2 This has affected the way in which they regulate their behaviour and emotional life. The sociologist Norbert Elias has commented: ‘What changes is the way in which people have to live with one another; in response, their behaviour changes, ultimately producing a change in the totality of their con sciousness and desires.’3 Elias contends that as people come to inhabit a larger, more complex world with less pronounced differences of power, their behaviour and their passions become more moderate and more amenable to self-control. Taking table man

1 The term ‘regime’ as used by Johan Goudsblom refers to all forms of pressure exer cised by individuals within a community in relation to themselves and each other in order to regulate behaviour—in this case, the consumption of intoxicants (Goudsblom 1988:173). 2 Abram de Swaan has referred to the “extension and intensification of human chains of interdependence” (De Swaan 1989:12). 3 Elias 1982 (1939) II:286.

Gerritsen p.001-115 v3

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INTRODUCTION

[2]

ners as an example, he traces a process of continuing refinement over the cen turies. In another example, he discusses the impulsive urge to attack that char acterized early medieval warriors, and shows the gradual development of greater restraint. It is interesting to test Elias’s theory in relation to intoxicants. Alcohol use, at any rate, seems to conform to his model. There is much evidence to suggest that the one-time wild excesses of alcohol consumption have largely given way, in our own times, to more moderate drinking habits.4 This trend has ac companied society’s wholesale condemnation of alcohol addiction. The com pulsive use of many other drugs meets with similar disapproval. And in the fight to stop people being caught up in an undesirable pattern of consumption, an arsenal of legislation has been enacted, and a whole new class of medical and para-medical specialists has sprung up—people who make a living from their concern with drug abuse. In the case of some intoxicants, it is not only uncontrolled and compulsive patterns of consumption that are condemned; almost any use is viewed with suspicion and hence outlawed, precisely because of the risk of addiction. Can nabis products, opiates, substances containing cocaine and certain synthetic compounds such as LSD are now subject to worldwide prohibition. Police and the courts, the corrective instruments of government, ensure compliance with the law. The production, distribution and use of such banned substances is permitted only under the supervision of accredited health organizations or on prescription. This is one extreme. The opposite extreme is seen in the case of tea and coffee, which are deemed quite harmless; no need is felt for laws or any con straints beyond price mechanisms alongside with customs and habits that have grown (and continue to be directed) informally. For a long time tobacco too belonged to the class of intoxicant that was not thought to pose any hazard to the individual or to society. This attitude has changed only quite recently—but in this case the reaction is not related to intoxication but to the harmful effects of smoking tobacco, and the nuisance caused to non-smokers. Whatever the differences in public attitudes, an addiction to intoxicants—and in the case of some intoxicants, any use whatsoever—is viewed as a deviant form of behaviour. It is labelled sinful, criminal or sick, or at the very least as an unpleasant habit: it is certainly never taken to be normal. The ‘prisoners of pleasure’5 themselves—the alcoholics, drug addicts (including the relatively

4 5

See e.g. Shivelbusch 1988; Spode 1991.

From a BBC-2 documentary on addiction broadcast in 1988.


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INTRODUCTION

inconspicuous category of persons whose drugs are obtained on prescription) and chain smokers—make others feel uncomfortable and are often a source of concern or even misery to those closest to them. The abuse of intoxicants frequently sparks off a public debate, attracting massive attention in the media as a social problem of our times. In this way, the inappropriate use of intoxicants within a community can easily become a ‘public drama.’6 It is noteworthy, though not hard to understand, that the public furore surrounding intoxicants is almost always confined to abnormal and out lawed forms of consumption. From the broad variety of ways in which people use intoxicants, a few forms of consumption are pried loose from the rest and stigmatized as beyond the pale. This approach may lead us to overlook the fact that deviant forms of the use of intoxicants are inextricably linked to other forms of consumption, which are comfortably integrated into society. One of the objectives of this study is to try to avoid a preoccupation with deviant patterns of consumption, endeavouring instead to survey the entire panorama of the use and control of intoxicants. The changing balance between different types of pressure In every society, the use of intoxicants is controlled through the interplay of diverse forms of pressure. Strict laws on the trafficking and consumption of intoxicants, and enforcement by the state’s corrective apparatus of police and judiciary (on occasion even the army) constitute a mode of state coercion, a highly formal and external type of pressure. Somewhat less formal, but equally external, is the role of medical practitioners in regulating consumption. The pressure that people exert on each other in small circles, without any interfer ence by the state or intervention by doctors, is an informal, external type of social pressure that encourages people to regulate their consumption them selves. It is only when the regulation of consumption is anchored in a person’s own habits of mind, and has become second nature, that one can speak of internalized ‘self-regulation.’ Self-regulation is by definition internal, and often—though not always—functions without the need for a conscious decision.7 These diverse forms of pressure are not unrelated, nor can they exist sepa rately from one another. In their interrelationship, a precarious and inconstant 6 7

Gusfield 1989. The final combination—the highly formal with an internalized form of control—is hard to illustrate realistically, though life in a monastery may provide an example. In con nection with intoxicants, a compulsory spell at a drug rehabilitation clinic is perhaps a case in point.


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[3]

INTRODUCTION

[4]

balance can be distinguished.8 Together they make up the regime that controls the use of a particular drug. It is this regime that ultimately determines which forms of consumption of a drug are fully accepted and which forms are condemned as pathological or criminal, against which action will be taken, wheth er in the form of medical intervention or that of criminal prosecution. There is something else that may be said about this interplay of different kinds of pressure. It would seem that an increase in relatively formal and exter nal pressure exercised by the state tends to reduce the scope for more informal and internalized modes of regulation. Conversely, adequate forms of more in formal and internalized regulation are a prerequisite for a more restrained ap proach on the part of the state. In order to explain the nature of regulatory regimes and the changes they un dergo, some knowledge of the pharmacological action of a drug is essential. But such knowledge is not in itself sufficient. Regimes may change in response to the availability of a substance, they may be related to its concentration or the mode of consumption. Furthermore, the significance with which people imbue an intoxicant and that prompts them to use it helps shape the regulatory re gime. Whether an intoxicant is seen as an everyday nutrient, or imbued with the power of a religious attribute, whether it is seen as a medicine or as a recreational drug—such differences are related to the regime that applies to a particular intoxicant, and are in fact reflected in it. One significant and common form of social regulation is the monopolizing of a particular intoxicant by a certain group in society. And this monopoly in turn colours the significance of the intoxicant to the group that has claimed it. In pre-industrial societies, a monopoly of this kind was—and is—generally in the hands of priests. The intoxicants whose use they supervise often serve as religious attributes accorded divine, mystical power, which prevents people from consuming them without special dispensation. Anthropology and archae ology supply untold examples of the regulatory role played by priests of vari ous religions. In the Yanomami tribes of the Amazon basin, for instance, it is the shaman who administers the ‘ebena’ (a mixture of plant extracts with nar cotic properties) to his fellow tribesmen, using a pipe to blow it up their nos trils. The shaman directs the use of this drug.9 The priests of the Hellenic tem ples of healing played the same role. In modern industrialized societies, medical practitioners seem to have tak en over from priests as the custodians of intoxicants. In the latter half of the 8

Cf. Elias’ model of external restraints and self-regulation in Elias 1982 (1939) II:239-

260. 9

Baumgarten 1982.


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INTRODUCTION

19th century, physicians and pharmacists succeeded—with the state’s support—in gaining a monopoly over the use of a select group of intoxicants. This monopoly was soon enshrined in legislation (a formal and external mode of regulation) and has been firmly entrenched ever since; it has even been tightened up over the years. Besides using their power to enforce a religious or medical monopoly, rul ers have also acted out of self-interest, over the centuries, in regulating the production, distribution and consumption of drugs. By levying import and ex cise duties, and sometimes by imposing a government monopoly on produc tion or distribution, or by reaping the proceeds from a licensing system, rulers would use the most generally accepted intoxicants as a source of state revenue. The large-scale consumption of certain intoxicants was therefore in the direct interest of governments. This helped shape the regulatory regime: state super vision of such intoxicants was originally introduced on the supply side without any effort being made to restrict consumption. And this in turn influenced the way individuals and governments tended to view the substances concerned— namely, as common and socially acceptable intoxicants. Aside from the creation of monopolies by certain social groups, and the importance of intoxicants as a source of state revenue, there is a third point worth noting in relation to changes in the regulatory regimes for intoxicants. People rarely voice their concern about their own use of an intoxicant; their interest is in regulating other people’s pattern of consumption. These other people are often outsiders or newcomers: a younger generation, new immi grant groups, or a combination of the two. It is particularly when established groups face great changes in society that jeopardize their position of power that new plans proliferate for limiting outsiders’ use of intoxicants. The disqui et felt by the established order concerning the real or imagined desire for intox ication among outsiders often functions in such situations as a pars pro toto; the implicit accusation is that the outsiders’ consumption of a particular intox icant is symptomatic of a general lack of self-control. And where a tendency exists to view newcomers as unreliable and to feel threatened by them, the newcomers’ use of intoxicants will often be cited in justification. The newcom ers thus negatively labelled as dangerous or unreliable tend to resign them selves to it. Their weak social position not only makes them easy scapegoats, it also makes them prime targets for any ‘civilizing’ campaign.10

10

The terms of this discussion (‘established’ groups vs. ‘outsiders’) derive from Elias and Scotson 1985; for civilizing campaigns in general, see Goudsblom 1992:214.


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[5]

INTRODUCTION

Focus of this study

[6]

A study of the social regulation of intoxicants must necessarily be selective in terms of time, place and types of intoxicants. This study focuses on the social regulation of two kinds of intoxicants—opiates and alcoholic beverages—in three modern Western societies: England, the Netherlands and the United States. This historical study thus has two kinds of comparison—between two types of intoxicants and between three countries—built into it. There are a number of good reasons for selecting these particular countries and these particular intoxicants. The countries have a good deal in common. Each has undergone a transformation over the past two to three hundred years—albeit along separate paths and different time schemes—from an agri cultural society into a largely industrial one. The three countries have enough similarities for a general pattern to be sought, making every allowance for var iations, in the development of their regulatory regimes for alcohol and opiates. The choice of alcohol and opiates was an obvious one. Alcohol is a com mon and accepted intoxicant in all three countries, well integrated into society as such. The medicinal use of alcohol, on the other hand, has had its day. With opiates, the situation is quite the opposite: opiates are subject to strict medical control, and their use as recreational drugs is prohibited. It is interesting to trace the roots and development of this contrast, which in itself justifies a com parative study of the two kinds of substances. The choice of the three countries was also influenced by the availability of ample readily accessible literature. Much has been written about the social history of both alcohol and opiates in the United States and England, though studies have seldom been historical, nor have they compared approaches to different intoxicants.11 And because the Netherlands has evolved its own indi vidual approach to the regulation of alcohol and of opiates, incorporating it into the study may prove illuminating—added to which it is a country about which the author is relatively well informed. Notwithstanding all the constraints, a cogent account of what remains a complex and vast subject is only feasible if a few aspects are singled out for detailed analysis. It became clear in the course of the research that a mere handful of criteria determine the moment at which regulatory regimes change and the new direction they take. The book is therefore structured around these 11

An excellent comparative study does exist, however, on the way in which different societies regulate alcohol consumption. Nevertheless, Alcohol, Society and the State (Sin gle et al.:1981) is more of a descriptive inventory than a sociological analysis. There are also several good studies that, while less systematic and sometimes rather overladen with philosophical ballast, provide a historical and comparative survey of approaches to partic ular intoxicants (Bakalar and Grinspoon 1984; Inglis 1975).


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INTRODUCTION

criteria. Inclusiveness is not the aim. The strength of what the study has to convey stems from its detailed attention to key aspects during their most criti cal periods. As far as methodology is concerned, a few words will suffice: the study is predominantly based on secondary and tertiary literature. The objective is not to introduce new material, but to present new insights in a process of contextu alization. Structure of the book Chapters I to III are relatively short and introductory in nature. Chapter I be gins with a broad, general survey of intoxicants, followed by a suggestion for an alternative way of classifying them. Brief descriptions are given of the phar macological action of different substances, focusing more especially on the effects of alcohol and opiates. The chapter concludes with a section on the— by no means uncommon—use of intoxicants by animals, and looks at how social regulation among humans differs from that among other animals. Chapters II and III give a historical survey of the technical aspects of the production and distribution of alcoholic beverages and opiates, describing the process whereby these substances have gradually become obtainable more easily and on a larger scale, and also in a more concentrated form. There has been a tendency to underestimate the importance of technical advances such as improved techniques of distillation and the refinement of raw opium to pro duce pure morphine (and later the technique by which morphine is converted into heroin) in determining the demands made of a regulatory regime. These advances, combined with the larger scale of present-day operations, have ex panded and intensified patterns of consumption. Changes of this kind have disturbed what is frequently a fragile balance between the supply of a drug and the regulatory regime that exists in a particular society. The same applies to the development of more efficient techniques of consumption. Chapters IV and V deal with opiates and alcohol as sources of state reve nue. The financial interests of governments have greatly influenced not only the kind of regulation to which these substances are subjected, but also their very definition as intoxicants. The profits derived from the opium trade as sured both England and the Netherlands of a substantial source of income, which helped finance the administration of the colonies. The colonial opium trade was a victim of its own success, however, provoking a wave of protest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The rise of the United States as a new world power proved decisive in founding the worldwide regulatory regime for opiates that we know today. In the 19th century, alcohol duties were an impor tant instrument enabling Western governments to ensure that the lower-placed,


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[7]

INTRODUCTION

[8]

poorer ranks of society (who, while lacking voting rights, were also free of any obligation to pay direct taxes) contributed indirectly to the state’s revenue. Chapter VI discusses the important role of the medical profession in changing regulatory regimes for intoxicants. Physicians traditionally held an informal monopoly on opiates. But as production was stepped up in Asia and the Levant in the 19th century, the use of opiates, under the influence of market mechanisms, became widespread and commonplace, and briefly these sub stances were demedicalized. In the latter half of the 19th century, free trade in opiates was halted in Western societies. The successful monopolization of opi ates was a significant milestone in the process of professionalization of physi cians and pharmacists. Since then, this medical monopoly on the prescription of, and dealing in, opiates has changed very little. No other groups in society have lawful access to these intoxicants. Chapter VII focuses on the 19th-century temperance movement. Wherever agriculture gave way to the new production methods of mechanization and mass manufacture, temperance societies sprang up. It was the middle classes that played the leading part in these organizations; the state had different inter ests, and kept its distance. Later, the vanguard of the labouring classes also lent its support to the temperance movement. In almost a hundred years of agita tion, with the United States even experiencing a period of federal Prohibition, the movement at length wore itself out. By its demise, however, patterns of drinking within what had meanwhile become industrial societies had under gone a definite and fundamental change. The focus of Chapter VIII is on 20th-century developments in the role of the medical and related professions, a role that goes beyond their monopoly on the prescription and lawful supply of opiates. In the course of the century, medical practitioners, and following in their trail social workers, social thera pists and psychotherapists, have increasingly been given the task—and have indeed sometimes claimed it for themselves—of curing persons for whom the consumption of intoxicants has degenerated into a compulsive addiction. The fight against alcohol in the United States culminated in a brief period of federal Prohibition. Between 1920 and 1933 the consumption of alcohol was banned by law, with exemptions for medicinal and religious uses. The rise of a flourishing black market in alcohol was an unintentional and unforeseen consequence of this ban, however predictable it may seem in retrospect. What happened at federal level in the United States during that period has since been repeated at international level, this time in relation not to alcohol, but to other banned substances. The most important of these are opiates (in particular her oin), closely followed by cocaine and cannabis products. Chapter IX discusses the dynamic relationship that can be shown to exist between a formal govern ment ban—nowadays uniform and worldwide in relation to opiates—and the


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INTRODUCTION

development of illegal markets. A brief final chapter (X) summarises the study’s main findings and presents its conclusions. Aims of the Study

[9]

The supply and consumption of intoxicants, and the kinds of intervention to which they are subjected—that is what this book is about. In his essay On Liberty, John Stuart Mill addresses the social relations that will be discussed here: relations between government and individuals, and among individuals within society. He sets about defining the rule or principle that should underlie the regulation of human actions in a civilized society. One of the examples he discusses is the regulation of alcohol use. In his time, the temperance move ment was gaining ground in England, and in response to Prohibition in several American states, many were clamouring for public houses to be closed all day on Sundays. Some groups even aimed to achieve a complete ban on alcohol in England. In opposition to this call for far-reaching government interference with the dealings of society, Mill invoked the freedom of the individual: ‘The only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others [...]. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.’12 Unlike Mill, I shall not attempt to persuade the reader that as a point of principle—the need to protect the freedom of the individual—the ban on the intoxicants that are presently prohibited should be abolished. I will confine myself to studying the intriguing social dynamics that have resulted, in some 150 years, in a situation in which opiates are subject to a uniform and world wide prohibition, while alcohol has in general become fully integrated into society as an accepted and indeed respectable intoxicant.

12


Mill 1947 (1859):10.

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fig. 2a. Illustrations from an introduction to the human brain A = neurotransmitter, B = neuromodulator, C = neurohormone The neurochemical action of neuropeptides P = peptide, T = transmitter, R = receptor, E = effect

fig. 2b. severe suffering; pain; euphoria; ecstasy Physiology (dark) and pathology (light) in relation to pain and euphoria


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CHAPTER ONE

A taxonomy of intoxicants In Civilization and its Discontents Sigmund Freud devotes a long paragraph to the socio-psychological function of narcotics. It was a subject on which he had expert knowledge. At the beginning of his medical career he had conducted research into cocaine, believing in its great medicinal potential and his own rosy future as its discoverer. For many years, and increasingly against his bet ter judgment, he propagated cocaine as an effective remedy against morphine addiction. He even went so far as to prescribe large quantities of cocaine to his addicted patient and former colleague Fleischl, with tragic results. As an ex periment, and possibly because they at length succumbed to the drug’s attrac tions, Freud and his fiancée also consumed large quantities of cocaine.1 Freud writes: The crudest, but also the most effective among these methods of influence [of our own organism—JWG] is the chemical one—intoxication. I do not think that any one completely understands its mechanism, but it is a fact that there are foreign substances which, when present in the blood or tissues, directly cause us pleasur able sensations; and they also so alter the conditions governing our sensibility that we become incapable of receiving unpleasurable impulses. The two effects not only occur simultaneously, but seem to be intimately bound up with each other. But there must be substances in the chemistry of our own bodies which have sim ilar effects, for we know of at least one pathological state, mania, in which a con dition similar to intoxication arises without the administration of any intoxicating drug. Besides this, our normal mental life exhibits oscillations between a compar atively easy liberation of pleasure and a comparatively difficult one, parallel with which there goes a diminished or an increased receptivity to unpleasure. It is greatly to be regretted that this toxic side of mental processes has so far escaped scientific examination. The service rendered by intoxicating media in the struggle for happiness and in keeping misery at a distance is so highly prized as a benefit that individuals and peoples alike have given them an established place in the economics of their libido. We owe to such media not merely the immediate yield of pleasure, but also a greatly desired degree of independence from the external world. For one knows that, with the help of this ‘drowner of cares’ one can at any time withdraw from the pressure of reality and find refuge in a world of one’s own with better conditions of sensibility. As is well known, it is precisely this property of intoxicants which also determines their danger and their injuriousness. They 1

Israëls 1993:17-116.


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CHAPTER ONE

are responsible, in certain circumstances, for the useless waste of a large quota of energy which have been employed for the improvement of the human lot.2

[12]

Nowadays we have a better understanding of the action of intoxicants on the human organism than in Freud’s day. Aside from this, however, the above pas sage has lost none of its relevance. The universal socio-psychological function of intoxicants in the lives of individuals and of entire cultures—there is scarce ly a single society in which intoxicants are altogether unknown—is irrefutable. Furthermore, in highlighting both the salutary and the detrimental aspects of drug use, Freud provides a useful caveat against any tendency to discuss nar cotics in absolute terms. At the time when Freud made these observations, intoxicants were very much in the limelight. Most medical practitioners, pharmacologists and toxi cologists in the field were chiefly interested in differentiating between intoxi cants and identifying their specific uses. In the early 20th century, display charts were produced specifying the type of intoxication caused by each one and its appropriate medical applications. Intoxicants—pharmacologists often refer instead to psychotropic substances—are traditionally classified according to a scheme devised by the Ger man toxicologist Louis Lewin.3 Lewin distinguished five categories: exci tantia, inebriantia, hypnotica, phantastica and euphorica. This traditional pharmacological classification is reflected in the categories used by today’s medical practitioners and pharmacologists, who differentiate between psyc holeptics (which dull the senses), psychoanaleptics (which stimulate the sens es) and psychodysleptics (which have a disruptive effect). Psycholeptics can be further divided into analgesics, sedatives, and sleep-inducing drugs or hypnotics.4 This mode of classification poses certain problems. The Dutch psychiatrist Frank van Ree, who uses this classification scheme in his study of drugs, points out that ‘since in practice many drugs possess more than one of these properties, and since the effect also depends on the quantity consumed, many of these substances could to some extent come under any of these headings.’5 Apparently this shortcoming did not move Van Ree to modify or abandon the scheme as a framework of reference. Alongside this tradition of medical classification, there are also the more loosely-defined categories favoured by laypersons. One popular mode of dif 2 Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and its Discontents, in The Standard Edition of the Com plete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, London (Hogarth) 1961, vol. XXI:78. 3 Lewin 1924. 4 Van Ree 1978. 5 Van Ree 1971:22.


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A TAXONOMY OF INTOXICANTS

ferentiation is based not so much on the type of intoxication induced but rather on the health risk posed by the consumption of a particular substance. This division between high-risk and low-risk intoxicants,6 according to whether or not a substance induces addiction, produces the common distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ drugs. But this distinction too is of questionable usefulness. For it is not so much the substance that determines the health risk, but the concentration in which it is taken, together with the regularity and mode of consumption. Another common type of classification is between recreational and medic inal drugs—a distinction based on what is assumed to be the social function of an intoxicant. But if social function were truly to be taken as the guiding line, this distinction would be far from comprehensive. The entire spectrum of so cial functions of intoxicants would encompass such diverse possibilities as their use as nutrients, flavouring or seasoning, or for recreational, religious or medicinal purposes, or indeed as poison. Yet when we examine classification schemes based on social functions we discover just as many ambiguities as in those based on the type of intoxicating effect and on the degree of health risk. Here too, a substance might belong under any number of headings. Classification schemes based on the physiological effect or social function of an intoxicant are open to a more serious charge than that of overly inclusive definitions. They fail to take account of the fluid nature of responses to an intoxicant. The expectations which an intoxicant arouses in individuals are partly shaped by the social significance with which it is imbued. More to the point, the social function of a substance will colour the way in which it is experienced.7 Hence, what one society defines as a recreational drug may well have the status of a medicine in another country or another era. The interplay between people’s impressionable experience of intoxicants and the significance invested in them by a society emerges clearly from mono graphs on the various substances. Tobacco, for instance, is not only consumed as a recreational stimulant, it has also been praised for its sedative properties. It has been used for medicinal purposes and as a religious attribute. The same applies to coca.8 The prevailing classification schemes completely overlook the susceptibility of people’s experience of an intoxicant to influences from society. The reason for this is that they are each based on the pattern of con sumption of a drug in a given society at a given moment in time. But applica tions change over the course of history, and differences exist from one society 6

On this concept of high-risk versus low-risk intoxicants, see Werkgroep Verdovende Middelen:1972. 7 This aspect has received relatively little attention. See Becker 1967. 8 On tobacco, see Koskowski 1955. On coca, see Grinspoon and Bakalar 1985.


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[13]

CHAPTER ONE

to the next. The classification schemes described above do not do justice to the dynamic relationships that are involved. [14]

An alternative classification There is one characteristic that all intoxicants have in common: acting on the central nervous system, they distort perceptions and emotional responses. By altering sensual receptivity, they change the information conveyed to the brain by the senses.9 As for the substances themselves, three groups may be distin guished: alcoholic beverages, alkaloids (compounds present in certain plants) and synthetic intoxicants. Alcohol Any substance containing sugar and/or starch may in principle be converted into an alcoholic beverage. This intoxicant hence occurs in an enormous number of varieties according to the raw material chosen and the processing technique adopted, and it is consumed almost everywhere in the world. The resulting drinks are usually divided into wines, beers and spirits. Grapes and other sugar-containing fruit—apples, berries, dates and coconut—are the com monest raw material for winemaking. Beer is brewed from grain—usually from barley, corn or rice. Spirits are distinguished by a specific production technique, the distilling process. Alkaloids A relatively recent ethno-botanic survey (1967) turned up 4,000 to 5,000 alkaloid-containing plants with a natural intoxicating effect.10 At least sixty have at some stage in time been consumed on a regular basis for their intoxicating properties. A few have been cultivated as a commercial crop, for regional, na tional or even inter-continental trade. In certain cases, the original wild variant is no longer found, an indication that people have been cultivating these plants since time immemorial.11 Some of the end-products of these cultivated crops—in particular, tobacco, tea, coffee, cocoa, quinine, hashish and marijuana, opiates and coca preparations—have expanded since the 17th century to become significant inter-continental commercial products. Less widely known are the betel nut, the cola nut, qat and peyote, the consumption of which has to date been confined to certain regions. In other cases, efforts to develop an alkaloid-containing plant 9 10 11

Cf. Hillenius 1986:12-14.

Schultes 1967.

La Barre 1970:73-80.


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into a cash crop—the rhubarb leaves consumed in certain Asian regions being a case in point—have come to nothing.12 The quest for new species goes on unabated. The pharmaceutical industry, in particular, frequently in collaboration with university departments, invests widely in the hunt for hitherto unknown alkaloid-containing plants. Synthetic intoxicants Synthetic intoxicants are a relatively new phenomenon, their social history closely linked to chemistry and the rise of the pharmaceutical industry in the late 19th century. In 1976 the Dutch Compendium of Psychiatry listed sixty common psychopharmaceutical compounds.13 To medical laypersons, the best known (and most notorious) of these synthetic intoxicants are barbiturates, tranquilizers such as Librium, Valium and Seresta, amphetamines, LSD, Ro hypnol and methadone. Even the cautious and aspecific classification I have adopted here is not entire ly free of ambiguity. Some substances, for instance, are semi-synthetic: heroin is the result of a chemical process applied to morphine, an alkaloid. And today’s chemical laboratories in the pharmaceutical industry are capable of arti ficially reproducing certain alkaloids. All this merely serves as a salient re minder of the limitations of ordering and classification, those cornerstones of scientific method. Developments in neurophysiology The mechanism of intoxication is no longer as mysterious as it was in Freud’s day. Two quite recent neurophysiological discoveries have helped to clarify it. The first important new realization dawned in the 1950s, when certain endog enous compounds—neurotransmitters—were found to be responsible for the transmission of stimuli between the neurons of the central nervous system. Neurotransmitters hence proved indispensable to human perception and emo tional response. Over fifty different types of neurotransmitter have since been identified, all of them acting as lock-keepers along the canals of our sensual perceptions and our experience of external stimuli. The second discovery was that the active components of exogenous intox icants share certain structural features with—endogenous—neurotransmitters. This structural similarity explains why people may experience a particular emotional state after consuming an intoxicant: they may feel happy, omnipo 12 13

Foust 1992.

Spoerri 1976:274-81.


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[15]

CHAPTER ONE

[16]

tent, satisfied, befuddled or depressed, or they may become delusional; any response in the gamut of psychological states is conceivable. These responses arise without any apparent cause in reality other than the intoxicant itself. An exogenous intoxicant disturbs the transmission of signals between neurons, the usual task of neurotransmitters, hence producing an artificial mood. As the active components of intoxicants take over the work of neurotrans mitters, they distort the individual’s sensual perceptions. They may alter pleas urable or unpleasurable external stimuli, or block their progress to the central nervous system, inducing artificial enjoyment or a sense of dissatisfaction. In toxicants can also disrupt the signals that the nerves transmit to the muscles, which explains the faltering movements, slower reaction rates and other unu sual muscular responses often seen in persons who are under the influence of an intoxicant. An important side-effect of a ‘pseudo-neurotransmitter’ is that after a peri od of regular consumption, the nervous system adapts to its presence. As this happens, the original effect of the intoxicant declines. Once the nervous sys tem has adapted to the regular presence of large quantities of the substance it cannot easily function without it. The individual hence experiences the need for the substance that we call addiction. If for whatever reason the external supply of ‘pseudo-neurotransmitters’ is suddenly cut off after a period of regu lar consumption, the nervous system becomes dysfunctional, causing discom fort, sometimes pain or deep distress. Other reactions include profuse perspira tion, yawning, spontaneous tears or flows of nasal mucus, dilated pupils, gooseflesh and trembling.14 In some cases the distress is so overwhelming that an addict will go to any lengths to remedy the deficiency. This addiction syndrome, in which a person is a slave to a substance [the Dutch word for addiction is ‘verslaving’, which also means enslavement— Trans.], can be described, using these recent neurophysiological discoveries, as a structural disturbance of the nervous system. The difference between a psychological and a physical addiction, a distinction much thrashed out in the literature, can therefore no longer be deemed relevant.15 In both cases the ad 14 These are some of the symptoms on the Himmelsbach scale used to measure with drawal syndrome; see Van Epen 1978:73-74. 15 Van Ree 1971. American Psychiatric Association 1985. In this connection Van Epen writes ‘The most modern and easiest approach is to take the neutral concept of dependence—which has both a physical and a psychological side to it—as a point of departure. The distinction between physical and psychological dependence is theoretically just as illconceived as the separation between body and mind, but it is nevertheless of great practical—clinical—value. Psychological dependence is known as “habituation” and physical dependence as “addiction”’ (Van Epen 1978:2). My own preference would be to relinquish such traditional distinctions altogether, once scientific advances have shown them to be obsolete.


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diction syndrome can be traced to a metabolic disorder in the central nervous system, so that the addiction is somatic in nature. In spite of these advances in neurophysiology, there are still gaps in our knowledge of the mechanism of intoxication. For instance, how is the pathology of the individual to be explained? Why are some people so soon in thrall to these ‘drowners of cares’ (Freud), while others, once introduced to the sub stances’ intoxicating effect, appear able to moderate their consumption? Are social variables of paramount importance here, or does the explanation lie in a combination of factors, possibly including a genetic component?16 Another as yet unanswered question concerns the reversibility of structural disorders of the nervous system. We do not know how long brain tissue can withstand the constant influx of a particular intoxicant without sustaining per manent damage. The answer to this question is of immense importance, in theory at least, to deciding whether permanent withdrawal (without substitu tion) is a realistic and desirable goal in the treatment of long-term addicts. Another point needs to be made here about the treatment of addiction. By way of therapy, addicts are often subjected to a strict behavioural regime, a kind of re-conditioning. But here too, the question arises of whether this ap proach is compatible with neurophysiological findings. Is strict discipline a salutary cure, or is it in fact a misguided recourse to a traditional mode of prevention—adult supervision of children—as a curative strategy?17 Neurophysiologists have yet to formulate clear answers to questions of this kind. Our increased understanding of the precise mechanism of intoxi cants has not yet produced an effective remedy to halt the compulsive use of intoxicants. No treatment of this syndrome exists, whether based on medicine or on psychotherapy, that has an acceptable success rate or runs to any extent a predictable course. Nor does this situation seem likely to change in the near future. The mechanism of alcohol18 The intoxicating effect of alcohol is caused by the constituent ethanol. Quite soon after consumption, the ethanol is absorbed into the blood stream through the wall of the stomach and abdomen, after which it spreads throughout the body. Ethanol is metabolized in the liver. Before this, however, it affects the 16 17

On the genetic aspects of alcoholism, see Fenna, Mix et al. 1971:105. For a discussion of the ‘hierarchically structured mode of therapy,’ (and a well-argued advocacy of it) see Schaap 1981. 18 The material in this section derives from a useful and accessible survey: Charness, Simon et al. 1989.


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[17]

CHAPTER ONE

[18]

peripheral and central nervous system. In individuals not suffering from alco hol addiction syndrome—that is to say, who have thus not built up any tolerance—an average ethanol concentration of 25 mg per dl blood is sufficient to produce a mild intoxication, expressed in a slightly different mood, dulled per ceptions and poor coordination. Concentrations over 100 mg per dl blood can induce stupor and ultimately coma. Concentrations higher than 500 mg etha nol per dl blood are generally fatal in non-alcoholics, whereas chronic alcohol ics often survive concentrations of 1,000 mg. The exact molecular mechanism responsible for the intoxicating effect of ethanol is as yet unknown. In comparison to certain other intoxicants, such as opiates and cocaine, ethanol is weak in its action. The concentration needed to produce a clearly perceptible intoxicating effect (over 25 mg per dl blood) is thousands of times higher than in the case of opiates and cocaine. On these grounds, one study concludes that ethanol probably has a fairly aspecific ac tion, and that it primarily exerts a general influence on the nervous system. Opiates and cocaine, on the other hand, act mainly on very specific locations in brain tissue, so that tiny concentrations suffice to induce intoxication. Excessive alcohol consumption, over a long period of time, can seriously damage the nervous system. Parts of the brain tissue may even die off altogeth er. Certain functions of the central nervous system may be permanently lost. One well-known consequence is the Korsakoff-Wernickes syndrome, in which memory functions are impaired.19 As the liver plays an important role in the degradation of ethanol, this vital organ may become overburdened and dys functional. This can lead to alcohol-induced cirrhosis of the liver, with ulti mately fatal results. The action of opiates20 About the action of opiates at molecular level we know a good deal more. Several decades ago the action of morphine was shown to correspond to that of a specific group of endogenous neurotransmitters, which were therefore dubbed ‘endorphins.’ It has since been discovered that endorphins occur pri marily at highly specific sites within the central nervous system. This explains why the effect of opiates is noticeable at far smaller concentrations than in the case of alcohol. For an adult who has not built up any tolerance, two supposi 19 This impairment, it should be added, is not a direct consequence of a high ethanol intake. It is the lack of vitamin B (thiamin)—a secondary effect of high ethanol concentra tions in the blood—that leads to a degeneration of brain tissue. 20 There is a good survey of this subject in Joose and Voorhoeve (eds.) 1986; see esp. Van Ree, ‘Neuropeptides.’


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tories daily containing 10-20 mg of morphine hydrochloride is sufficient to produce a clearly perceptible—analgesic—effect.21 Since opiates not only act against pain but also induce euphoria, the phar macologist J.M. van Ree argues that pain and euphoria (extrapolated in both directions to extreme suffering and ecstasy) lie in a single continuum. This continuum of feeling, says Van Ree, is regulated by the degree to which certain endorphins that occur naturally in the body are synthetized in response to ex ternal stimuli in the body. In the case of physical pain the endorphins are in volved in the tolerance of the pain stimulus, while in the case of enjoyable experience (Van Ree’s examples are a delicious meal, sexual activity and sport) the endorphins produce a sensation of pleasure and sometimes euphoria. Because of their similarity to endorphins, exogenous opiates are capable of producing an artificial mood change.22 The lessons of ethology Neurophysiological research into intoxicants often involves experiments on animals. Under strictly regulated conditions and following a fixed protocol, scientists administer a particular intoxicant to the animals—generally rats or monkeys—and observe the resulting changes in behaviour. This type of re search has generated valuable fresh insight into the effect of intoxicants. A related subject that has however been undeservedly neglected is the way in which animals deal with intoxicants in the natural world. The American psycho-pharmacologist Ronald Siegel is one of the few people to have set out to discover whether animals consume intoxicants outside the closed setting of a laboratory, and without being forced by humans to do so. His fascinating study charts countless instances of animals in the wild indulging in intoxicat ing alkaloid-containing plants and over-ripe (hence fermented) fruit.23 Siegel also reminds his readers of mythological tales of people learning the effect of certain intoxicants by imitating the behaviour of animals. Goats are credited with revealing to man the properties of coffee and qat, while llamas reputedly prompted the native peoples of the Andes to investigate the leaves of the coca plant. In the Christian tradition, Noah was the first man to discover drunken ness, which he did by eating rotten (i.e. fermented) grapes like a goat. Aside from this, people have chosen certain plants as fishing bait with a view to their intoxicating properties. Certain tribes indigenous to Eastern Indo 21

Koninklijke Nederlandse Maatschappij ter Bevordering der Pharmacie (Royal Dutch Society of Pharmacy) 1974:72. 22 Van Ree 1986. 23 Siegel 1989.


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[19]

CHAPTER ONE

nesia are known to throw the berries of a particular climbing plant into the water. The fish that eat the berries become drugged and float to the surface, where they can easily be caught. [20]

It is intriguing that an occasional indulgence in intoxicants is not the exclusive province of human beings. Yet significant differences do exist between human and animal approaches to intoxicants. Most notably, the consumption of intox icants in the animal kingdom does not demonstrably result in the compulsive pattern of consumption that is common in humans. A longing for a particular intoxicant that must at all costs be satisfied does not appear to occur in the animal kingdom. Any such tendency would of course make an animal ex tremely vulnerable to predators. But Darwinian considerations aside, it is easy to explain why addiction among wild animals is apparently unknown. In the first place, intoxicants are not freely available to animals living in the natural world. African elephants, for instance, are known to be crazy about (and to go fairly crazy after eating) the fruit of certain palm-trees. These fruit are rich in sugar, and ferment relatively quickly, often while still hanging on the tree. The scent of this rotting fruit exerts an irresistible attraction on ele phants for miles around. When a sporadic opportunity for indulgence arises, the consequences of the intoxication may be serious. The animals become ex tremely nervous and take fright at the slightest thing. They turn unpredictable, and may suddenly rampage in attack or flight.24 There are relatively few of these seasonal delicacies to go around, however. Elephants have to share them not only with one another but also with other animals, and the likelihood of being left out altogether is very high. Furthermore, elephants do not store pro visions for future need. What is gone is gone, and after an incidental immer sion in the delights of intoxication they are not tormented—at least not as far as we can judge from their behaviour—by a constant drive to repeat the experi ence. This pattern of scarcity applies in most parts of the animal kingdom, and constitutes a significant difference with the ready availability of intoxicants to humans. In agricultural and industrial societies in particular, the production of intoxicants has increasingly been controlled. The division of labour and the scaling-up of cultivation and refining processes made it possible to build up stocks. Hence people have become less dependent on seasonal changes, and altogether independent—unlike animals—of chance discovery. Another explanation for the lack of any addiction syndrome in the animal kingdom is the small concentrations in which intoxicants are found in the nat 24

Siegel 1989:119.


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ural world. Humans, again, have overcome this problem. Not only have they taken control of the production of intoxicants, but they have introduced new and sophisticated refining techniques—a human skill par excellence. These refining procedures, which will be discussed at length in the following chap ters, are based on the development and transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next, and they are part of the culture of a society. Because of them, people generally have access to intoxicants in higher concentrations than those available to animals in the natural world. The pattern of consumption is a particularly obvious way in which animals and humans differ. Animals simply eat or drink their intoxicants—or swallow them whole, like aspirins. Smoking, sniffing, anal administration and injection have ensured that people can make more specific and more effective use than animals of their intoxicants. These special techniques of consumption, too, have been developed exclusively by and for humans. Increasing the availability of these substances by scaling up production and building up stocks, creating higher concentrations by inventing and im proving techniques of refinement, and evolving more complicated techniques of consumption that enhance the intoxicating effect: these three exclusively human achievements have increased the social value of intoxicants. At the same time, however, they have presented societies with new and unexpected problems of control. The consumption of intoxicants thus becomes an issue of social regulation: the question is how, given the current level of technology and the possible modes of administration, do people subject themselves and each other to an effective regulatory regime in relation to the production, distribu tion and consumption of intoxicants.


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[21]

GIN LANE

BEER STREET

fig. 3. William Hogarth (1697-1764), Gin Lane and Beer Street (1751)


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CHAPTER TWO

The supply side: Alcohol The control of yeast Yeast is essential to the production of alcohol. Yet the vital importance of the natural life cycle of the yeast bacterium to the production of alcohol was dis covered fairly late in human history. Archaeologists consider it unlikely that this knowledge was available to the Babylonians, the Sumerians or the ancient Egyptians. We cannot be sure how long humans have known that yeast occurs in a vast number of strains, or that yeast colonies can be selected and cultivated for more focused and effective use in the preparation not only of beer and wine but also of bread. W.J. Darby observes that yeast traces in excavations from Egypt’s eight eenth dynasty [1570-1320 B.C.—JWG] support the hypothesis that pure yeast was being produced then. He continues, ‘In Ptolemaic times, yeast was wellknown, and the profession of yeast maker, the Zymourghos, is well attested.’1 People in almost all parts of the world gradually learned how to harness the fermentation process, and yeast became an important accessory in everyday life. Familiar though the substance itself may have been in the kitchen, people had a very imperfect understanding of the process of fermentation, and the workings of yeast were long cloaked in an air of mystery. It was not until the 17th century that Antonie van Leeuwenhoek brought his microscope to bear upon yeast, and established that it was a living bacterium. Then two more cen turies passed before Louis Pasteur, using a vastly improved microscope, was able to observe the metabolism of the yeast bacterium, and hence the actual process of fermentation. Yeast production was initially a subsidiary line pursued by brewers, wine growers and later also by distillers. In the course of time, however, the applica tions of yeast were considerably expanded and branched off, culminating in the growth of a separate yeast industry. The history of the Dutch yeast manu facturer Gist-Brocades N.V. illustrates the most recent history of specialization in this area. This company came into being in 1967, when the Koninklijke Ne derlandsche Gist- en Spiritusfabriek N.V. merged with the N.V. Koninklijke

1

Darby 1977:535-36.


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CHAPTER TWO

[24]

Pharmaceutische Fabrieken,2 previously Brocades-Stheeman & Pharmacia. Gist en Spiritus N.V. had been established in 1869, and specialized in the pro duction of baking yeast—traditional brewer’s yeast was unsuitable for bakers—and methylated spirits. Brocades, the other company, was originally an apothecary in Meppel, and had expanded into a pharmaceutical company in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries.3 The industrial history of Gist-Brocades, which has since become a leading multinational, illustrates the new al liances through which yeast production broke loose from the alcohol industry. As yeast became easier to control, new applications emerged. In our own time, yeast is an important ingredient in the pharmaceutical industry, the food indus try, and in cosmetics and enzyme production. Beer, wine and strong liquor People have been cultivating starchy grain (in particular barley, rice and corn) and fruit rich in sugar (e.g. grapes and dates) since about the 7th century B.C.4 All of these could in theory serve as the basis for the preparation of alcoholic beverages, with grains being made into beer, and the fruit into wine. Certain indications suggest that these relatively weak alcoholic drinks were indeed available to stone age man.5 Besides a certain amount of know-how and patience, the preparation of wine and beer does not call for any special skill. The yeast bacterium is present in almost all parts of the atmosphere, so wherever the opportunity presents itself, the process of fermentation commences spontaneously. The process can be accelerated by using water to make the base material into a paste and leav ing this mixture for a time to settle, preferably heated a little and away from the light. In principle nothing else need be done. Depending on the sugar or starch content of the original raw produce and the type of yeast bacterium that is involved, the fermentation generally stagnates at an alcohol percentage of 3 5%. In ideal conditions and with carefully selected yeast strains, natural fer mentation can continue up to a maximum alcohol content of 20%, as in certain strong wines. It is the wide range of raw produce combined with the simplicity of the preparation procedure that explains why beer and wine have been available for so long. From ancient times these mild alcoholic beverages—the average alco 2 The merger was thus between the Royal Dutch Yeast and Alcohol Factory Ltd and the Royal Dutch Pharmaceutical Factory Ltd. 3 Birza 1950. 4 Spectrum-Times 1981:38-39. 5 Tongue 1978:31.


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THE SUPPLY SIDE: ALCOHOL

hol content by volume of today’s beer is 5% and that of wine 12%—fulfilled a variety of roles, some of which still apply in our own times. Of great importance to humans was the thirst-quenching property of alco holic beverages; more reliable and less perishable than milk or water, they also provided nourishment. The mild sense of intoxication they induced was useful in a variety of situations; they made strenuous physical effort easier to endure, for instance. In addition, these beverages were a source of relaxation; beer and wine eased the flow of social interaction. The intoxicating effect was also har nessed for religious and medical purposes. And people could of course use the befuddlement of drink to escape for a while from the cares of everyday life. For many centuries the range of social functions fulfilled by wine and beer underwent little change beyond certain shifts of emphasis. Even the advent of strong liquor did not initially create new social functions. Quite recently, however—in the 20th century—alcohol has acquired a major new application: it has become an important constituent in the chemical industry. Beer The ancient history of beer is well documented. The egyptologist Darby dedi cates an entire chapter of his book Food: the gift of Osiris to beer, the ancient Egyptians’ favourite drink.6 The abundance of grain made beer a cheap com modity. As it was easy to prepare, it served mainly as nourishment and thirstquencher for the common people. In other cultures with plentiful grain supplies, beer became the people’s drink. From the ricefields of India and South-East Asia came rice beer or sake, sometimes mistakenly called a wine. In regions to which corn was indigenous, such as Central and South America, corn beer or chicha was the most popular beverage.7 In the societies of Northern Europe, it was barley beer that gained the up per hand. In countries such as Britain, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands its dominance has endured. Following the military and economic expansion of European societies after the Middle Ages, barley has superseded most other grains. Beer brewed from barley is drunk today in almost every part of the world.

6

Darby 1977:529-50. On the origin of beer in Egyptian society, Darby writes that it was so inextricably interwoven with the pattern of everyday life that it is impossible to deter mine the precise time at which this ‘gift from the sun-god Ra’ was bestowed. 7 See McCarthy 1959. In this collection of essays, R.N. Chopra, G.S. Chopra and I.C. Chopra discuss beer in India, M. Moore discusses rice wine in China. The same volume includes an article by J.M. Cooper about beer consumption in Central and South America.


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[25]

CHAPTER TWO

[26]

Wine People acquired a preference for grapes as the basic ingredient for wine very early on, although in some African societies dates, bananas and the sap of the palm tree were sometimes used, and indeed they sometimes still are. But wher ever grapes could be grown, they supplanted all other fruit as the basis for wine, just as barley did in the case of beer. Viticulture is estimated to have originated in the 6th or 7th century B.C. in the region to the south of the Black Sea.8 From there the crop spread to the four corners of the earth. Because of their higher alcohol content, wines could be kept longer than beer, and proved a suitable trading product over relatively long distances. As a result, in ancient Egypt, where beer was the drink of the ordinary people, imported wine was a luxury item for the higher classes, who used it—among other things—in religious ceremonies and for its medicinal properties. Later on, the Egyptians became wine growers themselves; we have hieroglyphics representing an Egyptian winepress dating from as early as 3200 B.C.9 In the Hellenic civilizations, and later in the Roman Empire, wine made from grapes was the dominant popular drink. Wherever the climate favoured grapes, they were always the preferred basis for wine, and viticulture predom inated over the production of beer. The high yield obtained from cultivating grapes together with the simplicity of the fermentation process and wine’s rel atively high alcohol content—making it more intoxicating than beer and easier to keep—underlay the supremacy of wine. Alongside the qualitative differences between wine and beer, there are also social and political differences between growing grapes for wine and growing grain for beer. Cereals are annuals. The crop is harvested only a few months after the seeds are sown. This means that even nomad agriculturalists could grow a crop to supply themselves with beer; the social and political conditions to be fulfilled are minimal. The cultivation of grape vines, on the other hand, is a long-term investment, with the vines standing vulnerable on the land for a few years before they yield fruit. Lasting peace and a stable allocation of land within a society are hence pre-requisites for commercial wine growing. Thus a certain degree of state formation—political stability and peace—is an absolute pre-requisite for a profitable wine growing business. Strong liquor In beer and wine, people had beverages with a limited alcohol content, with a percentage of 9% being extremely high for beer, and wine reaching its abso 8 9

Austin 1985.

Darby 1977:551.


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lute maximum at 20%. To surpass this natural limit, a purification technique is needed: the distilling process. Distillation is no recent discovery; the principle was known to alchemists in medieval monasteries. The procedure is based on the differences in melting and boiling points between substances: when an impure solid is heated, the solid with the lowest melting point drains away first (destillatio per descen sum) while in the heating of an impure fluid, a residue is formed of the solid with the highest boiling point (destillatio per ascensum) (see fig. 4). Although people were acquainted with the technique of distillation, it took some considerable time before it was possible artificially to diminish the pro portion of water in a drink with a low alcohol content. This is because the boiling pint of alcohol is lower than that of water, and people were interested in capturing not what stayed behind (the water) but the alcohol which evaporated first. Somehow, this vapour had to be recovered in condensed form. Not only was a special piece of equipment required—this was eventually invented in the form of the alembic, which evolved into the still—but the technique of distilla tion also required the accurate control of heat, and hence of fire. In his fine study of the history of distillation, R.J. Forbes meticulously dismantles all suggestions that the instrument with which alcohol could be distilled was discovered by alchemists from classical times, or that it was an Arabic or Chinese invention—or indeed a Dutch one.10 In all likelihood, he maintains, it was apothecaries and alchemists attached to the medical school of Salerno, in Italy, who presented the world, in the 11th or 12th century, with the art of distillation.11 In the development and dissemination of the new technique of distillation, medieval monasteries, as centres of learning, played a prominent role. This was where new discoveries of every kind were made and described. De Secre tis Mulierum by the philosopher Albertus Magnus (1193-1280) contains two recipes for the preparation of strong liquor. One runs as follows: ‘Take thick, strong and old black wine, in one quart throw quicklime, powdered sulphur, good quality tartar and white common salt, all well pulverized, then put them together in a well-luted cucurbit with alembic; you will distill from it aqua ardens which should be kept in a glass vessel.’ In another, Magnus comments: ‘When wine is sublimed like rose-water a light inflammable liquid is ob 10

Forbes 1970 (1948). Archer Tongue opts for the Middle East and China, while J.C. Sournia attributes the discovery to the Netherlands (Tongue 1978:31-38; Sournia 1990.) 11 See Forbes 1970 (1948); see also Braudel 1981:241. Until the latter half of the 19th century the term ‘distilled’ had a wider reference than now, referring to any distilled prod uct: strong liquor tended to be known by names such as ‘strong waters’ or ‘firewater’ in this earlier period.


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[27]

CHAPTER TWO

[28]

fig. 4. The development of the still


28

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tained.’12 The fascination of strong liquor—given such appealing names as aqua vitae or firewater—was based not so much on its intoxicating effect as on its inflammability: with a water content of less than 35%, strong liquor can easily be ignited. Commercialization and increased scale of operations Wine13 Wine’s long storage life and the availability of amphoras for transport by ship made it a suitable product for overseas trade early in time. In the 7th century B.C. people on the Peloponnese and the Greek islands were already expertly cultivating grapes for commercial purposes on a large scale.14 Wine growing later became one of the pillars of the economy of the Roman empire. Social historian E. Hyams describes the period 130-30 B.C. as the golden age of Roman viticulture. While it was true that wine growing required a major investment, with several years elapsing before the first harvest, the profits made in wine growing were three times that of other crops.15 With the levying of duties, wine was also an important source of revenue for the Roman Empire. Favoured by the Empire’s political stability, commercial wine grow ing spread throughout other Mediterranean regions such as France and Spain. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the tide turned in Europe for com mercial wine growing. Only within religious communities did the large-scale cultivation of wine vines continue. Indeed, D. Seward credits the monastic orders with ensuring the survival of wine growing during the middle ages.16 Later, with the rise of a more stable system of national states, commercial wine growing in Europe gradually started to thrive once again, and wherever the climate was at all propitious, vines would be cultivated. In countries such as France, Italy and Spain, wine growing became one of the main forms of economic activity during the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, these three coun tries still represent the centre of gravity of global wine production. In the peri od 1960-1980 they accounted for 60% of total wine production worldwide.17

12 Forbes 1948:58. The distillation procedure was the basis for the production not only of strong liquor, but also of rosewater and other scents made from flowers and herbs. 13 The commercialization of wine growing is described only briefly here because for the history of alcohol in Britain, the Netherlands and the United States wine is relatively unim portant. This has started to change only recently, since 1950. 14 Austin 1985.

15 Hyams 1965.

16 Seward 1979.

17 Cavanagh and Clairmonte 1985:21.


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[29]

CHAPTER TWO

[30]

Beer Unlike wine growing, the brewing of beer was for many centuries scarcely commercialized. This was because beer was relatively perishable. Brewing beer was something one did mainly for oneself, and like baking bread it was chiefly a woman’s task. This accent was already clear in Ancient Egypt.18 And in the modern era, in the early stages of commercial beer production in West ern Europe, brewing and trading beer was seen as a suitable livelihood, for instance, for widows seeking to provide for themselves.19 It was only with the development of the larger, more commercial and more capital-intensive breweries of the early industrial societies of Northern Europe that men began to take a definite interest in the brewing of beer. These new, market-oriented breweries belonged to monasteries or wealthy landowners who saw brewing as a way of making a profit out of their grain surplus.20 Further commercialization of the beer trade was hampered by the product’s perishability. This problem had been only moderately alleviated by the addition of hops to the brewing process, a Northern European invention that probably dates from the 13th century.21 The beer trade therefore continued to concentrate largely on the local market. In Northern Europe the commercial brewing industry took off in the late middle ages. At length, every village or hamlet had at least one brewery to supply the local demand for beer. Most such businesses were very small, and were run by one person, or two at the most.22 But expanding towns, in particu lar, could accommodate several decent-sized breweries. Given the scarcity of reliable drinking water, there was a large and constant demand for beer.23 The boom in traditional brewing subsided in the 16th and 17th centuries, partly because of the spread of alternative thirst-quenchers such as tea and coffee.24 Later, still more competition arrived, in the form of strong liquor. Even so, annual beer consumption in the Netherlands, at the beginning of the 18th century, is estimated to have been 100-150 litres per head of the popula

18 19 20 21 22

Darby 1977:531. This was the case, at any rate, in medieval Britain (Slater 1930:261). Van Eck 1981:138. Austin attributes this innovation to Dutch brewers (Austin 1985). Van Eck 1981:138. In rural areas, people continued to brew their own beer for a very long time. At the beginning of the 19th century, farmers in relatively remote parts of the Netherlands still brewed their own beer, just as they baked their own bread (Everwijn 1912). 23 According to Van Eck, traditional brewing flourished in the Netherlands particularly in the period 1350-1600 (Van Eck 1981:138). 24 Tea and coffee were exotic goods whose introduction in Europe was bound up with the expansion in Western Europe’s trade.


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tion. In England it is thought to have been as high as 350 litres. During the 18th century, beer consumption in both countries was halved, to 50 and 180 litres per annum respectively by 1800. In the 19th century, consumption stabilized at 35 litres per annum in the Netherlands and 150 in England. This was partly attributable to the efforts of temperance societies (to be discussed at length in Chapter VII). In the first half of the 20th century, beer consumption in the Netherlands fell to an all-time low of 13 litres, after which it steadily rose again, reaching about 80 litres per head of the population in the 1980s. In Eng land, annual beer consumption has fluctuated, in the course of the 20th centu ry, between 100 and 120 litres.25 In the United States, unlike England and the Netherlands, beer did not become popular until the mid-19th century, and Americans tended to prefer apple cider. It was not only at end of the 19th century that beer consumption in the United States rose to a significant level, at an average of 60 litres per per son; it was especially popular among German immigrants. Beer consumption has since risen to 80-90 litres per annum in the 1980s.26 The decrease in popularity of beer in the 18th century, followed by a stabi lization in the 19th century, meant that production came to be concentrated in the most advanced, large-scale production units. At the beginning of the 19th century—to my knowledge we do not possess reliable figures for earlier periods—the Netherlands boasted about 700 breweries. By 1900 there were only 500.27 The figures for England are more dramatic still. According to licences issued, there were 44,218 breweries in 1841; by 1891 only 10,477 remained.28 Before 1800, beer was produced primarily for the local market. In the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, however, improvements in the infra structure brought about an expansion in the potential market for breweries, in addition to which the use of the crown cap to seal bottles reduced the product’s perishability. Breweries became increasingly ambitious, producing beer for distribution far beyond their local markets and initiating a competitive struggle at both national and international level. In the 19th century Dutch brewers were already hard pressed to compete with Bavarian competitors, who had successfully launched a new type of beer using bottom fermentation.

25

For the Netherlands, Van Eck provides figures going back a long way into the past (Van Eck 1982:32). Industry Forecast Ltd has supplied comparable figures for Britain (In dustry Forecast Ltd 1988). For comparisons in consumption between different countries, see also Rorabaugh and the Productschap voor Gedistilleerde Dranken (Rorabaugh 1979:239; Productschap voor Gedistilleerde Dranken 1989). 26 Rorabaugh 1979:232. 27 Van Eck 1981:139. 28 Wilson 1940.


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[31]

CHAPTER TWO

[32]

The scaling-up of operations, modernized production methods and im proved quality were the three weapons with which brewers did battle. In their mutual competition, they compelled each other to make production more efficient. Hence the traditional top fermentation brewing process was gradually superseded, at the end of the 19th century, by an industrial, capital-intensive production method based on bottom fermentation, which remains the standard to this day.29 The increased scale of operations is clearly visible from employment fig ures in the brewing industry for the period 1858-1906. In 1858, there was not a single Dutch brewery with over 100 employees; by 1906 there were six. The breweries that survived the competition were those with sufficient capital to invest in the new production methods. This in turn meant that the company had to be structured differently, taking the form of the limited company, which could borrow on the capital market to finance these investments. In the Nether lands, the Heineken & Co., Amstel and d’Oranjeboom breweries all originate from this period. In the 20th century, the trends towards greater mechanization, increase of scale and concentration of the brewing industry in a few hands continued at an accelerated pace. In 1880 the Netherlands had 542 breweries producing a total of 1.3 million hectolitres of beer. By 1930 there were only 148, producing a total of 2.3 hectolitres. And by 1985, though a mere 20 independent breweries remained, total production had soared to 17.5 million hectolitres.30 By then of course, a substantial proportion was for export—about a quarter of total Dutch beer production in 1985, as against only 4% in 1890. Developments in England and the United States were broadly similar, with a steep decline in the number of breweries parallelling an enormous increase in production.31 In England the number of breweries fell from 6,500 in 1900— albeit under the ownership of only 1,500 brewing companies—to 160, owned by 80 companies, in 1980. In the United States the number of breweries fell from almost 2,700 in 1867 to about 1,150 immediately prior to Prohibition (1920). By 1935, two years after the end of Prohibition, production had resumed at 703 breweries. In 1973 only 122 remained. In the United States too, the concentration of the industry in a few hands was accompanied by a huge increase in production. In 1877 the largest brewery, the New York company George Ehret, produced

29 30 31

Everwijn 1912:2-599, 3-viii, ix; Jansen 1987.

Jansen 1987:286.

Produktschap voor gedistilleerde dranken 1989. See also Cavanagh and Clairmonte,

1985:48-81.


32

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about 250,000 hectolitres of beer. By the end of the 19th century, the biggest producer was Pabst Brewing Co. of Milwaukee, with an annual production of 1.6 million hectolitres of beer. And in 1973, Anheuser-Bush, Inc.—which still leads the market today—produced almost 50 million hectolitres of beer. The production of all 122 US breweries in 1973 totalled 168 million hectolitres of beer, whereas by 1980 total production had risen to 200 million hectolitres of beer, with only 43 breweries having survived.32 British brewers did not confine themselves to the production of beer. To guarantee themselves a market, they invested in public houses through the tied house system, which kept them closely involved in the retailing of their prod uct. In 1950, breweries in Britain owned three-quarters of all public houses, with more than half owned by one of the six brewing giants.33 As public houses are among the most important and most constant outlets for beer, the major breweries in other countries copied this successful sales strategy from their fellow producers in Britain. Strong liquor The same trends towards increase of scale and concentration of production can be seen in the history of the supply of strong liquor. The knowledge and skill needed for the distillation process were monopolized in Europe, until about 1400, by alchemists attached to monasteries. The quantities produced were very small and the distilled products were used first and foremost for medici nal purposes. From the monasteries, alchemy—including the technique of distillation—gradually spread to become an economic activity practised by apothecaries, whether self-employed or in the service of a court or city council.34 Later, innkeepers and vintners mastered the art of distillation and pur chased the necessary equipment. Soon distillers became a separate profession al group, producing brandy on the basis of wine and lees on an ever-increasing scale. Stills proliferated, and their capacity was steadily increased. In Europe, the first use of grain as a basis for strong liquor was in the 16th century. In the United States, only molasses were used initially, serving as a basis for rum. With the commercialized production of strong liquor came a change in its application. Gradually, the ‘aqua vitae’ was used less often medicinally and more for enjoyment. Initially an exclusive drink for social elites, as its price

32 33 34

Downard 1980:242-43.

Jansen 1976:253.

Wittop-Koning 1986.


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[33]

CHAPTER TWO

[34]

fig. 5. Advertisement for the Anderson & Hall Still

Capital Required 125 gal.patent still 100 gal doubling still and worm 125 gal. boiler 50 hogshead misc. equipment

$ 240

TOTAL

$ 1124

$ 100 $ 100 $ 75 $ 169

Expenses 600 bu. corn at 50¢ 300 bu. rye at 60¢ 100 bu. malt at 60¢ 500 lb. juniper berries hops 100 barrels transportation at 6¢ per gal. 33 cords wood grinding grain wages leakages, commissions, repairs TOTAL


34

Receipts $ 300 $ 180 $ 60

3000 gal. spirits at 55¢ per gain on hogs

$ 1650 $ 328

$ 100 $2 $ 100

TOTAL

$ 1978

PROFIT

$ 676

$ 180 $ 66 $ 50 $ 125 $ 139 $ 1302

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came down it became more widespread, and eventually ordinary people even used it to quench their thirst. Until about 1850 strong liquor was on the winning side in the commercial battle of the drinks. For the consumer, the more potent intoxication these drinks induced—with an alcohol content of 30-50%—gave strong liquor a dis tinct advantage over beer. And to producers and retailers too, including inn keepers and publicans, strong liquor held out more appeal than beer (or wine) because of their imperishability. Furthermore, technical improvements in stills made it possible to step up production and sell strong liquor more cheaply. New models of still made it possible to expand the range of basic ingredients that could be used: besides grain (for genever and whiskey) grapes and lees (for brandy) and molasses (for rum), other, cheaper raw materials could be used, such as potatoes and sugar beet. In many respects, strong liquor was a superior trading product. This is clear from the preference for rum as a medium of exchange in the American economy of the 17th century. Strong liquor was costly (this would later change), imperishable, and since they could also be standardized and divided up, they met all the requirements for a medium of exchange. Ready cash was scarce in the English colony at that time, and rum was an excellent alternative. In the molasses-rum-slave trade which connected the African continent with the Caribbean and the United States in the 17th century, rum was an indispen sable link in the chain. ‘Rum was shipped from New England to Africa, while slaves were traded to the Caribbean and the molasses shipped to New England (to be converted into rum)’ as Sidney W. Mintz summarizes this ‘triangle of trade.’35 With a higher ratio of alcohol per weight/volume, strong liquor had the edge over wine and beer when it came to transport. It also took up far less space in transport than the raw materials needed to make it. Thus until the beginning of the 19th century, it was scarcely profitable for farmers in the remote and poorly accessible Midwest of the United States to sell their corn surplus to east coast towns, because the transport costs were too high. But converted into whiskey, the corn became a source of income, cutting volume (and transport costs) by a factor of six.36 So Midwest farmers took to distilling en masse. And since it was possible to go into the trade with just one still and a handful of personnel, distilling was ideally suited to people going into busi ness for the first time, who could launch a commercial product cycle with

35 36

Mintz 1986:43.

Rorabaugh 1979:78-79.


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[35]

CHAPTER TWO

[36]

hardly any capital. Manufacturers of stills, such as Andersen & Hall, used this knowledge to market their equipment (see fig. 5). The commercialization of the distilling industry in the United States flooded the market with whiskey from about the mid-18th century. This slashed prices, and by the early 19th century, consumption had reached unprecedented heights. Whereas in 1710 Americans consumed about 3.4 litres of absolute alcohol in the form of strong liquor, by 1830 this annual figure had more than doubled, at 8.7 litres.37 This trend caused public concern, with some critics describing an average day’s wages as just enough for a week’s drunkenness, and questioning the place of whiskey in society. By this stage, strong liquor had long outlived its usefulness as a means of exchange, and the United States seemed to be degenerating into a nation of drunks, as described in Rorabough’s seminal work The Alcohol Republic. After 1835, however, partly in response to the efforts of the temperance movement (see Chapter VII) the con sumption of strong liquor went into decline. In 1830, the United States had about 20,000 distilleries, with annual pro duction figures ranging from 500 to 2,000 litres. The rest of the century saw falling consumption paralleled by a concentration of production in the distill ing industry. By 1909 there were only 613 distilleries left, and in 1919 a mere 34 remained. Some were able to survive the Prohibition period by producing strong liquor in the form of approved medicines. After 1930 the process of increase of scale and concentration continued, and since the 1970s five major companies have accounted for virtually the entire production of the country.38 The distilling industry developed in much the same way in England and the Netherlands—and in other European countries such as Sweden, Prussia and Russia—with however brandy, gin, genever and vodka taking the place of whiskey. In Europe too, a rapid increase in supply at the end of the 18th centu ry (in England earlier still) was followed by a drop in prices and increased consumption. This led everywhere to unexpected social problems, because none of these countries had evolved traditions of social regulation that could be drawn on to moderate consumption of this relatively new and extremely strong intoxicant. It is striking that in all these countries, the rise and expansion of the distill ing industry were closely related to surpluses in agricultural produce. To put it more strongly, agricultural surpluses would appear to have been a necessary condition to trigger this industrialization process. Thus the distilling industry

37 38

Rorabaugh 1979:232. Downard 1980:xxiv.


36

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both heralded and initiated the dramatic social transformation whereby agri cultural societies saw the scope for industrial activity opening up before their eyes.39 England had found itself confronting a ‘gin plague’ in the mid-18th century: a spiralling trend in production and consumption which ended up with over half of the total supply of grain on the London market being converted into gin.40 Initially the English government gave the distillers a—fiscal—helping hand, only too glad that England had a ready answer to the large imports of French brandy and Dutch genever. Tax benefits made it more attractive to start up a distillery than to go into brewing. But eventually the market was glutted with cheap gin, and consumption got out of hand. In their efforts to turn back the tide of gin, the government passed a series of acts of parliament, in 1729, 1733, 1736 and 1751. The chief weapons in the government’s arsenal were heavier duties and licensing laws. It was in the wake of this gin epidemic that William Hogarth produced his famous engravings Gin Lane and Beer Street (see fig. 3). The message is crystal-clear: where beer is drunk there is diligence and prosperity, but where people turn to gin, the result is degeneration and social chaos.41 In 18th-century Holland, distilleries were mainly concentrated around Schiedam.42 By encouraging this new branch of industry, Schiedam’s local administrators compensated for the decline of the herring industry. Around 1700 Schiedam had ten distilleries, but by 1798 the number had grown to 260. At the end of the 18th century there was a boom in exports to the colonies, to North America, Germany, Belgium and, most marked of all, to England. Be tween 1733 and 1792 gin production quadrupled, and besides the healthy ex

39 40

Rorabaugh 1979:88-89. Austin 1985:23. Gin consumption rose in England from less than 0.5 litre per head of the population around 1700 to 2.5 litres 50 years later (Industry Forecast Ltd:1988). 41 Some cultural historians have seen Hogarth’s contrast between strong liquor and beer as far more than the portrayal of a society with a sudden glut of gin and no regulatory mechanisms to cope with it, seeing his engravings as an allegory of two opposing econom ic systems and the lifestyles that go along with them. The traditional beer culture, based on a sense of community, was under threat from the new early-capitalist order. See Medick 1982. 42 In certain kinds of distilleries (branderijen) brandy and genever were made from grain. Later distilleries arose that produced methylated strong liquor from sugar beet, the result then serving as an alternative basic ingredient for genever. The distinction between these and other distilleries, such as those producing liqueurs, is only relative. In the latter type, various herbs were added to alcoholic beverages, producing liqueurs and bitters with a high alcohol content. For the early history of distillation in the Netherlands, see Everwijn 1912; Forbes 1970; Van Eck 1981-1982.


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[37]

CHAPTER TWO

[38]

port trade there was a steady increase in consumption at home. Around 1800 the annual intake of absolute alcohol in the form of strong liquor was about 5 litres per head of the population, a figure that remained more or less constant until the decline at the end of the 19th century. For the year 1819, J.C.A. Everwijn counted a total of 620 genever distill ing plants in the whole of the Netherlands.43 Most were small businesses with one, two or at most three stills. But like other distillers, genever producers were soon undergoing a process of concentration and increase of scale. Their numbers went down from 620 in 1819 to 169 in 1900. And this trend continued into the 20th century: in 1920 the Netherlands had only 14 grain distillers. The only distilleries able to avoid the trend towards concentration were those that also produced liqueurs: their numbers actually grew from 230 in 1885 to 382 in 1905. Most of these were very small businesses, however, that marketed their products locally. This brief historical overview of the supply of strong liquor in the United States, England and the Netherlands shows that the rapid increase in consump tion of strong liquor in the 18th century resulted first and foremost from an enormous increase in supply. With the commercialization and increase of scale of the distilling technique, vast quantities of a new, powerful and relatively cheap intoxicant had arrived on the market. A variety of factors made strong liquor more attractive to consumers than other alcoholic drinks—especially beer—until the late 19th century. Aside from being well-priced and far stronger, strong liquor could also be kept much longer. This rapid growth in the production and consumption of strong liquor took place in societies that possessed few if any social regulatory mechanisms to control the consumption of these powerful intoxicants. In the 19th century, the social regulation of strong liquor was to become a major issue in these societies. Globalization and new alignments Since 1960 the trends described above have moved towards their logical con clusion: a few worldwide multinationals now dominate the global supply of alcoholic drinks.44 Just how recent is the rise of transnational companies in this branch of industry is apparent from a quotation from a study by Adriaan Jansen concerning beer (and breweries) in the Netherlands and Belgium. He writes ‘The 1950s show a continuation of the process of small breweries being taken over, while the 1960s witnessed mergers of relatively large companies.

43 44

Everwijn 1912:39.

Cavanagh and Clairmonte 1985.


38

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Furthermore, starting in this period, the multinationalization of the beer indus try became a significant factor in the Netherlands. The largest Dutch breweries had already set up production units abroad. From the end of the 1960s, howev er, foreign concerns started to encroach on the Dutch market, again by taking over breweries.’45 It is clear from a study by John Cavanach and Frederik Clairmonte that a similar trend manifested itself among the producers of wine and strong liquor.46 Aside from the multinationalization of the supply, there is another striking recent development in the alcohol industry. In the trend towards an almost global production and distribution network, there are no longer any clear dividing-lines between producers of beer, wine and strong liquor. In many cases the production of alcoholic beverages has even been incorporated into compa nies that also produce other foodstuffs. This means that independent, smallscale production units specializing in a single alcoholic beverage for a local or national market have less scope to market their products. When we survey the alcohol supply over the past two hundred years, we observe a steady increase in uniformity, and differences in taste between soci eties narrowing accordingly. In practice this means that grapes have almost universally supplanted other basic ingredients in wine production, just as bar ley prevails almost worldwide in the making of beer. For strong liquor, too, global standards appear to have been set: brandy, gin, vodka and whiskey taste the same all over the world. Even the various brands available throughout the world have become almost interchangeable. In this globalization of the alcohol supply, the contrasts in what and how people drink have steadily diminished.47

45 46 47

Jansen 1987:102.

Cavanagh and Clairmonte 1985.

Cf. De Swaan 1991:93-120.


39

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[39]

fig. 6. The opium poppy


40

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CHAPTER THREE

The supply side: Opiates The domestication of Papaver somniferum1 Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy, is a tall annual with a highly character istic seedbox. The plant has been cultivated so long that wild variants no longer exist. Uniquely among poppy varieties, Papaver somniferum contains the alka loid morphine.2 It also contains, though in far smaller quantities, five other major alkaloids: codeine, thebaine, papaverine, narcotine and narceine.3 In his full-length study of the social history of poppy-growing, Mark D. Merlin argues persuasively that Papaver somniferum was among the small range of plants cultivated during the Neolithic.4 Excavations of remains from lakeside settlements of the Cortaillod culture in present-day Switzerland have turned up the oldest traces of Papaver somniferum. And although it is impossi ble to say for sure whether the plant was being cultivated systematically then, Murray has concluded, on the basis of the quantities of poppy seeds found, and their locations, that it was a crop of some importance to the Cortaillod culture.5 Remains of Papaver somniferum were also found during excavations of the Murciélagos caves of southern Spain, dating from the early bronze age; the plant’s seedboxes were among a collection of burial gifts. This relatively early domestication is certainly not attributable solely to the plant’s morphine content and consequent intoxicating effect; the unprocessed poppy plant can induce only mild intoxication. The crop served a variety of purposes: the pleasant-tasting and oleaginous poppy-seeds are highly nutri tious, and the seed-oil can also serve as fuel and lubricant. Other parts of the plant were used as cattle-fodder. Furthermore, decoctions of Papaver somni ferum could be drunk for pain relief, and a paste made from the plant made a soothing ointment for skin injuries.

1

For the information contained in this paragraph I am indebted to Mark David Merlin, On the Trail of the Ancient Opium Poppy. 2 Papaver setigerum contains morphine, but in far smaller quantities than Papaver som niferum. 3 The plant contains another 17 alkaloids besides these six primary substances, but in smaller quantities. 4 Merlin 1984:120. 5 Murray 1970; quoted in Merlin 1984:120.


41

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CHAPTER THREE

[42]

fig. 7. The collection of opium juice from slightly incised fruits

fig. 8. Kozani statuette (early Greek)


42

fig. 9. Poppy goddess (1500 BC)

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THE SUPPLY SIDE: OPIATES

Its many applications are one explanation for the early and widespread cultivation of Papaver somniferum.6 Another is the plant’s immense adaptabil ity to its surroundings: whether planted in a tropical, subtropical or temperate climatic zone, in a highland or lowland region, in arid or sandy soil, in river or sea clay, or loamy ground, Papaver somniferum will flourish almost anywhere.7 Furthermore, as an annual, it makes fewer demands on the society in which it is cultivated—in terms of its social and political stability—than winegrowing, for instance. Merlin believes that the poppy seedbox was introduced to the lands of the eastern Mediterranean during the bronze trade from Central Europe in the late bronze age, after which it spread to South-East Europe and the civilizations of the Middle East and then onward to India and South-East Asia.8 The cultivation of the opium poppy The morphine content of the entire poppy plant is very small, often less than 1%. Much higher is the morphine content of the milky juice that spills from an unripe poppy capsule when it is cut to the endocarp (see fig. 7). When this juice is collected and dried, the resulting brownish substance has a morphine con tent ranging from 5% to 20%. This is called raw opium. At a relatively late stage in time, the cutting technique was refined by using a knife with multiple blades. People also experimented with different types of incision—horizontal, vertical, diagonal and cylindrical patterns being tried out—to increase the yield. We do not know exactly when, or in what culture, people developed this extraction technique to harvest raw opium. Some archaeologists believe that the medicinal use of raw opium is recorded on a Sumerian clay tablet dating from as early as 2100 B.C. Less controversial are the interpretations of the Gazi excavations on Crete—in particular the ‘Poppy Goddess’ dating from around 1500 B.C. (see fig. 9), which can still be seen in the archeological

6 Duke begins his article on the uses of Papaver somniferum with an alphabetical enu meration: ‘The well-known opium poppy (Papaver somniferum L) furnishes opiates, orna mentals, poppyseed, poppyseed oil, poppycake, poppy flour, poppy straw and potherbs. Poppies also furnish analgesics, anodynes, ant food, antibiotics, anti-malarials, aphrodisi acs, baby rattles, bird food, copper indicators, cough remedies, demulcents, diaphoretics, diarrhea cures, febrifuges, fuel, fumitories, goiter treatments, hemostatics, hypnotics, im bedding media, indicators of the geographic origin of opium, molybdenum indicators, polyploidy inducers, salad vegetables, sedatives, sudorifics, tranquilizers and vesicants.’ (Duke 1973:390). 7 Addens 1938:11. 8 Merlin 1984:180.


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[43]

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[44]

museum of Iraklion.9 A Greek bronze statuette found in the vicinity of Kozani (see fig. 8) likewise suggests that opium was available to people in this period. The statuette shows a human figure resting upon an inverted and cut poppy capsule, whose gesture, as Merlin remarks, ‘emphasizes the psychoactive ef fects of the opium exudate.’10 Once people knew how to obtain raw opium, Papaver somniferum was increasingly cultivated for this specific purpose. The plant’s other applications gradually took a subordinate place.11 Virginia Berridge and Griffith Edwards give the following description of opium cultivation in Turkey in the 19th cen tury: ‘Harvesting by the traditional incision methods took place in July in the higher areas, in May lower down the slopes. Every part of the poppy plant was used. The plants were given to the cattle, the seed pressed to produce oil used by the peasants in cooking as well as for lighting, and the remaining cake partly given to cattle, partly used by poorer families who mixed it with their bread. Part of the seed was also sold to merchants at Smyrna, who shipped it to Marseille where it was converted into oil used in the manufacture of soap.’12 The demand for raw opium fostered the commercial cultivation of opium poppies. Vases have been found during excavations on Cyprus, dating from around 1500 B.C., shaped like a poppy seedbox. These vases are painted with parallel lines that suggest incisions made with a many-bladed knife. When we recall the labour-intensiveness of opium-growing—each seedbox must be cut by hand—the use of this type of knife represents a clear effort to increase an individual worker’s yield, and is hence indicative of commercial activity. The theory that opium was grown commercially on Cyprus around 1500 B.C. derives support from the fact that Cypriot vases of this type were found during excavations of the graves of Egyptian pharaohs. The likeliest explana tion would seem to be that raw opium was one of the products concerned in the trade in luxury goods conducted between Cyprus and Egypt in the period 1500-1300 B.C., and that it was transported in these vases.13 Besides a wealth of archaeological finds,14 we also have literary sources that point to the use of Papaver somniferum in classical antiquity. The Odyssey contains a passage in which Helen offers the Trojan soldiers returning from the

9 10 11

Kritikos and Papadaki 1967; Merlin 1984:237-42. Merlin 1984:233. Exceptions have been noted Tjako Addens reports, for instance, that Papaver somni ferum was cultivated in the first half of the 20th century, for instance in the province of Zeeland, solely for its oleaginous seeds. Addens 1938:39-42. 12 Berridge and Edwards 1987:6. 13 Merlin 1984:254-56. 14 For a detailed overview, see Kritikos and Papadaki 1967; see also Merlin 1984.


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battlefield a mysterious potion that makes them forget the horrors of war. Many scholars have suggested that the drink was opium dissolved in wine.15 Other literary sources reveal that Papaver somniferum and opium were already being used medicinally long before our own times. The physicians Hippocrates (460-377/370 B.C.) and Galen (A.D. 129-200) made abundant use of solutions of the poppy plant in water or wine. And in his De Materia Medica (1st century AD) the Greek physician Dioskorides described the tech nique of cutting the unripe poppy capsule with a many-bladed knife to obtain the powerful raw opium, and the subsequent preparation of this extract for medicinal use.16 These and other medical pioneers used opium for a wide vari ety of ailments: it served as a pain-killer and sedative, and was also adminis tered to improve blood coagulation and as an aid in euthanasia.17 In the course of time the range of applications expanded further still. The archaeological and literary sources mentioned above all point to opium being used exclusively for medical and/or religious purposes, and largely confined to the elites of a society. But with commercialization and an increased scale of operations, it gradually came to be used more and more—primarily by being smoked—as a recreational drug. The extraction technique used in the growing of the opium poppy has been the same since about 1500 B.C. Experiments were carried out around the be ginning of the 20th century to extract the morphine directly from the entire poppy plant by mechanical means, thereby cutting out the labour-intensive intermediate stage of raw opium. But although the results were not disappoint ing, to my knowledge the experiments were not followed up,18 and to this day, opium is still harvested by making an incision to the endocarp of the unripe seedbox using either a single- or many-bladed knife, and scraping the opium off the seedbox the next day. It is laid out to dry in the sun, and then either processed or sold. This is roughly how opium is harvested everywhere, wheth er for the legal pharmaceutical industry or for the illegal market. Making an incision in each seedbox and later scraping off the raw opium, though not physically demanding work, requires a certain amount of time and dexterity. For the business to be at all profitable, opium farmers have to rely on 15 Homer, Odyssey IV:219-32 Other classical examples can be found in Virgil, for in stance in Aeneid IV 1:486. Later, tincture of opium (i.e. a solution of opium in alcohol) reappeared in Europe and the United States under the name of laudanum. It was a common remedy for a wide variety of disorders. 16 Riddle 1985. 17 Duke 1973; Kritikos and Papadaki 1967; Merlin 1984. 18 Addens 1938:37-39 The fact that it never progressed beyond the experimental stage is probably because the cultivation of the opium poppy was increasingly concentrated in low wage countries.


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cheap labour that can be called in temporarily at fairly short notice. In practice it has always been the women and children of the farmer’s own family who reap the harvest. This is one of the main reasons why opium-poppies tend to be grown on a smaller scale than food crops. Low wages and easily available labour have always been important pre conditions for a viable opium-growing business. There was a huge demand for raw opium in Western societies at the beginning of the 19th century, and efforts were made to grow opium commercially in England, to save the transport costs from the Middle East and India. For the actual harvesting work, recruits were rounded up among children, women and the Irish unemployed, and soon quite respectable yields were being collected. Even so, opium farms were doomed to be an ephemeral phenomenon in England. The extremely low wages in Turkey more than offset the costs of transport, and as English farmers could earn much more with other crops, they soon abandoned the commercial growing of opi um poppies as a bad proposition.19 Small opium farmers are generally dependent on a handful of buyers— sometimes only one—for the marketing of their product, thus creating an im balance of power between growers and buyers. This tends to keep the cost price low, with middlemen enjoying large profit margins. The buyers either process the raw opium themselves or sell to others who will prepare it for smoking; more recently, the opium is often converted into morphine or heroin. Modest-sized opium farms have the added advantages of being harder to control and of spreading the risks. This is crucial in the case of illegal opium growing, as it helps to limit the financial damage suffered in the event of dis covery and the crop being seized or destroyed (see chapter X). Morphine and heroin refinement Less than two hundred years ago, raw opium, with a maximum morphine con tent of 20%, was still the purest form of morphine available, as it had been since 2000 B.C. It was only at the beginning of the 19th century that chemical and pharmaceutical pioneers developed a refining technique that would enable the diverse alkaloids, including morphine, to be extracted. In 1803 and 1804 the French chemists Derosne and Sequin took the first steps towards the refinement of raw opium, and in 1805 the German pharma cist Sertürner published the first article about morphine in the German Journal der Pharmazie. Sertürner it was who named the powerful substance after Mor pheus, the god of sleep and dreams. In 1821 another alkaloid was isolated from 19

Berridge and Edwards 1987:11-17.


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raw opium—codeine, which, together with morphine, would be of immense importance to the pharmaceutical industry. Numerous other alkaloids were first extracted from plants in the 19th cen tury, including quinine, caffeine, strychnine and nicotine. This was an exciting period for chemistry, which also witnessed the development of new synthetic substances, such as ether and chloroform.20 Thus was born an entire new gen eration of medicinal drugs, characterized by a high degree of purity. Unlike traditional remedies, substances such as morphine, quinine and codeine were also amenable to large-scale industrial production. This led to a division of labour within the pharmacists’ trade: some pharmacists turned entrepreneur, and started producing a small range of these new drugs on a large scale, while others increasingly became medicine retailers. In France this resulted in a gradual loss of status for the independent pharmacy. In Germany, on the other hand, the emphasis was rather on the rise of the chemical and pharmaceutical industry.21 Pure morphine was first refined on a large scale in the 1820s. But by the mid- 1830s, as we can see from references in the 1836 London pharmaco peia, it was already routinely prescribed in England.22 Medical practitioners were quick to see the advantages of pure morphine over opium, the morphine content of which varied wildly but averaged no more than 10%. The effect of pure morphine was not only stronger but also more predictable, enabling doses to be determined more accurately. It was in itially taken in the form of tablets, powders and potions, and suppositories containing morphine were soon on the market. Later the new drug was admin istered subcutaneously and even intravenously, making its action still more effective, and most important of all, faster. By the end of the 19th century, various substances, including morphine, had been manipulated to synthesize new compounds. After decades of experi ence with morphine addiction, researchers in pharmaceutical laboratories were eager to discover a drug that would provide the same universally praised pain relief without inducing addiction. In 1874 the English chemist Wright published, in the Journal of the Chemical Society, the results of his work with morphine, including the new semi-synthetic substance diacetylmorphine. Twenty years later the German pharmaceutical company Bayer started produc ing diacetylmorphine—which had scarcely received any attention in the meantime—under the trade name of heroin, advertizing it as a drug ‘with a stronger and more powerful effect than morphine and codeine, but without the adverse 20

Ether and chloroform were foremost among the drugs—as was morphine—that boost ed the development of medical science. 21 Temkin 1964:11. 22 Berridge and Edwards 1987:138.


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addictive side-effects for which morphine has by now become so notorious.’23 And in the Second World War German chemists even succeeded in synthesiz ing an opiate-like drug without the use of opium—methadone. [48] Modes of consumption An important aspect of the social history of opiates is the development of dif ferent techniques of consumption. People have almost always consumed alco hol by drinking it, a simple mode of consumption that has undoubtedly con tributed to the status of alcohol as a widely accepted intoxicant.24 Opiates are a different matter. It is worth considering the different modes of consumption involved here, not least because they affect the intensity and speed with which the intoxicating effect is experienced. In the early stages of domestication, the seeds of the poppy plant were probably simply eaten almost without any preparation. I have already suggest ed the possibility—the evidence is a little scarce—that people used an oint ment made from the seeds in the Neolithic age to soothe their wounds. And the ‘Spongia somnifera’ has a long history that can be traced back to classical antiquity.25 Infusions of the poppy plant in wine, beer or water,—and later so lutions of opium, too—were drunk partly for their taste and intoxicating effect, but most of all for their analgesic properties. Once raw opium became available, however, people developed more so phisticated habits than simply eating the seeds, drinking infusions or rubbing themselves with ointment: they started smoking the opium. The morphine re leased when opium is burnt is absorbed into the bloodstream faster and with greater intensity—resulting in a swifter and stronger intoxicating effect— through the lungs than if it has to pass through the digestive system. Smoking was at first a fairly crude affair: people simply sniffed the smoke released when opium was burnt in the open.26 Later the technique was refined, with the invention of special equipment such as the opium pipe. This in turn led to raw opium being specially refined for smoking. The oldest pipes thought by archaeologists to have been used for opium were found during the excava tion of a temple on Cyprus.27 The burning of opium at that time may well have 23 24

Inciardi 1984:9-10. Exceptions have been noted: in 1988 the daily newspaper Het Parool reported under the heading ‘Alcohol injection raises concern in Britain’ that British dropouts were admin istering alcohol—usually vodka—using hypodermic needles (Parool, 5-1-1988). 25 Daems 1970. 26 This simple sniffing technique, known as ‘chasing the dragon,’ has now become fash ionable again for the illegal consumption of heroin. 27 Kritikos and Papadaki 1967; Merlin 1984.


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had a religious function in services held in ‘healing temples.’ For it is entirely plausible that a fairly complicated new technique of consumption, which smoking must have been at the time, may have had a special distinctive value. If one hypothesizes that a social elite of priests cultivated the smoking of opium by jealously guarding it as a professional secret, this class of priests would have had a monopoly on the stronger and faster-acting intoxication that smok ing induced. It seems to me likely that the smoking of opium was initially the preroga tive of a religious elite, then gradually became accessible to other social elites before eventually, as is the way with most exclusive usages and habits, spread ing to the common people. Two necessary preconditions for the social dissem ination of opium smoking were the further commercialization of the opium supply and the removal of smoking from the sphere of sacred ritual into every day life. The available sources do indeed suggest that this was the route fol lowed by opium smoking in China from the 17th to the 19th century, by which time it was a popular intoxicant in all sections of the population.28 Until the mid-19th century, smoking opium was the most effective way to gain the benefits of morphine. But in the 1840s the hypodermic needle was invented, making it possible to inject drugs subcutaneously and later intrave nously. Opiates would take effect far more rapidly and intensively in this way than through the lungs. The medical applications of morphine were greatly boosted, in the latter half of the 19th century, both by the invention of the hypodermic needle and by the pharmaceutical discovery of how to extract pure morphine from raw opi um. Of all modes of consumption, intravenous injection has proved to be fast est and most efficient. And just as in ancient times a class of priests probably monopolized opium and the technique of smoking, around 1850 the medical profession in Western societies was fairly successful in securing a monopoly on morphine and the technique of injection—not so much for themselves (al though there were many users among the profession)—as for the treatment of their patients.29 Only recently has the technique of intravenous injection become accessi ble to persons with no medical training, albeit as an aberrant form of behav iour. Notably, in the 20th century, users of the intoxicant heroin—which has since been prohibited—have taken en masse to the use of the highly efficient hypodermic needle.

28 29

Inglis 1976. The role of medical practitioners in the regulation of this technique will be discussed at length in chapter VI.


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[50]

The examining hall

The boiling room

The balling room

The drying room

The storage shed

Dispatch to the coast

fig. 10. Successive stages in the pre-industrial colonial opium trade


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The three markets for opium In the development of opium growing since the middle ages, three overlapping markets may be distinguished: the colonial trade, the trade in opium as an ingredient for the Western pharmaceutical industry, and the illegal trade. In general, an opium farm would start off as a small-scale and barely commer cialized activity for the family’s own use and a local market, and later gravitate towards one or more of these markets. For instance, the tribes inhabiting re mote mountainous regions of South-East Asia had a self-sufficient opium cul ture. The opium was used as an intoxicant, and often for medical and religious purposes as well. While these communities continued to live in relative isola tion, without any link with a regional trade network, there was no reason to increase the scale of cultivation. Once this isolation was breached, however, the growing of opium poppies inevitably became a commercial venture.30 The colonial opium trade31 The colonial opium trade became a flourishing business in the 17th century, peaked in the 18th and 19th centuries, and eventually died out in the 20th cen tury. It was Western colonial powers—with Britain and the Netherlands fore most among them—that profited most from this trade. Given the huge profits to be made, there was an enormous increase in opi um cultivation in regions that had once had modest opium farms for local con sumption. Intensification of trade also resulted in an increase of scale and con centration of the processing of the product: ‘opium factories’ came into existence (see fig. 10). Production in bulk meant that the opium could be sold as a common intoxicant to the general public. Opium cultivation was concentrated in regions that are now part of India, and which became British protectorates in the 18th century: Bengal, and later Malwa. The most important market for the opium was China, where the prod uct was smoked as an intoxicant. The habit of smoking opium became so wide spread and deeply entrenched among the Chinese that a demand arose for it wherever there were Chinese communities, such as in the French and Dutch colonial areas of South-East Asia. The 19th-century Chinese immigrants in the United States, too, were eager to obtain opium that had been prepared for smoking. The trade in prepared opium to the United States that developed in the 19th century was hence an offshoot of the colonial opium trade.

30 31

Suwanela and Poshyachinda 1983; Westermeyer 1982 and Völger 1981. See esp. Inglis 1976. This paragraph gives only a very brief outline of the colonial opium trade, which will be dealt with at length in the following chapter.


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[52]

The opium cultivated in British India was not all exported; much was sold locally, opium being a traditional intoxicant among the indigenous population. In India, however, it was either drunk in infusions or taken in pill form, but not smoked, as in China. In the 19th century the colonial cultivation of opium enjoyed its heyday. The most striking feature of the colonial opium trade was the role played by Western countries. By acquiring various monopoly rights—and opium was of course only one of a wide range of products subject to Western state monopolies—they had a direct interest in this trade. The Western pharmaceutical industry There is a long tradition of opium use in Western civilizations. Pharmacists, medical practitioners, surgeons and quacks alike would always have a supply of opium in their medicine chest. The Catalogus medicamentorum of Leiden city pharmacy for the year 1665 records that opium fetched seven guilders and five stivers per pound. And the list of items carried in the Dutch East Indies Company ship’s pharmacy for 1772 had opiates under a separate heading, in cluding laudanum, tincture of opium, which was thus already a well- known remedy.32 The Western European demand for raw opium was largely fulfilled by im ports from Turkey; by way of illustration, over 70% of all opium brought into Britain during the 19th century originated from Turkey. The rest came from British India, Egypt, and later Persia.33 Smyrna was the commercial centre where European merchants went to buy raw opium from the Turkish middle men. In Europe, the opium was auctioned at the spice fairs (and later the me dicinal drug markets) of Marseille, London and Amsterdam. Most was bought by pharmacists and chemists, although in England the substance was also used, for instance, to flavour beer. In this second variant of the opium trade, there was a definite scaling-up of operations in the latter half of the 19th century. The quantity of opium import ed into Britain in 1860 was just over 90,000 kg. The average for the following forty years, however, was 300,000 kg. annually.34 Even at their peak, it should be added, these figures were far outweighed by the volume involved in the colonial opium trade. In the United States as in England, imports of medicinal opium increased substantially in the second half of the 19th century.35 No fig ures are available for Dutch imports of opium in the 19th century. 32 33 34

Wittop Koning 1986:87, 128.

Berridge and Edwards 1987:8.

Some of this was re-exported (see Berridge and Edwards 1987:272, table 1).


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The Western pharmaceutical industry, which was enjoying a rapid expan sion, processed the raw opium into a variety of approved medicines such as morphine and codeine. The opium preparations—powders, extracts and tinctures—were marketed not only within the medical profession itself, but also served as an ingredient for a wide range of patented secret remedies. As a result, opium was consumed on a large scale in Western societies in the 19th century, not as an intoxicant, but in the form of medicine and para-medical secret remedies.36 Scarcely a single obstacle was placed in the path of the opium trade with the West until the 20th century. Medicinal opium was subject to low import duties in Britain and the United States, and at the wholesale level prices were dictated wholly by supply and demand. Retailing was a somewhat different matter, however; in the latter half of the 19th century—somewhat later in the United States—the retail trade was constrained by statutory regulations. But it was not until the 20th century that these restrictions were followed by the in troduction of regulations governing the production and wholesaling of opium. To halt the colonial opium trade, opium was henceforth to be cultivated solely as a basic ingredient for medicine. On the authority of the League of Nations, and later the United Nations, a complicated system arose in the 20th century consisting of quotas for legal opium farming and checks on the further refinement of opiates.37 The League of Nations assessed the legal worldwide demand for the primary opium derivatives for 1935 as follows: morphine 41,421 kg; heroin 1,187 kg; and codeine 29,746 kg.38 Today, the extent of the legal cultivation of opium is relatively stable, oscillating between 1 and 1.5 thousand tonnes annually.39 The tight, global regulations imposed on the cultivation and refinement of opium has had unforeseen repercussions on the legal branch of the opium in dustry. The numerous constraints applied to the legal import and export of opiates has resulted in the production of medicinal opium derivatives being concentrated in the hands of a few pharmaceutical giants. In England, this trend progressed to the extent that it the 1980s it suddenly appeared that a single pharmaceutical company had acquired a monopoly position in the sup ply of legal opiates for medicinal use—with obvious consequences for prices. The Monopolies and Mergers Commission, which investigated this economic 35 36 37 38 39

Courtwright 1982:26. Berridge and Edwards 1987. Chatterjee 1981:69 ff. Addens 1938:63. Lamour and Lamberti 1972:25. Between 1981 and 1985 the International Narcotics Control Board estimated the legal world demand for pure morphine at approximately 2,680 kg annually.


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anomaly in 1989, therefore recommended that competition on the opiates mar ket be stepped up to protect the public from a monopoly on the part of the pharmaceutical giant MacFarlan Smith Ltd. The Commission went on to suggest that the most effective way of achieving this would be to remove the exist ing import ban on the goods in question. The illegal opium market40 At every time and in every place where the trade in opium and opiates has been impeded by factors unrelated to market forces, an illegal market has sprung up. Thus the state monopoly on the supplying and marketing of legal (or ‘legitimate’41) opium in the Dutch East Indies was always accompanied by smug gling and illegal supplies of smoking opium. The state of the illegal opium market was in factor determined by a single factor: the monopoly price of the legal opium supply. Now that a global ban is in place on trade in opiates—with the exception of opiates intended for medical or scientific use—even the mo nopoly price has vanished as a point of reference. This has served to widen price margins in the illegal supply. This applies of course to virtually all con sumer goods; once constraints are introduced outside the laws of supply and demand, an alternative will spring up, generally in the form of an illegal supply network. There are at least two factors which make the illegal supply of opiates especially lucrative: the addictive effect of opiates and the absence of an ac ceptable substitute. The constant longing for the intoxication induced by opi um through morphine, and more recently by the heroin ‘flash,’ means that in the short term, and up to a certain point, the demand for opiates is price-inelastic, although studies have shown that it is essential to add here the proviso ‘other factors remaining equal.’42 Financial gain is the primary motive at each individual stage in the illegal supply chain. Only where supply and consumption overlap—as in the case of small tradesmen-users—is self- sufficiency the motive for trade. The number 40

In chapter IX on the dynamics of formal prohibition and illegal supply the illegal sup ply of opium will be discussed at length. 41 The term used in Vanvugt 1985. 42 The demand curve for illegal opiates probably displays a large measure of price- ine lasticity at the maintenance level of individual users, enclosed by two price-elastic regions at excessively high and excessively low prices (see Wagstaff and Maynard 1988:43). The other factors that may influence this demand are in particular social changes which could have a dramatic impact on individual consumers’ demand for opiates. Thus Zinberg’s re search has shown that 90% of US soldiers who took heroin on a regular basis in Vietnam stopped taking it after they returned home (Zinberg 1981:177).


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of links in the illegal supply chain varies, and is determined by the specific circumstances of the market. There are two ways of procuring opiates for the illegal market: they can either be siphoned off from one of the stages in the legal production chain (from products intended for the pharmaceutical industry, for instance), or cultivated specifically for the illegal market.43 In the course of the 20th century there appears to have been a gradual change of approach. While withdrawal from the legal production chain was favoured in itially, nowadays illegal opiates are earmarked as such from the moment of cultivation. 43 Such classification is not always clear-cut. At the time of the colonial opium trade in China, for instance, the somewhat bizarre situation existed that growing opium poppies and trading in opium were completely legal in British India, but that the trade took on a differ ent nature upon reaching China, where it was illegal (see chapter IV).


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[55]

fig. 11. An opium saloon at Canton


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CHAPTER FOUR

The colonial opium trade Britain and the Netherlands: a profitable trade Although the action took place thousands of miles away, the European powers played a prominent role in the colonial opium trade, orchestrating or at any rate retaining a direct involvement in cultivation, refinement and trade. Crops intended for the opium trade with Asia were grown partly in the Levant and partly in India.1 For various reasons, including the quality and volume of the yield and proximity to the buyers—in South-East Asia—and the degree of Western control over the territory, India was favoured, with production being concentrated in Bengal, and later also in Malwa. China was the largest market. Other population groups in South-East Asia also consumed the drug but the biggest users—certainly where smoking was concerned—were the Chinese. As merchants, sailors and migrant workers, the Chinese had spread throughout the entire region, and wherever they settled, there was soon a demand for smoking opium. Opium was only one of numerous products in a system of colonial trade relations—a trade that linked Asia to Europe, and Europe to the rest of the world—which started in the 16th century, grew in range and intensity and fi nally expired in the 20th century, with the completion of the decolonization process. This trade network was dominated by the fleets of the European trad ing companies, the Dutch and English East India Companies in particular. Wherever profits beckoned and an opening was glimpsed, these trading com panies would set up permanent trading posts as bases for the further develop ment of their colonial relations. Philip Curtin has aptly described this develop ment as a ‘transition from trading-post empire to territorial empire.’2 Three trade flows came together in the colonial trade between Europe and Asia. In the first place, there was a substantial flow of goods from Asia to the European markets: tea, coffee, spices, sugar, silk, cotton and porcelain were 1

As was shown in the previous chapter, most of the opium cultivated in the Levant found its way into the pharmaceutical markets of Europe. 2 Curtin 1984:232. In the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, much of South-East Asia was divided up in this way—with boundaries changing in accordance with shifts in the balance of power—among the Western colonial powers. The indigenous traditional rulers were unable to withstand the Westerners’ superior military capability. Thus the struggle for land was one between rival European states rather than between the indigenous population and the European conquerors.


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CHAPTER FOUR

[58]

the most important goods shipped to Europe. Secondly, there was a flow of goods going in the opposite direction. This consisted largely of silver, as there was very little demand in Asia for other European products. (Europe derived most of its silver, however, from America). And thirdly there was the intraAsian traffic that was likewise directed and controlled by Western trading companies. Opium, which was both produced and consumed in Asia, was by far the most significant product in this third flow of trade. The following ac count will focus on four countries—Britain, China, the Netherlands and the United States—that played a part in the opium trade.3 China and the English colonial opium trade4 China’s role in this affair was largely a passive one. In the 17th and 18th centu ries, Chinese rulers had derived great benefit from the rise of an intercontinent al trade network which increasingly entwined their country in worldwide flows of trade. Unlike the situation in most other Asian societies, where tradi tional rulers had gradually been compelled to bow to European powers, the sovereignty of Chinese rulers was long unassailable. Until well into the 19th century, for instance, European trading ships entering Chinese waters to mar ket their wares were admitted only to the port of Canton. China exported to Europe a large range of goods, including tea, porcelain and silk. And as it had no demand whatsoever for European goods, the Chinese balance of trade displayed a structural surplus. European merchants paid in silver, which continued to pile up in the Chinese coffers. This situation persist ed until the early 19th century, when the tide turned, with the opium trade playing a pivotal role. Opium had long been a familiar substance in China. It was used medicinal ly, in the form of pills and infusions, as it was in other regions of the world. In the late 17th century, however, people in the Canton region consumed it in creasingly for recreational purposes. They smoked it, rather than ingesting the drug in edible or potable form, as in India. Brian Inglis has suggested that the habit was imported by Dutch merchants from the East Indies to Formosa, from where it spread to the Chinese mainland. It has been reported that people were already smoking a mixture of opium and tobacco on Java in the 1680s. Some where between Java, Formosa and China, the tobacco came to be left out.5 As opium was imported, the market was concentrated in the port of Can 3

Other states too—such as Portugal, France and Japan—were involved, although their role in the colonial opium trade was only a marginal one. 4 This section is largely based on the work of Brian Inglis (Inglis 1976). 5 Inglis 1976:16.


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THE COLONIAL OPIUM TRADE

ton. Initially only a modest volume of trade was involved, shipped by coastal vessels based in India. The route led through the straits of Malacca to Macau— then under Portuguese control—and from there to Canton. The scarcity of sup ply kept prices high, and Chinese opium consumption was hence initially regulated by the price mechanism. Access to this exclusive recreational drug was initially confined to men from the upper echelons of society. But with the rapid expansion in the supply of smoking opium in the 18th century, consumption spread to the population at large. Opium was used on such a vast scale that in 1729 the Chinese emperor proclaimed a ban on its import and consumption, without however achieving the desired effect. Opium fulfilled a need long felt by the trading houses of Europe: the need for a suitable export product for the Chinese market to offset that country’s huge bulk of exports. It was one of the few products for which a demand exist ed in China, and the trading companies were not inclined to let even an impe rial decree deprive them of it. Quite the opposite, in fact: during the 18th cen tury, opium imports were stepped up. The decree did however cause the English East Indies Company, which was anxious to avoid any negative reper cussions on its lucrative tea trade with China, to withdraw from direct opium exports to that country. To preserve outward appearances it left opium exports from British India, henceforth, to private trading companies. There were quite enough Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, French and American shipping compa nies to ensure that opium smuggling—for so it was now deemed in the eyes of the Chinese authorities—would continue unabated. The English Company easily compensated for this loss of revenue with money earned from its mo nopoly on the cultivation and wholesaling of the drug in India. The Chinese authorities were already voicing their concern about opium smoking in the early 18th century, long before the habit conquered the country as a whole. The explosive increase in consumption in the 19th century resulted from a scaling-up of operations on the opium farms in India, which slashed opium prices in China and brought the intoxication of opium within reach of virtually everyone. With opium supply and demand soaring in the first half of the 19th century, China’s favourable balance of trade was reversed and its sil ver stocks fast depleted. Opium was thus the key factor that overturned the balance of trade between China and Britain in the latter’s favour. From the late 1820s onwards, China spent more silver on opium than it received for its own exports. The Chinese silver stocks thus literally went up in—opium—smoke. Curtin comments: ‘As trade grew, the trade in opium grew fastest of all, even though it was illegal to import or to use opium in China’.6 6

Curtin 1984:237.


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Chinese balance of trade and opium import 1800-1836 6

opium expenditure

4

[60]

2

total balance of trade silver in mil. ounces

0

-2

-4

-6 1800

1810

1820

1830

1836

The constant increases in opium import brought to a standstill and then reversed the flow of silver: from about 1825 there was a flow of silver away from China. Source: Spectrum – Times 1981-174.

What this in effect meant that as tea-drinking spread among the population of Britain, opium-smoking spread among the population of China. Inglis’s view of the relationship between the two habits is that it was deemed essential to maintain the opium supply in order to pay for Chinese tea.7 Chinese rulers, whose power had already been undermined for a variety of other reasons,8 watched helplessly as this trend continued. Their efforts to curb opium consumption and stem imports had no effect at all. The profits to be made in opium smuggling were too large for the flow of imports to be stemmed. And once the Chinese population was used to the intoxication of opium, the desire for the opium pipe proved too strong to be diverted by ad ministrative measures alone. One of the main things preventing an effective anti-opium campaign was the rampant corruption among Chinese public serv ants. It was not until the end of the 19th century that a strong wave of Chinese nationalism swept the country and subdued the longing for opium intoxica tion. The aversion of China’s rulers to the rapid spread of opium consumption, added to the country’s deteriorating economic position, their own faltering power, European expansionism and nationalist sentiments did however pro duce a counter-offensive. In 1839, a special envoy of the Chinese emperor 7 8

Inglis 1976:198. Riots occurred regularly from the end of the 18th century onwards. The Chinese rulers proved no longer capable of enforcing their will upon the country’s enormous population of some 300 million, nor was China able, in the long term, to withstand European expan sionism.


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confiscated all the opium stocks of the European private trading companies in Canton. He ordered the content of the 20,000 chests seized in this action (1,250,000 kg of opium) to be ostentatiously cast into the sea, and extended his anti-opium campaign to the Chinese users, who could obtain amnesty by handing in their opium pipes to the authorities. Within four months, 70,000 pipes had been handed in and destroyed in Canton. A chain reaction of skirmishes provided this conflict with additional fuel, and eventually it escalated into a complete trade blockade for English private trading ships. This was sufficient reason for Britain to declare war on China, precipitating the two countries into what later became known as the First Opium War. In 1841, a fairly brief but effective British campaign forced the trade rela tions between the two countries back into the lines dictated by the military balance of power. The Treaty of Nanking obliged China to provide compensa tion for the damage suffered by the British trade companies and the British Government. It also stipulated that China open up other ports besides Canton (Amoy, Fuchow, Ningpo and Shanghai) for foreign trade. Finally, with this treaty the British took possession of Hong Kong. A second opium war followed in 1856. Once again the aversion of Chinese rulers to the opium trade was broken by Britain’s military intervention. This time, the capitulation was sealed with a peace treaty signed in Tianjin—a step closer to Peking than Nanking. It would be almost fifty years before China would finally succeed in stifling the colonial opium trade, and even then it was reliant upon the help of the United States. Opium cultivation in British India The British East Indies Company played a crucial role in commercial opium growing. Trading companies such as these made ideal instruments for Western powers to control their overseas trade from the 17th century onwards, and later to rule their colonies. The British had acquired control of most of India in the course of the 18th century, having successfully defeated rival Western states eager for the same prize. The British East Indies Company was given the mo nopoly rights to the commercial cultivation of opium by the Crown. Bengal, which came under British rule in the latter half of the 18th century, was already the traditional centre of opium growing, and so it remained after the British took over. Once the British East Indies Company deemed it no longer prudent to con tinue the opium trade with China, not wishing to cause undue offence to the Chinese rulers who had proclaimed the ban, the prepared opium was sold at auction in Calcutta to private trading companies which would then arrange for the transport to China themselves. These private companies would often be under contractual agreement to ship the opium to China. And by way of quality


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guarantee, the buyers took scrupulous care to ensure that the opium remained packed in the Company’s own chests. Opium was also shipped to China from regions that did not—or not yet— come under British rule, such as Malwa and even Turkey. It was American shipowners in particular who transported opium to China from Turkey, compe tition that dented Britain’s share of the market, despite increased sales. The British responded by intensifying their opium growing operations in Bengal, which caused British exports of opium to soar to new heights. Prior to 1820, opium exports almost never exceeded 5,000 chests, with each one containing 63.5 kg. By the 1830-31 season, however, this number had grown to almost 19,000 chests, and in 1838-39 Britain exported about 40,000 chests of smok ing opium to China. This increase continued unabated over the following years, with 68,000 chests in 1858 and exports eventually peaking in 1879 at 94,835 chests. The development of the 19th-century colonial trade between Britain, Brit ish India and China, and the central role in it played by the opium trade, is clear from the overview of the mutual trade relations given below. The table illus trates the importance of the opium trade within the overall trade relations be tween Britain and China. The success of military intervention, too, is clearly demonstrated—not only for the opium trade, but also in opening up the Chi nese market for an increasing range of products of British origin. Trade relations between England, China and British India, 1821-18919 period

exports from England to China in £

1821-1825 1833-1835 1837-1839 1842-1846 (after First Opium War) 1854-1858 1859-1862 (after 2nd Opium War) 1878-1882 1883-1887 1888-1891

exports from China to England in £

opium exports from British India to China in £

610,637 850,159 911,560 1,783,888

3,082,109 3,779,385 4,273,858 5,323,388

1,058,252 1,955,236 3,209,958 3,712,920

1,961,242 4,440,402

9,157,001 9,886,403

6,365,319 9,540,211

8,054,823 7,956,483 8,585,911

12,662,927 9,951,754 6,717,512

11,909,815 9,770,775 8,207,818

9

Source: Statistics of Trade between India, China, Japan and the United Kingdom. In Parliamentary Papers 1894:LX 712.


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After the Second Opium War (1862) the balance of trade swung towards Brit ain for good. By the beginning of the 20th century, opium exports had fallen back to 50,000 chests. This drop was not due to any decrease in popularity of opium consumption in China, but rather to a combination of an increased supply of opium cultivated in China itself and a growing aversion in Britain to the colonial opium trade.10 Opium growing did not only play a role in relations between Britain and China. It was an important link in relations between British India as colonial periphery and Britain as the centre of power. Britain received income from opium exports to many other countries besides British India, most of which in Asia. Furthermore, opium use on the part of the local population also contrib uted to colonial revenue. All things considered, opium was a substantial source of income. The following table shows why opium growing—a relatively lowcost enterprise—was indispensable if the resources of British India were to yield a profit. Although the state had other, larger sources of income, such as land tax and in the 20th century the duty on salt, the profits made on the opium trade were a major item in the colonial accounts. As a percentage of the total gross profits made in British India, net profits from opium rose from 3.4% in 1800 to 13.7% in 1850, to peak in 1876 at 15.6%, after which they gradually declined.11 Colonial income from British India, including opium profits, 1851-194012 year

1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1940

gross receipts from British India in £mil. 10.3 42.9 51.4 74.3 85.2 64.7 80.7 215.0 207.5 n.a.

Net receipts from British India in £mil. 2.7 -4.0 1.5 -3.6 0.5 1.7 3.9 -2.6 -2.2 n.a.

opium income in £mil.

Expenditure on opium growing in £mil.

3.1 6.7 8.1 10.5 7.9 5.1 7.5 3.5 2.5 4.7

10 11 12

1.6 n.a. n.a. 2.0 2.2 1.8 1.2 1.2 0.7 2.4

Inglis 1976:183; Stein 1985:7-8.

Stein 1985:8.

Figures derive from Parliamentary Papers. In order to arrive at a coherent series of

figures, rupees and colonial rupees have been converted, for several years, into pounds sterling.


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Viewing the colonial authority’s income from British India as a whole, opium earnings often made the difference between a positive or negative balance, and in bad years—which were actually in the majority in the latter half of the 19th century13—they kept the losses within an acceptable margin. The broodings of Robert Brown, writing in the year 1891, are illustrative of the position of com mercial opium growing in British India, who argued that the revenue earned from opium was dissipated in what he deemed the mismanagement of the rail road system, the telegraph service and suchlike. To Brown it was clear that India could not afford to dispense with the opium revenue without raising new taxes.14 British India was by no means an exception in this respect. In other parts of the British Empire in South-East Asia the opium trade was big business, and sometimes accounted for an even higher proportion of earnings than in British India. Basing himself on a report by the International Opium Commission, S.D. Stein calculated the following percentages for the year 1906: Hong Kong 29%; Straits Settlements 53%, Malaysia 10%; Formosa 14%; Siam 16%. Oth er colonial powers with territories in South-East Asia were in a similar posi tion: in French Indo-China opium earnings accounted for 16% of the total in come, and the Dutch East Indies, at 15% (1906), also had a lively trade in opium.15 The opium trade in the Dutch East Indies16 Although Britain had a stake in the opium trade through its own East Indies Company, it did not concern itself—formally speaking, at any rate—with the transport to China or the marketing of the product. It made its profits from cultivation and bulk sales, and to a lesser extent from selling opium to the indigenous population of British India. The involvement of the state of the Netherlands in the colonial opium trade in the Dutch East Indies was of an essentially different kind. Firstly, unlike the British, the Dutch colonial rulers gained their income precisely from transport and from retail sales. They achieved this by securing and exploiting a monop oly on supplies—granted in the 17th century to the Dutch East Indies Compa 13 14 15 16

Parliamentary papers. Brown 1891:22. Stein 1985:8; see also La Motte 1981 (1924). This condensed description is largely derived from Diehl 1983; Gerritsen 1982; Mei jring 1974; Rush 1977; Vanvugt 1985. Many of the figures I have reproduced here have been taken from the excellent paper by Frits Diehl, which has unfortunately not been pub lished in a journal. I have incorporated them into this description with the author’s permis sion.


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ny (VOC), and later (from 1827) to the Dutch Trading Company—and also on retail sales of opium. Secondly, the Dutch involvement amounted to a more extensive type of state control. This was not specific to the opium trade. Dutch colonial politics—with its unique forced farming system—were shot through with an unparalleled degree of state involvement on all fronts.17 The colonial opium trade in the Dutch East Indies may best be considered in two periods.18 In the first phase, up to the beginning of the state control system (1894), the sole concern was with the state’s revenue from the opium trade. This meant a constant quest for ways of maximizing profits, from the establishment of the ‘Opium Society’ (Amfioensociëteit) in the 18th century to the franchise system of the 19th century. In the second phase, that of the state control system, profits remained important, but other objectives—controlling opium consumption and the users themselves, and later actually curbing consumption—gradually started to make themselves felt, and eventually prevailed.19 When the Dutch flag was firmly planted in Javanese soil at the beginning of the 17th century, the VOC gained a monopoly on all trade with the East Indies, including opium. ‘As early as 1612, Governor-General Both forbade sales of opium within the city of Batavia, with the exception of stocks from the Company’s own storehouses.’20 Most of the opium supplied by the VOC orig inated from British India (especially Bengal) but some came from the Levant. 17 Influential English commentators such as J.W.B. Money (Money 1985 (1861):241-44) viewed with envy the profitable mode of colonial administration that the Netherlands had devised for the Dutch East Indies. In his travel journal, which was intended to light the way for English colonialists, Money accordingly dwelt at length on the franchise system used for opium and other goods. 18 This watershed was not, of course, absolute. In reality the transition was fairly gradual, and is hard to trace to certain specific years, in spite of the formal introduction of the state control of opium, as an experiment, in 1894. 19 According to Meijring’s excellent study, opium franchising should be seen as a begin ning of the suppression of opium use. ‘... from the introduction of the franchising system, the government’s policy was to extract the maximum profit from the franchising of opium with the smallest possible turnover [...]. Whereas before this, the product was viewed solely in commercial terms, and efforts were directed towards making the highest possible profits and curbing smuggling, it now became customary to proclaim, on moral grounds, that consumption be reduced.’ (Meijring 1974:76-77). It is true that the champions of the fran chising system availed themselves of this argument, and the colonial administrators may even have had the intention of reducing turnover. However, in practice, opium franchising was seen primarily as a source of revenue, and hardly the slightest obstacle was placed in the path of opium consumption; indeed, the turnover of state opium actually increased in the 19th century (Diehl 1983:7). This is further underscored by a ministerial memorandum stating that it was only after 1908 that government policy was geared towards suppressing opium consumption (Ministry of Colonial Territories 1916:85). 20 Meijring 1974:75.


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Harsh punishments—sometimes even the death sentence—were imposed to protect the VOC’s lucrative monopoly position against various forms of illicit trade. This strategy was far from effective, however. Opium smuggling, encouraged by the VOC’s high monopoly prices, was a thriving business. The resulting loss of income prompted the governors to develop a trade system that would facilitate effective action against opium smuggling and the evasion of import duties. With the founding of the Opium Society, in 1745, it was hoped that contraband operations would soon be a thing of the past. The Opium Society was a private trade association—its shareholders Dutch public servants—which was established to take over the monopoly on opium sales in the Dutch East Indies from the VOC. The idea was that the VOC would henceforth confine itself to opium imports, while the Society would purchase the merchandise for a fixed price—at a minimum sales level—and exercise its monopoly on the retail market.21 But the Society too soon experi enced the impossibility of suppressing illicit trade. The policing and military powers it had at its disposal were simply inadequate to the task. Having been billed as the perfect solution to the VOC’s problems, the Society turned out to be a fiasco. In 1808 there was a renewed effort to boost the state’s opium profits, with the introduction of a franchise system that would remain in force for almost the entire 19th century. Under this system, imports were regulated by the Dutch Trading Company. The Company had been founded on the initiative (and us ing the funds) of King William I, and it was its prerogative not only to pluck the fruits of the forced farming system, but also to exploit opium imports.22 Under the franchise system, the retail trade was regulated by dividing Java and Madura into franchise districts where the sale and consumption of opium were legal.23 The right to sell opium in these districts was auctioned off to the high est bidder for a set period (1-3 years), after which a middleman would market the merchandise in specially designated locations, in effect opium dens, which quickly became the usual place for consumption. The number of opium dens, which was determined as part of the franchise system, could change dramati cally from one year to the next. In 1861 there were over 1,800 legal outlets on 21

Later, from 1776 onwards, the VOC also claimed half of the profits (Meijring 1974:

76). 22 Between 1827 and 1835, the opium franchise too was granted to the Dutch Trading Company, which as successor to the VOC not only took care of supplies but also functioned as a kind of wholesaler’s and exploited the franchise system on its own account. 23 Aside from this there were also ‘prohibited zones’ such as the Preanger, where opium could neither be traded nor consumed. According to Vanvugt the point of this was to keep the Chinese—most franchise-holders were wealthy Chinese merchants—out of the coffee business (Vanvugt 1985:153).


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Java, but eight years later the figure was a mere 662.24 Also laid down in the franchise system were statutory opening hours and guidelines prescribing who could be served and who must be turned away. The franchise-holder—usually a wealthy Chinese merchant—was re quired to purchase his opium from the colonial authorities. This meant that the franchise system involved three distinct sources of income that went straight into the colonial coffers, and thus to the state of the Netherlands. For in addi tion to the profits made by the Dutch Trading Company (from which the Crown, as major shareholder, received dividends) the government first re ceived revenue from the import duties on opium, then from the sum paid for the franchise, and thirdly from the local authorities’ wholesaling of opium to franchise-holders.25 Under the franchise system too, however, competition from illicit trade was a fact of life. The main actors in the smuggling operations were generally the Chinese franchise-holders themselves, who were ideally placed to use the legal infrastructure to sell their smuggled merchandise alongside the “legiti mate opium” purchased from the colonial authorities with a minimum risk of exposure. A wide range of anti-smuggling measures were tried out in the course of the 19th century. Aside from police and military actions, these in cluded experimental internal changes to the franchise system.26 Obviously the forced farming system had no place for opium poppies, and following its abo lition, their cultivation was made a statutory offence.

24 25

Vanvugt 1985:204. There were also periods, however (1827-1835; 1842-1847) in which instead of a fee being paid for the franchise, the latter was granted to the person who undertook to purchase the largest quantity of smoking opium for a fixed (high) price. But it would be distorting the true situation to depict the opium franchise in the Dutch East Indies as an isolated econom ic phenomenon in the colony. It was because of the involvement of Chinese entrepreneurs in opium franchising that the retail trade in opium was incorporated in a far more compre hensive system of local trade. The notion that the franchising (and consumption) of opium was a rotten apple within a flourishing colonial system is incorrect. The opium trade was too closely entwined with other economic activities for that to make any sense. This is very clear from the study by Rush and the corrections to it made by Wil Gerritsen (no relative of the present author). See Rush 1977; Gerritsen 1982. 26 Two such experiments were the ‘Tiban-Siram’ and ‘Patoengan’ systems. Tiban stood for a certain minimum quantity of opium that the franchise-holder was obliged to buy for a fixed high price, and Siram represented the (sometimes unlimited) quantity that the franchise-holder could buy over and above this at a low price, from which he had to extract his profits. The Patoengan system involved a sort of private opium den that was indirectly stocked by a legal franchise-holder. This system was not recognized under the law but it was tolerated because the government feared that the opium smokers (many of whom were workers who purchased and consumed as a group) would otherwise turn to smuggled mer chandise instead.


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Notwithstanding all the modifications and refinements introduced to the franchise system, illicit trade was never suppressed altogether. Alongside the state-approved locations there were always illegal opium dens (or rather semilegal, as they were prohibited but tolerated). And smuggled opium was always in circulation in addition to the legal supply. The size of the illegal market depended on the price that the franchise-holders were asking for legal opium, and this in turn was to a great extent determined by the authorities’ monopoly price and the price of the franchise. Thus the relationship between the legal and illegal opium supply was that of two communicating vessels. The franchise system was financially successful. For Java alone, the net revenue from opium rose from less than 1 million guilders in 1814 to 16 mil lion guilders in the boom years around 1880. In the accounts for the Dutch East Indies, opium revenue between 1867 and 1892 (the year of the first experi ments with state control) initially accounted for 10% of total colonial income, and after 1880 they exceeded 14%.27 Even under the opium franchise system, the desirability of the opium trade was sometimes questioned, both at home and in the colony. Some perhaps even viewed the franchise system as a way of curbing consumption through the price mechanism, since it was clear that franchising kept prices high. This argument was used, at any rate, to justify each successive price rise. In prac tice, however, there was little evidence of any decrease in consumption under the franchise system. In Java alone, the quantity of legitimate opium sold un der the franchising system rose from fewer than 600 chests (each containing 63.5 kg) in 1814 to 1600 chests in the early 1870s. It was only after this, with the introduction of state control, that the annual volume of legal opium trade declined, falling below 1,000 chests around 1900. A table compiled by Frits Diehl shows that net opium income, in the years of the franchise system (1816-1915), accounted on average for 10% of total colonial revenue. Viewed in broader terms, Diehl’s calculations provide a good picture of colonial relations between the Netherlands and this region in the 19th century. State control was the second phase in the Dutch colonial opium trade. In this era—unlike that of the franchise system—curbing consumption was a key objective, although administrators remained mindful of profits. State control was presented as a new instrument to curb illicit trade in opium, as well as being a means of gradually reducing consumption of the drug. When it was finally in place, the competent authorities wrote: ‘Whereas at the outset, state control was geared solely to meeting the demand for opium, since 1908 it has 27

Calculations are based on the ‘Overzicht der Geldmiddelen van Nederlandsch-Indië van 1867 af’ (Ministry of Colonial Territories 1916).


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Opium and the credit balance:

State revenue from the Dutch East Indies, 1816-1915.

period

net opium revenue in Fl. mil.

total colonial revenue in Fl. mil.

Credit balance in Fl. mil.

Debit balance in Fl. mil.

1816-1822 1823-1833 1834-1847 1848-1865 1866-1875 1876-1885 1886-1895 1896-1905 1906-1915

8.1 30.3 88.0 145.1 103.8 157.6 180.7 153.1 211.9

129.4 284.3 887.9 1779.1 1290.5 1416.4 1298.5 1426.4 2251.6

9.2 118.0 503.9 199.6 -

51.0 73.9 5.6 100.6 115.2

1816-1915

1078.6

10764.1

830.7

346.3

Source: Diehl 1983.

been the Government’s policy to achieve the gradual suppression, and where possible the complete prohibition, of opium consumption.’28 Plans to institute state control had been formulated back in 1865, but it was not until 1904 that the new system applied throughout Java and Madura, and it was a further sixteen years before the remoter parts of the Dutch East Indies were brought into line. State control differed from the franchise system in two significant re spects. In the first place, the state of the Netherlands took control of preparing raw opium for smoking. Raw opium was purchased in British India (or some times in Turkey) and shipped to Java, where it was processed in the state opium factory in Batavia. Secondly, retail sales were brought under the direct super vision of Dutch officials. Users could be registered, and supervisory officials, unlike the former franchise-holders, received a fixed salary and hence had no stake (not on paper, at any rate) in keeping consumption rates high. The legitimate opium processed in the state factory was given a secret stamp of authenticity, so that supervisors could always distinguish it from con traband. Furthermore, by supplying the opium in sealed tubes, the authorities made it impossible to mix legal and legal merchandise. At the same time, the registration of users and the controlled filling of stocks made it possible to ration users. The processing of smoking opium was hence placed on an industrial basis (see fig. 12). Some 600 to 1,000 day labourers were at work, under the leader 28

Ministry of Colonial Territories 1916:85.


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fig. 12. The production of smoking opium in the state opium factory was a major industrial enterprise

ship of ten European overseers, processing the raw product into tjandoe, as the specific East Indies variety of smoking opium was known. By means of me chanical devices (including filling machines originally used in the paint indus try) and a thoroughgoing division of labour, opium manufacture was trans formed into a full-fledged industry. The franchise system continued to apply to the opium dens where users could consume the state opium. Although the drug was no longer sold there— it had to be purchased at state-owned opium sales points—users could con sume and enjoy it there at their leisure. The income earned by these franchiseholders came from sales of paraphernalia and from the residue left in pipes after smoking (known as the djiting), which they sold back to the state supervisors—in an early recycling system—for a great deal of money. It was used to give the smoking opium its specific, highly valued aroma. Under the state control system, the colonial authorities hence sold their smoking opium directly to consumers through a network of sales points. An extensive and complicated regulatory regime was in place to ensure that as few people as possible took up the habit of opium smoking, that the number of users would decline in the long term, and that the remaining users reduced their consumption. It was mainly the Chinese and indigenous populations that were affected by these provisions. Europeans were believed not to indulge in opium intoxication, and the facts appeared to bear this out. The state control system set out to monitor opium consumption closely. To this end, the territory of the East Indies was divided into four types of districts: open, closed, those with licensing, and mixed districts. Closed districts operat ed a total ban on the use of opium. Districts with licensing issued registered


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users with a license that authorized them to consume a certain set quantity. In mixed districts, consumption was limited to certain persons, groups, or sec tions of the community, and to those in the possession of a license. In open districts, there was no need for a license, but the names were registered of all persons who purchased opium. In addition, there was a minimum age of 18, which was raised to 21 in 1931. The number of opium dens was gradually reduced, from 927, when the state control system was introduced in 1904, to 49 by 1930. At the same time, the number of districts designated ‘closed’ was steadily increased, and legal opium consumption fell accordingly. The difference was especially clear after 1920: the quantity of opium consumed legally fell from about 100,000 kg in 1920 to 60,000 kg in 1928, and 27,000 by 1932.29 The success of the state control system, however, was wholly dependent on the extent to which opium was consumed illegally, outside the confines of the system. The quality of the merchandise sold by the state was a significant factor here, as opium users were known to be rather fastidious. For this reason, the quality of the smoking opium sold in the state factory was subjected to careful scrutiny. The State Opium Control Service, set up to control the opium trade on the state’s behalf, was a sprawling administrative body of inspectors, collectors, assistant collectors and depot managers, led by an official with the grand title of ‘Chief Inspector, Head of the State Opium Control Service.’ In addition, in 1926 a special investigation department was established to act against opium smuggling, which was suspected by some of being just as extensive as the state-controlled trade. It was hoped that illegal opium dealers would be de terred by sanctions imposed under criminal law. Equipped with motor launch es for coastal patrols, and backed up by threats of fines and prison sentences, the Dutch government moved to stamp out opium smuggling and the illegal consumption of the drug. The state control system entailed a drastic bureaucratization of govern ment control on the opium supply and on individual users. As in the case of any bureaucratization, the costs involved were considerable. Between 1890 and 1900, annual opium-related expenditure averaged 1.8 million guilders. With the introduction of the state control system, this soared to an average of 8.6 million guilders between 1905 and 1914.30 Despite all the government’s ef forts, illicit trade remained an uncontrollable factor that set natural limits to an effective anti-opium policy. 29 These calculations are based on the output table (in thails = 0.0386 kg) given in Meij ring 1974:82-83. 30 Ministry of Colonial Territories 1916:22-23.


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Although the state control system was extremely expensive—with costs rising to 30% of turnover—it is remarkable that under its regime (1904-1920) the government succeeded in achieving a rise in its net revenue from opium, with sales remaining about the same. While output fluctuated between 90,000 and 100,000 kg in the period 1914-1920, gross revenue rose from 35 to 53 million guilders. It is very probable that the high price of state opium diverted a sizable amount of trade into the illicit circuit.31 In other words, the fall in legal opium sales under the state control system can by no means be taken as evidence of a decrease in opium consumption in the Dutch East Indies.32 Sales and gross revenue from the legal opium trade in the Dutch East Indies, 1914-1932 year

Kg of smoking opium sold

1914 1919 1924 1929 1932

98,810 kg 91,714 kg 50,342 kg 58,806 kg 24,427 kg

gross revenue in millions of guilders 35 mil. 42 mil. 35 mil. 41 mil. 17 mil.

Source: Meijring 1974:80.

The decline in the state opium factory’s sales after 1920 was at length accom panied by a dramatic fall in the government’s income from opium. This is clear from the table above, which derives from a study by K.H. Meijring. It should be noted that these millions of guilders in revenue were to some extent offset by the relatively high costs of the state opium control system. The state control system gave the state a much firmer grip on the produc tion and distribution of smoking opium, which in turn tightened the state’s control over individual users. The existence of licenses for personal consump tion gave the governors of the Dutch East Indies a clear overview of the opiumsmoking population. At the same time, licensing created a barrier for new gen erations of users who wanted to join the system. In the Dutch East Indies, out 31 The literature is divided on this point. According to Diehl, consumption did indeed decline, and the power of the smugglers’ bands was broken (Diehl 1983). Meijring’s study (Meijring 1974) is more sceptical. Then as now, quantitative estimates of the illegal supply of intoxicants were completely unreliable. 32 After 1920 the turnover of state opium gradually declined, with a certain amount of fluctuation: in 1920 turnover was 100,000 kg, in 1925 52,000 kg, and in 1932 ( the last year for which Meijring gives statistics) a mere 25,000 kg were sold (Meijring 1974:80).


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1. Position in which opium is smoked

3. The pipe is scraped clean

2. The opium smoker has had his fill

4. “Master and pupil”

fig. 13

of a total population of 60 million there were 177,122 licensed opium users in 1927: 92,873 indigenous inhabitants, 83,242 Chinese and 7 Europeans.33 The registration of opium users made it possible to launch the state-subsidized medical treatment of opium addicts, which was started in earnest in 1920.34 Soon special clinics and medical practitioners were endeavouring to cure people ‘infected’ with a craving for opium. The net result was to bring what had originated as recreational opium consumption, in the Dutch East In dies, within the ambit of a medical regulatory regime. Opium addicts admitted to hospital for withdrawal treatment were permit ted to indulge in a certain amount of opium-induced (state-supplied) intoxica tion, the drug being seen in this context not as recreational but as medicine, as part of the treatment. Some patients were given morphine as a substitute. The 33 34

Meijring 1974:83. In 1933 de Mol van Otterloo wrote a doctoral dissertation entitled De Opiumschuiver in het Hospitaal (The opium-smoker in hospital), which describes the medicalization of opium smoking after 1920 (de Mol van Otterloo 1933).


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grubby opium den of the 19th century was thus exchanged, on medical author ity, for the spotless white of hospital sheets. By then, however, opium had dwindled to relative insignificance as a source of colonial revenue. Whereas in 1930 opium gains still accounted for 6.13% of total colonial profits, by 1938 they represented a mere 1.44%.35 The state monopoly on the opium trade in the Dutch East Indies and the state income accruing from it may also be seen as a form of indirect taxation, regardless of the regulatory regime that applied at the time, whether franchis ing or state control.36 Opium was used in the Dutch East Indies by Chinese and indigenous inhabitants, including a large number of impoverished coolies: day labourers in factories and plantations without a steady job or fixed income. Opium consumption and gambling—which was also subject to a state monopoly—were popular forms of recreation among migrant Chinese plantation la bourers. Plantation owners usually provided their own facilities for such indul gences. Gambling debts and opium acquired on credit were effective means of keeping the coolies yoked to the plantation. Hence owners encouraged their employees’ opium use, by ‘subsidizing’ it for instance, paying up to 20% of the amount spent on the drug. In his study Koelies, Planters en Koloniale Politiek, Jan Breman adds: ‘“Recreational drug” was a misleading name for a medicine that alleviated the coolie’s suffering and ensured that he remained productive until his energy was completely spent in the labour process. Opium kept the coolie on his feet until the end while impoverishing him.’37 Levying an indirect tax on consumer goods is one of the very few ways— along with forced labour and military service—of taxing subjects who have neither a fixed income nor any capital. Using opium consumption as a source of state revenue was an ideal way to get the Chinese and indigenous inhabit ants to contribute to the colonial expenditure without the colonials themselves being affected—for white opium users were few and far between. It is striking that a fairly small group of opium users—fewer than 200,000 out of a total of 60 million inhabitants were issued with licenses in 1927—financed a relatively large share (10%) of colonial expenditure. As Breman comments, on the peri od around the turn of the century: ‘The costs of internal administration, the judicial apparatus and military occupation could be paid from the proceeds of the opium franchise, and were hence paid by the coolies themselves.’38 The tax on opium had another major advantage. Because of the drug’s addictive properties, a certain minimum level of consumption could always be 35 36 37 38

Cribb 1988.

In the next chapter I shall discuss the ‘sociology of taxation’ at length.

Breman 1987:97.

Breman 1987:97.


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depended upon, making opium a relatively reliable source of revenue for the state. This practice was by no means unique to the Dutch colonial administra tion, although it is fair to say that the notion of the colony as first and foremost a region to be exploited continued to be taken for granted into the late 19th century.39 It was not until the 1920s that the turnover of state-controlled opium—and the related profits—in the Dutch East Indies started to fall. The Netherlands was thus slow in implementing international agreements made at a series of conferences on opium. At length, however, the Netherlands reluctantly fell into line with the international relations that crystallized in the 20th century, in which colonial trade, as colonialism in general, was an anachronism. The Second World War accelerated the decolonization of the Dutch East Indies. The disappearance of Dutch rule from the archipelago did not, howev er, mean that opium no longer played a role in the region’s finances. Although the precise facts have not been preserved, it appears that the state control of opium continued for some time under the Japanese occupation. And in the period following the Japanese capitulation the state opium stocks are said to have played a significant role in the financing of the Indonesian struggle for independence. Robert Cribb has shown, in a remarkable study, that Indonesian nationalists succeeded, after capitulation, in gaining possession of part of the stock of state-controlled opium. They used the proceeds to fund their struggle against the colonial authorities in what was then still the Dutch East Indies. Cribb appropriately ends his study on the following note: ‘It is ironic that opi um, so closely associated with the rise of European power in Asia, should also have contributed to its defeat.’40 Britain and the Netherlands: Voices of protest 41 With opium profits figuring so prominently in the colony’s accounts, it is not hard to understand why Britain and the Netherlands cherished their opium trade so fondly, and why they were initially little inclined to restrict the drug’s consumption. This attitude persisted even in the face of a rising tide of protest. From both China and the United States—as we shall see later—repugnance

39 The comments made by the Dutch Minister of Colonial Territories speak volumes: ‘subject to the welfare of the indigenous population,’ the ‘conquered territory’ of the Dutch East Indies was obliged to ‘continue to supply the material advantages that were the object of the conquest’ (Minister Pahud (1854) quoted in Boogman 1988:132). 40 Cribb 1988:721. 41 The following paragraphs are based on Johnson 1974; Johnson 1975; Berridge and Edwards 1987; and Vanvugt 1985.


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was being articulated, but in Britain and the Netherlands too, public opinion was starting to turn against the colonial opium trade. The aversion to Britain’s opium politics, and in particular the trade targeting China, did not become widespread until the last quarter of the 19th century. Although the Edinburgh Committee for the Suppression of the Indo-Chinese Opium Traffic was founded as early 1859, it made little public impact. It was the London-based Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade (SSOT, 1874-1915) that set the tone for the protest movement. Other societies with similar aims, such as the Christian Union for the Severance of the Connection of the British Empire with the Opium Trade and the Women’s Anti-Opium Urgency Committee, were in the main splinter groups from the SSOT, and exerted considerably less influence. The SSOT’s membership partly overlapped with that of the abolitionist and temperance movements. But the opium organizations—unlike the temper ance movement—numbered few if any workers among its ranks. This was be cause the opium issue was far removed from everyday life in Britain. The antiopium crusaders were mainly Protestants and Liberals from the upper middle classes: those who took up the pen against the opium trade—for this was large ly a written protest—were preachers, members of parliament, scholars and excolonial administrators. The protest against the opium trade in Britain was a response to the victo ries achieved in the Opium Wars and the humiliating terms on which China had been forced to make peace,42 which had undermined Chinese sovereignty in a way incompatible with the liberal views held by most of the British pro testers. Aside from this, the Society’s members were deeply offended by the notion that the country was making a profit from opium consumption in one of its own colonies—British India.43 By this point, in Britain itself the consumption of opiates had been placed under strict medical supervision (see Chapter VI). The stark contrast between the opium policy in the Far East and the medical regulation at home was a growing source of indignation, and the political pressure to review the peace treaty with China steadily gained ground. Finally, in 1885, the treaty was opened up for negotiation, and the SSOT claimed a moral victory. In the period that followed, the SSOT seemed well-placed to gain ground, with three members in the Liberal Government that came to power under 42 The peace treaty signed at the end of the Second Opium War stipulated, for instance, that Chinese rulers should henceforth allow the opium trade to proceed unhindered and that opium imports should be liable to no more than the usual (low) import duties. 43 Of every thirteen chests of opium (at 140 lbs = 63.5 kg) ten to twelve were intended for export to China. One out of thirteen was sold in India itself (Johnson 1974:374).


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Gladstone in 1892, although Lord Kimberley, Secretary of State for India, was a declared opponent of the Society.44 The anti-opiumists managed to persuade a majority of the parliament of the need to set up a Royal Commission to inves tigate the opium question, and in 1893 the Indian Opium Commission was appointed, its mandate to make recommendations on whether opium produc tion should be scaled down, and to investigate the alternatives to a total ban on opium and the drug’s effects on the moral and physical constitution of its us ers. It included SSOT members, but even so its conclusions (published in 1895) were contrary to the Society’s aims: both the opium policy in India and the trade with China could continue as before. Furthermore, the Commission accused the anti-opium campaigners of imposing a Western, Christian morali ty on Indian culture. However, the evidence suggests that financial considera tions weighed most heavily with the members. The report contains the follow ing question put by the Commission to Sir John Strachey: ‘When we view the opium question from the point of the financial benefits, is it the case that you have indeed pointed to the practical objections cleaving to a prohibition of opium? And have you pointed out that we have a certain income from opium, and that you cannot imagine what alternative sources of income could serve as compensation, were the income from opium to come to an end?’ Sir John’s answer was a brief but clear ‘yes.’45 After this inquiry all was quiet on the front of the battle against Britain’s colonial opium trade for a full ten years. This was to a great extent because the Conservatives were returned to office in 1895, and they stayed on until 1905. The opponents of the colonial opium trade were largely Liberals, and they were clearly dependent on a Liberal political climate to make their views heard. An undercurrent of dissatisfaction about opium remained, however, and after 1905, with the Liberals back in office and international pressure mount ing, the dismantling of the opium trade in India and shipments to China was tackled in earnest. In the Netherlands too, the desirability of the opium trade had been ques tioned in the 19th century, and the various changes made to the franchise sys tem were in part prompted, in the eyes of some, by a desire to defuse objec tions. In practice, however, maximizing profits proved more important than suppressing opium consumption. At length a Dutch organization roughly com parable to the SSOT was set up: the Anti-Opium Alliance (1890-1899) was an extra-parliamentary society whose members shared a common concern about the colonial opium trade in the Dutch East Indies. A far smaller organization 44 45

Johnson 1974:375. Indian Opium Commission debate 1894, Minutes of Evidence. In Parliamentary Pa pers LX:583.


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than the SSOT, the Alliance was also less radical and oppositional than its British counterpart, with members of parliament, senior civil servants, busi nessmen and missionaries its most prominent members.46 Like the SSOT, the Alliance was largely an upper middle-class society, its membership dominated by ex-colonials. Regarding the complete abolition of the opium trade as a long-term objective, the Alliance advocated intermediate short-term measures: the abolition of opium franchising and a clampdown on smuggling, using a system of state control. This meant that whatever the differ ence in motives—the government’s main reason for switching to state control was to reverse the decline in opium revenue from franchising since 1889—the Alliance did not oppose government policy as such.47 In the 1930s, when the Alliance had long been disbanded, private anti-opium societies sprang up in the Dutch East Indies.48 By then, however, curbing opium consumption was already near the top of the political agenda. The Anti-Opium Alliance never succeeded in making colonial opium pol icy into a serious political issue in the Netherlands. The status of the public debate was quite different in the Netherlands than in Britain. The Netherlands did not wage any opium wars, and there was no question of another state’s sovereignty being threatened, let alone violated. In the Netherlands the opium trade was regarded—albeit that the business was transacted thousands of miles away—as an internal issue. When the Government devised a new regulatory regime—the state control of trade in opium—that, for the time being, was the end of the matter. The global regulation of opiates: the role played by the United States In the late 20th century there is a global system in place regulating all trade in opiates. It is worth investigating why the regulatory regimes did not remain national in scope, such as, for instance, the formal aspects of alcohol control. What are the roots of the current global regulatory regime for opiates? The national protest movements in Britain and the Netherlands that have been described above, whatever part they may have played in shaping public 46 47

Vanvugt 1985:250. On Java, this revenue declined from an annual average of 13 million guilders in the period 1887-1889 to 10.2 million in the years 1890-1893 (Diehl 1983:16). Plans to set up a system of control modelled on lines similar to the existing system in French Indo-China had long existed on paper, but with opium profits steadily falling, the government finally pressed ahead with them. 48 These included the Batavian Anti-Opium Society, the Dutch East Indies Grand Lodge of the International Order of the Knights Templar and the Dutch East Indies Opium Society (Meijring 1974:85).


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opinion, were certainly not decisive in bringing about the decline and eventual abolition of the colonial opium trade. The crucial factor was the international political climate, which, around the turn of the century, turned resolutely against this particular brand of commercialism. The international furore about the opium trade that arose at this time was part and parcel of a general process of decolonization in the region that would unfold completely later in the 20th century, a process that would be directed by the United States, that well knew what it meant to be a colony. As an incipient world power, the US took the lead in suppressing the international trade in opium, which conflicted with the interests of colonial powers past their prime such as Britain and the Netherlands. Perhaps this was precisely why the United States took such a fanatical stance against the international opium trade. At any rate, Charles Stelle comes to the conclusion, in his study Americans and the China Opium Trade in the Nineteenth Century, that although the US presented its aversion to the opium trade as a moral conviction, it was in fact largely motivated by political and economic considerations. For well into the 19th century, US shipping companies, like the European private trading companies, had been earning good money on selling opium to China. Until 1830 they carried Turkish and Persian shipments, successfully competing with British India’s trade to China. And at a later stage, American merchant vessels were closely involved in supplying China with opium from British India. The US is estimated to have had an annual turnover of $2 million, in the period 1840 1860, in opium sales to China. In short, as Charles Stelle has said, ‘opium rivaled in importance any other single article—always excepting specie or bills of exchange—which Americans carried to, or sold in, China.’49 But with Britain’s victory in the Second Opium War, the US trading com panies lost most of their share in the lucrative opium trade—the British crown colony Hong Kong had become the main transshipment centre for opium, which was to the detriment of non-British traders—and American attitudes to the trade hardened. Without putting its own commercial interests in jeopardy, the United States could afford to side wholeheartedly with the Chinese author ities in the latter’s Sisyphean struggle against the British opium trade. Perhaps the Americans were half hoping to ingratiate themselves with a new generation of Chinese nationalists.50 49 50

Stelle 1981 (1938):142. And possibly to smoothen the sharpest edges of America’s own immigration conflict with China. This immigration conflict between China and the United States—in which the US authorities pursued a rigorous anti-Chinese policy—created a marked anti-American climate in China. So the United States’ help in suppressing the colonial opium trade was perhaps viewed as a mode of compensation.


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Chinese opium users in America

[80]

Thousands of Chinese migrants set sail for the US west coast in the course of the 19th century as contract labourers. While there was a labour shortage, their presence was not a problem. In the last quarter of the century, however, when the economy slumped from one serious crisis to the next, an anti-Chinese mood crystallized, particularly among white Americans of European origin. The Chinese practice of smoking opium gradually became the focus of this generalized anti-Chinese sentiment. Until the 1870s the recreational use of opium by Chinese immigrants was tolerated in the United States. Established groups of European origin thought it a peculiar custom, but as the Chinese were seen more as outsiders than were other immigrants—unlike most groups, for instance, they were denied the vote—their strange habits did not arouse any hostility. Smoking opium was seen as a quaint Chinese pastime that took place largely in the confines of each city’s Chinatown. No-one was likely to make a fuss about it while Chinese labour was so essential on the railroads and in the mines. Some American em ployers even attempted to bind their Chinese workers to them by providing a monthly portion of opium as an added benefit, just as the plantation owners in the Dutch East Indies had done with their ‘opium subsidy.’51 In the last quarter of the 19th century, however, this attitude changed. The railroads were more or less completed, the mines were near-depleted, and in 1876 the insatiable demand for labour in these sectors came to an abrupt end. As a result, many Chinese workers offered their services to developing indus tries, bringing them into competition with white workers who had been in the country for longer. The resulting resentment was further exacerbated by the economic recession of the late 1870s, which had created a slump in the labour market and slashed wages. White workers identified the cheap Chinese labour ers as a root cause of their economic malaise. In part, this was a fair analysis. The strike-ridden 1870s, with violent conflicts the order of the day, often wit nessed docile Chinese workers acting the part of scabs. In San Francisco and Denver this conduct provoked anti-Chinese riots, and even lynchings were not unknown.52 As smoking opium was such a typically Chinese habit, it could be used to fuel racially divided conflicts over the scarce jobs. The fairly sudden develop ment of an aversion to opium consumption in the United States—for as such it

51 52

Barth 1964. Quoted in Helmer and Vietorisz 1974. Barth 1975.


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is described by John Helmer and Thomas Vietorisz53—was part of a much wider, hostile attitude to Chinese labourers in the competition on the employ ment market.54 White workers, who were of European origin and therefore virtually by definition non-opium-users (alcohol being the intoxicant favoured by white groups) could present themselves as superior in this respect, thus giving rise to an ethnic segregation with opium serving as the dividing-line, even before its use was prohibited. In this process of marginalizing and stigmatizing Chinese immigrant groups, the view gained currency among white Americans that many of the evils around them, such as prostitution, gambling and assorted other crimes, had become deeply entrenched in society under Chinese leadership. The con sumption of, and trade in, opium were seen as the elements which bound all this social evil together. It was still legal to smoke opium, however, and regula tions were therefore introduced at local level to remedy this. In 1875 the smok ing of opium was made a criminal offence in San Francisco, and Virginia City followed one year later; both had large Chinese communities. This stigmatization of Chinese immigrants was undeniably successful, in the nature of a self-fulfilling prophecy.55 Gradually the practice of smoking opium did in fact come to coincide with other activities that could not easily bear the light of day. There was a modest spread of opium consumption, for instance, to marginal groups among the American population, a development that was given a disproportionate amount of press coverage. According to Dav id Courtwright, ‘the opium den had become the matrix of a deviant subculture, a tightly knit group of outsiders whose primary relations were restricted to themselves.’56 The diagnosis arrived at by mainstream Americans was clear enough: American society was under threat from the Chinese immigrants with their dissolute use of opium. The obvious remedy was to send the persons con cerned back to China, but treaties between the US and China ruled out that option. Something that could be done, however, was to halt immigration from China, and to this end the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882. As a result, the number of Chinese in the United States fell from a little over 100,000 in 1890 to about 90,000 ten years later, and to about 60,000 in 1920. Thus the anti-opium campaign in the United States played an indirect part in 53 54

Helmer and Vietorisz 1974. Another argument advanced, besides the links between Chinese and the opium trade, was that in all respects—clothing, language and customs—Chinese immigrants integrated relatively poorly into Chinese society. 55 Thomas and Thomas 1928. This rule has since been dubbed ‘Thomas’s law’. 56 Courtwright 1982:74.


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protecting the position of longer-established population groups of European origin on the job market.57 It was not until 1909 that the federal government introduced legislation to outlaw the smoking of, and trade in, opium. Up to this point, marketing the product among Chinese migrant workers had been a flourishing business. Giv en the sizeable import duty on opium for smoking, this Chinese pastime had also made a contribution to the federal treasury, so that the federal authorities had little reason to prohibit the use of the drug.58 In 1909, however, for a variety of reasons, the die was cast. As Courtwright explains, “Since smoking opium was identified with Chinese, gamblers, and prostitutes; since American firms had little financial interest in its importation; and since physicians professed to see no therapeutic value in the drug; little opposition was anticipated” to the federal prohibition of smoking opium.59 Thus the Smoking Opium Exclusion Act brought to an end the practice of legal recreational opium smoking in the United States in 1909, the year in which the first international opium commission met in Shanghai. The facts suggest that this was probably no mere coincidence. US involvement in the colonial opium trade Towards the end of the 19th century, the United States had to do with opium consumption in other ways, ways unrelated to Chinese migrant workers on US territory. The ‘liberation’ of the Philippines from Spain (1898) was one of the first territorial expansions with which the United States laid their claim to the status of a new world power. The Philippines had a large Chinese population, who—in accordance with their usual preference—smoked opium on a large scale. But many Filipinos, too, were devoted to the intoxicant. Partly inspired by the anti-opium climate in the United States itself, the Americans viewed

57 On a smaller scale, and somewhat later, this pattern was repeated in the Netherlands: the events that led to the ‘Chinese controversy’ of the 1920s were the strikes and unemploy ment among Rotterdam sailors—and Chinese scabs. But here too, the discussion soon shifted to Chinese opium smoking, Chinese involvement in prostitution, trafficking in women and the arms trade (Wubben 1986). Besides the commotion about Chinese opium smoking in the late 19th century, Helmer and Vietorisz have identified several later periods in which the use of intoxicants caused a wave of public indignation. In each case, the public outcry about an intoxicant appeared in combination with two other factors: the involve ment of outsiders and tension on the employment market (Helmer and Vietorisz 1974). For a more recent study of the connection between unlawful drug use and the US labour mar ket, see Kandel and Yamaguchi 1987. 58 Courtwright 1982:24, 28. 59 Courtwright 1982:82.


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opium consumption in the Philippines as a social evil: in short, something had to be done about it. Bishop Charles Henry Brent was one of the leading figures behind the anti-opium campaign waged by the US authorities in the Philip pines. In 1908, one year before the Smoking Opium Exclusion Act entered into force in the United States, the use of opium was prohibited in the Philippines, unless prescribed by a medical practitioner. Bishop Brent shared his leading role as anti-opium activist with Hamilton Wright, an American medical practitioner with political ambitions. In the first half of the 20th century, these two men would develop into moral entrepre neurs (a term used by Howard Becker60) of the purest kind: both were con vinced that opium was a supreme social evil, and to subject the intoxicant to a global regulatory regime was their goal in life. The efforts of Brent and Wright were not in vain. The two men played a role in creating a regime for opiates of which many elements are still in place today. But they were only able to play this leading part, and successfully pur sue their ideal of international regulation, because of two key factors: firstly, because of the anti-opium climate that had developed in the United States in connection with Chinese migrant workers, as described above, and secondly, because the United States was fast gaining ascendancy over the waning Euro pean powers, whose reputations were tarnished by identification with the per nicious colonial opium trade. The United States had conquered the Philippine Islands, one of their aims being to create a bridgehead for trade with China. Business magnates, bankers and leading politicians in the United States—as in Europe—had high hopes of China as a market for their merchandise.61 But the trade between the United States and China was slow to gather steam in the early 20th century. Further more, the cooperation between the United States and China in matters related to opium policy was ambivalent, as P.A. Varg has said: ‘support for China in its efforts to free itself of the opium trade [was] accompanied by paternalism and a sense of superiority.’62 What united China and the United States was their common adversary—the European colonial powers, and Britain in particular. By emphasizing its aversion to the colonial opium trade, the United States was able to distinguish itself from its European rivals. Thus when a new generation of self-assured nationalist Chinese leaders raised the issue of the English colonial opium trade once again, almost fifty years after the opium wars which the Chinese had lost from Britain, and found

60 61 62

Becker 1963.

The United States’ ‘open door policy’ is discussed in Stein 1985:33-37.

Varg 1968:171. Quoted in Stein 1985:42.


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some support among the British public,63 the United States was the only world power which had the capability to force countries such as Britain (and the Netherlands) to the negotiating table, to make more far-reaching agreements. And in this issue, the United States made full use of this power. The first Inter national Opium Commission met at Shanghai (in 1909) with Bishop Brent in the chair and Wright as the US representative.64 And although Britain and the Netherlands were jointly able to whittle down what the US and China had originally intended to be an Conference on Opium into an Opium Commission—a Commission could not make decisions, it could only issue recommendations—the Shanghai Commission nevertheless signalled the beginning of the end of the colonial opium trade. About three years after the Shanghai Commission, the English and Dutch having continued to stall,65 the Shanghai Commission was finally followed by the first International Opium Conference in The Hague.66 Once again the American duo Brent and Wright had the lead. A second and third Conference followed (1913, 1914) also in The Hague, and the three events produced some tangible results. The countries represented all concurred with the idea of draft ing international agreements on exports and imports of opiates and cocaine. But compliance with these regulations was emphatically to remain the respon sibility of individual countries. The Netherlands’ colonial opium trade was de facto an internal affair, and the Netherlands was therefore secure from any external interference in its colonial opium policy. But the English opium trade with China was a different matter. All things considered, these conferences and their aftermath were the first cautious steps towards a global regulatory re gime: international agreements had been made, and the various national gov ernments involved had arrived at a common standpoint. In the years that followed, the autonomy of national states in pursuing an individual opium policy was steadily reduced. This was especially marked when the League of Nations, as the precursor of the United Nations, assumed responsibility for the international supervision of the opium trade. The Opium Commission was set up in 1921, as the supervisory apparatus of the League of Nations. In 1925 the Opium Commission was institutionalized in a permanent Central Committee, which in 1931 became a supervisory body. In 1946, this 63

Even before the Opium Commission, China and Britain had signed a treaty to phase out opium imports gradually. 64 For a detailed overview of all international treaties and types of legislation, including the first International Opium Commission, see Chatterjee 1981. 65 Germany too, indirectly an interested party because of its sizeable pharmaceutical in dustry, was slow to cooperate. 66 It may be noted that the international trade in cocaine was also on the agenda. East Indies’ hemp was removed from the agenda.


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body’s supervisory duties were transferred to the United Nations, since which time the UN has borne primary responsibility for the global regulatory regime for a select category of intoxicants. The individual national states harmonize their national legislation accordingly. National autonomy is confined to marginal issues and details, and the UN now has several subsidiary bodies that ensure compliance with this international regime.67 Coda In the evolution of this international regulatory regime, individual national states have arrived at a large measure of uniformity and mutual harmonization on the regulation of certain types of intoxicants. Opiates are the most impor tant of these, followed by cocaine, cannabis products and a number of synthet ic intoxicants. The creation of a global regulatory regime, in the first half of the 20th century, for a certain type of merchandise is a far less natural development than it now appears. In effect, today’s complex global regulatory regime is the unin tentional result of an initiative taken almost a hundred years ago to suppress the colonial opium trade with China. The Opium Conferences were unique historical occurrences. The only comparable precedent is the international reg ulation of trafficking in human beings.68 Nowadays, various types of weapons are also subject to global regulation. A global regime of this kind has the unlooked-for consequence that it curtails the autonomy of individual countries to design regimes of their own, and increases the interdependence of national states. As a result, the differences between the regulatory regimes for opiates from one country to the next are far smaller than in the case of, say, alcohol. Viewed in this light, the international treaties on opium are among the first building blocks of an integrated world community of national states. 67

The most important of these organizations are the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, the International Narcotics Control Board, the Economic and Social Council and the World Health Organization (Chatterjee 1981:228). 68 In 1890 the Brussels anti-slavery conference, at which 17 states were represented, decided to adopt measures for the abolition of slavery. Later, the fight against the slave trade, like that against the illegal opium trade, was made the responsibility of a committee of the League of Nations.


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fig. 14. The levying of excise in practice. Detail of painting by Herman Heijenbrock


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CHAPTER FIVE

Excise taxes on alcohol:

three countries

Alcohol and tobacco, like opium, have been profitable commodities for West ern states: governments evidently gravitate towards intoxicants as sources of national revenue. It is often argued in justification that artificially high prices will reduce consumption. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), a firm opponent of any ban on the use of intoxicants, was dismissive of this line of reasoning. ‘To tax stimulants for the sole purpose of making them more difficult to be ob tained, is a measure differing only in degree from their entire prohibition; and would be justifiable only if that were justifiable.’ Mill nevertheless favoured the taxation of alcohol and other stimulants. Not because of any change it could induce in people’s behaviour, but for fiscal reasons. For it is the state’s task, in imposing taxes, to select those articles which the consumer can most easily do without: ‘Taxation, therefore, of stimulants, up to the point which produces the largest amount of revenue [...] is not only admissible, but to be approved of.’1 Taxing alcohol has a long tradition in Europe, stretching back to the Ro man Empire’s duties on wine. Ever since then it has been the rule rather than the exception for local authorities such as city councils to tax beer, wine and spirits. After the Middle Ages, when the process of state formation gradually stripped towns and regions of their autonomy in favour of a few centres of state power, this was expressed partly in the development of a uniform national tax on alcohol. The role that alcohol taxation came to play in the 19th century can be truly appreciated only when this consumer tax is placed in its rightful context as one of the many instruments with which ruling elites obtained (and still obtain) state revenue from their subjects. Between the various forms of taxation that have been instituted in Western Europe since the Middle Ages, a hierarchy is discernible that is apparently linked to the degree of state formation. Import duties are the most rudimentary type of taxation. Border controls—particularly at ports—are all that is needed to impose import duties. Consumer taxes require a more elaborate machinery. They generate revenue only when rulers have a tax service capable of monitoring economic activity throughout their 1

Mill 1989 (1859):101.


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territory. One step beyond import duties and consumer taxes are general in come tax and value added tax, instruments that presuppose an advanced stage of state control over all the country’s citizens and their economic activities. In practice, these general instruments of taxation work only when citizens identi fy to a certain extent with their government. As I shall show with copious illustrations in this chapter, the centres of national power, in Britain, the United States and the Netherlands have leaned heavily on alcohol excise tax, especially in the 19th century. This tax was high in all three countries, although there were certain differences: Britain intro duced it earlier than the Netherlands, for instance, and in the United States it did not become a substantial source of income until after the civil war (1865). It is not hard to see a correspondence here between the process of state forma tion and the ability to levy effective taxes: state formation was further ad vanced in Britain than in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 19th century, while in the federative United States the process occurred later still, and took a different form. In the 19th century excise tax on alcohol served in all three countries pri marily as a source of state revenue. It was only in the course of the 20th century that it gradually became a tool in the government’s hands (its usefulness as such, however, often overestimated2) to curb people’s drinking habits. This chapter focuses on the surprisingly great significance of alcohol excise taxes to the national revenue of Britain, the United States and the Netherlands in the 19th century. First, it will be useful to dwell briefly on the sociology of taxa tion. The sociology of taxation3 After the Middle Ages, sovereign national states gradually emerged in Western Europe as the dominant organizational unit of human society. The decisive factor in determining the success of this process of state formation was the degree to which rulers were able to secure a monopoly on the use of force and on taxation, a catalyzing role that Norbert Elias, among others, has described at length.4 2

On the limited effect of price increases on the consumption of alcohol, see Godfrey 1988. 3 These paragraphs are largely based on Ardent 1975; Braun 1975; Levi 1988; Webber and Wildavsky 1986. 4 Elias 1982. Charles Tilly prefers to speak of a trio. He writes, in this context: ‘Elias’s duo, however, actually forms two voices of a trio. The missing member, credit, links the military monopoly to the monopoly of taxation.’ (Tilly 1990:85.) The process of state for mation, in Europe, led to a system of states caught up in mutual competition. The national


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EXCISE TAXES ON ALCOHOL: THREE COUNTRIES

As the taxation system is a key element in the development and continued existence of a national state, the different facets of this system shed light on the state’s organization. Aside from collection procedures and the burden of taxa tion, this includes looking at the way in which the money is spent. In their historical study of Western systems of taxation, Caroline Webber and Aaron Wildavsky, focus on two variables—the burden of taxation and government spending on collective provisions—to distinguish four basic systems of gov ernment: 1. Despotism: heavy taxation combined with low government spending on collective provisions; 2. State capitalism: moderate taxation combined with moderate government spending on collective provisions; 3. ‘American individualism’: a light burden of taxation combined with low government spending on collective provisions; 4. Social democracy: heavy taxation combined with high government spend ing on collective provisions.5 This scheme highlights the significance of the taxation system as an index of the balance of power between rulers and those they rule. Michael Mann, fol lowing in the footsteps of Joseph Schumpeter, hence regards the taxation sys tem as the measure of a state’s strength. In his view, a state’s expenditure pro vides an indication of the functions it fulfils, while its income shows the degree to which the various groups within a society are dependent on it.6 In Western Europe, a state’s revenue, prior to the 19th century, largely served the comfort and military ambitions of small ruling elites. Most of the money was used to fund the repressive instruments of state formation: the po lice and armed forces. With these bodies, rulers controlled their subjects and defended—and where possible, expanded—their territory: a system that corre sponds to Webber and Wildavsky’s category of ‘despotism.’ In the 19th century, however, state revenue came increasingly to be used as well to fund collective provisions such as improvements in infrastructure, poor relief, state schools and public health care—‘care arrangements,’ as Abram de Swaan calls them. This Verstaatlichung of care arrangements had a major in state has proved to be a successful organizational structure: since the 18th century, virtually all other sovereign forms of social organization, such as tribal societies and city-states, have slowly but surely been absorbed into some kind of state structure. Almost everyone is now endowed with a nationality from the moment of birth, and virtually all the territory on our planet is divided up among the 180-odd sovereign national states that are recognized by the United Nations (1993). 5 Webber and Wildavsky 1986. 6 Mann 1986; Schumpeter 1954.


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fluence on the degree to which members of the public identified with their state.7 The development of a national identity that ensues, together with the change it brings about in people’s feelings, is sometimes referred to—in order to distinguish it from the process of state formation—as nation formation.8 In the history of Britain, the Netherlands and the United States, these proc esses are all visible. Yet major differences exist between the latter and the two European countries. State formation—in the sense of a national state —started later in the United States, and was a more complex development. This was largely ascribable to factors such as the youthfulness of this immigration coun try, its immense size, the extreme heterogeneity of its population and the rela tively early democratic constitution combined with an elected head of state. The American population was united not by a shared past, which was a cohe sive factor among the European nation states,9 but by a common vision of the future—the American dream. Given the country’s federal structure, its central administration in Washington had relatively few powers to tax the American people directly and to translate such revenue into federal collective provisions. It was in part because of these differences that Britain and the Netherlands developed into social democracies in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, with high taxation and extensive collective provisions, while the United States evolved a system of relatively low taxation and limited collective provisions— ‘American individualism.’ In their state formation and Verstaatlichung, modern Western societies have used four main types of government revenue: the spoils of war, indirect taxation, the income of state-owned monopoly industries and direct taxes. As a rule they have derived their funds from a combination of sources, with the distinctions between them easily becoming blurred.10 This chapter on alcohol excise duties will focus on state revenue as gener ated by the state’s citizens taxes through the imposition of taxes. Other sources 7 The distinction between state formation and Verstaatlichung [a term coined by Max Weber; in Dutch verstatelijking—Trans] is that state formation relates primarily to the con solidation of the organs of state control, such as the armed forces, police and judiciary. I am following De Swaan here in using the latter term when goods are supplied, either under state coercion or using the state’s resources, or both. In the actual developments of the 19th century this meant increased state intervention in social provisions such as public health, state education and social insurance (De Swaan 1989). 8 For the distinction between, and the complementary nature of, state and nation forma tion: Knippenberg and De Pater 1988:14 See also Hobsbawm 1987:142 ff. 9 Hobsbawm 1989. 10 Thus colonial revenue—eg. the income generated by the Dutch system of forced farming—may be regarded as a combination of the spoils of war and revenue from state-owned companies with a monopoly position. Some authors see government loans as another po tential source of national revenue, while others see such loans as nothing more than an advance on income to be generated in the future (Tilly 1990).


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of revenue—the spoils of war, colonial income, forced labour, military service and state monopolized trade as in postal services and lotteries—will hence remain out of consideration here. In the three countries under consideration, these other sources of revenue gradually declined in significance in the course of the 19th century, while the amounts raised by the public, through taxation, increased sharply in both absolute and relative terms.11 Modern Western governments have two ways of collecting taxes from their subjects: by direct or indirect taxation. Mill has given a cogent definition of the difference: ‘Taxes are either direct or indirect. A direct tax is one which is demanded from the very persons who, it is intended or desired, should pay it. Indirect taxes are those which are demanded from one person in the expecta tion and intention that he shall indemnify himself at the expense of another: such as the excise or customs.’12 The public’s willingness to submit to direct taxation—and the government’s ability to enforce compliance—presupposes not only a powerful and highly developed government apparatus, but also some identification on the part of the public with the state’s power, shared interests between rulers and the ruled, and hence a certain degree of nation formation.13 A general obligation to pay direct taxes (universal income tax) has thus only been imposed successfully when combined with rights, such as suf frage and the entitlement to use state-provided care arrangements. The rise of a universal income tax hence closely paralleled the expansion of suffrage and the rise and expansion of the welfare state. Direct taxes existed long before universal income tax came into effect in Britain and the Netherlands, but they were paid solely by the well-to-do.14 This selective direct taxation was accompanied by privileges that amply offset the burden: it conferred suffrage and gave access to certain positions in society.15 11 In the Netherlands, for instance, taxes increased, as a percentage of total state revenue, from 70% in 1850 to 81% in 1880 The income received from the colonies—which was still bringing in 23% of the state’s total state revenue in 1850—had completely dried up by 1880 (see De Jonge 1988:272, table 1c). But if Sweden and Norway, for instance, were to be included in this comparative study, the state industries in these countries which have a monopoly on the production and/or distribution of alcoholic beverages would doubtless have commanded considerable attention. 12 Mill 1985 (1848):175. 13 Levi 1988:144. 14 Direct taxes of this kind had the effect of narrowing the gap between higher and lower incomes when they were calculated on a progressive scale In most Western societies, the prosperity of individual citizens—measured in land ownership, staff in their service, prop erty and income—was the criterion that determined the level of this direct tax obligation. 15 Thus, until the end of the 19th century, members of parliament and ministers of the Church were recruited, in the Netherlands, from the nobility and patriciate (Ultee et al 1992:435). And Britain still has a House of Lords, an Upper Houses reserved for the aris tocracy.’


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For rulers, direct taxes present a number of disadvantages. Chief among these is the fact that every form of direct taxation excludes those without per sonal property or a regular income, which in the 19th century meant the majority of the population. To redress this problem, rulers have always introduced indirect taxation as a complementary source of income.16 Indirect taxes consist of import duties and excise on a variety of goods.17 Excise was levied in the 19th century primarily on staples, so that the poorest classes of society—since they were most numerous—bore the lion’s share of this burden.18 And as expenditure on staples accounted for a relatively large proportion of poor people’s income, excise widened the gap between rich and poor. Thus whatever levelling of income was achieved by selective income tax on the wealthy was more than reversed by the disparities induced by excise. The principle of excise is that the government imposes the tax on the pro ducer or retailer, who then incorporates it into the price of the commodity, so that it is ultimately the consumer who pays. Excise hence has the advantage that it is raised in small amounts. People are often scarcely aware that they are paying taxes every time they purchase certain commodities. A senior British tax official expressed this covert strategy in 1897, in an address to the Brewers’ Society, in the following words: ‘Through your agency I am enabled to extract from the pockets of the people a sum of money...and to do this without their knowing anything about it at all. What the people pay to me I think they gener ally charge to you, and that seems tot me an extremely satisfactory result to both of us. ...If the unfortunate taxpayer knows nothing about it, so much the better for him, so much the better for you, and so much the better for me. Where ignorance produces such bliss, do you think it wise to enlighten?’19 We shall see in the rest of this chapter the precise—substantial—amounts Sir George Murray was referring to. Murray was speaking on behalf of the British government, but a comparable situation existed in many other countries.20 16

Or the other way around: indirect taxes generally accounted for a higher proportion than did direct taxes. 17 Some authors, however, see excise as a distinct source of state revenue, separate from indirect taxes; eg. Sickenga 1883. I am deferring here to the authority of Ardant 1975; Braun 1975; De Vrankrijker 1967 and 1969; Mill 1985 (1848). In the 20th century another indirect tax was introduced: Value Added Tax. 18 It should be noted that in resorting to excise tax, the national states were following in the footsteps of the local authorities. Thus Marco van Leeuwen, in his study of the funding of welfare payments in Amsterdam in the first half of the 19th century, observed: ‘More than a third of the city’s total income came from excise on the above-mentioned staple commodities [i.e. flour, meat and fuel, JWG].’ (Van Leeuwen 1992:155.) 19 These were the words of Sir George Murray in his capacity of Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue, addressing the Brewers’ Society in 1897. Quoted in Wilson 1940:197. 20 England was (and still is) pre-eminently a beer-drinking nation. Were a Dutch treasury


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Excise was the dominant instrument of taxation in Western countries throughout the 19th century. And as excise was levied on staples for which alternatives scarcely existed, it enabled rulers to reach practically the entire population. In the Netherlands, for instance, national excise was levied, in the 19th century, on beer, coal, flour, meat, peat, salt, soap, spirits, sugar, vinegar and wine. Excise was a disproportionate burden on the incomes of the poor, not only in the Netherlands, where De Vrankrijker calls it a ‘class tax,’21 but in other countries in the region too. Gabriel Ardant comments: ‘Because of its depend ence by and large on consumption taxes, the fiscal system of the 19th century [in Western Europe] weighed most heavily on the popular classes. It was sure ly one of the most striking manifestations of the triumphant bourgeoisie.’22 The levying of excise on staple commodities was advantageous to the gov ernment in other ways besides enabling it to reach most of the population. As the demand for such goods, in the short term, is scarcely sensitive to price fluctuations (staples display little price elasticity), rulers were able to predict their income from excise quite accurately. For states that needed increasing funds to expand their government apparatus and for interventions in the realm of social economics, this was a significant advantage. Nonetheless, there is a negative side to excise. Both producers and con sumers may succumb to the temptation to evade this consumer tax, either by illegal production or by smuggling merchandise out of neighbouring countries where it is taxed at a far lower rate or not at all. This sets limits to the basic tax rates, as the profits made from smuggling or illegal production could other wise be so high as to induce too many people to venture into lucrative clandes tine trade. This in turn requires extra activities on the government’s part, in creasing the cost of collection and actually diminishing the net gain from excise if the basic tax is set too high. All in all, this type of taxation has always been a problematic and expen sive system to operate. Not only must the government have a special supervi sory apparatus to monitor the production of, and trade in, goods liable to ex cise, but it also has to operate frontier controls. An example from Dutch history shows that the state’s ability to levy excise was strained most in border regions, where it was heavily dependent on effective frontier controls. The Chamber of Commerce in Oldenzaal, near the German border, made the following report to the Dutch Minister of Finance in the mid-19th century: ‘It will not be un official ever to have delivered such a eulogy, it would probably have been for the manufac turers of spirits rather than brewers. 21 De Vrankrijker 1967. 22 Ardant 1975:232.


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known to Your Excellence [...] that every day hundreds of people, travelling in groups of twenty or more, most of whom are children aged between ten and fifteen, cross the border with these goods (spirits, wheat, salt and sugar) and follow diverse routes, some penetrating to the very heart of Overijssel, and that this clandestinely imported merchandise is traded as far as the other side of the province’s border. [...] Experts estimate that three-quarters—some say ninetenths—of the spirits consumed in the territory where excise is due is smug gled in, and this will be much the same where the other goods—that is to say salt, wheat and sugar—are concerned.’23 All the efforts of rulers in Western societies to levy excise and import du ties, together with the supervisory apparatus such as fiscal and police (cus toms) services needed to enforce them, inevitably had the effect of giving cen tral governments more control over their citizens and their territory. This development in turn made it possible for governments to impose more and more direct taxes on ever-larger sections of the population, culminating in uni versal income tax and value added tax. The United States however, as already mentioned, developed along mark edly different lines than the European countries discussed here. In comparison to Britain and the Netherlands, the Federal Government in Washington contin ued far longer to depend exclusively for its income on indirect taxes. Even today, Washington’s ability to generate income directly from all US citizens is relatively limited, just as the services provided by Federal Government—representing the process of the national government’s increasing intervention in collective provisions—lag behind. The US central government’s relative reti cence (at any rate in relation to the other countries we are considering) when it comes to taxing Americans directly would appear to be bound up with the country’s federal structure and in particular the precarious balance of power between individual states and the federal heart of government. Alcohol excise and state formation in the Netherlands and Britain. The national revenue of the Netherlands The frontiers of the Kingdom of the Netherlands were very different in 1830 than they are today. The province of Limburg—with the exception of Maastricht—belonged to Belgium from 1830 to 1839, and long afterwards it re mained a frequent diplomatic bone of contention. The protests about military service that were expressed in the Catholic province of North Brabant and 23

Sickenga 1883, vol 1:26.


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Catholic areas of Gelderland and Twente illustrates the fragility of state forma tion and the weak development of nation formation in outlying regions.24 This had consequences for tax collection. For instance, in the first half of the 19th century tax inspectors were advised ‘to perform their duties in provinces where they fear for their safety properly armed, especially in the night hours.’25 But in time this changed, and the government’s monopoly on force was scarcely challenged structurally—although it continued to be represented in the province of Limburg, as it was in the former colonies, by a governor. In the 1830s and 1840s there was a steady rise in the government’s income from taxes—both in absolute terms and per head of the population.26 Thorbecke’s 1851 Municipalities Act, in particular, was a significant step towards a more centralized Dutch state, with powers swinging away from local and pro vincial authorities towards central government. This Act ushered in a trend to impose uniformity from above on all the highly diverse existing types of local taxation. The phenomenon of surtax—a kind of municipal import duty which greatly impeded national trade but helped to safeguard the financial autonomy of the municipalities—was gradually phased out by this Municipalities Act, and replaced by a system of uniform national taxes. Hans Knippenburg and Ben de Pater have summarized these administrative developments as follows: ‘Looking at the 19th century as a whole, we can discern two trends. Firstly, the individual member of the public had increasingly strong financial ties with the national state, through the increasing importance of taxes levied directly by central government. Secondly, local authorities too became more dependent on central government in their obligations to fulfil tasks imposed by the State.’27 Changes in the tax system and the constant rise in revenue from taxes played an important part in this development as they set limits to the powers that central government could appropriate.28 24 25 26

Knippenberg and De Pater 1988:30. Sickenga 1883, vol 2:81. I am confining myself here to national revenue from taxes relating to the territory and population of the Kingdom, excluding overseas territories The profits received from the Dutch East Indies had long been one of the mainstays of the government’s budget, amount ing sometimes to as much as a third of the total, but it was used primarily for interest and repayment of national debts. In the period 1831-1920, the proportion of the total raised in the Dutch East Indies gradually declined, while the government revenue rose sharply at that time. The spoils of war have also been left out of consideration here as a source of state revenue, as they were by then—with the exception of an occasional year—negligible (De Vrankrijker 1969; De Jonge 1988). The statistics used here for the 19th century derive from Statistiek der Rijksmiddelen, supplemented by data accumulated by Peter Flora (Flora 1983). Inasmuch as comparison was possible, these figures correspond to those collected by B.R. Mitschell (Mitschell 1975). 27 Knippenberg and De Pater 1988:144. 28 This is described at greater length in Gerritsen 1991.


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The increase in the country’s national revenue was by no means solely attributable to population growth. In 1831 the Dutch government (still without Limburg) received from 2.5 million citizens, along both direct and indirect channels, a total of 38 million guilders—a little over 15 guilders per head of the population. In 1900, by which time the population had doubled, the amount paid to central government was 120 million guilders, which comes to 24 guilders per head of the population.29 The period 1865-1880 witnessed the sharpest rise, from 18 to 25 guilders per person, an increase of almost 40%. Indirect taxes—especially excise—accounted for the lion’s share of this increase. In the period 1850-1914, indirect taxes fluctuated between 55% and 65% of the state’s total income, and between 1866 and 1890 the figure was consistently over 60%. While back in 1831 the State only received 37% of its total revenue in indirect taxes, by the peak year of 1880 this percentage had grown to 62.5%. After 1915 direct taxes gradually regained the upper hand, although from 1928 to 1940 the revenue from indirect taxes prevailed once again. The predominance of indirect taxes in the 19th century was, to paraphrase Ardant, a triumph of the well-to-do citizenry. As the ruling class, they knew how to ensure that the money needed to run the machinery of state and to fund the state’s increased intervention in care arrangements—health care and edu cation in particular—was paid by those with relatively low incomes. The wellto-do themselves were left relatively unaffected. Indirect tax chiefly meant excise. Expressed as a percentage of the state’s total revenue, excise varied from 22.8% (1832) and 44.3% (1878).30 The government’s reliance on excise can be explained partly by its as yet limited hold on the income and property of individual citizens. It was apparently easier and cheaper to enforce watertight controls on a small number of consumer goods than to tax the income and property of wealthy citizens. But more to the point, perhaps, is that the rulers may have been reluctant to harm their own interests, and those of their supporters. Yet direct taxation too was in the interests of the

29 In the 20th century this development was more rapid still—up to 3,730 guilders per head of the population in 1975—but constant inflation obscures this picture There was scarcely any question of currency depreciation in the 19th century, nor did wage levels undergo any regular increase. In order to appreciate the relative importance of government expenditure over the entire period from 1831 to 1975 it would be useful to express it as a percentage of the Gross National Product. Unfortunately, however, these figures are una vailable for the years 1830-1900. 30 Excise accounted for 30% of total indirect taxation (besides excise this included im port duties and various other indirect duties) in 1832; in 1878 the percentage was about 50%, and in 1878 it was over 60% (statistics derive from the annual figures of the Ministry of Finance)’.


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middle classes. An obligation to pay direct taxes was proof of wealth and hence also served as a demarcation line for the bestowal of power and status. Privileges, including suffrage, could be kept out of reach of the common people.31 In the long term, this taxation policy, whereby the burden of the machinery of state was borne chiefly by lower income groups, had the unintentional effect of making the lower classes an indispensable factor when it came to funding the process of state formation and the Verstaatlichung of care arrangements. The Netherlands and other Western states proved incapable, in the medium term, of withholding from those who bore the burden of the machinery of state access to political power, in the form of the right to vote and the right to be elected. Or perhaps it is the other way around: that as soon as the people ac quire suffrage and political power, the balance between direct and indirect tax es is altered as a result. Alcohol excise in the Netherlands Between 1830 and 1920 excise accounted for a large proportion of the government’s total revenue. Excise on flour was abolished in 1856, that on peat and coal in 1865, with that on soap being retained until 1894. This left meat, beer, vinegar, salt, wine, sugar and—by far the most important source of excise revenue—spirits.32 According to Dutch government records for 1831, excise on spirits, wine and beer together accounted for 5.7 million guilders, or 2.30 guilders per head of the population, raising 15% of national revenue, a figure that witnessed a mild decline over the following decades. Between 1860 and 1865, this per centage shot up to a quarter of the state’s total revenue, remaining at this level until the end of the century. Given the rapidly increasing tax burden, which was especially marked in the years 1860-1880, the average amount paid per head of the population soared in this period from 2.25 to 6.47 guilders. After

31 In 1850 only 11% of men aged 23 and above—a little over 25% of the population— was eligible to vote in the elections for the Lower House of parliament. (A somewhat high er percentage could vote in local elections). Thirty years later the figure had only risen to slightly more than 12%. After this, however, male suffrage expanded rapidly: 49% in 1897, and 65% in 1913. The Electoral Act of 1917 introduced universal male suffrage, and women gained the vote in 1919 (Boogman 1988:105; Minderaa 1988:303). 32 The duties imposed on wine, beer/vinegar (lumped together for excise purposes), salt and flour were of relatively little significance The excise on meat was also moderate, but remained at a fairly constant level throughout the 19th century—fluctuating between 1 and 4 million guilders. Excise on sugar grew more important after 1895, but never became as high as the excise on alcohol.


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this it declined slightly to around 5-6 guilders around the turn of the century (see table and figure below). Tax increases in the Netherlands and the proportion accounted for by alcohol excise, 1860-1880

[98] Year

all taxes

1860 1880

alcohol excise per head

total

per head

total

nlg 60.3 mil. nlg 102.7 mil.

nlg 18.16 nlg 25.36

nlg 8.2 mil. nlg 26.3 mil.

nlg 2.48 nlg 6.47

Source: Statistieken der Rijksinkomsten

Indexed tax rises per head of the population 300 250

total tax 200

alcohol excise

150 100 50 0

1831

1840

1850

1860

1870

1880

1890

1900

The increase—in both absolute and relative terms—of alcohol excise revenue was a significant factor in enabling the Dutch state to spend 117 million guil ders in 1900, compared to a mere 31 million guilders around 1850. The 19th century also saw a huge increase in the number of public servants, from only 1,000 in the first half of the century to 45,000—without taking into account those in education and those employed by state-run industries and utilities— by 1900.33 This ongoing process of state formation was obviously accompa nied by an expansion in the tax service itself. In 1833, when the first tax offi cials’ yearbook appeared, it contained 1,250 names—35 of which worked in The Hague, and the rest spread throughout the provinces (1 tax official for every 2,000 inhabitants). By 1900 there was an army of over 6,000 tax offi 33

Knippenberg and De Pater 1988:145-46.


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cials, one for every 800 inhabitants. It must constantly be borne in mind, in interpreting these figures, that alcohol excise was a tax raised primarily by the common people.34 It might be asked whether the increase in government revenue after 1860 resulted from higher levels of alcohol consumption. Drinking certainly showed something of a mounting curve.35 This increase, however, was so mod est that it could not possibly have accounted for the remarkable growth in gov ernment revenue from excise on alcohol. Increases in basic rate of excise on strong liquor, 1831-1885 year

basic rate of excise per hectoliter (50%)

1831 1860 1864 1866 1869 1877 1885

nlg 12 nlg 22 nlg 35 nlg 50 nlg 53 nlg 57 nlg 60

increase expressed as a percentage

+ + + + + +

– 83% 59% 43% 6% 8% 5%

A far more significant factor was the increase in the base level of excise for spirits. In 1831 this was 12 guilders per hectolitre of 50% alcohol, at which level it remained until 1860. Then came several sharp increases, so that by 1885 the corresponding tax was 60 guilders. All these increases took place in a period characterized by a complete absence of inflation. This no longer ap plied in later years, but even so, the increases in excise far exceeded any cor rection for inflation, going from 63 guilders in 1892 to 90 guilders in 1909 and 99 guilders at the outbreak of the First World War (the 10% war tax), and was eventually fixed, in 1919, at 165 guilders.36 34 The province of South Holland had 230 active tax officials in 1831, whereas a mere 27 were available in the eastern province of Drenthe It is also noteworthy that each province’s tax department was led by the King’s Commissioner (a governor appointed by the Crown, usually a nobleman). See Jaarboekje voor de Ambtenaren der Directe Belastingen, In- en Uitgaande Regten en Accijnzen in Nederland, 1833 and 1901. 35 For an overview of alcohol consumption in the Netherlands, see Chapter VII. 36 Nederlandsche Vereeniging tot Afschaffing van Alcoholhoudende Dranken 1901:14 Excise rates were regularly raised after this, but as the share of alcohol excise in total government revenue fell sharply in the 20th century, this period is of less importance in this context. In 1993 the excise on alcohol was 6,356 guilders per hectolitre with an alcohol content of 50%.


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In view of the substantial amounts generated by alcohol excise, it is not surprising that the government took a keen interest in it. The inspectors re sponsible for collecting the tax were given impressive statutory powers. An Act passed in December 1855 ‘required all existing stills (except those enjoy ing continuous credit), wholesalers, off-license shops and public houses etc. lying within a certain radius of a distillery to submit to gauging (and visitation) by tax officials.’37 The meticulous method taught to tax collectors for determining the correct alcohol content of spirits, the detailed instructions issued concerning the use of the gauging instruments prescribed by law and the related procedures all dem onstrate the seriousness with which the government viewed this type of excise.38 Correspondingly severe prohibition orders were hence promulgated, along with supervisory regulations giving the government a large measure of control over this industry, chiefly to prevent any evasion of excise tax. The following amendment to the Excise Act on the location of pipes was intro duced in 1862, undoubtedly in response to tax evasion practices: ‘Pipes laid beneath floors or through the walls of a distillery, which serve, or are capable of serving, to conduct vapour, distillate, malt spirit or any other product of the distillation process, from the tubes to the tanks, from one tank to another, or to other equipment or rooms, must be laid or placed in gulleys or openings such that their circumference is open to inspection by the officials along their entire length.’39 Such strict forms of government control were clearly dictated by experience. Excise tax collectors regularly encountered opposition; smug gling, tax evasion and fraud were all common phenomena. Aside from these strict controls, the disproportionate interest of the Dutch government in the excise on alcoholic drinks also expressed itself in the cor dial relations built up between the government and the alcohol industry.40 After all, this was an important branch of industry—not only for the excise income it generated but also for its exports, and also because of the related yeast and methylated spirits industries.41 Figures for the year 1895 may serve to illustrate this importance. There were 1,224 ‘excise factories’ registered with the Dutch Ministry of Finance

37 38 39

Sickenga 1883, vol 2:53. Broeksmit 1896. Annex to the Act of 20 June 1862, containing provisions relating to the excise on domestic spirits (’houdende bepalingen omtrent den accijns op het binnenlandsch gedistil leerd’), in Accijnzen, The Hague 1937:189. 40 For this reason the temperance movement emphasized the shared interests of the state and the alcohol industry, and the political power of ‘alcohol capital’. 41 Everwijn 1912.


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that year. Of these, 1,036 (including 524 distilleries) were active in the produc tion of, or trade in, alcoholic drinks. In that year about 650,000 hectolitres of spirits (with an alcohol content of 50%) were produced. Almost 26 million litres of this were exported, as against imports of a mere 4 million litres. In these distilleries, classified as ‘excise factories,’ tax officials regularly, and ac cording to statutory procedures, showed up to determine or collect the excise due. Furthermore, production was subject to strict guidelines to prevent the evasion of excise. All things considered, excise gave the Dutch authorities an inordinate degree of control over the alcohol industry. Nor was this control misplaced, given that each distillery paid the state an average sum of 45,000 guilders in excise in 1895. The industry as a whole, that year, raised 20% of total government revenue. In short, although alcohol consumption in the Netherlands increased in the 1870s, the main reason why excise on alcohol accounted for a steadily rising proportion of government revenue was that excise rates kept rising. This was a deliberate tax policy, and meant that the cost of Verstaatlichung—of education and health care in particular—was borne to a great extent by the lower classes, partly because they made up the majority of the population and partly because of general patterns of drinking behaviour. Excise on alcohol was thus the pro totype of a paternalistic class tax: a tax instrument with which the state extract ed money from the lower classes and subsequently supported these same class es, and tried to elevate them, with collective social provisions funded by the proceeds of taxes. This shifting of the burden effectively turned the working classes into the pivot of the government’s finances. The working classes and their leaders were however too divided on the issue of alcohol consumption ever to exploit their indispensability.42 Enlightened middle-class citizens knew full well that there was something wrong with the excise on alcohol. Not only did it place a dis proportionate burden on the shoulders of ordinary people, but certain liberal leaders also considered the arguments used to justify successive increases in the rates to be hypocritical. For instance, addressing the liberal electorate in 1879, Samuel van Houten wrote: ‘To date, the compassionate concern to curb the consumption of genever has provided a constant licence to burden the genever drinkers, i.e. the lower classes, still further.’43 The tax expert Sickenga,in his historical study of the Dutch taxation sys tem, likewise dwells on the government’s controversial role in relation to alco hol excise: ‘the excise on distilled spirits [...], which was intended to serve

42 43

I shall return to this subject in Chapter VII.

Van Houten 1879:10.


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both as a tax and as a means of curbing alcohol consumption, [...] has gradual ly acquired such significance in our fiscal legislation as to be almost indispen sable, but therefore repeatedly confronts the legislature with the difficult dilemma of whether to opt for a more effective restriction of consumption by other means, which would inevitably jeopardize tax income, or whether to choose instead a constant, relatively simple increase in taxes, which while it also aims to reduce consumption, is ineffective in this regard.’44 In addition to its revenue from alcohol excise, the Dutch government also received some income in the 19th century—albeit a considerably smaller amount—from the patent rights that publicans and proprietors of drinking ven ues such as wine taverns were liable to pay.45 In 1850 there were over 20,000 such proprietors, and in 1877 the number exceeded 35,000.46 According to an ethnographic report (published in 1919) of drinking venues and inns in Dren the, in the latter half of the 19th century every hamlet had one or more such venue. Furthermore, the publican’s occupation—for which no licence was needed at that time—was generally combined with another job.47 On market days and at local fairs, local authorities also received income from incidental patent duties. The Netherlands’ first Licensing Act (1881) established a licensing system for drinking venues. This system was called into existence primarily as a means of regulating alcohol consumption to some extent, with government revenue being of secondary importance. The revenue from these licences was allocated to local authorities.48 Until well into the 20th century, the Dutch state thus depended heavily on alcohol excise taxes. Expressed in percentage terms, between 1865 and 1915 this dependency fluctuated between 15% and 25% of total national revenue. Excise—especially excise on spirits—served as the pivot of the entire process of increased state intervention in social provisions. At the same time, excise on alcohol was the chief instrument with which the government ensured that per sons with little or no means contributed substantially to the costs. In view of the public concern about alcohol abuse that gathered steam in Dutch society from about 1850 onwards, this is a remarkable piece of information. It caused the temperance movement to complain vociferously about the ties between the interests of the alcohol industry and those of the state. Notwithstanding the 44 45

Sickenga 1883, vol 2:176. The total income received in patent duties fluctuated, between 1831 and 1893—when patent duties were abolished in favour of company tax—between about 2 and 35 million guilders—approximately 3% of total government revenue from taxes. 46 Jansen 1976:283. 47 Tiesing 1919:34, 653-69 Quoted in Jansen 1976:278. 48 I shall return to the subject of the Licensing Act in Chapter VII.


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arguments advanced in publications such as Het alcoholisme, de staat en de verkiezingen (Alcoholism, the state and the elections) and the desperate plea ‘that the government sever all ties with anything that can promote the curse of the demon alcohol,’ the custodians of the government’s purse-strings unflinchingly preserved excise taxes on alcohol.49 It was not until a general income tax—devised by Pierson in 1893—had been operational for several decades that the government’s dependency on alcohol excise (and indirect taxation in general) declined. In the course of the 20th century, corporation tax and a wide-ranging progressive income tax somewhat curtailed the importance of indirect taxes, although the introduction in 1969 of Value Added Tax as a gen eral indirect tax partly offset this effect.50 The further expansion of the welfare state in the latter half of the 20th century was partly funded with the proceeds of these taxes. By then, excise tax on alcohol no longer played a significant role in the Netherlands. In 1965 it generated 389 million guilders, only 2.4% of the total tax revenue. By 1975, although the corresponding figure was 1,017 million guilders, expressed as a percentage of total tax revenue it was a mere 1.8%.51 As excise tax on alcohol gradually became less important (though not entirely negligible) as a source of national revenue, the government was free to concentrate more on its deployment as an instrument to curb alcohol consump tion. Excise on alcohol in Britain In Britain too, excise on alcohol played a major role in the process of state formation and increased Verstaatlichung. Indeed, a national excise on alcohol existed in Britain as early as the 17th century. Gilbert Slater writes: ‘The in crease of consumption of native liquor, during and after the Civil War, caught the attention of the financiers. There were experiments in excise under the rule of the Long Parliament, and in 1660 the system became permanent, and the tax then imposed on the manufacture of all the popular fermented drinks became a very important and continually growing source of revenue.’52 Britain was also earlier than the Netherlands in introducing a licensing system for the retail alcohol trade. While the Dutch Licensing Act did not come into effect until 1881, a licensing system had been introduced in Britain 49 50

Nederlandsche Vereeniging tot Afschaffing van Alcoholhoudende Dranken:1901. It is therefore not surprising that the Dutch Labour Party opposed this new class tax with especial vehemence. 51 Calculations made on the basis of a combination of OECD statistics (for receipts from excise on alcohol) and the statistics accumulated by Peter Flora (for the tax revenue of central government); OECD 1989:132-33; Flora 1983. 52 Slater 1930:264-65.


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fig. 15. Kitchen where bootleg liquor was produced; this is how the excise duties on alcohol were evaded


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at the end of the 17th century. The British authorities however envisaged it not so much as a source of revenue but primarily as a vehicle to supervise the people: until the end of the 17th century the licensing system acted as an in strument of control. The idea of income for the state was at that time entirely absent.53 The drinking venue, after all, was traditionally the place where gener al dissatisfaction among the population could be translated into organized so cial protest. From the 19th century onwards, however, the British licensing system was also intended increasingly as a source of government revenue. It involved the evolution of two types of licence: a licence to pour drinks for consumption on the premises and a licence to sell drinks for consumption else where (the present-day ‘off-licence’).54 In Britain too, however, excise on alcohol was many times more important than the revenue generated by the licensing system. Not only spirits, wine and beer, it should be added, were subject to excise tax. Malt and hops, as essential basic ingredients for the brewer’s trade, were also taxed. In 1803, the taxes on alcohol, when totalled, accounted for a staggering 44% of Britain’s total reve nue. It then fell to about 30% from 1810-1860, after which it rose again to over 40% in 1880, staying at this level until the 20th century. As Britain too wit nessed a steady increase in state expenditure in the 19th century—from ‘35 million in 1803 to ‘104 million in 1900—there was a growth in the revenue from alcohol income in absolute terms. The British government too was thus able to finance a substantial share of the steadily rising government expenditure by the various types of alcoholrelated revenue. The tried and tested approach, as in the Netherlands, was a series of increases in the rate of excise tax.55 Particularly when major, unfore seen (and evidently temporary) costs arose, the British government resorted to excise, as evidenced by a more than 500% increase in the British excise on spirits to finance the First World War.56 In consequence of the British tax policy in relation to alcohol, between 1800 and 1900 an average of 35% of total tax revenue—for the period 1870 1900 as much as 40%—derived from the excise on alcohol and licensing fees. This was a period in which the British government had to raise huge sums of money, in particular for the compulsory education of children at state-subsi53 54

Wilson 1940:195. The contributions of the various alcohol-related licences to the British Treasury fluctu ated, after 1850, between ‘1 million and ‘2 million annually To give an indication of the figures: in 1877-78, with the population of Great Britain standing at 25 million, almost 135,000 licences were issued. Different licences existed for spirits, wine and beer (Wilson 1940:195). 55 In 1840 excise on spirits in Britain, was 7 shillings and 10 pence per gallon; in 1856 it was raised to 8 shillings, and subsequently to 10 shillings in 1860 and 11 shillings in 1900. 56 Wilson 1941:318.


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dized schools.57 After 1900 alcohol excise fell to 28% of government revenue in 1910, then to 13% in 1940, and 7% in 1967. In 1987, excise on alcohol raised ‘4,229 million—less than 3% of total tax revenue.58 It will be clear that the British Government was to a large extent dependent for its tax income, throughout the 19th and well into the 20th century, on the excise tax on alcohol. It exploited the high levels of alcohol consumption to ensure that the lower classes contributed more than their fair share to the col lective social provisions, and to an expansion of the government apparatus that involved the trebling of staff alone from 1891 to 1911. Nor were the poorer classes enfranchised in return for their contribution.59 The dependency of Brit ish governments on alcohol revenue did not diminish until the revision of the tax system in 1907. As in many other Western societies, general income tax took over as the primary source of state revenue. This shift from excise on alcohol to income tax was one of the many changes expressive of the narrow ing gap in power between rulers and the general population in Britain, and it was a direct consequence of the introduction, in 1914, of universal male suf frage. ‘The evolution of representative institutions was essential to the passage of the income tax’ writes Margaret Levi.60 But by the time this transformation occurred, excise on alcohol—pre- eminently a class tax—had already played an essential role in generating state revenue, and hence in state formation and state intervention in social provisions. Alcohol excise and state formation in the United States The US taxation system contrasts sharply with those in Britain and the Nether lands. This is largely because of the country’s federal structure, with each indi vidual state having a relatively large degree of autonomy. The federal authori ties in Washington hence have far less scope to levy both direct and indirect taxes than do their counterparts in London and The Hague. In the period immediately after Independence (1783) the Continental Con gress did not even have the power to impose taxes directly on the US popula tion. ‘When Congress was short of money it had to request funds from the individual states. The states would then collect their tax revenue and transfer it to the federal treasury. The congress had to ask the state for whatever funds

57 58 59

De Swaan 1989:103-10.

OECD 1989:149-50.

With the Reform Act of 1883—in itself a great leap forwards—only 29% of the male

population aged over 20 acquired voting rights (Hobsbawm 1989:85, 103). 60 Levi 1988:144.


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were needed. They were then collected by the states through taxation and turned over to the central treasury.’ 61 Later Congress was given the power to collect taxes itself and to spend them ‘for the benefit of defence and for general improvements in welfare’ provided that this money were collected in an identical fashion throughout the United States. Until the Civil War (1861-1865) however, the Federal Government was strikingly restrained in its use of these powers. It is true that Alexander Hamilton introduced a modest federal inland tax as early as 1791, including excise on alcohol. Also taxed were carriages, sugar, snuff, auctions, bonds and slave ownership. The proceeds were disappointing, however (under $250,000 for 4 million inhabitants) while acquisition costs, at 20% of the proceeds, were relatively high. Hamilton’s excise tax on whisky encountered a good deal of opposition, so much so that in 1794 the federal armed forces had to be called out to crush the Whisky Rebellion of the grain farmers of Pennsylvania. After this first unsuccessful attempt, all federal inland taxes were abol ished in 1802. And until the Civil War, the US central authorities were unable to impose inland taxes directly for any length of time. While it is true that in the period 1812-1817 a few temporary taxes came into existence—such as a tax introduced in 1812 to pay for the war with England—after 1818 there was a long period of time without any direct inland tax revenue, and hence also with out federal excise. The Federal Government’s revenue at this time derived from import duties. The formation of a national state was evidently not yet far enough advanced in the United States to empower the central authorities to do much more than enforce effective controls on the outer frontiers—i.e. the ports. US citizens at that time did not pay any inland taxes to Washington, not even indirectly, let alone in the form of a direct tax. The Civil War ushered in a change of climate. Strapped for cash, the feder al authorities of the Northern States resorted to a range of direct and indirect taxes. These taxes ensured that in 1866 the federal authorities in Washington received, from 36.5 million inhabitants, $310 million in inland tax revenue on top of the $180 million gained in import duties. After the end of the Civil War, most of these taxes—especially the direct taxes—were repealed; but this time the federal authorities did not allow the indirect income from excise taxes to slip through their fingers. Excise on alcohol and tobacco, in particular, gradu ally became—together with import duties—the basic taxes that kept the fi nances of the Federal Government afloat from 1868 to 1920. According to

61

Doris 1963:16.


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Doris, from 1868 to 1913 almost 90% of all inland revenue came from excise on alcohol and tobacco.’62 It took some time for the federal authorities to master the technique of collecting excise taxes. Fraud and smuggling were relatively easy in this vast expanse of territory. Washington therefore had to seek exactly the right bal ance in setting excise rates. Only by trial and error could the level be ascer tained that would generate maximum gain, given the limited scope for federal control. In 1864 Washington collected $219 million in taxes, with alcohol ex cise, at $33 million, accounting for 15% of this. But in 1866 only 8% ($39 million) of the $489 million that the Federal Government collected in inland taxes derived from excise on alcohol. This was the case even though excise rates had risen to ten times their previous level in less than eighteen months: from 20¢ per gallon in 1862 to 60¢ in March 1864 and $1.50 in July 1864, and finally to $2 by 1 January 1865. This increase had the unintentional and un foreseen consequence of seriously impeding the use of industrial alcohol, which had major—in some cases disastrous—repercussions on certain branches of industry.63 The rapid rise of excise rates caused an expansion of the illegal supply circuit. With the final increase, to $2 per gallon in 1865, the excise on alcohol was 8 to 12 times higher than the average costs of production. The evasion of excise tax thus became an almost irresistible temptation.64 Clandestine distill eries became the order of the day, so that most of the spirits produced did not come within the ambit of excise tax. The Federal Government responded by slashing the rate from $2 to 50¢ in 1868, eliminating the illicit supply over night. With this far lower excise rate, Washington was able to collect almost three times as much income in 1870 as in 1865 during the high rate of $2: $56 million rather than $19 million. After 1868 the rate edged back up again, reaching $1.10 per gallon in 1917, without however undermining alcohol ex cise as a proportion of federal income. In the period 1870-1917 excise on alcohol accounted for a steadily grow ing share—from 15% to 25%.—of federal tax revenue.65 The proportion then

62 It should be recalled that this did not include import duties, which accounted on aver age for over half of total federal revenue (Doris 1963:19). 63 It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that a distinction was introduced in the United States between excise on alcohol for consumption and that intended for industri al use (see Hu 1950:129) A similar distinction was made—a good deal earlier—in the tax on opium: different rates applied in respect of smoking and medicinal opium (see Chapter IV). 64 Hu 1950:129.

65 Including import duties, which accounted for over 50% in most years.


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rose further still: in 1890 it was almost 30%, and in 1900 almost 35%. The peak was reached in 1894, when excise tax on alcohol raised a full 42% of the total. The importance of excise tax on alcohol meant that the interests of Federal Government and the alcohol industry were profoundly intertwined. The boom ing alcohol industry made it relatively easy for Washington to collect increas ing amounts of taxes, indirectly, from the American people, especially from the poorer sections of society. Richard Hamm therefore concludes that the Federal Government’s interference with the distilling industry led to a cooper ative venture between officialdom and the entrepreneurs in this branch of in dustry. He goes on to observe that a strong identification with the distilling industry was characteristic of the entire taxation apparatus. ‘The interference of Federal Government with the distilling industry led to a cooperative venture between officialdom and the entrepreneurs in this branch of industry. A strong identification with the distilling industry was characteristic of the entire taxa tion apparatus.’66 This emerged, for instance, from the opposition of the feder al tax inspectors to the activities of the temperance movement. The federal tax department/alcohol industry coalition often found itself at odds with the alcohol policy formulated by the authorities of individual states. This was especially the case in outlying rural states, many of which were try ing at this time, as we shall see later, to ban alcohol altogether at local or re gional level. Another complication was that the entanglement of the federal tax department with the alcohol industry often conflicted with the interests of the federal state, as individual tax inspectors would often collude with the industry.67 Over the whole period 1870-1892, alcohol excise averaged 25% of the total federal revenue, whereas in 1892-1916, it averaged 35%. This peak coin cided precisely with the period during which the Federation of the United States was emerging as a new world power. Most of the Federal Government’s revenue therefore probably helped to fund a foreign policy that was geared towards expansion and military intervention: the war with Spain over the Philippines and various other military campaigns in South America and the Pacific.68 66 67 68

Hamm 1992:13. Mittelman 1992:28. Interestingly, this scarcely led to any increase in the number of tax officials In about 1866 there were approximately 4,500 tax officials working for the federal tax authorities (one for every 8,000 inhabitants); in 1917 there were 5,000 (one for every 20,000 inhabit ants). It was only after federal income tax started to bear fruit (the 16th Amendment intro ducing it was passed in 1916) that the army of federal tax officials in the United States rapidly expanded, to reach 14,000 in 1919 (Doris 1963:284-85.)


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Immediately prior to the United States’ intervention in the First World War another tax was introduced which, though modest, had come to stay: a direct federal wages and company tax. After this indirect taxes—including excise on alcohol—accounted for a smaller proportion of total government revenue. This federal income tax came just in time. For as the Temperance movement gained steam, the future of the federal excise tax on alcohol looked decidedly shaky. After almost a hundred profitable years, after 1910 it seriously seemed as if the temperance movement would achieve its ultimate objective: a country-wide ban on alcohol. It is therefore worthwhile looking briefly here at the period of federal Prohibition—before the longer analysis in Chapter IX—from the vantage-point of federal excise tax on alcohol. US Prohibition and excise tax on alcohol 69 In 1917, on the eve of federal Prohibition, Washington was still drawing over 27% of its total tax revenue from excise on alcohol. Only four years later this source had almost entirely dried up: its share had dropped to a negligible 1.7%, where it stayed throughout the 1920s. The cause of this dramatic disappear ance of revenue was the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, by which federal Prohibition became a fact, and which having been ratified at lightning speed in 1920, entered into force throughout the United States.70 Federal Prohibition was the trophy won by an active and committed tem perance movement.71 At this stage—Prohibition is discussed at length in Chapter IX—I should like to answer two questions. Firstly, why was Washing ton prepared to relinquish the excise on alcohol, one of the foremost sources of national revenue? There was no question of giving it up in Britain or the Neth erlands, despite the activities of equally fanatical temperance movements. Sec ondly, how did the Federal Government compensate for this sudden loss of revenue? To answer these questions, we must first take stock of the various parties that were involved in this issue. Hamm rightly notes that—from the vantagepoint of excise, at any rate—two camps may be distinguished. One consisted of local administrators and politicians whose political fate—and position of power—depended to a large extent on the resoluteness they displayed in im plementing local anti-alcohol policies. In rural areas and state governments in 69 70

See eg. Maxwell 1946; Hu 1950; Doris 1963: Hamm 1992; Mittelman 1992. For the enforcement of the 18th Amendment a tax law was used—de Volstead Act, named after the man who introduced it. 71 For the composition and strategy of the US prohibitionist movement, the reader is referred to Chapter VII.


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particular, these administrators often owed their election to the block of votes represented by the popular temperance movement. For it was the consistent strategy of the temperance movement and its wide following, when deciding who to support, to select ‘dry’ candidates only, regardless of all other political issues.72 Once elected to office, the newcomers had little option but to curb alcohol consumption—within their powers—at local level. And so they did. In the course of the 19th and early 20th century a growing list of counties and at length entire states prohibited the sale and consumption of alcohol.73 There was something else that characterized these elected leaders: they, like other local administrators, had a traditional dislike of interference from the federal heart of power in Washington. Their suspicion of Washington was a significant reason why federal Prohibition had not been introduced earlier. After all, a nationwide ban of this kind would give Washington free rein to carry out more checks and controls throughout the country. Facing this camp of local administrators was the coalition formed by Washington and the alcohol industry, with interests diametrically opposed to theirs. The industry was obviously eager to protect its profits, and the Federal Government too had a significant financial interest, in the form of the excise on alcohol. Moreover, the election funds of many a presidential candidate had been pleasantly boosted by alcohol magnates. Finally, the industry provided employment, an argument that carried particular weight in times of economic malaise.74 Given their interests in promoting this booming industry, federal adminis trators were inclined to ignore the alcohol question and the activists who want ed to see federal Prohibition in place. Washington’s interest and energies were largely directed at that time towards foreign policy. Within the federal state apparatus—particularly within the tax department—most officials were un compromisingly opposed to a total federal Prohibition. Many tax officials, whose work it was to collect the excise taxes on alcohol, were afraid that they would lose their jobs.75 72 In addition, in the United States—far more than in Britain or the Netherlands—official appointments are made by way of (local) elections. 73 As early as 1900, 24% of the US population was living in a municipality in which public saloons were prohibited (Timberlake 1963). 74 This explains why one of the prohibitionists’ strategies—as early as the 1880s—was to abolish tax on alcohol altogether, in an effort to break the coalition between the Federal Government and the alcohol industry (Mittelman 1992:28) The same strategy was advocat ed by temperance activists in the Netherlands (see Nederlandsche Vereeniging tot Afschaff ing van Alcoholhoudende Dranken 1901). 75 Hamm 1992:13, 16.


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Towards the end of the 19th century, the local administrators’ camp— urged on by a committed following—was pervaded by a sense of frustration and an increasing thirst for action. The alcohol issue had occupied the minds of the American population, on and off, for almost a hundred years. Previously it had always been a local question, for which local solutions had been devised: each state was responsible for setting up its own regulatory system and each state cherished that autonomy. It was particularly states with little urbanization and industrialization that had introduced a formal ban on alcohol, because the local population had democratically arrived at this decision. In practice such a ‘local option’ meant that the production and commercial distribution of alco holic drinks were prohibited. Individual members of the public were however not forbidden to produce alcohol for their own consumption, nor were they forbidden to transport it or consume it. There was nothing to stop people im porting their drinks from a state where alcohol was freely available, and this was in fact common practice, with the merchandise even been sent through the mail. Nothing short of a Constitutional amendment would in principle suffice to put an end to this situation.76 The ease with which the ban on alcohol could be circumvented was a thorn in the side of the administrators of the dry states and the locally oriented prohi bitionists who supported them. But as long as local administrators continued to oppose every form of federal state intervention, it was impossible to bring about the necessary constitutional amendment. Only with local administrators at the helm who a) opposed alcohol—and the temperance lobby took care of that side of things—and who b) were not automatically averse to federal inter vention could the temperance movement unite their elected representatives of the dry states and compel Washington, through Congress, to pass the amend ment that would make federal Prohibition a fact. At the beginning of the 20th century, the administrators of the rural border states fulfilled these two conditions. This was in part related to the Zeitgeist, in which states were transferring all manner of supervisory tasks to the Federal Government. Richard Hofstadter has labelled this entire period (1890-1940) the Progressive Era, with Roosevelt’s New Deal policy its crowning and final achievement. The onslaught on alcohol was high on the agenda of Populist aims. It may be noted that the prohibitionists did not always find themselves in perfect accord with other reformist movements. ‘For Prohibition was a pseu

76

Maxwell 1946:320.


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do-reform, a pinched, parochial substitute for reform which had a widespread appeal to a certain type of crusading mind.’77 Because of the federal structure of the United States, the inequality of power between the central authorities and the individual states is less pronounced than in most other Western societies. An alliance of a substantial number of outlying and rural states, albeit of little economic significance, was able to enforce its will on Washington. The political structure of the United States made this possible—in contrast to Britain and the Netherlands—and the temperance movement exploited this scope to the full. The power of Washing ton and the industrial conurbations, where the majority of people opposed a general ban on alcohol, was too weak in domestic affairs to prevail over the combined will of local administrators and a committed social movement. An added factor—and this answers the second question—is that with the introduction of federal income tax in 1916, the central government was as sured of an alternative source of revenue if it had to do without the excise on alcohol. This made Washington far less dependent on the alcohol industry than before.78 The important share of government revenue accounted for by the excise on alcohol was not left unstated in the temperance movement’s campaigning. Both sides were well aware of the potential loss of revenue that was at stake. And they also knew that direct federal income tax—a burden largely to be borne by the middle classes—would be used to fill this structural gap in the federal budget. The prohibitionists, however, saw a rise in federal income tax as a transient phenomenon, as they reasoned that the disappearance of alcohol from society would soon eliminate crime and poverty. And once the country had been deliv ered from these social ills, the government would need far less income, and have less cause to meddle in the affairs of the individual states. This was the gist of the prohibitionists’ argument, and among their grassroots supporters, who had a traditional dread of high taxes and increased federal powers, it was a definite vote-winner.

77

Hofstadter 1955:289 It would be going too far here to give an accurate description of the place of the prohibitionist movement—fraught as it was with ambiguities—in the ‘pro gressive movement.’ See also Chapter VII. 78 Together with the Clayton Antitrust Act (1914), the Federal Trade Commission Act (1914) and the Keating-Owen Act (1916), this Federal Income Tax was a sign that local administrators were displaying less resistance to federal state intervention with domestic affairs This domestic orientation of the Federal Government reached its peak for this peri od, of course, with Roosevelt’s New Deal policies announced in 1933.


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Few of these hopes materialized, although where the tax burden was con cerned, the arguments of the prohibitionists initially seemed to be borne out. As a result of the economic growth of the United States in the 1920s, it proved possible to lower income tax several times, while government revenue never theless increased dramatically. But when the economy slumped at the end of the decade, the tide changed. Treasury minds instantly flew to excise on alco hol as a way of alleviating the pressure on direct taxation. In short, in the unrelenting rivalry between the states and the federal centre of power, Washington initially came off worse, as it was forced to give up an important source of revenue. In the medium term, however, the Federal Gov ernment gained power, as the excise was replaced by a direct federal tax obli gation with a far higher yield. In the process of national state formation in the United States, this was a major breakthrough. Federal income tax was a prize that Washington was never again to relinquish. Federal Prohibition lasted from 1920 until 1933, when it was repealed by the 21st Amendment to the Constitution. Immediately following repeal, the excise on alcohol was swiftly increased to over 10% of national revenue. The need to regain this source of tax revenue had been a key argument, alongside employment, in the campaign that culminated in the 21st Amendment. But the repeal of Federal Prohibition by no means rendered universal federal income tax obsolete. President Roosevelt needed both sources to finance his New Deal policies. Partly for this reason, excise on alcohol never again played such a prominent role in the United States as a source of federal revenue as it had in the period 1863-1919; income tax proved an altogether richer vein. The extra expenditure for the Second World War, however, was in part paid for by an increase in the excise on spirits.79 As a percentage of federal revenue, however, excise on alcohol dropped dramatically, as it did in Britain and the Nether lands. In 1965 it raised $3,689 in the United States—2% of the total federal tax revenue. By 1975 this percentage had declined still further, to just over 1%.80 The subject-matter of this chapter—the strikingly high proportion of the total government revenue of the Netherlands, Britain and the United States in the period 1860-1910 accounted for by tax on alcohol—is perhaps best sum marized in the figure below, in which these percentages are mapped out. The most conspicuous features of the graph are the synchronicity between the trends followed in the three countries, the peak between 1860 and 1910 and the sudden fall after 1910, when all three countries had introduced the new instru ment of general income tax.

79 80

Hu 1950:133.

OECD 1989:151-52.


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Excise on alcohol and federal revenue % 50

[115] 40

30

20

10

0 1830

1850

1870

The Netherlands

1890

Great Britain

1910

1930

1950

1970 1980

United States

Excise on alcohol as a percentage of the revenue of central government in Britain, the Netherlands and the United States, 1830-1980. This graph was composed using a variety of sources. Where the statistics provided by the indi vidual countries did not precisely correspond in terms of the period covered, estimates were made. Sources: Doris 1963; Hu 1950; Dutch Ministry of Fi nance annual statistics; OECD 1989; Wilson 1940.


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fig. 16. Advertisements for cocaine and opiates were still appearing in popular magazines as well as medical journals in the early 20th century


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Physicians as suppliers The great economic importance to Britain and the Netherlands of the intraAsian opium trade in the 19th century has already been discussed in Chapter IV. But another legal branch of the opium trade evolved in the course of the 19th century, involving the transport of smaller, but by no means negligible, opium shipments from the Levant and SouthEast Asia to Western Europe and the United States. In the case of the intra-Asian opium trade, the state monopolies described above disrupted the free interplay of supply and demand, but trade to Europe and the United States was initially unrestricted aside from the usual import duties. Here price mechanisms reigned supreme, and when opium cultivation intensified in the Levant and SouthEast Asia in the 19th century, prices fell. As the demand for opium soared, a variety of experiments were conducted with the aim of cultivating the poppies closer to the European market. In the period 1740 1870, for instance, there were countless attempts to cultivate the crop on British soil.1 And much later, in the early 20th century, new harvesting tech niques were tried out some in Western Europe the aim being to replace the labourintensive harvesting of opium as an intermediary stage in the process of morphine production with the mechanical extraction of morphine from the entire Papaver plant.2 There was a definite increase in the consumption of opiates both in Europe and the United States; the precise figures will be given below. This increase did not go unremarked by the public authorities. Certain types of consumption caused particular concern, such as the injudicious use of chlorodyne, morphine and laudanum. Acting on this concern, the governments of various countries introduced acts of parliament in the 19th century to regulate the production, distribution and consumption of opiates, which had initially been free from all constraints. Almost without exception, such acts were incorporated into the body of legislation on medicinal drugs, and were always national in scope. And although countries’ formal regulatory regimes for opiates had many sim ilar features, each country drew up its legislation independently. There is an essential difference here between these earlier modes of regulation and the later formal regulatory regime for the opium trade, which, as we have seen in 1 2

Berridge and Edwards:1981:11-17; Harding 1988:8.

Addens 1938:5-6.


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Chapter IV, was bestowed and imposed on the various countries of the world from above. The medical profession played a key role in the establishment of the national regulations on opiates that were introduced in the 19th century. Pharma cists and medical practitioners in Britain and the Netherlands, and later in the United States, successfully claimed a monopoly on the prescription, prepara tion and sale of these drugs. This chapter will discuss the origins of these na tional formal regulatory regimes for opiates as they arose independently from one another, in the latter half of the 19th century in Britain and the Nether lands, and somewhat later in the United States. While opium remained a scarce and exotic commodity in Western socie ties and remained so until the end of the 18th century it was chiefly supplied by physicians, who prescribed it for medical reasons. Their analgesic proper ties made opiumcontaining drugs ideal remedies for all manner of ailments. Opium was the ‘universal panacea,’ remarks Geoffrey Harding, in a discussion of this traditional use by medical practitioners.3 New medicines with which medical practitioners and pharmacists in Europe and the United States estab lished their reputation (and made their fortune) very often had opiates as their main ingredients. Laudanum, a solution of opium in alcohol, was a popular concoction that had been invented (by Paracelsus) as early as the 15th century. From Basel, one of the many towns in which he stayed, laudanum spread throughout Europe, and in the 18th century it figured as one of the standard items on the medical supplies list used by ships of the Dutch East Indies Company.4 Another common opiate in the 18th century was papaver syrup, prescribed to induce sleep in children.5 Given the considerable turnover and popularity of this drug, however, it was almost certainly consumed by adults too. The opium used to prepare opiumcontaining medicinal drugs was not always imported. As trade links with Asia Minor and the Levant were poor, opium supplies were unreliable, and European pharmacists sometimes grew their own Papaver somniferum plants to extract the ingredients needed for medicine. In the United States too, the main informal use of opium the statutebooks had nothing to say about it was in medical practice.6 David Courtwright, dis

3

Harding 1988:4.

Wittop Koning 1986:128.

Bosman-Jelgersma 1979:171-72.

This applied, at any rate, to the use of opiates by Americans of European origin: Chi

nese immigrants smoked oipium recreationally (see Chapter 4). These two opium markets were strictly separated. This is clear from the difference in import duties for instance, smoking opium being liable to a far higher rate than medicinal opium. 4 5 6


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cussing the medicinal use of opium in the United States in the first half of the 19th century, writes: ‘By 1834 it was ranked as the single most widely pre scribed item in the materia medica.’7 But as the supply of opium on the Western markets grew during the 19th century, medical practitioners gradually lost their traditional, informal monop oly on the preparation and prescription of opiumcontaining substances. Opium became more readily available and knowledge about its effects spread to those outside the medical profession. In the 19th century in particular, more and more opiumcontaining preparations found their way into the home outside medical channnels. Patent remedies such as Dover’s Powder, Godfrey’s Cor dial and Mrs Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, which were especially for children and even chlorodine, a registered pharmaceutical remedy achieved both fame and notoriety as members of the assortment of opiumcontaining drugs used in the 19th century.8 These preparations were primarily intended to meet the huge demand for affordable drugs by practitioners of popular medicine and by quacks. For even people unable to afford qualified physicians took substantial quantities of opiates in the first half of the 19th century, whether as selfmedica tion or on the informal advice of unqualified medicine men. Then there were the itinerant ‘miracle doctors’ exalting the virtues of the opiates they offered for sale and demonstrating their wondrous properties above all, in the realm of pain relief. Sometimes the informal use of an opiumcontaining drug would enter pop ular medicine from overseas. A good example is Dr Bleeker’s potion, or ‘Bleeker’s drops’ as they were called. This potent mixture, which contained opium wine, peppermint oil and ether with methylated spirits, was originally a Javanese home remedy for cholera. So when a cholera epidemic broke out in the Netherlands in 1866 to which the medical establishment of the time had no answer some local administrators saw fit to distribute Bleeker’s drops to their fellow villagers. The response of one contemporary, an authoritative medical officer (the medical inspector for the provinces of Overijssel and Drenthe) is illustrative of the fervour with which medical practitioners protected their monopoly of the distribution of opium: ‘On Java, opium is a very common home remedy in general use, and that may perhaps be all well and good; but here, where it may, at the right time and in the right place, and in the hands of a medical practitioner, be a superb medicinal drug, in the hands of ordinary people it must without a doubt be regarded as an extremely dangerous home remedy!’9 7 8 9

Courtwright 1982:45.

Berridge and Edwards 1987:xix.

Geneeskundig Staatstoezigt 1865-1866:273. Quoted in Bierman 1988:87.


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Popular medicine, with its home remedies and miracle cures, was an area that the medical establishment preferred to give a wide berth. But it also repre sented a market that they were loath to forego. This ambivalence blurred the distinction between official and popular medicine. ‘There was no clear divid ing line in the first half of the [19th] century between strictly ‘medical’ reme dies and those used in selfmedication, so patent medicines were often used in medical practice, or medical men made their own semipatent remedies.’10 Medical practitioners would also sometimes purchase the instructions to make up a secret remedy and use the preparation to treat their patients. Some of these patent remedies acquired an international market, but most were sold exclu sively in one country or even in a particular region. Opiumcontaining preparations were immensely popular in the 19th centu ry, especially among the lower classes. Their relatively low price made it pos sible to market them among all sections of the population. This is clear from the numbers and nature of the retailers who sold them. According to an esti mate made by Virginia Berridge, in the mid19th century Britain had between 16,000 and 25,000 opiate retailers: from chemists and grocers to a miscellany of tradesmen. In the Lancashire town of Preston, those who earned a little extra money selling opiates, around 1865, included a shoemaker, a basket maker, a tailor, a factory operative and a baker.11 On the basis of the figures for opium imports, Berridge has calculated opi um consumption levels for Britain in the 19th century. They are very high. In 1827 the weight of opium consumed per head of the population was 600 mg, and by 1859 average annual consumption had risen to 1,410 mg.12 These fig ures were not evenly distributed among the population: agricultural labourers from certain areas, such as the marshy Fens, consumed above average levels of opium preparations. The status and sales of opium preparations in the United States followed a similar pattern in the United States, where their use in established medical practice was every bit as common as in Britain. ‘Opium remained a popular therapeutic agent throughout the first half of the 19th century. When Alexander Hamilton lay dying, a bullet lodged in his shattered spine, it was for the lauda num bottle that his physician instinctively reached to alleviate his patient’s suffering.’13 But opiates also sold well outside the doctor’s surgery, as the main ingredients of patent medicines. In his study Dark Paradise David Courtwright describes the early history of Scotch Oats Essence, one of the many 10 11 12 13



Berridge 1978:363.



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opiumcontaining patent remedies of the day. ‘One day the originator of this remedy, a young man with an eye on the main chance, asked his physician in an offhand manner how he would prepare a successful patent medicine. ‘Oh well,’ replied the doctor, ‘make the basis whiskey; put in some opiate; disguise the whole with a bitter tincture; get highsounding testimonials or indorsements, and especially give it an attractive, ‘taking’ name. Then extensively advertise it from ‘Dan to Beersheba’ and the thing is done.’ The young man, evidently impressed with the simplicity of the scheme, did precisely that. Scotch Oats Essence enjoyed a successful, if devastating, career as a nerve tonic, until someone analysed the solution and announced that it contained morphine.’14 Countless remedies like Scotch Oats Essence, containing opium or morphine, were readily available to the public. When we look at overall opium consumption in the United States during the 19th century, the picture that emerges is similar to that for Britain. Courtwright has calculated annual opium consumption in the US for the period 1846-1850, on the basis of import figures, and arrives at a figure of 1,036 mg per head of the population.15 No quantitative data are available for the Netherlands, to my knowledge, concerning opium consumption in the 19th century. There is however some evidence to suggest that, just as in Britain and the United States, a wide range of opiumcontaining patent remedies were available there. The ‘patent reme dies industry’ targeted the lower classes in particular, and played a leading role in popular medicine. This is clear from the advertisments of these remedies that appeared in daily newspapers. The same advertisements, it should be said, were published in medical journals: in the Netherlands too, it appears, the medical establishment had not yet broken away entirely from the informal marketplace with its myriad wonder cures.16 A pleasant sense of intoxication which apparently also possessed medici nal value, as it provided pain relief for a small amount of money. This, in a nutshell, is the formula that explains the immense demand for opiates among factory workers and agricultural labourers. Opiates went some way towards dulling the recollection of the pain and exhaustion that resulted from heavy toil, it helped to induce sleep, and was particularly useful as a remedy to sup press coughing. On top of this, opiates helped to pacify children, enabling their mothers to carry on their work in the factory or on the land. 14 15

Courtwright 1982:57. The spread of this medical/paramedical form of opium consumption in the United States, between 1840 and 1850, was completely separate from the use of smoking opium by Chinese immigrants (as described in Chapter IV) which was a later development; see Courtwright 1982:21. 16 De Kort 1988. See also Bierman 1988.


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fig. 20. Opiates were often used to pacify small children when mothers went out to work


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Karl Marx has an illuminating footnote on this subject: ‘During the cotton crisis caused by the American Civil War, Dr. Edward Smith was sent by the English government to Lancashire, Cheshire and other places to report on the state of health of the cotton operatives. He reported that from a hygienic point of view, and apart from the banishment of the operatives from the factory at mosphere, the crisis had several advantages. The women now had sufficient leisure to give their infants the breast, instead of poisoning them with “Godfrey’s Cordial” (an opiate).’17 This passage reveals the origins of Marx’s fa mous definition of religion as ‘the opium of the people.’ Yet the popularity of pills, powders and potions containing opium, around 1850, was far from being an exclusively lowerclass phenomenon. (The smok ing of opium, the usual mode of consumption in China, was virtually unknown in Britain, the Netherlands and the United States, except among Chinese trav ellers or immigrants). Prosperous citizens too availed themselves of opiumcontaining remedies which in their case were generally prescribed by quali fied physicians. Many of them were men of literature, who soon discovered that opium had more to offer than mere pain relief in disease and discomfort. Samuel Col eridge and Thomas de Quincey in England, Charles Baudelaire in France, Edgar Allen Poe in the United States, Willem Bilderdijk and Francois Haverschmidt (a pharmacist’s son!) in the Netherlands they all used the intoxication of opium to enhance their artistic work. Several of them sang its praises, al though a certain ambivalence became apparent when its less attractive quali ties impinged on them. ‘Woe to those who abuse it! This substance so drastic / in effect, so formidable, so devastating to strength and spirit!’18 An artistic panegyric of this kind appealed to the imagination of others, who took to imi tating these artists in their use of opiates, sometimes with fatal consequences.19 All in all, the consumption of opiates, in both Britain and the United States, was a conspicuous phenomenon in the first half of the 19th century. And the situation in the Netherlands is unlikely to have been very different. This widespread use of opiates was not accompanied by any form of statutory regulation. In a few cases, municipal authorities restricted consumption20, but 17 18 19

Marx 1975:294. Willem Bilderdijk, quoted in Büch 1981:13-14. See also De Kort 1988:71-85. In his biography of De Quincey, Grevel Lindop writes: ‘Not all the influence of the Confessions, however, was literary. In 1823 a young man died from an overdose of opium. It appeared that he had been experimenting with the drug, and at the inquest a doctor testi fied that there had lately been an alarming increase in the number of such cases, “in conse quence of a little book that has been published by a man of literature, which recites many extraordinary cases of taking opium”’ (Lindop 1981:248). 20 Bosman-Jelgersma 1979:169-70.


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for those who wanted them, opiates were inexpensive and easily obtainable. And since opium and related substances was frequently used as a raw ingredi ent in the patent remedy industry, people were sometimes quite unaware that they were consuming it. The origins of national medical regimes for opiates Around the mid19th century, the free market in opiates was gradually subject ed to restrictions. The Netherlands and Britain were first to introduce con straints, but the United States soon followed suit. Marx has another pertinent comment in this regard. He distinguishes the three elements on which the so cial unease about opiates centered in Britain: ‘ In the agricultural as well as the factory districts of England the consumption of opium among adult workers, both male and female, is extending daily. ‘To push the sale of opiate.....is the great aim of some enterprising wholesale merchants. By druggists it is consid ered the leading article’. Infants that received opiates ‘shrank up into little old men’, of ‘wizened like little monkeys’. We see here how India and China have taken their revenge on England.21 Hence a variety of factors the irresponsible and injudicious use of opium by workers and their children, the explosive growth of the retail trade in opiates, and the reviled colonial opium policy combined to arouse public indignation: at length, the calls for government in tervention no longer fell on deaf ears. The medical profession, not exactly a disinterested party, was in the vanguard of the formalizers of the regulatory regime for opiates: that is to say, as far as the campaign to curb the irresponsi ble consumption of opium by workers and their children was concerned, and the clampdown on the burgeoning retail trade. The denunciation of the coloni al opium trade, on the other hand, was a cause largely associated with organi zations such as the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, and its consideration was deferred. In the various countries of the Western world a coalition of physicians and pharmacists claimed a nationwide monopoly on the preparation, description and retail sale of opiates. Given the high levels of consumption, considerable economic interests were at stake. The medical professions eventually secured this coveted monopoly, which included finan cial support from the state. In the Netherlands, the turning point was the pass ing of the Preparation of Medicines Act 1865. A few years later Britain passed similar legislation in its 1868 Pharmacy Act. In the United States things moved a little more slowly: the Pure Food And Drug Act was not introduced until 1906. Each of these national laws made the preparation, prescription, and 21

Marx 1975:298.


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distribution of the majority of opiates the exclusive prerogative of medical practitioners and pharmacists. The hypothesis advanced in the present chapter is that the formal, medical regulation of the supply and management of opiates was a major determining factor in the professionalization of these medical groups in the countries concerned.22 The medical regulation of opiates in England The professionalisation of the medical occupations in England was largely completed in the nineteenth century. Physicians moved up the social ladder, partly by making their profession a protected one and thus sealing it off from outsiders. Legislation was an indispensable part of this process, now at supralocal—i.e. national—level. The passing of this legislation was far from auto matic. It was only by achieving cohesion and solidarity among their ranks that the medical professions were able to compel the state to introduce laws that besides regulating the professions also endowed them with greater legitimacy. That ‘sanction from above’ should be expected from the national state rath er than city or province was an entirely new development. Previously, when physicians had collectively belonged to guilds, the laws on medicine differed from one city to the next. But during the 19th century, as both trade and indus try and the orientation of professional groups focused increasingly on the na tional state, the need for a national system of regulation came to be felt more keenly. And this in turn was intimately bound up with state formation, as de scribed in chapter V. A certain degree of state formation and centralization were therefore enabling conditions for the professionalisation of (among oth ers) the medical profession.23 In England, a coalition of physicians and pharmacists made active efforts to achieve a statutory monopoly on the production and distribution of opiates. This was one of the substantive aspects of their professionalization. They ar gued that the free consumption of opiates which they believed was getting completely out of hand was part of a far broader social issue, namely the entire array of concerns of the middle classes about public health, particularly the alarming lifestyle of the urban underclasses, referred to in the Netherlands as the ‘social question.’

22

In the literature on theories of professionalization, three key criteria are given for as sessing the level of professionalization achieved by a particular occupational group: a man date from above, autonomy within the group itself, and the (one-sided) dependency of their clientele; see Freidson 1986. 23 Parry and Parry 1976:107.


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Thus under the auspices of the Public Health Movement24, the consump tion of opiates without medical intervention became identified within a rela tively brief period of time as a social problem. The existing free trade in opiates constituted a threat to public health or so went the argument of the medical lobby for the strict statutory regulation of opiates. And the evidence that they advanced in support of this view was entirely convincing: they could point to an alarming number of deaths from overdoses, especially among chil dren and especially from the use of laudanum. In the five years prior to the 1868 Pharmacy Act, an average of 125 ‘narcotic deaths’ were registered annu ally in Britain. Almost half of these involved children between the ages of one and four. It was this child mortality among lowerclass children, above all, that made opiates increasingly into a public health issue. Berridge and Edwards summarize this gradual shift of public opinion as follows: ‘Case histories in the medical journals, the evidence of the famous inquires into social condi tions in the 1840s and 1850s and those into the sale of poisons and pharmaceu tical organization in the 1850s and 1860s established opium as a public health problem.’25 It was far from a foregone conclusion that physicians and pharmacists should feel a sense of mutual solidarity. For although, where the regulation of opiates was concerned, they closed ranks against outsiders in their campaign against the free market in opiates, their interests in other respects were sharply divided, and a clear hierarchy was visible between them. The way in which the 1868 Pharmacy Act came into being expressed both the mutual solidarity and the clash of interests. The origins of this Act also demonstrates the role played by opiates in the professionalisation of these medical groups. In the first half of the 19th century, medical practice in England consisted of three separate, yet, given the nature of their activities, intimately intercon nected, professional groups. On the highest rung of the ladder stood the physi cians their authority was undisputed and was largely based on education and training. Medical practitioners, united in Britain in the Royal College of Physi cians, identified with scholarship and preferred not to soil their hands at work. One rung below were the surgeons, represented by the Royal College of Sur geons. Despite this noblesounding professional association, they were viewed primarily as superior craftsmen rather than scientists: they did the dirty work.26 Pharmacists made up the third tier although in Britain they were not really 24

The Public Health Movement was a wideranging campaign waged in the mid-19th century for improvements in public health, with physicians in the vanguard. 25 Berridge and Edwards 1987:77 and tables 3 and 4. 26 The surgeons will be left out of consideration here, as they had little to do with the trade in medicines.


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counted among the medical classes. Pharmacists or apothecaries were initial ly joined together in the Society of Apothecaries, a professional association that was obliged to do without royal recognition, and in which they jostled with druggists and grocers. Despite their dogged efforts to distinguish them selves from the rest, and to rise above the level of ordinary shopkeepers, pharmacists were often seen certainly by physicians, who rightly saw them as a threat to their own trade in medicine as vulgar shopkeepers. The variegated assortment of wares they sold certainly justified this qualification. At the beginning of the 19th century, then, pharmacists, druggists and gro cers constituted a single category in Britain. But an elite among the pharma cists wanted to apply themselves to the preparation and distribution of medi cines. For them in particular, there was a great deal at stake in the mid19th century, when it became clear that the unchecked trade in opiates given the activities of the Public Health Movement would soon be a thing of the past. Their first concern was to gain admission to the medical professions that had already established themselves: physicians and surgeons. In order to create a lower threshold for their own professional group, the leading pharmacists es tablished a new professional association in 1841: the Pharmaceutical Society. In this way, an elite of persons concerning themselves with the preparation or sale of medicine sought to attach themselves to the more established and rec ognized professions of physicians and surgeons. It was a successful strategy. The new professional association of qualified sellers of medicine achieved of ficial recognition with the 1852 Pharmacy Act. This Act gave the Pharmaceu tical Society the official medical seal of approval it had sought. Pharmacists, newcomers or latecomers that they were, occupied a subordi nate position within the medical profession compared to physicians. For in stance, admission to the Pharmaceutical Society was subject to requirements that were initially determined solely by physicians; in other words, pharma cists had no autonomy over their own profession. And although the rival organ ization, the United Society of Pharmacists and Druggists (established in 1860 61) enjoyed lower social status, these shopkeepers posed a genuine economic threat to the pharmacists. Pharmacists achieved a major breakthrough with the 1868 Pharmacy Act. This Act imposed restrictions on the free retail trade in certain medicines and toxic substances. Among its provisions was a schedule listing two types of substances that could henceforth be sold only by physicians and pharmacists. List 1 contained highly toxic substances such as arsenic, cyanide and potassi um. List 2 contained opiates together with a number of other substances. A physician or pharmacist could sell a substance appearing on list 1 only to an adult known to him. Furthermore, he was obliged to register the sale and to note his own name and address on the packaging, as well as specifying the


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precise toxic substance contained. Where the substances on list 2 were con cerned, only the labelling obligation applied. The economic competition between physicians and pharmacists emerged clearly when the trade in opiates was regulated in the 1868 Pharmacy Act. Physicians and representatives of the Public Health Movement favoured strict er restrictions, while pharmacists did their utmost to prevent their exclusion from the selling of opiates.27 In this, they were successful. On the one hand, the 1868 Pharmacy Act did not give pharmacists a monopoly on the sale of opi ates. Physicians retained this right as a foregone conclusion; for them, selling medicine in addition to medical consultations was a bitter necessity, given that this was their major source of income.28 But neither were the pharmacists ex cluded; things might have worked out much worse for them. They succeeded in preventing opiates being supplied on prescription only. As long as a pharma cist refrained from giving medical advice, he was permitted to continue selling medicine, including opiates, without further restriction. Pharmacists’ chief victory was over the United Society of Chemists and Druggists. For having allied themselves with the physicians, pharmacists had managed to ensure that these shopkeepers were henceforth forbidden by law to sell the substances enumerated on lists 1 and 2. Alongside the existing differ ence in status, the 1868 Pharmacy Act thus finally introduced a differentiation in business terms between pharmacists on the one hand and druggists and gro cers on the other. The 1868 Pharmacy Act thus took the first step towards a more formal medical regulatory regime for the trade in medicine in Britain and more spe cifically, the retail trade in opiates. Physicians and pharmacists were hence forth designated by law the state’s official curators in the sale of opiates. What emerged more clearly with this legislation than before was the distinction be tween medical consultations, which were defined emphatically as the province of physicians, and the retail sales of medicines, which came to be viewed more as the domain of pharmacists. Nonetheless, this new legislation did not deprive druggists, grocers and other retailers of opiumcontaining patent remedies of their trade overnight. This was a very gradual development; it was not until the passing of the Patent Medicine Bill of 1884 that the unrestricted sale of opiumcontaining patent remedies was definitively consigned to the past. And in the case of the popular substance chlorodyne a mixture of opium and chloroform unrestricted sales were not outlawed until the late 1890s. This said, the 1868 Pharmacy Act sig 27 28

Berridge and Edwards 1987:119. In Britain, 90% of prescribed medicines, until 1913, were supplied by the prescribing physicians themselves; see Crellin 1967:215-27.


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nalled the beginning of a development in Britain that would eventually elimi nate the former free trade in opiates and place it under the exclusive statutory supervision of physicians and pharmacists. This formal medical regime for opiates entered into force throughout Britain though not in the colonies! while the medical occupations was undergoing rapid professionalization, and was in part an expression of their success in this respect. The impact of the 1868 Pharmacy Act on public health was immediately visible. Drug related mortalities fell from 140 in 1868 to 100 the following year. The sharpest drop in consumption was in the fatal administration to children.29 The medical professions retained absolute control over the supply of opi ates in Britain well into the 20th century. But in the 1920s they were compelled by the new international opium conventions to surrender something of this exclusivity. The Dangerous Drugs Act of 1920 (tightened up in 1923) required physicians henceforth to keep accurate records of all the opiates and other narcotics they supplied. The initial draft of this legislation even went so far as to forbid physicians to prescribe narcotics for themselves. But this clause was fiercely opposed as a gross infringement of their autonomy (and privacy) and was dropped from the bill.30 The Dangerous Drugs Act also conferred certain advantages on physicians to the detriment of pharmacists. For until 1920 pharmacists were permitted to supply opiates to their customers without requiring a prescription. This prac tice was now outlawed. Opiates (and other narcotics) were now obtainable only directly from physicians or on prescription from pharmacists. This British regulatory regime for opiates was dominated by formal medi cal provisions because physicians had achieved an absolute ascendancy in this domain. Supervision by the legislature was lowkey and confined to an obliga tion to keep proper records. This regime remained in place until 1968, when the regulation of opiates was subjected to further restrictions by the ‘clinic system.’ This was a reaction to the increased use of opiates surreptitiously withdrawn from the medical circuit. Individual physicians with the exception of a small number of license holders attached to special clinics lost the right to prescribe opiates for their patients.31

29

There was not only a drop in absolute figures, but also a relative decline per million inhabitants. Although the number of ‘narcotic deaths’ fluctuated somewhat in the period 1870-1910, there was undeniably a downward trend. It is striking, however, that there was an increase in the proportion of suicides in which the assistance of narcotics was enlisted; see Berridge and Edwards 1987: tables 3 and 4. 30 Parssinen 1983:139. 31 See also Chapter VIII.


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The medical regulation of opiates in the Netherlands

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In the Netherlands too, the process of state formation which meant a shift in the balance of power from local authorities to those of the state was at the root of the professionalization of pharmacists and physicians. Wittop Koning, in his Compendium voor de Geschiedenis van de Pharmacie van Nederland, rightly divides the period following the Middle Ages into a ‘local period’ (from about 1500 until about 1800) when local administrators regulated the rights and ob ligations of pharmacists and physicians, and a ‘national period’ (after 1800) when medical rights and obligations were laid down in statutory laws with nationwide application. This distinction shows clearly that the professionaliza tion of pharmacists (and physicians) in modern Western societies was depend ent upon the far more general process of state formation32. The medicalization of the opiate regime in the Netherlands followed roughly the same pattern as in Britain, and took place around the same time. Nevertheless, two conspicuous distinctions may be discerned. First, interven tion at the level of central government was an earlier and more intense devel opment in the Netherlands, probably because of the country’s Napoleonic her itage. The first piece of legislation regulating state supervision of the medical profession dates from as early as 1818. This Act defined pharmacy as a lower category of medicine: its practitioners were medical assistants who did not require a university degree33. The second striking difference with Britain was that Dutch pharmacists had a stronger position relative to physicians than their British counterparts. Indeed, they established their own national professional association before the doctors: the Dutch Society for the Advancement of Pharmacy was founded in 1842, while the Medical Association did not come into existence for another seven years. Furthermore, in terms of autonomy and selfregulation—in mat ters relating to training and admission requirements—Dutch pharmacists were better off than their British counterparts. Yet these differences did not affect the strategy pursued: in the Netherlands too it was an alliance of physicians and pharmacists that endeavoured to distin guish themselves clearly through legislation from druggists and grocers. At the same time that state supervision of medical facilities in the Netherlands was increasing—previously the supervision of physicians and pharmacists had been the responsibility of city councils34—this coalition of physicians and

32

Wittop Koning 1986:223.

Bierman 1988.

For the practice of municipalities supervising the work of pharmacists, see Bosman-

Jelgersma 1979; Wittop Koning 1988; and Bierman 1988. 33 34


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pharmacists contrived to obtain a monopoly on the preparation, prescription and sale of opiates, hence manifesting themselves as the curators or managers of opiates. Article 6 of the Instructions to Pharmacists in the Kingdom of the Nether lands (1818) reads: ‘Pharmacists shall be required to store toxic substances and narcotic agents, and in particular arsenicum album, rat poison; arsenicum nigrum, [...] murias hydrargyri [...], mercurius sublimatus corrosivus and opi um, in a secure and locked place, the key to which may be entrusted to noone, and to ensure that the paper, box or glass in which it is delivered is properly closed and sealed, and that the toxic substance, together with the words ‘dan gerous poison’ is clearly specified on this packaging.’ This national legislation by no means gave pharmacists (or physicians) the exclusivity they would have preferred in retail sales of opium. Others too were free to prepare and sell the drug. The Preparation of Medicines Act 1865, mentioned above, went a step further. This act did lay the legal foundations for a medical monopoly on the preparation and retail sale of opiates. As in Britain, however, the trade in med icine followed a capricious course. Druggists and grocers fiercely resisted the idea of having to surrender their right to sell opiumcontaining patent remedies. Aside from this, the law contained the far from consistent provision that toxic substances and medicines appearing in its schedule C—and this included opiates—could be sold in small quantities only by pharmacists and physicians, whereas bulk sales of these substances were also permissible by druggists35. The laws on the preparation of medicines were amended in 1876 and 1878. These amendments facilitated the professionalization of the pharmacists as a group, and ensured that in the Netherlands too a formal medical regime be came ever more markedly the basis for the control of opiate consumption. The exclusive rights to trade in opiates was a minor but essential building block that enabled the Dutch pharmacists gradually to elevate themselves above druggists and grocers. But pharmacists were in turn obliged to make a commercial concession: their trivial non medical merchandise was henceforth taboo. The indignation this aroused is evident in a pharmacist’s letter to the Pharmaceutisch Weekblad in 1867. Having observed that ‘the efforts to elevate the pharmacist’s profes sion are universally welcomed’ he goes on to complain that certain pharma cists, despite all the legislation, continue to sell all manner of other goods: shoe polish, blue and lamp oil; and will therefore ‘remain certified grocers forever.36’ 35 36

De Kort 1988:44-48.

Bierman 1988:46-47.


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By the last two decades of the 19th century pharmacists had definitely and permanently broken away from the ordinary run of shopkeepers. Their exclu sive hold on the preparation and distribution of opiates in this country too was both a consequence of professionalization and a factor promoting it. In the 20th century the statutory provisions dating from the previous centu ry on the preparation, prescription and distribution of opiates were incorporat ed into the 1919 Opium Act and later into the 1928 Opium Act. Numerous small amendments have been introduced since then. But the initiative for these amendments did not lie with national bodies representing the medical profes sion; nor were they occasioned by problems encountered with domestic opiate consumption. The activists here were the opponents of colonial trade, in this case China and the United States. This meant that two separate issues—colonial politics and the supervision of medical practice—came to be included in a single piece of legislation. In this way, part of the comprehensive legislation covering medical facilities acquired a definite international dimension. This is explicit in the introduction to the text of this Act, which observes that ‘the 1928 Opium Act thanks its existence primarily to considerations relating to interna tional interests.’37 This did not affect the monopoly enjoyed by physicians on the prescription of opiates or that of pharmacists on their preparation and distribution. It is still the case today that physicians are entitled to prescribe opiates, while pharma cists possess the exclusive right to prepare and supply these substances, pro vided they are intended for a medical purpose and in some situations, especial ly in the case of patients whose condition is terminal, this is a frequent occurrence. The medical regulation of opiates in the United States In the United States, opium was supplied in three separate ‘domains’ in the 19th century. There were qualified physicians who prescribed opiates—and later morphine—for their patients. (And just as in Europe, it was primarily the welltodo who could afford to consult a physician). Secondly there was the market of patent (or secret) remedies such as Scotch Oats, which were for sale everywhere outside the control of medical practitioners or pharmacists: they were obtainable from general stores and itinerant quacks. These were used primarily by the lower classes of white immigrants. Thirdly, there was the sup ply of smoking opium for Chinese immigrants. It is particularly the first two of these domains which are of importance in the present context.

37

Schuurmans & Jordens 1977:587.


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The rivalry between American doctors and pharmacists was little different from that in the two European countries that have been considered. Their com mon commercial interests too were abundantly clear.38 Nevertheless, it took much longer in the United States for any comprehensive federal legislation to be introduced that would regulate the state supervision of medical facilities. Some states and local communities, however, formalized the medical regula tion of opiates in regional laws. But legislation of this kind, given its limited scope, was relatively ineffective.39 In the United States, then, the formal medical regulation of opiates, in the form of federal legislation, took far longer than in Britain or the Netherlands. And although there is no attempt to explain this in the literature—comparative research in this field is scarce—I am inclined to ascribe it once again (see the chapter on taxation) to the American process of—national—state formation, which was a fairly late development, and to the federal nature of the United States. Another contributory factor, perhaps, is the fact that medical practition ers and pharmacists did not enjoy the same status in the United States of the late 19th century as in Europe.40 Although it is true that the professional asso ciation of physicians, the American Medical Association, was founded as early as 1846 (and that of pharmacists, the American Pharmaceutical Association, in 1852)—which was scarcely later than in Britain or the Netherlands—the fed eral bodies from which these associations derived their raison d’être and au thority were still relatively powerless at that time. In comparison with Britain and the Netherlands, the federal authorities in the United States had consider ably less scope to intervene in domestic affairs of this kind. This reduced the scope of professional associations to take successful action—i.e. culminating in federal legislation—to protect themselves from potential competition and to claim a monopoly for certain services. In his study of the professionalization of the medical occupations in the United States, Paul Starr summarizes the social position of these groups in the 19th century as follows: ‘In the nineteenth century, the medical profession was generally weak, divided, insecure in its status and its income, unable to control entry into practice or to raise the standards of medical education.’41 This would not change dramatically until the 20th century. Physicians and related profes

38

Musto 1987:14-21. According to Musto these laws were introduced primarily in states and communities in which the production of opiates was a topical issue; see Musto 1987:91. 40 But because this status derived in part from formal recognition by a public authority, this additional reason was intimately bound up with the characteristic process of (national) state formation in the US. 41 Starr 1982:7-8. 39


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sions would eventually grow to become influential people who enjoyed excep tionally high social status.42 The 19thcentury consumption of opiates in the United States, while displaying certain similarities with Britain, also differed from it in several essen tial respects. For instance, after 1850 there was a clearly defined Chinese pop ulation group that consumed smoking opium for recreational purposes—a phenomenon virtually unknown in Britain and the Netherlands. Another im portant difference was that in the United States opiates were used far less fre quently to pacify small children. A plausible explanation has been advanced for this in the literature. During the early industrial period in Britain the wom en from the lower classes had flocked to the factories. These mothers relied on child minders, who were overgenerous with the bottle of laudanum (or what ever other opiumobtaining solution was available) to pacify the children en trusted to their care. American mothers, on the other hand, generally took in work to do at home during the 19th century, so that they had no need to leave their children elsewhere, and were less likely to be compelled to rely on opium-containing and sleep-inducing preparations.43 As a result, the abuse of opiates—that is to say their consumption without the medical stamp of approval—did not rank high on the political agenda during the debate on public health and the lifestyle of the lower classes. Americans were far more worried about alcohol abuse. And this may well partly explain why legislation on opi ates took longer to arrive in the United States than in Britain. All in all, it was not until 1906 that federal legislation was passed in the United States that went some way towards restricting the free sale of opiates. The Pure Food and Drug Act compelled manufacturers of opium obtaining patent remedies to specify the contents of their product on the outside of the packaging. By then, opiates and morphine in particular had already acquired a bad name among the general public, so that sales of patent remedies contain ing them immediately slumped. Another new restriction was the designation of pharmacists as the only persons licensed by law to retail opiates. In 1914—in other words, less than 10 years after the passing of the Pure Food and Drug Act, with the Smoking Opium Exclusion Act as an intermedi ary stage (1909)—the provision of the Pure Food and Drug Act that dealt with opiates and a number of other intoxicants was tightened up in the federal Har rison Act. Under this Act, pharmacists, who had been the lawful retailers of 42

This is apparent, for instance, from the membership of the American Medical Associ ation, which rose from 8,500 in 1900 to 36,000 in 1913 and 44,000 in 1920 (Musto 1987:56). 43 Parssinen 1983:207. Yet this phenomenon did manifest itself in the United States, as is clear from a footnote of Marx, quoted above in this chapter (Marx 1975:294, note 120).


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opiates since 1906, were henceforth required to register their trade in opiates and certain other goods. Physicians were restricted by the Harrison Act as well as pharmacists; they lost their power to decide freely whether to prescribe opi ates. This only became truly apparent in 1919, however, when the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the Harrison Act to mean that physicians were no longer permitted to prescribe daily maintenance doses of opiates to addicts, these being mainly morphine addicts.44 Medical professionals thus lost the power to dispose freely of opiates, a monopoly they had only secured a short while ago, with the introduction of the Pure Food and Drug Act. From this time on, the centre of gravity of the formal regulatory regime for opiates shifted towards the more repressive instruments in the hands of the federal state appa ratus: the police and justice systems.45 Medical practitioners understandably looked askance at the move to im pose more repressive federal intervention in their affairs. That the Harrison Act was nevertheless passed had everything to do with the American crusade against the colonial opium trade.46 Morphine and the hypodermic syringe Two things in particular intensified the formal medicalization of the regulatory regime for opiates in the latter half of the 19th century: first, the isolation of the powerful opiate morphine (at the beginning of the 19th century) and second, the popularization among physicians of a new technique of medical adminis tration: the hypodermic syringe. Almost immediately after the morphine purification technique had been mastered, medical practitioners and pharmacists succeeded in gaining exclu sive control over the drug. The discovery of morphine was the product of a branch of science that was undergoing immensely rapid development at this time: the medical line of applied chemistry, from which the pharmaceutical industry would emerge in the 20th century. Morphine was the first of a group of compounds which became available in purified form with the advent of modern chemistry. Within a short space of time, a variety of other alkaloids were isolated, including narcotine, strychnine and quinine.

44 45

Webb et al. versus the United States (Musto 1987:132). In 1916 there were 1,900 convictions under the Harrison Act. In 1920 the number rose to 3,900 and in 1925 there were 10,300 (Musto 1987:346). 46 Given its pioneering position in relation to the International Opium Conferences and its advocacy of strict international rules for the trade in and consumption of opiates, the United States could not afford to pursue a slack policy at home.


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Although the principle of subcutaneous administration was known a good deal earlier, the definitive breakthrough of the technique of injection in medi cal practice is attributed to British physicians around 1840.47 In the 1850s the technique became widely known after articles on its use had appeared in trade journals. Outside Britain too, medics sat up and took note: ‘In less than a gen eration the hypodermic kit took the world’s medical profession by storm. In the late 1850s, few practitioners had heard of it. By the 1870s, it was a standard article in the doctor’s bag.48 Morphine injection in particular soon came to be viewed as a medical intervention, which enabled physicians to distinguish themselves from people with no medical training. New types of hypodermic syringe were designed by and for physicians, specifically for the administra tion of morphine (see fig. 18).49 The medical monopoly on the technique of injection had the effect as did every use of specialist instruments of increasing doctors’ social status, at the same time as consolidating the ongoing profes sionalization of their group. In the 1860s and 1870s the injection of morphine was actually propagated in Britain as a remedy for people who were addicted to the oral use of opiates and wanted to quit the habit. The downside of a course of treatment with morphine injections soon be came clear: ‘Enthusiasm for hypodermic morphine was generally accompani ment by a denigration of opium; the ‘medical’ remedy was seen as more effec tive. But the profession was also creating its own problem by the advocacy of hypodermic usage, and it was not long before the first warnings of the in creased incidence of addiction began to appear.’50 The injection of morphine was enormously popular among medical practi tioners. As long as the dangers of addiction were not yet fully appreciated, large numbers of patients were treated with morphine for the most diverse of disorders, both in Britain and in the United States51. This unchecked practice took its toll in the United States: ‘In spite of repeated warnings, therapeutically engendered addiction remained a serious problem until the early 20th century, when the American medical profession largely abandoned its liberal use of opium and morphine.’52 Most 19th-century American morphinists thus owed their addiction to a course of treatment that had been prescribed by their doctor. This explains why

47

Berridge and Edwards 1987:139-40.

Morgan 1981:22.



51 The corresponding situation in the Netherlands, as far as I know, has scarcely been

studied, if at all.

52 Courtwright 1982:42-43.

48 49 50


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opiate addiction was most prevalent in 19th-century America (aside from the Chinese users) among white middle class women. They belonged to the cate gory of people who could afford a physician.53 Another factor that helped to expedite the spread of morphine use in the United States, which had thus partly been caused by the quick rise to popularity among the medical profession of the technique of injection, was the Civil War. For though morphine had no curative value whatsoever, it did alleviate distress: it rapidly acted to relieve war casualties of their pain. Once morphine injections had proved their worth in the army hospital, they soon spread to other areas of medical practice. The hypodermic syringe and stethoscope together served as status symbols which not only distinguished medical practitioners from quacks, but also character ized the user, within the profession, as advanced and up-to-date: ‘Promoters [of the hypodermic syringe] played upon professional insecurities, noting that practitioners of standing were quick to avail themselves of the advantages of the syringe and implying that those who did not were in danger of falling be hind. The percentage of American physicians practicing hypodermic medica tion grew dramatically during the 1870s; by 1881 virtually every American physician possessed the instrument.’54

fig. 18. Sketch of the new model of hypodermic needle

53 54

Courtwright 1982:41-42. Courtwright 1982:46.


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In Britain and the United States (and probably in the Netherlands) mor phine was not only prescribed frequently to the patients of qualified medical practitioners, it was also used by numerous physicians, dentists and nursing staff.55 (Pharmacists were subject to stricter controls, and therefore had greater difficulty gaining access to the drug). What may well have started as ‘profes sional self-medication’, would soon become an entrenched habit. The esti mates of users among the medical professions in the United States are highly divergent: 6%-23% of all physicians are believed to have belonged to the pop ulation of regular morphine users at the beginning of the 20th century.56 More over, the wives of medical professionals all too often found relief in the intox ication induced by morphine injections prescribed by their husbands. With almost fifty years of experimentation with morphine injections be hind them, physicians were painfully aware of the consequences of morphine treatment. The risk of addiction provided them with an additional argument to bolster their demands for a monopoly on the control of all opiates. Medical supervision was essential for all opiates, including injected morphine, both to prevent incompetent use and to militate against the development of an addic tion. This argument was incorporated into the successful medical campaign for a statutory scheme to regulate the preparation, prescription and sale of opi ates57. As a result of the new legislation, the medical profession had a statesanctioned monopoly position: from that time on, they were the state’s sole curators in the supply of opiates. The monopoly on opiates contributed, as has already been noted, to the professionalization of the groups concerned. The new legislation meant that people wishing to obtain opiates were more dependent than in the past on the mediation of physicians and pharmacists. This sharpened the dividing line be tween these latter groups and traditional opiate retailers. But this nationwide medical monopoly not only contributed to the professionalization of these medical groups, it was also a product of it. So the formal medicalization of opiates was embedded in this far wider process of professionalization. This formal medical regulatory regime brought to an end the legal recrea tional consumption of opiates, nor did any scope remain for the legal selfadministration of opiates as a form of self-medication. The prohibition of the use of opiates without medical intervention—and the prosecution of offen ders —was an inevitable consequence of the government sanctioned monopo

55 To my knowledge figures have never been researched for the Netherlands comparable to the studies of Berridge and Edwards and Courtwright. 56 Courtwright 1982:41. 57 Berridge and Edwards 1987:135-49.


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ly obtained by the medical profession. This reduced the scope for more infor mal types of regulation to the small circle of a largely deviant subculture. At worst, this led to the criminalization of the users of illegal opiates. More over, where users succeeded in obtaining their intoxicant from their doctor, they were stigmatized, and their use of opiates was justified by invoking a pathology.58

58 The consequences of this medical monopoly for the supply of opiates outside the med ical circuit—i.e. the black market—are discussed in chapter IX.


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fig. 19. Certificate of membership of temperance society; the signatory un dertakes neither to drink liquor nor to serve it to others, to oppose its con sumption and to urge others to sign a similar undertaking


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CHAPTER SEVEN

Industrialization and the war on alcohol Three paces of industrialization The subject of industrialization has generated vast quantities of diverse reflections.1 The transformation of an agricultural society into one largely based on industry was stimulated by the use of a new energy source, fossil fuels—first coal, later petroleum and natural gas—which increasingly took over from hu man or animal force.2 Foremost among the economic consequences of this development were a more pronounced division of labour and the mechaniza tion and scale expansion of the production process. Industrialization also led virtually everywhere to enormous population growth and urbanization: exist ing towns expanded and many new ones sprang up. Of great significance to the rise of the temperance movement was the new social mobility generated by industrialization, producing in social and economic terms a strong middle class—the petty bourgeoisie. England was at the forefront of industrialization, with 1780 often being cited as its beginning. In other Western societies the process began somewhat later. Countries also differed as to the pace of industrialization: in the Nether lands it was a slow process, as the economic centre of gravity very gradually shifted away from agriculture towards trade and industry. Although industrialization also started late in the United States, it moved rapidly, soon overtaking developments in England.3 The extraordinarily fast industrialization of the United States was made possible by the country’s wealth of raw materials and by a steady influx of new workers to exploit these natural riches.4 The first, modest-sized flows of migrant labour to the New World (well into the 19th century) came from northwestern Europe and Afri 1 2 3

See e.g. De Jonge 1976 (1968); Wrigley 1988; Righart 1991. Goudsblom 1992:197. For the process of industrialization in the Netherlands, see Brugmans 1983; De Jong 1976 and 1988. There is a good, detailed account of the late industrialization of the Nether lands in De Liagre Böhl et al. (1981). Further data on the rapid industrialization of the United States have been taken primarily from Fite and Reese 1973. 4 Cause and effect are essentially interchangeable here: many Europeans wanted to em igrate to the United States because industrialization presented them with new opportunities there.


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ca—the former voluntarily, the latter as slaves. Working the land was their primary economic activity. Later on, immigrants started flooding in from east ern and southern parts of Europe, and from Asia and South America. Starting in the second half of the 19th century, the United States witnessed a huge immigration-based population growth, in contrast to the natural population growth seen in England and the Netherlands, producing a society that was— and still is—more heterogeneous than in Western Europe. Because most of the newcomers settled in the large towns, and because the United States under went such rapid industrialization, the dividing-line between urban and rural life in the United States was drawn more sharply, and a wider gap developed between the two kinds of communities, than elsewhere in the Western world. Another significant factor is that the American constitution—again, unlike England and the Netherlands—was still in an embryonic form. It was not until the Civil War (1861-1865) that Washington’s position as federal center of pow er was firmly established. Even then, however, American society remained characterized by a high level of individualism and self-administration at re gional and local level.5 The temperance movement and its origins Some scholars have argued persuasively that the 19th-century temperance drive was a social movement largely inspired by moral considerations. Such “culturological” studies place great emphasis on the folklore of the temper ance societies themselves. In these studies, the war on drink is presented and analyzed as a social confrontation, involving a conflict over the validity of the standards of decency upheld by the petty bourgeoisie.6 In analyses of this type, the process of industrialization in which these societies were caught up at this time—and the new demands it placed on people—disappears into the back ground. It is quite true, of course—and this will be discussed at greater length presently—that the petty bourgeoisie played a prominent role in the temperance movement. But this role was not identical in every country. And diametrically opposed explanations have been put forward for the campaigners’ motives: some attribute their zeal to conservatism, while others have put it down to progressiveness.7 5 6

Cf. De Tocqueville 1968 (1848). The chief exponents of this approach are Joseph Gusfield for the United States, Brian Harrison and Lilian Shiman for Britain, and Patricia Prestwich for France. No monograph has yet appeared on the Dutch anti-alcohol movement. See Gusfield 1980; Harrison 1971; Prestwich 1988; Shiman 1988. 7 Gusfield 1980 (1963); Timberlake 1963; Harrison 1971; Prestwich 1988.


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INDUSTRIALIZATION AND THE WAR ON ALCOHOL

At odds with the ‘culturological’ approach are studies that interpret the temperance movement primarily in economic and functionalist terms. These focus first and foremost on the impact of industrialization on the production process, on everyday life and on the regulation of alcohol consumption.8 The industrial mode of production made certain demands on workers, demands that transformed their lives. For the first few generations of industrial workers, the tasks they per formed differed enormously from the predominantly agricultural labour of the pre-industrial era. Factories had a more far-reaching division of labour, the effect of which was to increase the mutual dependency of individual workers. As the numbers of workers in a particular factory increased and mechanization progressed, machines increasingly dictated the pace of the production process. In comparison with the pre-industrial era, the working rhythm became more inflexible, and discipline stricter. Both were increasingly dictated by the pace of machines, and by clock time rather than seasonal or sun time. The increasing importance of capital investment in the new alignments of the production process explains why individual industrialists placed great val ue, at local level, on curbing their workers’ alcohol consumption. In the Neth erlands, the sugar manufacturer Vlekke fought his own campaign on this front, and in the United States, magnates such as Rockefeller Sr. and Guggenheim attached great importance to reducing the alcohol consumption of their workforce.9 Vlekke had a clause inserted in the works regulations (1898) for his permanent employees defining the bringing of strong liquor onto the premises or its consumption there as grounds for immediate dismissal. ‘But where cas ual labourers were concerned, who [...] were engaged in unloading beets out side the factory gates, he [Vlekke] did not initially consider that he could exer cise any compelling authority over them.’10 This aversion to alcohol was a complete reversal of pre-industrial employ ers’ attitudes to the combination of alcohol and work. Jacques Giele’s Arbei dersleven in Nederland 1850-1914 illustrates this point well, in the words of

8

See e.g. Blocker 1979; Tyrrell 1979; Rumbarger 1989. The two approaches—the ‘cul turological’ perspective and the economic/deterministic approach—are often ranged squarely against each other as if they were mutually exclusive. (See e.g. the comments that greeted the appearance of the second edition of Gusfield’s Symbolic Crusade in The Social History of Alcohol Review, no. 17, 1988:28-37.) In the present chapter I have attempted instead to adopt a synthesis of the two approaches, taking the economic and determinist approach as the basis, and supplementing it with interpretations informed by a ‘culturolog ical’ vantage-point. 9 For Vlekke, see Theunisse 1966 (esp. Chapter 3). For Rockefeller, Guggenheim and others, see Rumbarger 1989. 10 Theunisse 1966:231.


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Theo Postma, who was born in 1825 and worked as a goldsmith’s assistant in Leeuwarden: “As for strong liquor, my thoughts return to the workshop, where I was sent out by the apprentices to fetch genever; the more people there were, the more drink I brought back. The master allowed this—in fact, on Fridays and feast-days he would provide the brandy-bowl himself.”11 For the first few generations of factory workers, many of whom had previ ously earned their living as journeymen or by working on the land, industrial life was a new and strange experience.12 They had to accustom themselves to new patterns of work and of life in general. In particular they had to learn more controlled and more predictable patterns of behaviour; the mechanized and factory-based production methods made this indispensable.13 And the changes did not stop at the factory gate. The new industrial mentality penetrated every sphere of life—private as well as public—forcing people to acquire more dis cipline and regularity in their conduct. All this had major repercussions on patterns of drinking. The ‘genever-drinking classes’ Not everyone took to the new lifestyle easily or ungrudgingly. Some formed an enthusiastic vanguard, while others dragged their feet. The new order was embraced swiftly by people such as craftsmen and trained workmen who ben efited directly from industrialization, in terms of higher social status and a permanent job, sometimes with attractive perks such as company housing and social provisions thrown in. But for the lower regions of the working classes, things were very different. They put up long and vehement resistance to the new industrial reality and mentality. Unskilled workmen, indispensable though they were as a source of casual labour (and on occasion as a reserve army of labourers) scarcely benefited from the new economic order and the rise of prosperity. The forming of the ‘fifth estate’ as contemporaries in the Netherlands called the lowest layers of the population, with the Dutch liberal Samuel van Houten often referring to the ‘genever-drinking classes,’14 took generations to achieve, and was forced through by coercion and supervision rather than any voluntary actions on the part of workers.15 This process contin 11 12

Giele 1979:43. Employers too, of course, had many adjustments to make. There was a fundamental shift in the relationship between the primary means of production—land, labour and capital—added to which the ability to understand and respond to far-off, unfamiliar markets played an ever greater role in successful entrepreneurship. 13 See e.g. Thompson 1988. 14 Van Tijn 1988:28; Van Houten 1879:10. Quoted in Stuurman 1989. 15 De Regt 1984.


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ued right up to the 20th century, when in most Western societies the “fifth estate” was reduced to little more than a residual proletarian rearguard.16 The aversion of the ‘fifth estate’ to the changes threatening the lifestyle to which they had become accustomed was understandable. Any direct benefits accruing from the changes were ill-defined, nor were they guaranteed. Far more tangible was the downwards spiral into which the proletariat was collec tively sucked in times of economic decline. The impoverishment of the work ing classes, especially of those living in the industrial centres, seemed to present an insoluble problem. And in the short term, it did. It involved a pleth ora of factors such as poor housing and hygiene, child labour, illiteracy, immorality—including crime and excessive drinking—and more general problems associated with poverty.17 This meant that the fight against alcohol abuse was only one part of a comprehensive campaign to ‘civilize’ the lower classes. Yet for at least two reasons, it was an important part of this campaign. First, there is the economic/determinist explanation: alcohol consumption needed to be curbed because it did not mix well with the new heavily mechanized produc tion methods. Industrial accidents resulting from drunkenness were not infre quent occurrences. To be sure, they had not been so very rare in the past, but with increasing mechanization, the risk of entrepreneurs sustaining damage and suffering a resultant loss of income became ever greater. Monday absenteeism—sometimes even extending to Tuesday—among the workforce did not accord well with an industrial production line.18 For entrepreneurs it meant that their expensive machines, forced to stand idle on Sundays, would often remain unused for another twenty-four-hour period. The second reason for the importance of the fight against excessive drink ing in the ‘civilization’ drive was social concern about the downward spiral in which the lower working classes were caught up, for which alcohol abuse was given much of the blame. Contemporary commentators were convinced of the relationship between alcohol abuse and poverty, but the nature of that relation ship was far from clear: alcoholism was both a cause and an effect of poverty. To Friedrich Engels, writing an ethnographic study of living conditions of the factory proletariat in Manchester, the latter was the crucial connection. He wrote: ‘Drunkenness has here ceased to be a vice, for which the vicious can be held responsible; it becomes a phenomenon, the necessary inevitable effect of certain conditions upon an object possessed of no volition in relation to those

16 17 18 19

Van Doorn 1965.

Slater 1930; Snell 1985; De Vries 1992:1-3.

De Regt 1984:27-28.

Engels 1976 (1845):149.


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conditions.’19 Dutch socialists and social democrats too inclined to this view.20 Impoverishment was not confined to people struck down by misfortune and hence unable to provide for themselves, thereby becoming a burden on the community—‘the decent poor’ is De Swaan’s collective term for the disabled, widows, orphans and the elderly. In the industrial centres, casual, unskilled labourers too balanced on the edge of poverty in times of economic malaise. They made up ‘the able-bodied poor’—working people of no fixed abode who were usually no more than one generation removed from an existence as farm labourer—and who sometimes still combined the two kinds of work, whether seasonally or at the same time, in the city.21 It was the able-bodied poor, in particular, who were seen as posing a threat to the fabric of society. These were people quite capable of working—which meant that they were equally capable of committing acts of violence and rebelliousness—who had no permanent place in the production process. The established bourgeoisie believed this class to be responsible for the filth pervading the cities, for the lack of safety in the streets, and for brawls and similar public order disturbances.22 It was this section of the urban proletariat on which all attention was em phatically focused whenever the topic of alcohol abuse was debated. The unre strained drinking habits of unskilled, rough, casual workers—whether their alcohol abuse was fact or fiction scarcely mattered—constituted proof, to the established sections of the population, of an unregulated life lived in idleness and sin. And their dissolute conduct under the influence of alcohol was regard ed as an indication of even worse aberrations. For alcohol abuse, crime and social unrest were all viewed at this time as close companions. The petty bourgeoisie as the motor of the temperance movement In virtually all Western societies, numerous initiatives were launched to re verse the impoverishment of the proletariat described above and to remedy the social abuses from which they suffered. Most stemmed from philanthropists and other private individuals, and much resembled a social movement. At the forefront of these initiatives was the petty bourgeoisie, and the main arenas for these “civilizing” campaigns were the large, fast-growing industrial cities.23 It was there that the proletariat’s conduct caused most offense, and where they

20 21

See Roland Holst-van der Schalk 1902. I shall return to this point later on.

For the ‘decent poor’ and the ‘able-bodied poor’ see De Swaan 1989:25-30. See also

De Regt 1984:22. 22 Stedman Jones 1984:281 ff. 23 For the concept of a ‘civilizing campaign,’ see Goudsblom 1992:214. Piet de Rooy has used the similar term of a ‘civilizing offensive;’ see De Rooy 1979.


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put up most resistance to outside interference and coercion to adopt ‘civilized’ values. Private initiatives directed against poverty were inspired by a mixture of compassion and fear. All these ‘civilizing’ campaigns set out to pacify the lower classes of uneducated factory workers and their children, with coercion where necessary, and gradually to acclimatize them to the pace of industrial society. But the petty bourgeoisie was also driven by a desire to enhance their own status; initiatives of this kind were a good way for them to express how very superior they considered themselves to the proletariat, an aspect explored at length in the ‘culturological’ studies of the temperance movement. If we define the petty bourgeoisie as meaning those who work—either alone or assisted by staff—with their own capital goods,24 it is clear that this was—and is—a highly diffuse and varied section of society. It included the small businessman, in other words someone who was himself present on the factory floor every day, and who got down to work together with his employ ees. But it also included the teacher and the parson—people who made up in education for what they lacked in fortune, and who hence possessed what may be called cultural capital. At the lower threshold of the petty bourgeoisie, just above farmhands and the proletariat, were shopkeepers and small farmers. At the upper edge, bordering on the true social elite which was made up of the well-to-do middle and upper classes, were highly educated professionals such as physicians and lawyers. And entrepreneurs who had made their fortunes within a short space of time were often motivated by much the same senti ments as the petty bourgeoisie. In short, the petty bourgeoisie was a varied class of people who made up for their lack of an inherited fortune by education, skills, ability to save money, and self-discipline. It was not in any sense a static group. New people were constantly being assimilated into it, while others left its ranks. In net terms it grew, however, because industrialization created an increasing demand for its services and skills. And as the conservative class society gradually crumbled under the weight of new opportunities for self-advancement, it was the petty bourgeoisie that became the main junction for both upwards and downwards social movement.25 Within the petty bourgeoisie, certain professions were constantly drawn on as a source of intellectual leaders and spokesmen, producing entire genera

24 Teaching certificates may be looked upon in this context as highly personal investment goods. 25 On the shift from a society marked by rigid social divisions to one of differing socioe conomic gradations, see Van Tijn 1988.


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tions of moral entrepreneurs: physicians, church ministers and teachers.26 These groups were to become the mainstay of the temperance movement. The power of the petty bourgeoisie grew up in the 19th century: not only economically, but also politically and culturally. This is clear, for instance, from the steady expansion of suffrage and the success of the liberal parties in Britain and the Netherlands, and of the Democrats in the United States. The leading figures among the petty bourgeoisie worked hard to spread their norms and standards of decency throughout society—first (where necessary) in their own circles and then to the lower classes. Aside from their activity in the liberal political parties, the petty bourgeoi sie was also in the vanguard of all manner of private initiatives. Countless organizations in society were closely bound up with liberal ideology, and bore the seal of the petty bourgeoisie. And whatever the diversity of subject-matter, these organizations had one thing in common: they gave people the opportuni ty to join with others, on an equal standing, in defining values and standards, and subsequently in their dissemination, in what amounted to a mission. In Britain, these organizations included the Abolitionists, the Anti-Corn Law League, the Chartists, the first wave of women suffragettes, child protection agencies, along with the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade and countless temperance societies. In the United States too, the Abolitionist movement played an important pioneering role. After slavery had finally been outlawed, many other private organizations driven by a desire to achieve ‘pro gressive reforms’ came into being.27 For a variety of reasons alcohol abuse was an obvious target of concern for the petty bourgeoisie. Partly, as already noted, excessive drinking was incom patible with the new production methods. And directly or indirectly, this class—including people not working in industry—had the new economic or der to thank for its very existence. (It is worth adding that the petty bourgeoisie did not identify with the new order to the same extent everywhere: rural popu lations often viewed the industrial life of the big cities as a threat). The public nuisance associated with drunkenness was another reason for the petty bourgeoisie to focus on the alcohol problem. This was a phenomenon that no-one could ignore—it was out in the street for all to see. And since the proletariat had to go to taverns or saloons to drink, drunkenness in public was largely the province of the lower classes. The mere sight of it was sufficient to shock, and shock it did. Vicarious shame may well have played a role here, as excessive drinking obviously occurred among the respectable classes too, but in the privacy of their own homes. 26 27

Cf. Van Bottenburg 1993, chapter III, section 2.1.

Hofstadter 1955.


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The petty bourgeoisie had a third motive for its zeal in the temperance cause, one that has been unjustly neglected in the literature. By attacking alcohol consumption, they were able to criticize the ‘low proletariat’ and the elite of society (whom Samuel van Houten dubbed the ‘high proletariat’) in one fell swoop.28 By propagating moderation in drinking, respectable citizens could set themselves apart from both these groups. Thus, anti-alcohol campaigners in England accused the aristocracy of consuming too much expensive wine, port and brandy—all of them imported, which was in itself suspicious enough. At the other end of the scale, they railed at the lower classes for their excessive consumption of cheap gin and beer. The latter was all the more injurious, be cause large sales of these grain products served the interests of the big landowners—who were mainly aristocrats. The petty bourgeoisie were happy to suggest alternatives to these purchases of ephemeral intoxication, in the form of more durable—industrial—consumer goods.29 It is worth adding that over drinking was not the only thing that the ‘high proletariat’ and the ‘low proletar iat’ had in common, in the eyes of the petty bourgeoisie. They both displayed a preference for certain forms of spectator sports, such as boxing and cockfight ing, which were increasingly viewed with disfavour by the middle classes.30 The same applied to the reputation which the proletariat shared with the aris tocracy for the pursuit of sexual gratification, another area in which the middle classes propagated a new, puritanical code of conduct.31 This latter point leads to a fourth motive, which helps to explain why middle-class women were particularly active in the temperance movement. In many taverns, drinking and eating were not the only activities on offer. All too often, the tavern doubled as a brothel, and middle-class women had no reason to assume that their husbands or fiancés were necessarily averse to such attrac tions. Drinking and prostitution were therefore easy to lump together: women of easy virtue, with the tavern their front door, constituted a direct threat to the monogamous values of marriage and to middle-class ideals of family life.32 The threat—real or imaginary—of venereal disease could hence easily be in corporated into the motives of women anti-alcohol activists. It furnished them

28

See Stuurman 1989. This argument played a role for entrepreneurs, for instance, when wage rises were at issue. The Dutch sugar manufacturer Vlekke, already mentioned above, expostulated in an address: ‘Sunday rest? Fine for innkeepers. A shorter working day? To spend in the tavern. Higher wages? They will only spend it on drink’ (Theunissen 1966:232). Looked at in this way, the anti-alcohol movement was also a weapon in the fight for markets: a struggle between the alcohol industry and industrial consumer goods. 30 Van Bottenburg 1993.

31 Thompson 1988:307-08.

32 Thompson 1988:85-113.

29


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with extra ammunition to identify drinking—within a scenario of general mor al decay—as the root of all evil, and to advocate its eradication. Both the objectives of the various temperance societies and the strategies they pursued varied enormously. At one end of the scale were campaigners who did not view moderate drinking as a problem, and who were unwilling to pronounce judgment on what people did in the privacy of their own homes: this tolerant grouping was only concerned to curb the excessive consumption of strong liquor and to reduce drunkenness in public. They hoped first and foremost to influence people’s drinking behaviour through informal channels. At the other end of the scale were the Prohibitionists. These militant teeto tallers regarded all forms of alcohol consumption as pernicious: wine, beer and strong liquor were all loathsome to them, regardless of who drank it, and where. Prohibitionists were scornful of the informal types of persuasion with which moderate temperance campaigners attempted to influence alcohol abuse. They strove to achieve formal government measures in the form of leg islation that would prohibit the consumption of alcohol altogether. To achieve this goal, they started by using political means to introduce the regulation of drinking at local and regional level: the ‘local option’ (US, the Netherlands), or the ‘local veto’ (Britain). In Britain and the Netherlands this goal never materi alized: central government was too strongly developed in these two countries to permit any local autonomy in this issue. In the United States things were different. Given the low level of centralization and the enormous amount of direct democratic control that ordinary citizens exercised over local adminis trators and local legislation, the regional authorities had sufficient autonomy in the United States to pursue the ‘local option’ to curb or even prohibit alcohol consumption at local level. At the height of the Prohibitionist drive, this is what happened. The ‘domino effect’ meant that—after almost a century of action— a large majority of dry states could eventually force federal government, from ‘bottom up,’ to enforce Prohibition throughout the country. The Prohibitionists, however, were not the only ones eager to tackle the alcohol problem with state support. Moderate temperance campaigners, too, frequently attempted to get local and national authorities to introduce legisla tion to influence people’s drinking patterns. They advocated, for instance, the introduction of a national licensing act that would make drunkenness in public a criminal offense, as well as reducing the number of licenses issued to taverns and their opening hours. In several cases their efforts were successful at local and sometimes at national level.33 33

In the Scandinavian countries—which fall outside the scope of this study—a success ful struggle was pursued for a state monopoly on the production and/or distribution of alcoholic beverages.


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Nevertheless, there was an inconsistency at the heart of the middle-class temperance movement. Clearly, the aim of introducing legislation to change people’s drinking habits was not immediately reconcilable with liberal ideolo gy. Calls for formal government intervention were at odds with the emphasis on the freedom of the individual, and clashed with the fundamental liberal principles upheld by a large proportion of the middle classes. So it is easy to see why an authoritative liberal thinker such as John Stuart Mill wrestled with the alcohol problem.34 Even so, most temperance activists—unlike Mill— were willing to set aside their liberal principles when it came to the alcohol question. Another area of controversy was the question of excise tax on alcohol, the different views on which were outlined in the previous chapter. Advocates of Prohibition saw excise on alcohol as an obstacle in their path, while moderate campaigners regarded it as a legitimate and effective instrument of controlling consumption, to some extent, through price mechanisms. Whatever the issues that divided the different anti-alcohol organizations, the middle classes were the motor behind the temperance drive. The full range of anti-alcohol groups, as indicated above, existed in most early-industrial Western societies.35 Local variations determined their precise colour, which could also vary from one period to the next: a stretch of time characterized by a fierce struggle to achieve Prohibition might be followed by a milder phase. A general pattern is nonetheless discernible in the history of anti-alcohol activism in different countries. In the first stage of the temperance drive, the main butt of criticism was strong liquor. Early temperance campaigners strove to achieve moderation, and focused primarily on their own circles. Later—in the second and third acts, as it were—the more radical anti-alcohol organiza tions came to prevail: first the committed teetotallers, followed by the Prohibi tionists. These more radical generations of campaigners had a striking prepon derance of lower middle-class members among their ranks, and even contained a small vanguard from the proletariat. And they became ever more insistent on the need for government support in their struggle against alcohol abuse, or, in some cases, against all alcohol consumption. The remainder of this chapter will be devoted to an account of the cam paign against alcohol, highlighting correspondences and discrepancies, in Britain, the Netherlands and the United States. First, however, it is necessary to dwell briefly on an issue that is too often overlooked in studies of the 19th century struggle against alcohol: the drinking water supply.

34 35

Mill 1989 (1859). See also Grinspoon and Bakalar 1985:27.

For France, see Prestwich 1988; for Germany, see Roberts 1984.


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The drinking water supply

[152]

The anti-alcohol campaign could not truly gain steam in the big cities until one essential condition was fulfilled. Beer, wine and even strong liquor traditionally had an important role in city life as reliable thirst-quenchers. So until there was a drink to take its place, an anti-alcohol movement was scarcely likely to command much support. The existence of a good supply of drinking water was a prerequisite for a successful urban anti-alcohol campaign. It was not until the second half of the 19th century that tap water became widely available in the big industrial towns of Britain.36 Even in the 1850s, for a house to be connected to the drinking water supply was thought an excep tional luxury. Around 1840, only the more prosperous households of London had their own supply. In Bristol and Birmingham, in 1845 only 5% of house holds had running water. In Manchester, however, 23% were connected by then, while another 25% had access to collective outlets in the street. The rest, like the populations of less prosperous towns, had to make do with rainwater, the local pump, and ice and water vendors. The major cities of the Netherlands—and of the United States—were not much different in this respect.37 To quench one’s thirst, the tavern was the easiest and most comfortable—if not the cheapest—solution.38 Furthermore, for poor people in particular they were inviting places to be: they provided warmth on cold winter days, the company was agreeable, and the furniture was simple. The only drawback was that it cost money to stay there. Clearly, then, the installation of a drinking water supply to private house holds was a prerequisite, however unforeseen as such, for a successful antialcohol campaign. Reliable and affordable drinking water (the Dutch still refer to it as ‘municipal beer’) together with coffee and tea proved a good alterna tive, as a thirst-quencher, to beer and strong liquor. Water conduits and sewers, installed partly to prevent epidemics of infectious diseases such as cholera,39 had the unanticipated side-effect of helping to stamp out an epidemic of a dif ferent order altogether—alcohol abuse.

36 37

De Swaan 1989:131-37.

Harrison 1971:298-99; De Swaan 1989:131-37; Armstrong 1976.

38 Thompson 1988:192-93.

39 A desire on the part of the well-to-do middle classes to distinguish themselves worked

as a catalyzing force in this process.


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The anti-alcohol struggle: three variants 1 The anti-alcohol movement in Britain 40 Campaigners for moderation The late 18th century witnessed the establishment of the first organizations, in Britain, of advocates of moderation in alcohol consumption. They were small, informal clubs with a casual organizational structure, whose members gath ered now and then to discuss ways of moderating the consumption of strong liquor. These early clubs tended to be short-lived, and were without any aspira tions at regional—let alone national—level. The London Temperance Society represented a new departure. The nation al aspirations of this new group led to its renaming itself, only a few months after its establishment in 1831, the ‘British & Foreign Temperance Society’. The members of the B&FTS only opposed the excessive consumption of strong liquor. Physicians, teachers, church ministers and industrialists formed the backbone of this organization, and they were backed up in the society’s endeavours by their wives. The B&FTS—along with most other temperance societies—maintained close ties with the Church. The leading lights of these organizations were often members of small Protestant churches such as the Methodists and the Quakers. Having a close relationship with the Church conferred several advantages. Church infrastructure enjoyed a national range, beyond anything the temper ance organizations had yet built up, and church buildings made convenient meeting-places (an important point, as there were few alternatives to the usual local meeting-place—the tavern). Moreover, church services were excellent vehicles of anti-alcohol propaganda, as well as providing a good opportunity to collect the necessary funds. The benefits were not all on one side, however: a campaign against the tavern served the interests of the Church too. Brian Harrison has written: ‘The competition between church and tavern was implic itly recognized even before the 1820s—when magistrates often closed taverns during the hours of Sunday morning church service. The church and tavern, whose recreational facilities had for so long been complementary, now began to turn against each other.’41 Although the temperance drive attracted a certain amount of interest in the countryside, the membership of the B&FTS—like that of other British anti

40

Most of the information for this section has been derived from the studies by Brian Harrison (1971) and Lilian Shiman (1988). 41 Harrison 1971:187.


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alcohol societies—was largely concentrated in the major industrial cities.42 The urban middle-class population could scarcely close its eyes to the ‘gin drinking classes’ or to the consequences of excessive drinking. Only a short time after its establishment, the B&FTS already had a membership of one hundred thousand. Its London headquarters maintained ties with the Society’s 443 branches and had a modest degree of professionalisa tion, employing five paid staff in 1833—by 1835 it had ten. The 1830s were the B&FTS’s heyday. The Society’s publications and lec tures were a colourful addition to the life of society. Despite its moderate aspi rations, it did not target the consumers or producers of strong liquor. Instead, it spent a good deal of time informing and influencing respectable fellow-citizens: physicians, church ministers, and Liberal parliamentarians. In short, it addressed its message chiefly to people who, in all likelihood, had already adopted moderate patterns of drinking. The ideas of the British temperance movement were absorbed into the country’s licensing legislation, especially the 1830 Beerhouse Act. This act made the trade and public sale of beer almost completely free from restraint. ‘Any householder, therefore, assessed to the poor rate might open his house as a beershop free from a justices’ licence or control, on payment of £2 2s. to the local excise officer.’43 The Beerhouse Act was inspired by a desire to rid the community of the nuisance of public drunkenness. It was a laissez-faire strate gy geared towards curbing the rising consumption of strong liquor. It would result in cheaper beer, pricing gin out of the market.44 Besides advocating beer as an alternative to gin, and encouraging people to favour the beerhouse above the ‘gin palace,’ the first generation of moderate anti-alcohol campaigners also propagated alcohol-free alternatives to strong liquor such as milk, coffee, tea, cocoa and reliable tap water. Numerous coffee house owners—doubtless alive to their own interests—were anti-alcohol cam paigners of the first hour.45 Moderate temperance campaigners such as the B&FTS did not strive to achieve a total ban on strong liquor. They proposed a wide range of minor interventionist measures: regulations that would have little impact taken indi 42

The characteristics mentioned here—the importance of respected public figures, the ties with the Church, and the complex relations between city and rural areas—did not only apply to the situation in Britain. They are also identifiable, in constantly shifting patterns, in the United States and the Netherlands. 43 Wilson 1940:99. 44 The Beerhouse Act was also an effort on the part of the government to break the ‘tied house’ system that traditionally gave the major breweries a monopoly position within the retail trade. This practice too clashed with the liberal economic views of the time. 45 Harrison 1971:92.


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vidually, but which they anticipated would combine to influence the drinking patterns of the British population. One such proposal, for instance, was to shorten the licensing period for liquor sales, and to determine the number and location of liquor outlets according to population size. Advocates of moderation favoured uniform opening hours for taverns throughout the country. They also proposed that all drinking venues be required to have windows on the street side, so that visitors could be seen from outside: this was expected to produce a certain amount of informal social control, combined with the deter rents of shame and embarrassment, which would moderate consumption. They also urged that strong liquor sales be rigorously separated from those of other consumer goods, and that the fixed rations of liquor in the army and navy be abolished. Drinking venues, they proposed, should no longer be used as meeting-places for societies, nor—most importantly—as a place to pay out people’s weekly wages. All these proposals and ideas were geared towards isolat ing the sale and consumption of strong liquor from other social activities. The highest priority, however, according to the moderate temperance movement, was a broad onslaught on poverty. Only a general elevation of the working classes, in the eyes of this first generation of temperance campaign ers, would provide a sure solution to the problem of alcohol abuse in Britain. These activists therefore thought that the greatest benefits would be gained by improving living accommodation and education, by creating parks, zoos, mu seums, libraries and reading rooms and the like—all this to be done under the auspices of—and with funds provided by—the state.46 Teetotallers The B&FTS and similar moderate temperance societies had little effect on the consumption of strong liquor. Although levels of consumption fluctuated be tween 1820 and 1870, there was certainly no structural decline. Until about 1870, the number of licenses for strong liquor outlets (both in absolute terms and per head of the population) increased at a fairly constant rate, in spite of the statutory and fiscal impediments that were put in place. This failure to achieve any results made more and more supporters of the moderate temperance campaign decide that the strategy of comprehensive so cial reform coupled with informal controls was too mild, and overly intellectu alistic. Since the lower classes, whose alcohol abuse, after all, was the main

46

Many of these ‘action points’ were laid down in the report of a parliamentary investi gation, published in 1834, by a committee chaired by J.S. Buckingham. Buckingham was a Liberal who maintained close ties with the temperance movement.


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target of the campaign, were not involved in the temperance movement them selves, this first generation of anti-alcohol activists was increasingly accused of paternalism and condescension. It was quite true that the anti-alcohol movement, under B&FTS leadership, scarcely commanded any support among the lower classes. This changed, however, in the late 1830s, when a second, more radical generation of antialcohol activists took the helm. These newcomers were no advocates of mod eration: they were teetotallers. They made stricter demands, both of them selves and of others. With missionary zeal, they proclaimed their message directly to the proletariat. Of course, the liberal freedom to choose ‘whether and how much one wishes to drink’ was never questioned in black and white. But these new activists saw it as their public duty to advise the lower classes, in particular, in relation to this decision. And a little push in the right direction was not thought to be such a bad thing. Considerable differences of style emerged between the earlier advocates of temperance and the later, more radical, teetotallers. The program offered by the B&FTS consisted of civilized, sober and orderly—medical—lectures on the damage wrought by the excessive consumption of alcohol. The huge, excit ed gatherings of teetotallers belonged to a different world, and were more rem iniscent of mass religious conversions. These events were not attended solely by the middle classes; they attracted working people and former alcoholics. New members ceremoniously signed an impressive-looking certificate in which they pledged to renounce alcohol, after which they were joyously ac cepted into the family of teetotallers. It was the working-class elite—skilled workers with permanent employment—for whom the teetotallers’ movement held out the greatest attractions. This is not to say that such people acquired any great influence once they joined. Positions of leadership were reserved for middle-class members. Among the rank and file, however, the upper echelons of the working classes were conspicuously in evidence.47 The gap between the teetotallers and the temperance campaigners in Brit ain was never bridged. In the inevitable tussle between them, the B&FTS and the countless other temperance societies came off worst. By 1840, the B&FTS had run dry, and the era of the teetotallers had dawned. In most cases, existing local temperance societies and organizations against strong liquor were radicalized from within and re-emerged as teetotal lers’ groups. But some completely new teetotallers’ societies sprang up, such 47

This was the same section of society that would later—under the terms of the 1867 Reform Act—acquire voting rights, at the instigation of the Liberal party; see Thompson 1988:326.


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as the British Teetotal Temperance Society (1835) which underwent a series of mergers and splits in the 1840s and 1850s to eventually become the leading organization in its field, under the name of the National Temperance Society (1842) and later still as the National Temperance League (1856). As it was not hard for the more ‘respectable’ sections of the working classes to join these teetotallers’ societies, the groups functioned as social steppingstones. The teetotallers’ movement thus acquired a completely separate role for workers: membership enabled them to move among the middle classes. Participation in the war on alcohol became a means of achieving and consoli dating social advancement.48 Some individuals even made a living out of the anti-alcohol movement. In the 1860s, a circuit of professional representatives of teetotallers’ societies grew up. These representatives were without exception skilled workers (former shoemakers and tailors, carpenters etc.) who had since found perma nent employment with a society such as the National Temperance League, and who travelled throughout the country to deliver their lectures. The middleclass executive committee members of these organizations were somewhat taken aback by the qualities they discovered among their working-class associ ates. John Dunlop is said to have remarked that teetotalism had laid bare ‘a large amount of native oratory among the humbler classes.’49 Former alcohol ics, in particular, emerged as attractive and successful apostles of the teetotal lers’ message. They addressed themselves directly to the proletariat in the lan guage of their audience. The more intellectual of the liberal vanguard often winced to see their gatherings with edifying scientific lectures gradually meta morphose into populist meetings aimed at converting large groups of listeners to teetotalism. But their societies were enjoying such success that they suffered in silence. In spite of the influx of new members from the working classes, the exec utive committees of the British teetotallers’ organizations remained predomi nantly in middle-class hands. Medical practitioners, teachers and church ministers—including many Quakers—were in charge, assisted where possible by their wives. It was women such as these who set up the London Band of Hope Union (1855) which later expanded to become the United Kingdom Band of Hope Union (1863). The Band of Hope recruited Sunday-school children who would join in anti-alcohol marches (which were thus often directed against

48 A good example of this is the life of Thomas Whittaker (1813-1899), who started off as a miller’s assistant, and steadily gained in social status through the teetotallers’ movement, eventually becoming mayor; see Harrison 1971:133-34. 49 Harrison 1971:133.


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their fathers) with songs. And aside from the impact they had on the crowd, the children would be singing their way into a sober future. Aside from the direct actions they conducted among the working classes, radical organizations such as the National Temperance League and the British Temperance League also campaigned for a gradual clampdown on the sale of alcoholic drinks. They started by working to have beershops shut on Sundays, and then tried to achieve a complete ban on the sale of alcohol on Sundays. Some of their initiatives were successful, but they also aroused hostility among the lower classes. Sunday closing was a direct threat to the little recreational time workers had to themselves, and the Sunday Beer Acts of 1854 and 1855 sparked major riots, about which Harrison says that they were ‘really a protest against all evangelical restrictions on popular recreation.’50 Prohibitionists After the teetotaller came a more radical strain of campaigner still. The Prohi bitionists wanted a formal and absolute ban on all alcohol in Britain. The Unit ed Kingdom Alliance (founded in 1853) was the most influential of this third generation of anti-alcohol organizations. In the 1860s and 1870s the United Kingdom Alliance worked together with other radical anti-alcohol organiza tions to push through the Permissive Bill. This Bill would introduce the ‘local veto’—it would delegate to local authorities the power to set up a formal re gime of alcohol control. Each local authority would be able to decide, without deference to central government, whether or not it would tolerate the existence of public houses, and if so how many. The underlying principle, hope and con viction was that the local veto would mean the gradual phasing out of alcohol consumption, a strategy with which the American anti-alcohol movement was having a measure of success in certain states. The Permissive Bill provoked a great deal of resistance. Prohibition at lo cal level would hit the lower classes hardest, because the public house, which played a large part in the community’s social life, was the only place where the proletariat could acquire alcohol, while the well-to-do could continue to enjoy their private supplies at home. ‘The Permissive Bill was monstrously aristo cratic’ as Harrison quotes from a contemporary daily newspaper;51 especially when one recalls that the proletariat had no voting rights, so that the local veto could easily be introduced without their wishes being taken into account. The lower classes were thus completely at the mercy of the standards of decency propagated by the local petty bourgeoisie, who by then had been enfranchised.

50 51

Harrison 1971:244.

Harrison 1971:200.


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Anti-alcohol organizations in Britain, 1830-1873 52 1830

1831

LONDON TEMPERANCE SOCIETY

NEW BRITISH & FOREIGN SOCIETY FOR THE SUPRESSION OF INTEMPERANCE

1836

1838

NEW BRITISH & FOREIGN TEMP. SOC. BRITISH & FOREIGN SOCIETY FOR THE SUPRESSION OF INTEMPERANCE

1842

1843

1845

1848

1851

1853

1854

1855

BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE PROMOTION OF TEMPERANCE

BRITISH TEETOTAL TEMPERANCE SOCIETY

1835

1839

[159]

BRITISH & FOREIGN TEMPERANCE SOCIETY

NEW BRITISH & FOREIGN TEMPERANCE SOCIETY

NATIONAL TEMPERANCE SOCIETY TRUE TEETOTAL UNION

LONDON TEMPERANCE LEAGUE UNITED KINGDOM ALLIANCE

BRITISH TEMPERANCE LEAGUE

LONDON BAND OF HOPE UNION

1856

1862

CHURCH OF ENGLAND TOTAL ABSTINENCE SOCIETY

1863

NATIONAL TEMPERANCE LEAGUE

UNITED KINGDOM BAND OF HOPE UNION

1864

CHURCH OF ENGLAND TEMPERANCE REFORMATION SOCIETY

1866

CENTRAL ASSOCIATION FOR STOPPING THE SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUOR ON SUNDAYS

1868

LICENCE AMENDMENT LEAGUE

1870

1871

1873

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR PROMOTING THE AMENDMENT OF THE LAWS RELATING TO LICENSING SYSTEM LIQUOR TRAFFIC AMENDMENT ASSOCIATION NATIONAL UNION FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF INTEMERANCE

CHURCH OF ENGLAND TEMPERANCE SOCIETY

▼ ▼ 52

BEERHOUSE LICENSING AMENDMENT ASSOCIATION

▼

▼

▼

▼

▼

This table is taken from Harrison 1971:141.


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But the Permissive Bill also had its vociferous supporters. They reinforced their campaign with the aid of various petitions. By 1869 they had collected 800,000 signatures, and in 1872 a petition bearing 1,388,075 signatures was handed over to parliament. By this tactic the Prohibitionists hoped to persuade the politicians in London that the Permissive Bill enjoyed widespread social support. Their efforts were to no avail; parliament repeatedly rejected the sweeping changes represented by this Bill. The debate on the formal structure of the British alcohol regime returned to the political agenda again and again between 1850 and 1890, each time in relation to the Permissive Bill. But the debate was about much more than alco hol. It was a touchstone in the liberal debate on the state’s role as custodian of the country’s morals and the degree of freedom that individual citizens—including the proletariat—should enjoy. This was a highly divisive issue among the liberal petty bourgeoisie. The second half of the 19th century was the heyday of the British antialcohol movement. A motley collection of middle-class initiatives existed for varying periods of time, each setting out to reform the alcohol regime in a particular way, as is clear from Brian Harrison’s overview. In addition to the then dominant United Kingdom Alliance (in 1861 the Alliance claimed to have an membership of 58,000 individuals plus 1,000 affiliated local anti-alcohol societies), there were four other anti-alcohol organizations operating at nation al level. They distinguished themselves by minor differences of objectives or strategies. Whatever the mutual wrangling that sometimes took place, they all counted on more or less the same grassroots support. And for their committee members they frequently recruited from each other’s ranks.53 The picture this reveals is of an anti-alcohol movement that consisted of a broad-based but dense network of activists. The United Kingdom Alliance, however, was the strongest and most influential organization, probably be cause the legislation it proposed was the most extreme. In the 1860s and 1870s the United Kingdom Alliance enjoyed particular success, which was reflected in a high degree of professionalization.54 Particularly in the years 1860-1890, the alcohol question was a matter of constant public debate. Liberal politicians sympathetic to the cause enjoyed a few modest successes. For instance, a licensing system was reintroduced for beer sales, and wine imports remained subject to extra duties. More notably, opening hours were restricted. The 1864 Public House Closing Act and the

53 54

Harrison 1971:258. The Alliance News (est. 1854) was published weekly, with a circulation of 15,00020,000. Salaries accounted for an increasing proportion of costs over the years.


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Licensing Acts passed in 1872 and 1874 served as the foundation for the idio syncratic system of opening hours which characterized public houses in Brit ain until very recently. But the great goal was as far off as ever: there was no national Prohibition, nor was the Permissive Bill passed that would have been the first step in that direction. Was this because the economic power of the alcohol industry was too great and too many jobs were at stake? Or because the national revenue from excise taxes on alcohol and the licensing system was indispensable? In any case, leading Liberal politicians such as Gladstone and Bright were unshakably attached to a centralized form of state supervision. As far as they were concerned, this set the limits to the aspirations of the 19th century anti-alcohol movement in Britain. Within these limits, however, the movement achieved certain definite ad vances. Its influence made itself felt most forcefully in relation to the statutory supervision of retail sales. A formal regulation of the number of sales outlets was introduced, which also dictated their opening hours, and there were new regulations on public houses. Another achievement was a ban on serving alco holic beverages to minors; later it was also made an offense to sell alcohol to minors in off-license premises.55 It was also forbidden for publicans to contin ue to serve drunkards; violations were punishable by fines, and repeat offenses by the revocation of their license. Furthermore, excise duties and license sales enabled the British government to exercise considerable influence on alcohol prices. Partly through the activities of the anti-alcohol movement, the police in creasingly concerned themselves with drunk and disorderly behaviour in the course of the 19th century. The number of convictions for drunkenness rose from a little over 28.76 per 10,000 inhabitants in 1865 to 76.87 in 1875, which was a record.56 Legislation was passed making it possible for alcoholics to be required to undergo medical treatment; this Habitual Drunkards Act (1878) will be dealt with in the following chapter. And the Canteen Movement suc ceeded in creating an alternative place of recreation for workers during their lunch break; with the introduction of alcohol-free canteens, they no longer had to go to the tavern. The graph of alcohol consumption in Britain during the 19th century show that none of the activities of the diverse anti-alcohol organizations had much direct influence: at the end of the 19th century, workers had scarcely adjusted their drinking habits to accord with the new industrial mentality and lifestyle.

55 56

The 1901 Child Messenger Act.

It then gradually declined again, reaching 56.47 in 1900; see Wilson 1940:431.


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Alcohol consumption in Britain, 1750-1990 in broad outline (expressed in litres of pure alcohol per head of the population) 20

[162] 15

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strong liquor only

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But things would change over the next few decades. By about 1915 the moder ate consumption of alcohol had become embedded in the social life of the British population. This was too late to be witnessed by most of the campaign ers, who were either deceased or no longer active. The demise of the British anti-alcohol movement brought to an end a period of mass informal group pressure geared towards restricting the alcohol consumption of the lower classes. What remained were the limits that had been formally laid down in licensing legislation in combination with informal social pressure as exercised by the immediate family, friends and acquaintances, and plain self-control. Even so, it is remarkable that the British government, in spite of all its liberal principles, became so closely involved in the 19th century in the regula tion of public houses. And this trend continued into the 20th century. With the threat of war looming, Britain like other countries passed special legislation: the Defense of the Realm Acts, empowering the government to exercise strict controls on—and if necessary restrict—the production of and trade in alcohol ic beverages in the vicinity of war-sensitive industries. Moreover, the opening hours of public houses were limited still further. This system of opening hours, originally introduced as a temporary measure, outlived the war by many dec ades. Not only in the vicinity of war-sensitive industries, but throughout the country, the serving of alcohol in public was restricted, until quite recently, to 12-2.30 p.m. and about 6-9 p.m. One of the unlooked-for side-effects of this rigid system of opening hours was that it encouraged the burgeoning of private clubs where members could


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drink at their leisure; for the lower classes, however, there was no such option. Another consequence was that people for whom public houses represented the only source of alcohol taught themselves, under the pressure of time, to drink large quantities at immense speed. The direct control of drinking habits through opening hours strictly regulated by law leaves relatively little scope for more informal types of social regulation and self-control. The restricted opening hours in fact functioned as a sort of coercion, almost forcing people to drink. This may explain the unbridled alcohol consumption of working-class British tourists visiting countries where the formal restrictions are far more lax.57 From 1900 to 1925 there was a conspicuous drop in alcohol consumption. This low level stabilized in the following 25 years, after which consumption in Britain gradually rose again. This increase is generally—and understandably—explained in the literature as a consequence of the postwar growth in prosperity.58 It is partly attributable to the increased popularity of wine, which in turn reflects the increasing proportion of women in the drinking population, as elsewhere in the Western world. 2 The anti-alcohol movement in the United States59 Historians giving an account of the anti-alcohol movement in the United States often use a three-wave model: three phases in which alcohol aroused wide spread public concern, separated by periods of a comparative lack of interest.60 The first phase spanned the years 1820-1855 and the second 1880-1890; and the third started around 1900 and culminated in Federal Prohibition (1920 1933). Prohibition thus represented the climactic result of a century of cam paigning against alcohol, and at the same time heralded the definitive collapse of the mass social movement of American anti-alcohol activists. 57 This would apply to other countries besides Britain. Many inhabitants of the Scandina vian countries, where the formal restrictions on alcohol consumption are also relatively severe, display the same unrestrained drinking behavior. Within the social studies of alco hol, the socio-cultural approach has dwelt most on this phenomenon. Mäkelä et al. write in this connection: ‘This approach [i.e. the socio-cultural approach, JWG] held that many problems were a product of the lack of an integrated and internalized system of norms concerning drinking activities. This could be resolved, it was argued, by the early introduc tion and inculcation of responsible drinking habits, and through the removal of certain legal constraints and regulations. Thus, the liberalization of control was encouraged as being consistent with a healthy drinking culture.’ (Mäkelä, Room et al. 1981:85). 58 Mäkelä, Room et al. 1981. 59 The data for this section derive largely from the work of Paul Aaron and David Musto (1981), Joseph Gusfield (1980), Harry Levine (1983) and John Rumbarger (1989). 60 Aaron and Musto 1981; Levine 1983.


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We have already seen (in chapter II) that rum and whisky were important trade commodities in the United States, and the scale expansion that this key position led to in their production. At the end of the 18th century, molasses and rum together accounted for one-fifth of total U.S. imports. And in 1810, distill ing was the country’s third industry, after textiles and leather processing; its value represented 10% of the total.61 Virtually all sections of society, including American Indians and black slaves, consumed alcohol. Adult white men, however, consumed the lion’s share. Class played little part in this: men from the upper echelons of society drank no less than farmhands or woodsmen, miners or casual labourers. Alcohol consumption* in the United States, 1750-1990) in broad outline (expressed in litres of pure alcohol per head of the population) 20

15

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Even when drinking led to drunkenness—no rare event—this was not seen, in the 18th century, as a social problem. Scarcely any formal social regulation existed to limit alcohol consumption. The only instrument that the government possessed to control drinking habits was a licensing system for public saloons. But this instrument chiefly served quite a different purpose, as Robert SmithBader has remarked: ‘A licensing system had been in place since colonial times. Its primary purpose had been to generate revenue; its secondary purpose had been to regulate; moral considerations hardly entered the matter at all.’62 61 62

Rorabaugh 1979:61-62. Smith-Bader 1986:13.


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Local authorities oversaw these licenses. Washington had no significant role to play in this area, as we have already seen (chapter V). It is therefore fair to say that until the early 18th century, American society—more than most other Western countries—was an ‘Alcohol Republic’. As Rorabaugh puts it: ‘Alcohol was pervasive in American society; it crossed re gional, sexual, racial, and class lines. Americans drank at home and abroad, alone and together, at work and at play, in fun and in earnest. They drank from the crack of dawn to the crack of dawn.’63 Small, isolated communities of Quakers and Methodists were an exception to this common pattern. They are known to have voluntarily adopted moderate drinking habits towards the end of the 18th century, and some of their members were teetotallers. One was the physician Benjamin Rush, who published an essay in 1784 criticizing the consumption of strong liquor. Five years later he published his Moral and Physiological Thermometer of alcohol consumption (see fig. 20), with a scale indicating the effects at each stage of inebriation. It was many years, however, before Rush’s ideas were disseminated widely, after which reprint upon reprint of his essay were issued. First wave: local and regional initiatives The high level of democratization and decentralization in the United States meant that people had acquired the habit of setting up private organizations to achieve their goals. De Tocqueville was struck by this feature of American life during his travels there.64 It was therefore an entirely natural response to the increased consumption of strong liquor in the first half of the 19th century that a plethora of local societies sprang up with the aim of reversing this trend. Here, as in Britain, these initial campaigns strove to reduce or abolish the con sumption of strong liquor. Some were founded by farmers, such as the Union Temperance Society of Moreau and Northumberland (1808) and others by church ministers, who even made an abortive attempt to set up a federal net work in the American Temperance Society (1826). And there were other soci eties whose membership was predominantly made up of skilled workers and retailers; some, such as the Washingtonians, for instance, and the Sons of Tem perance, doubled as mutual assistance societies. These early campaigns took place before the mass migration to the United States. The annual number of immigrants did not yet exceed 100,000, and the economy was still predominantly based on agriculture.65 The small industrial 63 64

Rorabaugh 1979:20-21. De Tocqueville 1968 (1835). 65 Large-scale immigration did not start until the advent of iron steamships (1843). The first immigrants to take advantage en masse of this cheap new means of transport were the Irish, following the potato famine of 1846.


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fig. 20. Moral and physiological thermometer for alcohol consumption


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proletariat took no interest in the temperance movement. Nor, it may be added, did the major landowners. Entrepreneurs and beginning industrialists were sometimes swayed by the temperance ideals because they realized the eco nomic benefit they would derive from a sober workforce.66 But other entrepreneurs were inclined to the opposite view, as they managed the supply of alco hol themselves, thus earning back part—sometimes a very large part—of the wages they had paid out. In the first half of the 19th century the local and regional temperance soci eties started attracting huge numbers of new members. By about 1830 the American Temperance Society, which spread its message through church net works, had persuaded some 100,000 people to take the pledge to abstain from strong liquor. In 1835 the United States had 1.5 million converts (out of a total population of 13 million) to the temperance cause. In 1837 the New York City Temperance Society boasted a membership of over a quarter of the total popu lation, and the countless other like-minded organizations were also flourishing.67 All this commotion about strong liquor was bound to have an effect. Be tween 1820 and 1850 the consumption of whisky and rum fell by over 50%. In response to pressure from the local and regional temperance groups, many public authorities introduced statutory restrictions—far-reaching in some instances—on alcohol sales. In certain states the ‘local option’ entered into ef fect, in others the licensing system was tightened up or free sales of alcohol were subject to a minimum quantity, the idea behind this being to curb alcohol consumption in public places.68 The country’s high degree of democratization and decentralization meant that measures could differ enormously from one state to the next. In 1851 the state of Maine went so far as to introduce total Prohibition—on paper, at any rate. Twelve other states followed its example. But without a constitutional amendment that would apply throughout the country, the practical implementation of Prohibition at local or regional level was hard to achieve. The borders between ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ states were open, and without federal Prohibition it was unconstitutional to ban the transport of alco hol for private use or to forbid the consumption of alcohol on private premises.69 Because of these difficulties, by 1863, eight of the states that had previ ously introduced Prohibition had repealed it again.70

66 67 68

Rumbarger 1989. Aaron and Musto 1981:140. E.g. the Maine 28 Gallon Law of 1846; see Rumbarger 1989:34. 69 The most that could be achieved with local legislation was a ban on the production and sale of alcohol, including transport for commercial purposes. 70 Aaron and Musto 1981:141.


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After 1855, interest in the anti-alcohol movement waned, as all minds fo cused on the impending civil war. For some twenty-five years, the temperance ideal was scarcely a topic of public concern. [168]

Second wave: the Women’s Christian Temperance Union After the civil war, the temperance movement gradually gathered steam again. This could scarcely have been a response to consumption levels, which were lower than ever before. But this decline was far from satisfying these new tem perance campaigners. Despite the decline in drinking the number of saloons had actually in creased, though given the rapid population growth the increase was fairly modest.71 In rural areas especially, the saloon served a variety of purposes, and was sometimes simply an extra room added to a grocery store. In small towns the saloon was a lodging-house, a polling station, a meeting-hall, a courthouse, brothel and gambling house. Foreigners used the saloon as a base from which to try their luck. And with the continuous influx of immigrants, there were more foreigners everywhere, especially in rural areas that the new railroad sys tem was opening up for the first time. Smith-Bader cites the ‘cowtowns’ of Kansas as examples: little towns like Abilene, Dodge City, Hays and Newton, where people had long lived in the relative peace and isolation of a rural com munity were suddenly a hive of activity, because the heavily commercialized cattle transport from Texas started the long train journey to the East Coast there. In the 1880s, these transit towns were notorious for drinking, prostitu tion and gambling, and for the trainloads of immigrants who were the main stay of all these recreational facilities.72 Established sections of the population saw the saloon, because of the mul tiplicity of functions it fulfilled, as a barometer of the fast-moving immigra tion. The saloon was the stage on which all the chaotic changes in American society could be viewed and experienced. The traditional rural population in particular, including the inhabitants of small provincial towns, initially put up a determined resistance to all the changes, but eventually grew to accept the 71

Rough calculations indicate that in 1870 there were about 100,000 saloons for a popu lation of 40 million. Ten years later there were 150,000 (for a population of 50 million) and by 1900 the number had risen to 300,000 for 75 million inhabitants (see Clark 1976:65). 72 Smith Bader 1986. Norman Clark also illustrates his ‘chaos hypothesis’ to explain the fanaticism of the anti-alcohol campaign by reference to Kansas: ‘Nowhere in the nation was there a more disorderly society than Kansas—disorder from the bloody turmoil before the war, from the war itself, the coming of the railroads, the migration of tens of thousands [...] and disorder inflamed by raiders, jayhawkers, bankrobbers, cowtown revelries, farm failure, and farmers’ protests. In this environment, the competition of saloons was vicious and sustained a daily outrage to those who were trying to shape the structure of bourgeois society’ (Clark 1976:73).


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new fabric of society. Within the space of thirty years (1870-1900), industrial ization had fundamentally transformed the power structure of the United States. Metropolises such as New York, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia, with their factories and industry, and their sizable immigrant proletariat, increasingly became the centers of economic power. In this second wave, the temperance movement resembled a type of sym bolic resistance to a new social and economic order.73 The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was at this time by far the most important group within the anti-alcohol movement. The WCTU drew its members from all parts of the country, though most came from rural areas and small provincial towns; it could not muster much support in the major metropolitan areas. Founded in the predominantly rural state of Ohio in 1874, the Union soon had branches in numerous provinces and other states. Under the inspiring leader ship of Frances Willard the WCTU evolved into more than a temperance soci ety. The emancipation of women, prostitution, prison reform, working condi tions, education and tobacco use—the WCTU had definite opinions on all these issues. On the socioeconomic status of the WCTU leadership, Joseph Gusfield wrote: ‘At the local level the organization was led by wives of inde pendent professional and small businessmen. The wives of physicians, law yers, doctors, and ministers made up a large segment of the WCTU leadership. Retail storeowners, manufacturers in small plants, and wholesalers of varying sorts made up another major group.’74 In a nutshell, the WCTU was through and through an organization of women from the petty bourgeoisie. The success of the WCTU is clear from its membership figures. At its peak it numbered over 300,000 members. It maintained many connections with oth er ‘progressive’ organizations, and collaborated on a large scale with likeminded anti-alcohol bodies such as the later Anti Saloon League. The WCTU’s campaigning strategies were hard and effective, with the sa loon a frequent target. Large groups of women would sometimes stage demon strations lasting several days outside a saloon, a phenomenon they called “sa loon visiting.” During a siege of this kind, in which the weapons deployed were singing and prayer, a saloon would be smoked out, as it were, by the women, and its clients put to shame. These actions, in which the WCTU would mark out a moral threshold around the den of iniquity, drew an enormous amount of publicity. This attracted new members while fostering a sense of common purpose within the organization itself.

73

The approach adopted by Gusfield (see above in this chapter) is therefore most useful in an analysis of this second period of anti-alcohol activism. 74 Gusfield 1980:80-81.


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To these middle-class women, the saloon constituted a direct threat to their family life.75 ‘Home protection’ was one of their chief objectives. And this was more than just a noble and abstract goal to them. For their aversion to the saloon was to a large extent inspired by disgust concerning one of the saloon’s important extra activities: prostitution. The expansion of prostitution limited middle-class women’s freedom of movement. The risk of being mistaken for a woman of easy virtue was a real one, and it brought with it the danger of un wanted attentions from inebriated ‘clients.’ Moreover, prostitution also created a certain risk for middle-class women of contracting venereal disease from their husbands—for how reliable was a man when under the influence of alco hol? Thus the fear of venereal infection was one of the motives underlying all the WCTU’s actions. The slogan ‘Lips that have touched liquor shall never touch mine’76 was more than a WCTU cliché: it was a rule applied to ward off infection among the Union’s members. Viewed against the backdrop of American society and the rapid transfor mation it was undergoing, Gusfield’s description of the American anti-alcohol movement seems—for the second phase—very apt: this form of anti-alcohol activism during this period of time was primarily a symbolic struggle. It was a conflict in which the Protestant, rural petty bourgeoisie stood up for their tradi tional values and standards of conduct while defending their own economic power position. This variant of the anti-alcohol struggle was indeed a collec tive strategy of the middle classes, whose status was suddenly clouded in un certainty, to avoid or mask their loss of social power and prestige.77 Third wave: the Anti-Saloon League and the run-up to federal Prohibition In the third and final phase of the anti-alcohol movement, the main actor was the Anti-Saloon League (ASL, founded in 1896). This phase led up to the achievement of the campaign’s ultimate goal—total Prohibition throughout the United States. In the first few years of its existence, however, the ASL was not explicitly working towards this complete ban. Its initial objective, as its name suggests, was to rid the country of saloons and everything that went along with them—notably prostitution and gambling. This explains why many respectable members of American society, who were themselves far from tee totalers, were happy to lend the ASL their financial and electoral support.

75

Norman Clark writes in this connection: ‘pietist women after 1870 rushed towards political and social protest with almost an involuntary response to save the bourgeois fam ily’ (Clark 1976:65). 76 Gusfield 1980:85.

77 Gusfield 1963:5.


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Previously the American anti-alcohol movement had always operated at a fair distance from federal politics. With the ASL this changed dramatically. The League developed into a lever with which the anti-alcohol movement worked its way into both local and federal politics. In the words of David Kyvig, ‘….the league sought to demonstrate that it controlled enough votes to make the difference between election and defeat, thereby gaining candidates’ acceptance of its program in return for its endorsement. Drawing its support primarily from the evangelical Protestant churches, the Anti-Saloon League became a political force to be reckoned with by the early twentieth century.’78 Like the WCTU, the League was active throughout the country. It had a pyramid-like structure, with branches in virtually every state. Unlike the WCTU, however—which campaigned on behalf of a variety of causes—it was a one-issue-movement. Particularly under the leadership of the lawyer Wheel er, the ASL became, in the early years of the 20th century, one of the most powerful extra-parliamentary lobbying machines in American history.79 What had been a 300-strong paid staff in 1903 numbered 1,500 employees by 1915. The number of speakers available to the ASL in the decisive phase of the cam paign to achieve Prohibition has been estimated at 50,000. The ASL’s financial base consisted mainly of small gifts (each one less than $100) which were often given at church collections. But the League also received donations from a few industrial magnates. For figures such as Rock efeller and Guggenheim, economic motives probably outweighed moral con siderations. John Rumbarger has given the following explanation for the in volvement of major industrialists: ‘By 1915 American industry found itself more dependent upon the working class than ever before, and less able to con trol it as it desired to.[...] Industry’s solution to its labor problem, in light of the failure of its efforts at social controls, was national Prohibition.’80 While this argument was not new, in previous phases of the anti-alcohol campaign it had never figured so prominently, or on such a large scale.81 So it was the ASL that set the rules of the game in the drive to achieve federal Prohibition. Its strategy was to create a tightly-knit and unconditional voting block that would enable it to attain the desired result at every election,

78 79

Kyvig 1979:7. ‘Wheelerism’ is still in common use in the United States today as a term for intensive political lobbying. 80 Rumbarger 1989:147. 81 This explains why for this third period, the economic and deterministic analyses pro vide a better explanation of the anti-alcohol movement—and especially the involvement of increasing numbers of employers—than ‘culturological’ approaches, in which the empha sis lies on the desire of a conservative petty bourgeoisie to enhance their status.


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whether there was a new sheriff to be elected, a new mayor or provincial ad ministrator, a governor or a senator, or even the president. Whatever the other political issues of the day, loyal ASL supporters would vote only for candidates who had publicly declared their support for Prohibition. By these means, the anti-alcohol activists were able to compel many political candidates to adopt the Prohibitionist cause, and subsequently to formalize it in local and regional legislation. This strategy meant that Prohibition was introduced first in neighbour hoods, then in towns and counties, and eventually in entire states.82 In 1900, five of the then 45 states had enforced Prohibition—Maine, Kansas, North Dakota, New Hampshire and Vermont. Eighteen million Americans (a quarter of the total population) lived, in 1900, in an area where saloons had been de clared illegal. In 1906, 35 million inhabitants lived within an area of Prohibi tion (about 40% of the total population). In 1913, Prohibition was in place in nine states, while four years later 26 out of 48 states had introduced it. By then, over half of the American population had no public saloon at their disposal, whether through state or local legislation.83 Voting behaviour when it came to the issue of Prohibition reflected reli gious, ethnic, political and socio-geographical differences. Writing about Kan sas, Smith-Bader comments: ‘Counties tended to vote dry if they had a strong presence of evangelical churches, Old Stock ethnicity, Republican politics, small-to-moderate-sized towns, and an ‘interior’ position removed from the Missouri border. Many of the driest counties are found clustered in the southcentral region. Those counties that voted against the amendment tended to have a significant Roman Catholic and/or German Lutheran influence; Ger man, Irish, or Eastern European ethnicity; Democratic politics; a large urban center; and a border position across from Missouri or out in the untamed west.’84 Encouraged by their success at local and state level, the antisaloonists were able to ensure that their ideology spread rapidly throughout the country. And just as the ASL had orchestrated Prohibition at lower levels, it set about doing so with the elections for the House of Representatives and the Senate. At the end of 1917, the 18th amendment to the Constitution was finally adopted. Af ter an unprecedentedly fast ratification—while a period of 7 years had been set, only one year later three-quarters of the states had ratified the amend 82

In point of fact this domino effect had also led to Prohibition in several states at an earlier stage in the campaign. Now, however, it took place on a far wider scale, and was orchestrated at federal level by the powerful ASL. 83 Timberlake 1963:155. 84 Smith Bader 1986:60.


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ment—the 18th amendment was added, on 16 January 1920, to the United States constitution.85 The anti-alcohol campaigners had achieved their objec tive: after a crusade lasting almost a century, alcohol was formally prohibited throughout the United States of America. And it was very widely believed that a mentality of complete abstinence would soon follow. Of the 48 states, only three rejected the 18th amendment: New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Connecti cut, three small but urbanized states on the east coast.86 Until 1920, everything went the ASL’s way. Yet the League’s political suc cess was not an isolated phenomenon, let alone a stroke of good fortune. Nor was it merely the result of a well-planned strategy pursued by an opportunistic and politically shrewd organization. For in the early 20th century, the ideal of a society in which alcohol consumption would be subject to stricter state control had been embraced by large numbers of people outside the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie and of industrial entrepreneurs who saw the economic benefits to be gained. Many industrial workers, too, had been ‘converted’ to teetotalism or moderate alcohol consumption. In the earlier phases of the anti-alcohol movement, only a small vanguard of American skilled workers joined what was overwhelmingly a middle-class initiative. In their membership of temperance organizations, they confounded the class distinctions which the anti-alcohol campaigners liked to stress: ‘Tem perance organizations did reflect subtle class distinctions, but at the same time, temperance cut across class lines. A common commitment to temperance did give employers and some sections of the working classes common cultural values. This commitment to sobriety and self-discipline set pro-temperance workers and industrial entrepreneurs apart from the great majority of immi grants entering the country in the late 1840s and 1850s, and so set the stage for a bitter cultural conflict.’87 In the mid-19th century the industrial workers who had joined the temper ance movement were no more than a small group. But by the end of the centu ry, increasing numbers of them were seeking to join. Under the pressure of wave after wave of newly arrived immigrants, it was attractive for workers to

85 For the implementation of this constitutional amendment, a separate tax law was need ed: the National Prohibition Act, also known as the Volstead Act. President Wilson’s veto of this Act was immediately rejected by Congress. 86 It should be added that the final steps along the long path to federal Prohibition were made a good deal easier by the involvement of the United States in the First World War. As a measure to boost the war industries, the production of alcohol had already been declared illegal in a war act of 1917. Furthermore, the association of beer with German immigrants provided the anti-alcohol campaign with a pseudo-patriotic tint that activists exploited to great effect. 87 Tyrrel 1979:59.


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distinguish themselves as teetotallers in the highly competitive American la bour market. In the factories and on the shop floor, industrial workers who did indulge in alcohol regularly, often while they were working—the Catholic Irish and the Germans had poor reputations in this regard—were increasingly viewed as weak links in the production chain. And their weakness, given the increased mechanization and division of labour, was to the detriment of their sober fel low workers. A sober worker was likely to foster regularity and to help boost profits, and his abstinence was not only praised but often also rewarded, for instance with lower insurance premiums. Thus moderate drinking habits—or better still, teetotalism—gradually became an important part of a far more gen eral change in mentality among industrial workers: teetotalism became a key to achieving success in society. It became a selection criterion that increased one’s chances of obtaining a permanent, more responsible job. The American railroads were among the first major employers to com pletely rule out the consumption of alcohol during working hours. The regula tions of the American Railway Organization included the following clause: ‘The use of intoxicants by employees while on duty is prohibited. Their habit ual use, or the frequenting of places where they are sold, is sufficient cause for dismissal.’88 In 1904, one million railroad employees fell under this rule. But this strictness was far from universal, as is clear from a questionnaire conduct ed by the United States Committee of Labor. In 1897, strong liquor was forbid den during working hours in only 23% of the 3,644 workshops and factories that were looked at. The same picture emerges for the mines: 1,158 mining companies were questioned, and no more than a quarter of them stated that alcohol consumption was forbidden during work. It was only after about 1908 that industry started forbidding drinking at work on a larger scale. This went along with a more general interest in safety in the workplace, and heightened attention for ways of making production more efficient—essentially, this amounted to the advent of management based on scientific principles. The success of the Safety Movement in the steel factories is a case in point. A questionnaire conducted in 1916 showed that almost all major iron and steel factories had since introduced a ban on the drinking of alcohol during working hours. Where the big blast-furnaces were concerned, 10% of companies ex pected their workers to abstain from alcohol completely, even outside working hours. As having a reputation as a drunkard made it more and more difficult to obtain steady employment, a sober mentality spread to the lower layers of so

88

Timberlake 1963:68.


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ciety. The spread of the ideology of teetotalism or moderate alcohol use among the working classes was thus not merely a consequence of moral pressure issu ing from the middle classes, or of coercion on the part of employers; it emanat ed in part from a form of adjustment and self-discipline that was voluntarily adopted by the industrial workers themselves. As time went on, an increasing number of trade unions endorsed the cam paign for federal Prohibition. The entire membership of the four major railway unions consisted of teetotalers. Because of their high wages, railway workers were looked on with envy, as the elite of the working classes. Skilled workers in permanent employment saw teetotalism as a way of distancing themselves from the uneducated immigrants without steady jobs. Abstinence from alco hol, in the United States, was a way of bettering oneself, or conversely, of expressing one’s rise up the social ladder. The largest American trade union in the early 20th century—the American Federation of Labor, whose membership grew from a quarter of a million in 1897 to four million by 1920—displayed a greater class awareness: its leaders saw alcohol abuse as the result of poverty, and not the other way around. But this view did not prevent the American Federation of Labor from encouraging its members to adopt moderate drinking habits. (There were still other unions in 1920, of course, which fiercely opposed Prohibition—the Brewery Work ers, understandably enough, and the Wood Workers, to mention two. Other opponents included the Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialist Party, which relied heavily on their German, beer-loving supporters.) The major industrialists increasingly joined the Prohibitionist ranks in the early 20th century. Though their support stemmed mainly from a belief that Prohibition would boost productivity, this was not their only motive. They also anticipated that teetotalism would increase workers’ spending power—an at tractive prospect for manufacturers of durable consumer goods such as refrig erators, radios and cars. Besides this, many employers favoured Prohibition because during a strike—not an infrequent occurrence—it would help prevent the destructiveness that would often accompany drunkenness. Finally, the ASL held out the prospect to employers of tax cuts in the medium term. They argued that a sober society would in due course involve lower government expendi ture on measures to combat poverty and crime. To be sure, not only employers found this a persuasive argument (see chapter V). The petty bourgeoisie too looked forward to a reduction in federal taxes. In the event this argument proved a fallacy, but it played a significant role in the campaign for federal Prohibition. All things considered, it was certainly no small minority in the United States who believed that Prohibition would usher in more pleasant times. On the contrary, the 18th Amendment enjoyed very widespread support. Federal


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Prohibition, when it came, was hence more than a trophy won by a single lobby, nor did it result from a single tension in society. Throughout the antialcohol campaign there was a constant shift in coalitions and social tensions. There was an identifiable contrast between the urban and rural populations, and between the petty bourgeoisie and the industrial proletariat. But friction also existed between conservatives and progressives, between established communities and newcomers, between employers and employees, between Protestants and Catholics; all these social tensions were expressed in some way in the drive for federal Prohibition. So any attempt to give a single or monolithic explanation for the vehemence of the American anti-alcohol cam paign and its extraordinary success would be ill-conceived. Nonetheless, there is one aspect which is scarcely addressed in the litera ture, but which, on the basis of international comparison—with the anti-alcohol movement in Britain, for instance—played a prominent role. The federal structure of the state, and the smaller disparity of power between Washington and individual states—but also Washington’s disinclination to concern itself with domestic issues—formed the bedrock of the success of the American Pro hibitionist cause. The ASL skillfully exploited the power vacuum that existed between the federal and state governments to achieve its objectives. Before Prohibition, the consumption of strong liquor in the United States was already fairly low—at 1.9 liters per head of the population, it was lower than ever before. Federal Prohibition created an illegal supply of alcohol. Al though it is impossible to determine the volume of the illegal alcohol trade, enough indications exist to show that while alcohol consumption did not dis appear during the Prohibition years, it did decline further.89 This was especial ly marked among industrial workers. This decline is generally attributed to the workings of the price mechanism: bootleg liquor was four to six times more expensive than its legal equivalent prior to Prohibition.90 Another consequence of Prohibition was that strong liquor drove lighter alcoholic beverages (wine, beer and cider) out of the market. The consequences of Prohibition for the regulation of alcohol consumption in the United States will be discussed at length in chapter IX. After Prohibition, alcohol consumption in the United States quickly rose again to a level comparable to that of other Western societies. The fanatical mass movement for the eradication of alcohol was consigned to the past. Only 89 Thus, mortality rates from cirrhosis of the liver (a common index of alcohol abuse in a particular society) fell from 29.5 per 100,000 men in 1911 to 10.7 in 1929. There was also a significant fall in the number of admissions to psychiatric clinics under the heading of ‘alcoholic psychosis.’ The same applied to arrests for drunk and disorderly behavior, which fell by 50% between 1916 and 1922. 90 Aaron and Musto 1981:165.


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where drunk driving claimed lives on the road did Americans once again resort to the tried and tested remedy of a social movement based on private initiative. This led, in the 1980s, to the founding of the action group Mothers against Drunk Drivers.91 The anti-alcohol movement in the Netherlands92 In the Netherlands too, the petty bourgeoisie assumed the leadership in the anti-alcohol movement, and their chief aim was to stop alcohol abuse as prac ticed by the impecunious, genever-drinking lower classes. The campaign against alcohol abuse was part of what was known as the ‘social question.’93 The pamphlet ’t Morgenslokjen (the Morning Nip) was published as early as 1804.94 A number of groups became active around 1835, and in Drachten, Rotterdam and Utrecht, temperance societies were founded with a local orien tation. The Dutch Association for the Abolition of Strong Liquor (NVASD) was established in Leiden in 1842. Liberal and petty bourgeois—these adjec tives typify the society best. The Haarlem physician Egeling was the driving force behind the NVASD. Aside from other medical practitioners, its leader ship consisted chiefly of church ministers and teachers. Like the nationally oriented British & Foreign Temperance Society in Brit ain and the Anti-Saloon League in the United States, the NVASD soon had branches throughout the Netherlands, with local representatives in most towns. Thus in 1852, the NVASD had 40 branches, with 200 representatives and 9,000 members.95 The Society published a newspaper and other material, and organized conferences to further its cause. In its heyday (around 1865) the NVASD had around 14,000 members. Membership was sealed with a testimo nial that had to be signed each year. Contentment, health, diligence, frugality, prosperity and peace were the fine-sounding mottoes with which the Society succeeded in persuading increasing numbers of people to renounce the bottle and join the campaign. In the initial stages of its existence, the NVASD recruited mostly from the petty bourgeoisie. The few representatives of the proletariat in its ranks were 91 92

Reinerman 1988. At present, no monograph has yet appeared on the Dutch anti-alcohol movement. Readers interested in this topic must await the publication of Piet Wielsma’s forthcoming historical dissertation. For an overview of the first 100 years of one of the Netherlands’ most important anti-alcohol societies, the NVASD (later renamed the NVAAD and nowa days active under the name of ANDO), see Proost 1941. 93 De Vries 1992. 94 Maas 1977. 95 Jansen 1976:285.


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patronized as second-class comrades and were watched over solicitously by their fellows: ‘they lack the strength and will-power to endure in the arduous struggle.’96 People from the highest echelons of society—the upper middle class and the aristocracy—were seldom interested in the NVASD. In the Netherlands, as in Britain, the first generation of anti-alcohol cam paigners addressed themselves to liberal parliamentarians and government ministers. They urged these politicians to use their authority and legislative powers to tackle the alcohol problem.97 This strategy earned the NVASD a measure of success. Gradually, questions started to be asked in parliament about the problem of alcohol abuse. In 1855, an investigative committee was appointed ‘to explore the means by which the abuse of strong liquor may be curbed or eliminated.’98 But the campaigners would have to wait almost thirty years before a national licensing act, along the lines of the British legislation introduced at the beginning of the 18th century, entered into force in the Neth erlands. Meanwhile, the consumption of strong liquor obstinately withstood all the NVASD’s efforts. This lack of success tarnished the Society’s image, and the enthusiasm it had aroused before gradually petered out in the 1870s. Alcohol consumption in the Netherlands, 1750-1990 in broad outline (expressed in litres of pure alcohol per head of the population) 20

15

10

5

0 1750

1770

1790

1810

1830

1850

1870

strong liquor only

96 97 98

1890

1910

1930

1950

1970

all alcohol

Quoted in Wielsma 1988b:102.

De Lint 1981:87-102.

Described in Schmitz 1986:6.


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1990


Towards the end of the 19th century other societies grew up alongside the de vitalized NVASD, including the ‘Multapatior’ alliance (= I have suffered greatly), later renamed the ‘People’s Association against Alcohol Abuse.’ This ushered in the second and most important phase of the Dutch anti-alcohol campaign. The Association, unlike the NVASD, was markedly liberal in its politics, and did not favour the abolition of strong liquor. Moderation was its watchword. The Association’s slogans—domestic happiness, prosperity, selfcontrol and development—betray a somewhat more individualistic approach than the stern virtues propagated by the NVASD. Of the Dutch anti-alcohol organizations that existed around the turn of the century, the Association represented the most moderate end of the spectrum. But its arrival on the scene girded the moribund NVASD into renewed activity; the Society underwent a process of radicalization, henceforth propagating strict teetotalism. From 1899 it adopted the name of the Dutch Society for the Abolition of Alcoholic Beverages (NVAAD). The Society’s leadership had also changed by this time. ‘The doctors and the preachers behind the table with their well-meaning attitudes towards the working man made way for socially committed and politically educated peo ple who had come up “from below,” people who had learnt to understand their own situation, in the trade union movement or a political party, and who had also acquired the social skills to change that situation.’99 Thus membership of this radical wing of the anti-alcohol movement in the Netherlands, as in Britain and the United States, became a vehicle, for part of the working-class elite, to express and consolidate their rise in social status. This connection was even closer than in Britain and the United States; in the Netherlands, an unprece dentedly firm bond arose between the anti-alcohol campaign and the labour movement. Thus, within the Dutch Society for the Abolition of Alcoholic Bev erages, the ‘socialist alcohol reformer’ gradually became a familiar concept, while in Britain and the United States the phenomenon was virtually unknown. This intimate bond between the labour movement and the anti-alcohol campaign was well expressed, for instance, in the report of a questionnaire that was conducted about alcohol abuse. The questionnaire ‘Workers and alcohol’ was commissioned by the NVAAD, and the report was written by Henriëtte Roland Holst. A passage from this report speaks volumes: ‘Better accommo dation, better food, shorter working hours, a higher level of intellectual devel opment, all these, in our opinion, are factors that would militate against alco hol abuse. Conversely however, a reduction in alcohol abuse would do much to enhance the consciousness of the proletariat and would also have a certain 99

Jansen 1976:287.


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impact on its economic position. So to our minds a very close relationship exists between the anti-alcohol campaign and the class struggle.’100 This fairly unusual mutual influence between the labour movement and anti-alcohol organizations—a phenomenon that was also however seen in Germany101—was consolidated, as far as the immediate future was concerned, by the existence of ‘blue-red’ youth organizations, which came into being in the Netherlands around the turn of the century.102 This second phase of the Dutch anti-alcohol campaign witnessed the ad vent of a third branch alongside the liberal People’s Association and the social ist NVAAD. This was the National Christian Teetotalers’ Society (NCGOV), founded in 1881. The Christian Teetotalers took up the battle against alcohol by conducting direct missionary work among casual labourers, the group at highest risk of alcohol abuse. The NCGOV’s propaganda material from the 1920s illustrates just how much the fight against alcohol, in the eyes of its members, fitted seamlessly into a far wider civilizing campaign, geared to wards the dissemination of the lower middle-class lifestyle and the elevation of the proletariat. It publicized the calculation, for instance, that the Dutch Nation spent 240 guilders per family each year on intoxicating beverages. ‘An entire family of seven persons could be respectably clothed for that amount, as far as outer garments are concerned, and children could be given proper shoes into the bargain.’ The message continued, in capital letters: ‘Many family men, whose wife and children are now clad in rags, could easily give them a smarter appearance, if only they would forgo their drink.’ Alternatively they could spend the 240 guilders on furniture: two armchairs and four leather-upholstered dining-chairs; a sideboard, an extending table—all in oak—and a car pet. In this way the National Christian Teetotalers’ Society (a largely Protestant organization) displayed the showroom of its own lifestyle. It was a lifestyle that lay within everyone’s reach, if workers would only exercise the self-control to resist the temptation of the fiend alcohol.103 Aside from these three main streams—the Christian, socialist and liberal anti-alcohol campaigners, which together reached a large proportion of Dutch society—a host of smaller groups sprang up. Sobriëtas (est. 1895) represented

100

Roland Holst-van der Schalk 1902:22-23. Roberts 1984. For the flourishing cooperation between ‘red’ and ‘blue’ youth clubs, see Harmsen 1961. 103 The pictures distributed in the NCGOV’s propaganda drive have been collected, to gether with other posters from the history of the anti-alcohol movement, in a publication by the Federatie van Instellingen voor Alcohol en Drugs. See Scheepmaker 1985. 101 102


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the Catholic section of the population, and the strict Calvinists had their Cal vinist Society against Alcohol. Other groups were attached to particular occu pations rather than a specific religion or political ideology. As in the United States, the railway workers were in the vanguard of the anti-alcohol movement in the Netherlands. Most prominent of all, however, were medical doctors, teachers and church ministers; each of these professions had their own antialcohol or temperance society. All in all, from 1900 onwards a national net work of anti-alcohol societies grew up in the Netherlands, in which every so cial group was in some way represented, with the notable exceptions of the aristocracy and the proletarian rear guard. At the beginning of this active peri od, the various groups had a total membership of 25,000. In the peak years from 1910 to 1925, they had around 150,000 members.104 The diversity of the various organizations guaranteed a broad base in Dutch society. And with the flourishing youth groups, in which blue and red banners waved proudly beside one another, the temperance ideal was safe guarded for the next generation too. The Dutch campaign, though it had all the range of its British and Ameri can counterparts, got under way much later. The likeliest explanation for this lies in the later and more gradual industrialization of the Netherlands. Another conspicuous difference is that the Dutch campaign, certainly in comparison with the United States, was less concerned with broadening the gap between established groups and outsiders—largely for the simple reason that there were scarcely any outsiders to speak of in the Netherlands. In this respect, the Dutch campaign was more similar to the one in Germany.105 The strategy and means used by the Dutch anti-alcohol movement were in the main borrowed from Britain and the United States, helped along by the international ties that existed between the various organizations. Thus in the Netherlands too, coffee houses were propagated, with their coffee, tea, cocoa and milk, as good alternative recreational venues. Especially in the vicinity of large companies, ‘blue’ public establishments of this kind were opened, to en courage working men to abandon the tavern. These initiatives evolved, over the years, into works canteens and—more recently—into commercial catering companies.106 With the periodical the Wegwijzer (1898) and Het boek van den alcohol,107 with public lectures and exhibitions—the Travelling Suppression of Alcohol Museum toured the Netherlands after the First World War—the public was 104

Wielsma 1986:112; Wielsma 1988b:106. Spode 1991:Chapter VI; Roberts 1984. Thus the ‘Volksbond Kantinebeheer’ eventually led to today’s company ‘Bedrijfs Res tauratie Nederland’ (see Van Druenen 1989). 105 106


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informed about progress on the anti-alcohol front, both at home and abroad. Alternative recreational establishments sprang up everywhere. Youth hostels, ‘blue bars’ and ‘blue sports clubs’ were intended to provide workers and their children with an alternative to the local public house. This was not easy, as the tavern had long enjoyed a monopoly position in providing recreation for the working classes; nevertheless, it succeeded.108 Aside from the more prominent role of the Dutch labour movement in the anti-alcohol campaign and its relatively late development, the campaign in the Netherlands differed from those in Britain and the United States in another essential respect—the role played by women. In Britain, and even more noticeably in the United States, the temperance campaign was seized on by women of the petty bourgeoisie as a vehicle of furthering their own emancipation. While politically they had no say whatso ever, the anti-alcohol movement gave them a platform—and they used it to their best advantage. Dutch women lagged behind in this respect, just as the 19th-century women’s rights movement in the Netherlands developed later than in other countries.109 This is not of course to say that women were alto gether absent from the Dutch campaign, but there was no influential and exclu sive women’s society in the Netherlands along the lines of the WCTU in the United States or the Band of Hope in Britain. Indeed, many of the publications that discussed women’s role were written by men: De Vrouw en Alcohol (The woman and alcohol; published in 1898) and De Roeping van de gehuwde vrouw in den strijd tegen den sterke drank (The married woman’s task in the struggle against strong liquor; published in 1892) had male authors. Public lectures on this theme were also given by men.110 The anti-alcohol campaign peaked later than in Britain or the United States. The mass petitions intended to pressure parliament into adopting legis lation that would allow a ‘local option’ (i.e. local authorities deciding on their own alcohol regime) were presented some twenty years after similar actions in Britain.111 The local option, although repeatedly proposed from 1904 on wards, really came to the fore only in 1920-1924, when alcohol consumption was long past its peak—it had fallen from six to four liters per head of the population. Essentially, it had little relevance by then.

107

This book served as instruction material for prospective teachers (Don and Van der Woude 1917). 108 Harmsen 1961. 109 Rendall 1985; Janz and Van Loosbroek 1985. 110 Kat 1998; Parent 1892; Ruysch 1896. De Arbeidster als Drankbestrijdster (the work ing woman as a force against alcohol) was the subject of an address given by a Mr Mendels at the National Exhibition of Women’s Labour in 1898.


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Even so, almost 700,000 signatures in favour of fundamental amendments to the Licensing Act that would create a local option were presented to the Queen in 1914. The plan underlying this amendment was that municipal refer endums would be held, giving the local population a direct say in the number and location of the licensed premises. Six years later, in 1920, the Lower House did in fact adopt a proposal shifting responsibility for the local alcohol regime to local level, but the proposal was vetoed by the Upper House. A sec ond attempt, four years later, suffered the same fate: the Upper House rejected the amendment by a majority of one. The debate on the local option and all the related activities were great days for the Dutch anti-alcohol movement. The campaigners found themselves very much in the limelight; the alcohol problem (which the statistics on consump tion suggest was already far less acute by then) commanded the same kind of public interest as the peace movement in the 1980s. With their minds concen trated on the common goal of the local option, it proved possible to reduce rivalries to a minimum and to collaborate in the National Committee against Alcoholism (1908). Only the moderate People’s Association kept aloof from this national pact of anti-alcohol campaigners.112 Despite all this solidarity, the government in The Hague repeatedly with stood the pressure to decentralize and tighten up the alcohol regime. The stub born opposition of the Upper House was a great disappointment to the move ment as a whole. And although the leaders soldiered on undaunted, their support rapidly dwindled after this. The Dutch Licensing Act The Dutch government had never displayed very much interest for this contro versy, but worked behind the scenes to produce the first Dutch Licensing Act, which entered into force in 1881. This put the Dutch alcohol regime on a stat utory basis, albeit a less far-reaching one—and much later—than the equiva lent legislation in Britain. The first hesitant steps towards a licensing act had been taken in 1855, but had stranded in a mire of good intentions. In 1866 the Liberal parliamentarian Heijdenrijck endeavoured to revive the debate by commenting in the House: ‘There is nothing that I feel so deeply about as the interests of the working classes. It is all the world to me to concern myself with them. Which one of us, Mr. Chairman, is not appalled to see the abyss into 111

At the beginning of the 20th century, the first petition was held, with 100,000 signa tures being presented in a bid to tighten up the 1881 Licensing Act. The success of this action was reflected in the amendments to the Licensing Act of 1904 (see De Lint 1981:95). 112 Wielsma 1988b.


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which so many working men precipitate themselves through the abuse of strong liquor?’ But Heijdenrijck quickly went on to warn that ‘No-one should overestimate the power of government measures in this matter.’113 And this resignation continued to be the dominant note, until the 1881 Licensing Act. The legislation focused primarily on two aspects of the alcohol regime. First, there was the regulation of retail sales, its key instrument a licensing system for the serving of alcoholic beverages. Coupled to this was a target ceiling for the number of strong liquor licenses for a given population size.114 One result of this new system was to eliminate casual retail sales such as stalls set up at fairs and other events. Places where alcohol had been sold alongside other forms of trade were forced to abandon this sideline.115 However, opening hours remained—unlike in Britain—a matter for local authorities to decide. The second aspect to be regulated was the treatment of the drunk and dis orderly. The Licensing Act made drunkenness in public a criminal offense throughout the Netherlands. In some municipalities it had already been a pun ishable offense on the basis of a local police ordinance, but now all local au thorities were required to prosecute offenders—initially with a fine, and for repeat offenders, more unpleasant sentences loomed: a term of imprisonment or a period of forced labour in a state institution. Alcoholism was henceforth also defined as sufficient grounds for marital separation. The Licensing Act also defined certain other activities as criminal offenses: serving alcohol to children aged under sixteen who were unaccompanied by their parent or guardian, for instance, and serving someone who was already in a clear state of drunkenness. The 1881 Licensing Act also affected other areas of life, some of which quite unintentionally. In rural districts and smaller municipalities, the public tavern had frequently doubled as town hall and town clerk’s office. Often, judges even administrated justice there, in the absence of any separate premis es of their own. This traditional symbiosis between public tavern and govern ment representation was severed by the new licensing system. Under the terms of the Licensing Act, it became mandatory to reject a license application for ‘premises used wholly or in part for the provision of public services.’116 In 1880, over 25% of the 1,127 municipalities in the Netherlands held their town council meetings in a public tavern. All of these now had to seek new

113 114

Parliamentary papers (Lower House) 1865-1866:194, quoted in Schmitz 1986. One license for every 500 inhabitants for municipalities with a population of over 50,000 (i.e. the large cities), falling in stages to one license for every 250 inhabitants in municipalities with a population of under 10,000 (see Jansen 1976:281). 115 Jansen 1976:280. 116 Quoted in Jansen 1976:281


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accommodation. It was fairly common for burgomasters and aldermen, town clerks and collectors, to work as a publican or wine merchant alongside their official duties. This too had to change. Town councils were given five years to find new accommodation.117 The Licensing Act thus provided a quite unforeseen boost to the building of town halls and courts of justice. This meant that state representation at local level—almost unnoticeably—took a large and ir reversible step forwards. Despite all these consequences, however, the Dutch Licensing Act was es sentially a moderate piece of legislation. The main formal aspects of the alco hol regime in the Netherlands that it introduced and enshrined—including the definition of drunkenness in public as a criminal offence—would remain in tact, aside from marginal amendments, well into the 20th century.118 Within the guidelines it set down, an informal regime of social coercion fostering selfcontrol effectively kept alcohol consumption within acceptable limits in the first half of the 20th century. For while the temperance campaigners were en gaged in their heated debates and collecting signatures in support of the local option, the consumption of strong liquor declined to less than one liter per head of the population each year. This was a lower level than in most other Western societies—less even than in the United States under Prohibition! The question of cause and effect is worth considering here. Could alcohol consumption in the Netherlands perhaps have fallen so sharply, and remained low for so long, precisely because the relatively unrestrictive Licensing Act left plenty of scope for more informal types of social regulation and their inter nalization? If this were the case, the common cause made by Christian and socialist temperance activists would provide the best explanation for the rela tive sobriety of the Dutch population in the first half of the 20th century. After all, the 700,000 signatures collected in support of the local option represented almost a quarter of the total population aged over twenty. Jan de Lint’s rhetor ical question of whether the temperance cause is not best served by mass sup port for an anti-alcohol campaign that is not converted into legislation119 would appear, on the basis of this rough comparison, to merit an affirmative answer: in the Netherlands, comparatively unrestrictive formal regulations, 117

Or the other way around: in some cases their primary source of income was as a pub lican, in addition to which they held the post of burgomaster or alderman. 118 Thus in 1904 the Licensing Act was tightened up somewhat in relation to the serving of strong liquor. And the 1931 Amendment to the Licensing Act set maximum limits to the number of licensed premises serving wine and beer. The Licensing and Catering Act of 1964 was in a sense a relaxation of the previous system, in that these maximum numbers were abolished; it imposed stricter regulations, however, on the public houses themselves (Jansen 1976:297). 119 De Lint 1981:94.


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combined with more informal modes of social regulation that were firmly embedded in society, resulted in a relatively low level of alcohol consumption. By this time, drinking levels were so low as to deprive the countless antialcohol societies, realistically speaking, of their raison d’être. After the 1930s, they gradually disappeared from the scene. Some, however, managed to sur vive as social clubs, retaining a certain curiosity value as anachronisms. The General Dutch Anti-Alcohol Organization (the successor to the NVAAD) still exists today. Other societies successfully metamorphosed into company can teens and catering businesses—only in their archives will you find any refer ence to the temperance struggle of the past—or into scientific bodies. Many others simply vanished. But to the Dutch youth of the day, partly because of the unique intertwining of ‘blue’ and ‘red’ youth clubs, moderate drinking hab its had become second nature—habits it would take almost two generations to erode. Alcohol abuse among the working classes—the origin of all the concern— has scarcely manifested itself as a social problem since then. Moderate pat terns of drinking, no longer at the place of work but during leisure hours, were rooted—for one generation at least—in a system of internalized constraints or ‘self-coercion’ and self-control. At the same time, alcoholism underwent re definition: no longer a class-related sin, it came to be viewed as an individual pathology.120 This largely self-imposed moderation lasted for two generations, a timespan sufficient virtually to erase the anti-alcohol campaign from living memo ry. From the 1960s onwards, the Netherlands rapidly caught up with other Western societies in terms of alcohol consumption, a trend fostered by the quick growth in postwar prosperity. Today, the Dutch drink roughly the same quantities of alcohol as the British and Americans. And women nowadays ac count for an increasing proportion of drinkers in the Netherlands, as in other Western countries, as a result of a far more universal process of emancipation.121 Public concern about alcohol abuse now focuses almost exclusively on patterns of drinking among young people and drink driving. This concern is expressed in government activities that are cast in the mould of public infor mation campaigns. A large-scale civilizing campaign conducted by a fanatical movement of anti-alcohol activists is a thing of the past. 120

Widdershoven and Ter Meulen 1989. On the medicalization of alcohol abuse, see Chapter VIII below. 121 Women still drink considerably less than men, but this gap is narrowing. There is a striking positive correlation between women’s level of education and their consumption of alcohol (see Drop 1986).


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Coda In this chapter I have endeavoured to show that both the history of the different anti-alcohol movements and the development of patterns of drinking in Brit ain, the United States and the Netherlands were embedded in the more general process of industrialization and all that it entails: population growth, urbaniza tion and the rise of the petty bourgeoisie. The above-average ferocity of the American anti-alcohol movement, as it seems to me, was primarily a derivative of the intensity and great speed with which industrialization took place there. The social tensions engendered by this rapid and drastic socio-economic transformation were heightened in the United States by a specific mix of factors: class conflicts were compounded by fairly sharp divisions between the established sections of society and a prole tariat made up of new immigrants. Nevertheless, the success of the American anti-alcohol movement—Prohibition imposed throughout the country—is hard to explain without also taking into account the decentralized character of the federal state structure, which leaves considerable scope for self-administration. In the power vacuum be tween Washington and individual states, the movement could achieve its su preme goal.


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fig. 21. Advertisements for respectable clinics to cure alcoholism


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Physicians as detoxifiers In the 19th century physicians and pharmacists succeeded in gaining a monop oly on the prescription and preparation of opiates (see chapter VI). At the same time they continued with their traditional use of alcohol to treat their patients: ‘The popular belief in the need for alcohol in maintaining good health is not surprising when we find that the medical profession itself held similar views. Nineteenth-century doctors were dependent on alcoholic beverages for many of their cures.’1 When strong liquor had only just been invented (between A.D. 1100 and 1500) and it was still a scarce and exclusive intoxicant, physicians were among the few people to have access to it. But they did not have a statu tory monopoly on strong liquor, and with the later scale expansion of its pro duction they lost even their informal grip on it. Only during Prohibition, in the United States, was an exception made for medical practitioners: they were per mitted to prescribe alcohol for their patients, a facility of which they made abundant use. The involvement of the medical profession in alcohol and opiates went beyond their role as suppliers. In the course of the 20th century, physicians also acquired the task—or to some extent took it upon themselves—to try to cure people whose use of these intoxicants degenerated into a compulsive hab it. And in their wake came bands of psychotherapists and social workers. This chapter focuses on the role of the medical and related professions in breaking people of the compulsive habit of alcohol and opiate consumption. Alcoholism: from sin to syndrome2 The American physician Benjamin Rush is a good point of departure for a discussion of the involvement of the medical profession in the care and cure of alcoholics. Writing in the late 18th century, Rush maintained that compulsive drinking was a disease characterized by a loss of self-control. The disease was primarily attributable to the drink itself and not the drinker, he went on. Rush also proposed a remedy for this disorder—total abstention. His remarks only concerned strong liquor; wine, beer and cider, in his view, were salutary thirstquenchers. 1 2

Shiman 1988:35. There is a good article on the development of the concept of alcoholism by Widder shoven and Termeulen (1985) See also Spode 1991:106-25.


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Rush had several European counterparts in the early 19th century—i.e. before the upsurge of the fanatical mass temperance movements. Trotter in Britain, von Brühl-Cramer in Russia (who coined the term ‘dipsomania’) and Hufeland in Germany were among the first generation of European medical specialists in the field of alcoholism. Like Rush, most of them were inclined to identify the liquor itself as the cause, and its random victim—the alcoholic— as one who suffered its fateful consequences. Strong liquor was poisonous to the human body, and this was the chief, if not the sole explanation, for the development of alcoholism.3 In short, alcoholism was a disease, and the alco holic was a patient and not a sinner. The 19th-century temperance movements described in the previous chap ter played an ambivalent role in the dissemination of this non-judgmental med ical verdict. Both in the United States and in Europe, there were always physi cians to be found in the vanguard of the temperance activists. And it was partly due to the leading role played by doctors that the ‘illness approach’ was able to take root within the anti-alcohol movement. But medical practitioners were not the only professional group with a high-profile presence in the fight against alcohol. Large numbers of church ministers and teachers were also involved from the outset. And they, unlike their medical fellow activists, sprinkled their polemic liberally with concepts of sinfulness and the need for edification. The panaceas for alcoholism proffered by these groups lay in the realm of conver sion to the true faith and adherence to the rules laid down by church and school. Within the anti-alcohol movement all these approaches existed simul taneously, which led to an uneasy compromise. While the involvement of doctors in the anti-alcohol struggle helped to promote the notion of alcoholism as a disease, their necessary alliance with church ministers and teachers inhibited any ‘pure’ scientific application of this theory. Every attempt at a medical analysis foundered on moral judgments based on existing class contrasts and civilization campaigns. This explains why the medical concept of alcoholism shrank into a mere paragraph within a largely moral interpretation—precisely what the pioneers of this medical spe cialization had been so eager to shake off. The tension and interaction between the two rival approaches—alcohol as a sin or a syndrome—were never resolved. The interpretations act as the two 3

An extreme and at the same time curious elaboration of the idea that alcohol had a destructive effect on the body was the theory of self-combustion19th-century physicians such as Trotter and Huss believed in all scholarly seriousness that self-combustion was a real possibility. The fantasy of an earthly hell-fire that alcoholics brought down upon them selves probably served as a source of inspiration here. In this way, the association with divine punishment was still able to muddy the waters of scientific endeavour (Esser 1960:32).


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sides of a pair of scales, which tips now one way, now the other, with the proposed remedies varying accordingly. In the latter half of the 19th century, the compromise was forged that would satisfy all the diverse groups that made up the temperance movement. The alcoholic was presented as a patient who, for whatever reason, was lacking in willpower. This formulation justified a moral approach within the framework of medical treatment. It also gave psy chiatrists the opportunity to carve out a new working area as their exclusive domain. They started treating this personal defect (a weak will) in clinics set up for this specific purpose. Between 1857 and 1874, eleven clinics were founded in the United States for the treatment of alcoholics. Similar clinics sprang up in Britain and the Netherlands, as private initiatives launched by members of the anti-alcohol movement. The first such institution in the Neth erlands was a rehabilitation clinic in Hoog- Hullen in Drenthe, which opened its doors in 1890. All authority in these establishments was vested in psychiatrists. ‘Moral treatment’ a term coined by the British physician Tuke—was the essence of the inpatient care provided. Discipline, hard work, religion and wholesome recre ation would restore a sense of moral awareness. With the aid of these instru ments, patients could be helped to regain the self- discipline that would be needed to resist the temptation of alcohol once they were back in the outside world. These alcohol clinics were what the American sociologist Erving Goffman has called ‘total institutions.’4 In many respects they scarcely differed from insane asylums or prisons. There was indeed a certain overlap, and referrals from repressive institutions to alcohol clinics was quite common. In Britain, the Habitual Drunkards Act of 1878 (tightened up in 1898 and renamed the Inebriates Act) made it possible to issue court orders committing persons who had broken the law under the influence of alcohol to state-subsidized institu tions of this kind. Martin J. Wiener has given a detailed and graphic account of the metamorphosis of the 19th- century drunkard in Britain from a criminal into a patient. In Wiener’s view, this metamorphosis was part of a more general trend in which moral judgments gradually gave way to a more pragmatic inter est in causality: what was it that made certain people exhibit antisocial or crim inal behaviour? The quest for answers soon singled out alcoholism as one of the prime causes, especially where repeat offenders were concerned. Public indignation was roused especially by cases of child abuse by parents under the influence of alcohol. Thus the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children succeeded in persuading the authorities to make more use of the existing powers to force alcoholics to undergo treatment. Between 1894 and 4

Goffman 1982:13-116.


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1898, an average of 500 alcoholics were sentenced under the Habitual Drunk ards Act each year, but only ten were actually being forcibly admitted to clin ics. With the passing of the Inebriates Act, this number soon rose to over a hundred cases in 1902.5 In other Western societies too, the criminal law and the probation and af tercare services came to serve as revolving doors through which certain of fenders passed to a regime of medical treatment that was prescribed by law. In the Netherlands, this connection was cemented by the 1881 Licensing Act, which called upon the police and judiciary to keep the public thoroughfare just as free of alcoholics, in future, ‘as it does now [i.e. prior to 1881; JWG] in the case of beggars and vagrants.’6 This illustrates the fact that from the end of the 19th century onwards, the control of alcoholics in the Netherlands was in the hands of the police and justice department. It was only after people had been preselected by these more repressive government institutions—with the con siderable class bias that coloured this process—that medical practitioners could start curing their patients. The treatment of alcoholics as a special cate gory in clinics such as Hoog-Hullen intensified the stigma that those admitted by a court order had to bear. The sequestering of patients with the same illness—alcoholism—in spe cial clinics gave medical practitioners the opportunity to develop further as specialists in this area. The residential treatment of alcoholics fostered the de velopment of new psychological theories on compulsive drinking towards the end of the 19th century, and this medical specialization developed very rapidly as a result. Scholarly journals were launched to disseminate these theories and to enhance the professionalism of this field. In the United States, for instance, the Journal of Inebriety appeared (1876-1914), while in Britain the Society for the Study and Cure of Inebriety (1878) brought out the British Journal of Inebriety.7 The rival Society for the Study of Addiction also had its own journal, the British Journal of Addiction (1884-), which has grown to become one of the most authoritative of scholarly journals in the field. The theories all tended to focus on patients’ personality structure, and medics increasingly divorced their analyses of alcoholism from the class prej udices that still prevailed in the justice system. While the initial tendency was to point to the relationship between alcoholism and crime, in which forensic psychiatry defined the alcoholic as a degenerate human variant—most often as 5 6

Wiener, 1990:79, 188-90. Appendices to the Proceedings of the Lower House of Parliament 1878-1879 Quoted in Haanraadts 1991. 7 This Society would later tone down its optimism somewhat In 1887 it renamed itself the Society for the Study of Inebriety; see Berridge and Edwards 1987:152.


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a psychopath—in the 20th century doctors increasingly differentiated their categories of alcoholics. Sigmund Freud, for instance, speculated towards the end of the 19th century that alcoholism served as a substitute for an addiction to masturbation.8 Others saw a connection between alcoholism and certain genetic disorders. The German psychiatrist Krafft-Ebing, for instance, believed that ‘dipsomania’ was a variant of epilepsy.9 Medical approaches to alcohol ism were presented increasingly as a separate specialization within medical science—the science of addiction, a field that extended beyond alcohol and embraced addiction to other intoxicants. Despite these developments, it was some time before the psychological theories of alcoholism became dominant. Psychological explanations did not have the space to develop until alcohol consumption had structurally declined among the working classes, and until after the morally fired temperance move ment had disappeared from the scene. When Prohibition was repealed in the United States, and the anti-alcohol campaign consigned to the past, medics acquired more scope to specialize in their individual-centred explanations. In the train of the various schools and traditions of psychology that developed in the 20th century, a wide spectrum of types of alcoholics evolved, with each school of thought advocating its own treatment.10 With all these new types of classification and treatment, the moral con demnation of the alcoholic was pushed more and more into the background, though it never disappeared altogether. The concept of ‘saving’ the alcoholic is still encountered in treatment today. In the Netherlands, the care of alcoholics has been viewed to a large extent as a form of rehabilitation work throughout the 20th century. Charitable institutions long dominated the scene, with re sources being supplied by the Ministry of Justice.11 The new clinics—one in every court district—provided employment for doctors and psychologists, and increasingly for social workers too. Of the many specialists in alcoholism who have presented their theories to the public in the 20th century, the most important is the American E.M. Jell inek. Although Jellinek was not himself a medical practitioner, in the 1940s and 1950s—years after Prohibition— he developed a theory of the etiology of alcoholism that led the field for many years.12 One of the main reasons for the 8 9

Freud 1969. Esser 1960:55. 10 Esser 1960:34-35. 11 Brijder 1979. 12 According to Jellinek’s theory, alcoholics possess certain personality features which make them oversensitive to alcohol Some people, according to this theory, are predestined to become alcoholics. Jellinek developed a four-phase model for the development of alco holism; see Jellinek 1960.


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success of his theory was that it fitted in perfectly with the working methods used by the self-help organization Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). The AA grew up in the United States in the 1930s as a form of treatment provided by and for alcoholics. The self-help method combines medical principles with religious techniques to arrive at a form of social coercion inducing self-control. The strictly orchestrated rituals of an AA gathering, in which alcoholics seek mutu al support in their efforts to resist the temptations of alcohol, are much like church services. On the AA’s methods, and their relationship with Jellinek’s theories, Guy Widdershoven and Ruud ter Meulen write: ‘The practices of the AA throw the ambiguity of the medical and moral approaches into sharp relief. AA publications interlace medical and moral concepts of alcoholism [...]. Jellinek’s medical approach apparently lends itself perfectly for appropriation by a more moral approach such as that of the AA.’13 From its origins in the United States, the AA method spread further afield after the Second World War—first to Europe and later to many other parts of the world.14 Because of the popularity and the successes achieved by this ‘layman’s treatment’—and partly, without a doubt, because of the signal failure of more formal and institutionalized medical programs of treatment—medical practitioners gradually incorporated the AA into their repertoire. It is now common for doctors to send alcoholics to the local branch of the AA, some times as a form of aftercare and sometimes to support a formal program of medical treatment. Alongside the various types of psychotherapy and self-help groups, drugbased programs have been developed by the medical profession for the treat ment of alcoholics. Most involve administering substances—Antabuse and Refusal being the best known— that will induce profound nausea in combina tion with alcohol; gradually an aversion to alcohol develops as a result. In general, this drug-based program is used to support psychotherapy. Besides the psychological and pharmacological theories of alcoholism as a syndrome, epidemiology has also done much to remove it from the sphere of morality. Of particular importance was the theory developed by the French man Ledermann in the 1950s. According to Ledermann, the number of alco holics in a given society is a function of the average alcohol consumption in that society. This epidemiological analysis eschewed any debate on the moral repugnance of drinking, focusing instead on probability theory. Ledermann’s theory is still a frequent point of departure in contemporary discussions of alcoholism.15 13 14 15

Widdershoven and Ter Meulen 1989:110.

The Dutch branch of the AA was founded in 1940.

See eg. Raat 1987.


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As a result of the diverse medical theories and types of treatment devel oped during the 20th century, the alcoholic has undoubtedly undergone a proc ess of ‘emancipation’ in Western society. Rather than the target of anti-alcohol campaigners, police and judiciary, the alcoholic is nowadays a patient treated by a variety of medical practitioners. While it is true that a stiff dose of moral pressure is still often part of the treatment, it is applied on behalf of medical science, a more neutral agency in terms of ethical beliefs.16 Thus in the United States, in Britain and in the Netherlands, a medical regime has become the usual instrument for the social regulation of alcoholics—an external form of pressure, to be sure, but with none of the highly repressive characteristics of the past, when an alcoholic was dealt with under the criminal law. As far as the medical approach to alcoholism is concerned, there are no significant differ ences between these three countries—nor indeed between these and most oth er Western societies. Evidently, the medical repertoire of treatment displays a tendency, much like the supply of alcohol itself, towards globalization and uniformity. Medical practitioners and opiate addiction: a history of delayed reaction Medical practitioners started looking for ways of treating opiate addicts at an early stage. This was no more than logical, given that they—together with pharmacists—were the chief sources, in the 19th century, from which opiate addiction spread. As a result of the frequent prescription of morphine, until the beginning of the 20th century the majority of opiate addicts in the United States —as far as Caucasians were concerned—had acquired their addiction from medical treatment.17 The situation in Britain was much the same.18 And because no mass movement grew up in 19th-century Western societies that set out to banish opiates from society—as happened in the case of alcohol—medical practitioners were initially free agents in the treatment of opiate addicts, with the exception of those addicted to smoking opium, who tended to be of Asian origin. As a result, the approach to opiate addicts, in the 19th century, tended to be comparatively more medically and less morally oriented than the treatment of alcoholics. (Another factor that may have played a role here was the high incidence of morphine addiction among physicians themselves.) Mor phinism in particular was a common secret problem among ‘respectable’ citi zens of a high social status, whereas the highest incidence of alcoholism, in 16

Schaap 1981. The addiction to smoking opium was primarily a Chinese affair, with which the West ern medical profession did not concern itself (Courtwright 1982:115) . 18 Parssinen 1983:178. 17


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contrast, was among ‘outsiders’ of low social standing, who, far from conceal ing their addiction behind closed doors, exhibited it for all to see. Many diverse forms of treatment were available for opiate addicts. Some were based on drugs—heroin, for instance, was briefly propagated as a cure for morphine addiction—while others were based on a steady decrease in the daily dose. In most cases, however, doctors resigned themselves to their pa tients’ addiction, and prescribed a daily maintenance dose of morphine or an other opiate. In short, in the latter half of the 19th century, an addiction to opiates was seen, without a doubt, as a problem—whether by patients them selves or by those in the immediate surroundings—but it did not bring with it the stigma of social degeneracy and criminal conduct that was attached to alco holics from the lower classes. The compulsive use of opiates only became a more pressing problem with the passing of legislation that restricted the medical profession in the prescrip tion and supply of opiates. In the United States, the 1914 Harrison Act was the first piece of legislation to have this effect. In Britain, medics held on to their autonomy for much longer, although the 1920 Dangerous Drugs Act intro duced a measure of external control. Dutch medics too kept their autonomy for longer, and addiction to opiates supplied on prescription by, and under the supervision of, medical practitioners scarcely attracted any public attention. For Dutch doctors—like their British counterparts—were still entitled, under the 1928 Opium Act, to supply morphine to their addicted patients within the privacy of their practice. And this they did, though on what scale is hard to ascertain. The US: the medical regime for heroin addicts curtailed In 1914, after the successful launch of the American crusade against the colo nial opium trade, stricter opium laws were introduced for domestic use as well. The Harrison Act raised the difficult question of whether or not the prescrip tion of opiates to addicted patients should henceforth be viewed as legitimate treatment. At first it was allowed, but a Supreme Court ruling of 1919 over turned this position.19 This meant that American addicts became reliant on the black market, and medical opinion on addiction to opiates—and in particular on the addicts themselves—changed correspondingly. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were still some clinics left providing opiate addicts with a regular maintenance supply of morphine by way of medical treatment. David Musto comments: ‘The clinic for addicts was an extension of the program of clinics set up by health departments to treat tuberculosis, mental illness, of 19

Webb vs the United States, 1919; see Musto 1987:132 See also chapter 9 below.


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syphilis.’20 This practice was halted in 1920. Medics too gradually adopted a more repressive approach to addicts, as is clear from a memorandum produced by an authoritative health care committee on the care of addicts: ‘Vicious, de generate and criminal types should be handled on a basis of vice, degeneracy or criminality and treated for their addiction-disease in places suitable to their personal or class characteristics.’21 By this point, doctors had long lost their supremacy in this area. The police and judicial authorities had more and more say, and treatment under medical supervision lost ground as a result. Narcotic clinics were closed down under this repressive approach that developed in the 1920s. Soon, the medically-led regulatory regime for opiate addicts in the United States was—for the time being—a thing of the past. The demedicalization of the regulatory regime for opiate addicts went hand in hand with criminalization, and the addict population changed accord ingly. By then, the original generation of medical addicts had thinned out. The prototype of the 19th-century morphine addict—a white, middle-aged, middle-class woman from the rural South—had ceased to exist. This generation, which had become addicted through medical channels, had died out, and was not replaced by persons following a similar route, as medics were by then using morphine more selectively. The new generation of opiate addicts con sisted of marginal outcasts from the big cities—young men from the lower classes, who had discovered heroin on the black market after 1910.22 This trend encouraged a more repressive mode of regulation, although cause and effect, again, were probably interchangeable to some extent. Where medical initiatives for the treatment of opiate addicts did develop in the United States after 1920, they were closely linked to the more rigid ap proach under the criminal law: long-term confinement in separate labour camps. ‘The necessary legislation for two federal narcotic ‘farms’ passed in 1929. The first opened in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1935, the second in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1938. The term ‘farm’ indicated symbolically how much of the inherited antidrug consensus remained. Presumably, such facilities would take the addict out of the competitiveness, urban tensions, and crime that had caused his weak personality to succumb to drugs.’23 In these ‘narcotic farms’ addicts were forced to undergo treatment; such places were much like ordinary prisons, including the walls, the bars and the social isolation. Medical practi tioners played a subordinate role in this harsh form of rehabilitation. 20 21

Musto 1987:151. American Public Health Association’s Committee on Habit Forming Drugs Quoted by Courtwright 1982:139. 22 Courtwright 1982:113-147 For the rise of this illegal circuit, see chapter 9. 23 Morgan 1981:135.


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The hardening and demedicalization of the regime in the United States can in part be explained by the changes in the addict population. Working with this new generation of addicts would not be likely to enhance a doctor’s professional status. Another reason why medical practitioners did not try harder to achieve a more medical regulatory regime for heroin addicts (for heroin was the most popular illicit opiate) was that they had no effective treatment to offer. These lower-class young men were ‘junkies’—a name they adopted them selves in the 1920s from the cast-off bits of copper, lead and other junk they collected and sold for subsistence.24 There was little credit to be gained by caring for them. All in all, from the 1920s onwards the United States had a repressive, high ly formalized and external regulatory regime for the supply and use of opiates. The police and judicial authorities set the tone. This continued well into the 1960s, when the accent shifted back to a more medical regime. ‘The years between World War II and 1970 witnessed, first, enactment of maximum legal sanctions against narcotic drug use, and then a strong reaction that gave con siderable responsibility for control to physicians and psychotherapists.’25 New psychological theories of opiate addiction tied in with theory and practice in the treatment of alcoholics, with much attention being paid—from a psycho analytic vantage-point—to the weak personality structure of the heroin addict. But psychology did not have the field entirely to itself. A new pharmaco logical mode of treatment was developed around the same time—methadone replacement treatment.26 Many had high expectations of this new approach. Germans had used the synthetic analgesic methadone in the Second World War—calling it ‘Adolphine’—when they ran out of morphine. When it was re discovered in the United States, there was an optimistic belief that methadone might be able to cure opiate addiction, just as morphine had once enjoyed a brief vogue as a cure for opium,27 and just as heroin had originally been believed, at the beginning of the 19th century, to have a healing effect on morphinists. Methadone treatment was developed in the mid-1960s by the Americans Nyswander and Dole—one a medic, the other a biochemist. In view of the prevailing repressive regime, to propagate a drug-based treatment of this kind was a trail-blazing approach.28 Until then, all government intervention—ac24 25


Musto 1987:230.

26 For a good survey of this history, see Van de Wijngaart 1989.

27 Mol van Otterloo 1933.

28 A certain amount of preparatory work had taken place, of course, prior to this break

through After the Second World War, American doctors had taken an increasingly firm stance that opiate addiction—like alcoholism—was a sickness rather than a sin. This was the view taken, for instance, by the Council of Mental Health in 1957.


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tion under the criminal law combined with psychotherapy—had been geared towards reducing the addiction and curing the person affected. Nyswander and Dole argued, in contrast, that the long-term use of opiates—whether legal or illegal—structurally disrupted the body’s metabolism. Based on this view, they propagated a new pharmacological treatment for persons addicted to illegal opiates, heroin in particular. Within this approach, the concepts of ‘weak will’ and ‘addictive personality structure’ scarcely figured at all. Nyswander and Dole hence presented methadone as a legal medical sub stitute for illegal heroin. When their treatment was introduced, it soon became clear that the synthetic methadone was just as addictive as ‘natural’ opiates.29 Addicts increasingly came to view the methadone they obtained on prescrip tion as a supply to satisfy their most basic needs. They continued to yearn for the intense pleasure that only the intoxication of injected illegal heroin could supply. The shift in the 1960s away from a repressive regime and towards a more medical one took place at a time when the use of heroin (and other intoxicants) in the United States had spread far beyond the lower-class youth and ethnic minorities. Experimenting with forbidden intoxicants—marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD and countless other synthetic substances—had led to many an addiction among the youth subculture of the prosperous and respectable mid dle classes. In retrospect it would appear that this new shift in the population of drug users was one of the factors that led to a certain relaxation in the regulato ry regime. Suddenly, in the early 1970s, methadone clinics sprang up all over the United States. Methadone treatment was even ‘exported’ to other Western countries, including Britain and the Netherlands. Among the next generation of middle-class youth, however, heroin was unfashionable again: people soon heard of the dangers of addiction, and in these circles young people quickly decided to give this drug a wide berth. Co caine was more popular, and had a higher status, among the middle classes—it was more expensive and appeared to carry less risk of addiction—but in the main it would appear that the use of illicit intoxicants became something of a discarded item of cultural baggage in the 1980s. Since then, the lower classes have again predominated in the use of illicit intoxicants—heroin, cocaine and ‘crack’30—and the accent in the American government regulation of these sub

29 Methadone had certain advantages for medical practitioners in comparison with hero in For instance, its effects lasted longer, but it did not provide any concentrated pleasure of intoxication. This released doctors from the dilemma (and the undesirable reputation) that they were helping to supply intoxication rather than medical treatment. Another advantage is that methadone can be administered orally. 30 Crack is a product refined from cocaine.


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stances has shifted back to a more repressive approach. The role played by medical practitioners has again become subordinate, with an all- out War on Drugs being the formal government strategy in the regulation of addicts.31 [200] The British System: doctors at full strength Medical practitioners in Britain were more successful than their American counterparts in retaining their autonomy and their leading role in the regulato ry regime for opiate addicts. A number of factors contributed to this success. Chief among them, probably, is the fact that the addict population was smaller and very different from that in America: British opiate addicts tended to come from better backgrounds, and they mainly used the more medical substance of morphine rather than heroin. Another possible cause was that the medical pro fession had a stronger power base in Britain than in the United States. This impression is based partly on the Rollestone Report published in 1926. The events that led up to the appointment of the Rollestone Committee (the official title of which was the Ministry of Health Departmental Committee on Morphine and Heroin Addiction) were as follows.32 Britain, like the United States, had doctors who had a reputation for prescribing opiates—whether from conviction or for gain—to anyone who wanted them and was able to pay. This enabled a small proportion of British addicts to evade the 1920 Danger ous Drugs Act legally. Aside from this, there had been a number of incidents involving doctors who were addicted themselves, and whose profession gave them easy access to morphine. As Britain wished to comply faithfully with the international opium conventions to curb the colonial opium trade—just how sensitive an issue this was has been described in chapter 4—a government committee was set up and asked to make recommendations. The Rollestone Committee consisted entirely of medical practitioners, and this was clearly reflected in the recommendations it issued in 1926, at the end of a two-year investigation. Since opiate addiction was not a substantial social problem—‘All of the witnesses who commented on the relationship between alcoholism and drug addiction stressed that the former was a much more dangerous social problem than the latter’33—and since British medical practitioners enjoyed high social status, they were able to prevent any controls from outside the profession on 31

For this shift in the balance between the medical and criminal law approach, see Gerstein and Harwood 1990. 32 See Parssinen 1983:183-200; Berridge and Edwards 1987:167ff; Trebach 1982:85117. 33 Parrsinen 1982:188.


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their prescription practices, opiates included. During the committee’s sessions, it was proposed that doctors treating addicted patients be required to register them with the Home Office, and to get a second opinion before prescribing opiates. But these proposals represented such a major infringement of the autonomy of the medical profession—besides creating the suggestion of a basic lack of confidence in individual doctors—that they were dismissed. The committee’s ultimate verdict was that opiate addiction was a disease, which should be treated by medical practitioners. The addict was not a felon, to be punished through the channels of the criminal law. The Rollestone Com mittee recommended the establishment of a medical tribunal consisting entire ly of medical practitioners, which could intervene with due restraint in situa tions in which doctors prescribed too many opiates or ‘helped themselves.’ This preserved the autonomy of the profession. For opiate addicts, the Rolle stone Report meant that they did not immediately have to turn to the expensive black market, with all the attendant risks of further criminalization. Unlike the United States, then, the medical profession in Britain did not have to relinquish authority to the police and judicial authorities. The British system for the medical care of addicts continued to function virtually un changed right up until 1968. Partly because of this medical regime, Britain scarcely possessed a black market, and for a long time opiate addiction was a relatively minor phenomenon. Furthermore, the patients were respectable, and for their treatment—that is, the legal supply of opiates on prescription—they could always go to their general practitioner. But the small-scale, exclusive nature of opiate use on prescription came to an end in Britain at the end of the 1960s. Echoing the trend in the United States, the use of illegal intoxicants, including opiates, became fashionable among young middle-class Europeans. In Britain, the existing medical regime collapsed under the pressure of a fast-growing clientele. Some general practi tioners were found to be prescribing too many opiates too easily, drugs that subsequently leaked into a gray market. In addition, the user-friendly medical model attracted addicts from countries with a more repressive regime. For all these reasons, the British medical model, in which the general prac titioner had played the leading role, was changed in 1968. The direct state control that the Rollestone Committee had managed to keep at bay was now introduced after all. The Home Office took charge of registering and control ling the treatment of opiate addicts. A new aspect of this stricter medical regu latory regime—which became known as the Clinic System—was that only certain specified doctors attached to clinics were licensed by the state to pre scribe opiates. Following the American practice of the 1960s, methadone became an im portant medicinal drug in the British treatment of opiate addiction in the 1970s


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and 1980s. Even so, as part of the heritage of the ‘British system,’ doctors continued to prescribe heroin for addicts, albeit on a small scale and by way of experiment—with the special permission of the government. The primary motive for this residual practice would appear to have been to stop addicts com mitting petty crime,34 rather than to cure them. Although the regime for opiate addicts in Britain was more medical, and hence relatively mild, the Clinic System of the 1970s and 1980s, with the sep arate care that went along with it, nevertheless represented a shift towards a more repressive type of government regulation. The medical care itself was more austere: instead of providing maintenance programs, doctors aimed to scale down the amounts taken with a view to eventual abstention. In addition, the stigma attached to drug addiction became more severe—this is an inevita ble development where people are sequestered away for care, with the general practitioner playing a negligible role. Closely tied in with this was a change in the addict population in Britain: just as in the United States, from about the mid-1970s, heroin addicts increasingly came from the lower classes. Simultaneously with these changes within the medical regime, Britain wit nessed a shift towards the greater involvement of law enforcement authorities, as is clear from legislation introduced in the 1970s and 1980s.35 Nonetheless, the British regulatory regime for opiate addicts still had, and has, a far stronger medical accent than that in the United States.36 The Netherlands: socio-medical paternalism The Netherlands, like Britain, did not find itself confronting the phenomenon of heroin addiction on any substantial scale until the 1970s. And when it came, Dutch medics were not prepared for it. Meanwhile, however, a state commis sion had been appointed in 1968 to advise the government on the increasing use of illicit intoxicants.37 Although the report issued by this commission, the Baan Report, was largely taken up with young people’s use of marijuana, LSD and amphetamines—heroin did not come onto the market until about 1973—it nevertheless served as the basis for government policy on heroin addiction. The Working Group on Narcotics was deliberately composed of equal numbers of medical practitioners (mostly psychiatrists) on the one hand, and

34 35

See chapter 9 below. The Misuse of Drugs Act (1971) and the Drug Trafficking Offences Act (1986); see Albrecht and Van Kalmthout 1989. 36 Trebach 1986. 37 Werkgroep Verdovende Middelen (Working group on narcotics), 1972.


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law representatives of police and judicial authorities on the other.38 But the report came down heavily on the medical and socio-psychological side. Ad dicts were seen as patients, and persons with what the committee described as a ‘behavioural disorder’ of this type were best tended to, the members felt, in specialized care and cure facilities. A combination of outpatient and residen tial care would be the right way to help the—mainly young—users of illicit intoxicants back to a healthier way of life. Initially, opiate addicts could get medical and/or psychological treatment, in the 1970s, at institutions that dealt with general mental disorders. The Insti tute for Multidisciplinary Psychotherapy, for instance, treated a small number of heroin addicts.39 But after the Baan Report, addicts were treated separately.40 The care of opiate addicts in the Netherlands was taken over largely by social psychologists, educationalists and social workers. As a result, there was soon an endless chain of state-subsidized socio-psychological experiments in the care of addicts, as well as numerous diverse forms of treatment. For these fairly young and fast-growing professions it opened up a whole new field—the care of people with drug problems—and medical practitioners were perhaps less than keen to concern themselves with these individuals for whom they had little to offer by way of a cure. The socio-psychological approaches had little effect, however, and the Dutch soon followed the American example in the large-scale application of methadone treatment.41 The objective of methadone treatment was rather unclear: in some cities, carers viewed it as a medicinal drug to break addicts of their habit, while in others it was intended to make addicts less dependent on the black market, thus removing the need to commit petty crime. But by the time it had been used for about ten years, most of the original aims had been abandoned, and Dutch carers viewed the provision of methadone primarily as a way of reaching heroin addicts and holding on to them.42 Heroin soon lost its attractions for the Dutch middle-class youth as it had in Britain; its users were increasingly young people from the lower classes and ethnic minorities. As the numbers of addicts increased, and at the same time

38 The working group also contained a number of social scientists. For its precise compo sition, see Werkgroep Verdovende Middelen 1972:viii. 39 Gerritsen 1991. 40 There is a subtle distinction between care, the aims of which are relatively vague, and treatment, the aims of which are defined—on paper, at any rate. 41 Wijngaart 1989:130-31. 42 Dutch carers, in general, are proud of the fact that they have gained such a firm hold on heroin users through methadone treatment Since 1987 their methadone clients have been registered nationally. The practice of supplying methadone is often described as a useful instrument in the fight against AIDS.


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became a problem associated with groups of low social status, there was all the more reason to strengthen the separate facilities for this branch of care, which were generally organized at municipal level. Unintentionally, and in a manner quite unforeseen, from the late 1970s onwards the separate care for addicts helped to push addicts into a downward spiral of stigmatization, criminaliza tion and debilitation: now, in the 1990s, there are few other social groups that are so dependent on care, for so many facets of their everyday life, as are her oin addicts.43 But in spite of these medical facilities, heroin users have not been spared the intervention of more repressive state instruments such as law enforcement authorities. Notwithstanding all the policy intentions of ‘normal ization’ and ‘decriminalization,’44 about half of the total Dutch prison popula tion, in the 1980s, consisted of heroin addicts, and heroin use in prison is a serious problem. When we compare the formal medical approach to opiate addicts in Brit ain and the Netherlands, we find few essential differences. In both countries, treatment by general practitioners has gradually given way to specialized care facilities, and medics in both countries lean heavily on methadone treatment;45 methadone is no longer seen as a habit- breaker, but as a basic medicinal provi sion for addicts. In Britain, some doctors are still licensed to prescribe heroin as maintenance treatment for addicts, a possibility that is used on a small scale. In the Netherlands, medical practitioners would theoretically be legally enti tled to prescribe heroin or methadone, were it not that the profession has con cluded an informal agreement with the government not to prescribe heroin at all, and to leave the prescription of methadone to the specialized care facilities for addicts. In the United States, the accent in the approach to drug addiction is cur rently on more repressive forms of regulation. In consequence, American med ical practitioners have only had a very marginal involvement in the control of opiate addicts since the late 1970s. From sin to sickness—and back again? The modern addiction syndrome Down the ages, alcohol and opiates have alternately attracted words of praise and revilement. Whenever the use of these intoxicants has led to apparently uncontrolled and offensive behaviour, it has often given rise to public conster

43

Gerritsen 1992. Baanders 1989. Interestingly, methadone substitution has become a rather marginal phenomenon in the United States, where it was developed as a form of treatment. 44 45


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nation. The furore has been loudest when groups of social ‘outsiders’ were involved. Medical opinion has always weighed heavily in these social dis putes, and this remains true today. But religious and educational authorities too have proclaimed their views—and still do—when alcoholism and drug addiction are being discussed. The religious terminology—sin, repentance and conversion, but also charity, and scope for personal growth—were key con cepts not only in the fight against alcohol and opiates, but also in the care and treatment of alcoholics and opiate addicts, and in many cases they still are. Medical opinion on alcoholism and opiate addiction has changed over the past two centuries. There is no simple way of defining this change, which is of course still an ongoing process, nor have the views on alcohol and opiates changed at the same pace. But it is fair to say that the medical profession has largely abandoned the morally charged position that addiction is a form of ‘sinful behaviour’ for a more clinical approach in which the toxic effect of the drug is seen as the source of illness. This clinical approach has focused atten tion on the physiological aspects of addiction to intoxicants, and there is less interest, nowadays, in passing judgment. Nevertheless, a moralizing undertone persists, even within the medical concept of addiction. The explanation of the addiction syndrome in terms of the personality structure of the alcoholic and the opiate addict have never entirely vanished from the picture. Psychiatrists and psychologists, in particular, often point to a ‘lack of willpower’ and a ‘de fective personality structure’ as causative factors. Many types of treatment set out to repair these personality defects in psychotherapy, sometimes supported by prescribed drugs. The rise of the psychological approach to addiction had certain important consequences. One is that addictions to alcohol, to opiates or other intoxicants—and even to certain types of behaviour, such as gambling—have been gathered together under a common denominator, and regarded as different ex pressions of a single, underlying syndrome. This idea has a long history. The Dutch physician J. Broers wrote his 1886 doctoral dissertation on ‘Alcohol ism, morphinism and chloralism, viewed separately and in relation to one another.’46 And Freud wrote to his friend Fliess: ‘…It has dawned on me that masturbation is the one major habit, the ‘primal addiction’, and that it is only as a substitute and replacement for it that the other addictions—for alcohol, morphine, tobacco, etc.—come into existence.’47 And in the 1960s the World Health Organization defined addiction to alcohol and to opiates as distinct

46

Broers focused particularly on the physiological features of the three types of addic tion See Broers 1886. 47 Freud 1966 (1897), vol I:272.


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manifestations of one and the same dependency syndrome.48 Given this basic similarity, some institutions geared towards treating alcoholics also, as a mat ter of course, take in persons addicted to opiates or other intoxicants, as well as compulsive gamblers.49 It is not only medical opinion that has changed. Nor, indeed, has medical opinion always carried the same weight. Public attitudes to alcoholics and opi ate addicts in the United States, Britain and the Netherlands have always swung between an approach based on the criminal law and one based on med ical treatment, between the prison and the clinic (with the church occasionally providing a transit route). Periods characterized by a medical approach have alternated with more repressive times. The current state of affairs is that the alcohol question, partly through the influence of the medical profession, is no longer seen as a problem of the ‘genever-drinking classes’ but as a personal medical problem, with social class being irrelevant. In the case of opiate addicts, medical predominance is not (yet) taken for granted to the same extent. Addiction to illicit intoxicants— especially heroin—is still often seen as a class and generation problem: it is associated primarily with disadvantaged young people from lower social classes—which in Western societies frequently means people from ethnic mi norities. This involvement of social ‘outsiders’ with opiate addiction is less natural than it may seem. We may recall that in the latter half of the 19th cen tury it was above all persons belonging to established groups in society who tended to be addicted to morphine. And more recently, in the 1960s and 1970s, members of the ‘establishment’ still viewed the use of illicit intoxicants as a typical feature of the youth counter-culture: as a threat, to be sure, and yet somehow not so very alien, as it was their own respectable children who were experimenting with these substances.50 After this, however, the use of illicit intoxicants—certainly of heroin—went ‘down-market.’ The age- range of us ers expanded somewhat, and their class profile and marginal position as social outsiders gradually became more distinct. The balance between a medical approach and one more based on the crim inal law—sometimes expanded to include care from a religious angle—is un stable and in a constant state of flux. This is clear from the nature of the most

48

The WHO described this dependency syndrome as follows: ‘A state, psychic and sometimes also physical, resulting from the interaction between a living organism and a drug, characterised by behavioural and other responses that always include a compulsion to take the drug on a continuous or periodic basis in order to experience its psychic effects, and sometimes to avoid the discomforts of its absence..’ 49 One example is the Jellinek Clinic in Amsterdam. 50 Ten Have 1974.


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predominant medical practices to rid individuals of an addiction. Treatment for an addiction syndrome (and here we are focusing on addiction to illicit intox icants) is sometimes imposed as a punitive measure, and exhibits many simi larities with a criminal law approach geared towards the inculcation of discipline.51 Furthermore, it is interesting to note that many types of care for alcoholics and drug addicts are closely linked to religious organizations.52 And the institutions and remedies with which people attempt to rid themselves of their dependence on alcohol or opiates, such as self-help organizations, are often saturated with religious ideas. In spite of all the scientific efforts to the contrary, the medical and related professions have as yet been fairly unsuccessful in developing an effective treatment for alcohol or drug addiction. There are few other sicknesses the treatment of which has such a low success rate, and for which the prospects of a breakthrough are bleaker. Perhaps this is why medical carers have increas ingly turned their attention to secondary successes such as reducing overdose mortality rates and preventing the spread of infectious disease among addicts. As for any prospect of a permanent cure for addiction by some form of medical intervention—on this subject, silence reigns.

51 52

Schaap 1981.

Van de Wijngaart 1990:19.


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fig. 22. A ban on intoxicants inevitably leads to a black market. Dealers and police officers have to interact at every level, and derive their raison d’être to a large extent from each other


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CHAPTER NINE

The dynamics of prohibition

and illegal supply

The monopoly on opiates obtained by physicians and pharmacists in the latter half of the 19th century culminated in national systems of statutory regula tions. All consumption of opiates without medical intervention became an of fence against the law. After a successful international campaign against the colonial opium trade at the beginning of the 20th century, these national sys tems of formal medical regulation were even standardized internationally: since then, the non-medical production, trade and consumption of opiates have been subject to a uniform worldwide prohibition. The development and growth of an illegal market in opiates were the inevitable result of this development. Similarly, the fierce and persistent campaign against alcohol in the United States led to federal Prohibition. As in the case of opiates, the statutory outlaw ing of alcohol led to the rise of an illegal market, though in this case it was a market confined to the United States. In the following pages, I wish to examine these two variants of illegal mar ket formation more closely. Then I shall use these descriptions to formulate some general observations on the development of illegal markets in illicit in toxicants. This section is hence a retrospective survey of the dynamic relation ship between the banning of a substance and its illegal supply. US Prohibition: 1920-19331 The 18th Amendment was adopted by the US Congress in 1917. In addition to the change in the Constitution, separate fiscal legislation was needed to guar antee compliance with the 18th Amendment. This National Prohibition Act, frequently referred to as the Volstead Act after its promoter, Andrew J. Vol stead, first had to withstand the veto cast by President Wilson. But not even the President could prevent the Volstead Act coming onto the statute-books in au tumn 1919, so widespread was the support for the new Act among the general population.

1 For this section I have used (inter alia) Peter de Baare’s doctoraal thesis on the unin tentional consequences of Prohibition (De Baare 1992).


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[210]

In spite of the speed with which the 18th Amendment was ratified, the Act was an ambivalent piece of legislation from the outset. Initially only those who traded alcohol or produced it commercially were liable to prosecution. The consumption of alcohol was not yet an offence, nor was the possession of stocks of liquor. It was not until 1929, with the Jones Act, that this inconsisten cy was removed; henceforth possession and consumption were also criminal offences, and far tougher penalties were introduced. Another inconsistency was that prohibition only related to the consumption of alcohol as a narcotic; industrial uses were not affected, nor was the supply of alcohol for medicinal use. Grey areas of this kind made the vigorous enforcement of the Volstead Act a very difficult task. Nevertheless, boundless optimism accompanied the intro duction of federal Prohibition. Popular support for the 18th Amendment had after all been overwhelming, and the Anti-Saloon League, its most vociferous champion, took it for granted that in the space of one generation, or two at the most, the consumption of alcoholic beverages would have completely van ished from American society. Entirely according to plan, the Volstead Act did indeed lead to a drop in alcohol consumption. According to Rorabaugh’s well-founded estimate, the average amount consumed annually per head of the population (converted into volume of pure alcohol) was 2.3 litres, less than half of the pre-Prohibition average.2 What was not according to plan, however, was the change in drink ing habits, with beer, wine and cider losing ground to bootleg strong liquor. The reason for this shift was that strong liquor was easier to produce and trans port, which boosted profits. Given that the ASL and its supporters viewed strong liquor as a far greater evil than that of wine or beer, the increased popu larity of liquor was not simply an unanticipated side- effect of Prohibition—it was the last thing the temperance movement had wanted. The supply of alcohol during Prohibition In spite of the ban on trade and production, there were countless ways of ob taining alcohol during Prohibition. One legal way, at any rate until 1929, was to draw on private stocks. On the eve of Prohibition—though the constitutional Amendment was ratified swiftly, enacting the new legislation still took over a year—it was entirely lawful for those who could afford it to stockpile supplies

2

Rorabaugh 1979:232 It is interesting to note that alcohol consumption in England and the Netherlands, where there was no prohibition, also declined in this period; the decline in the Netherlands was actually more pronounced than in the United States.


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THE DYNAMICS OF PROHIBITION AND ILLEGAL SUPPLY

for their own use. Some did so on an individual basis, while others pooled their resources in a club: the exclusive New York Yachting Club, for instance, amassed stocks that would keep its members drinking for years. Besides the use of private stocks, there were two other legal ways of evad ing the ban. First, doctors were permitted to prescribe alcohol for medicinal purposes, and they obliged on a massive scale.3 Second, making alcohol was permissible provided that it was strictly for personal consumption, and this too was extremely common. Producers of frozen concentrated grape juice encour aged this practice by marketing their blocks as Rhine Wine, complete with a ‘warning’ that once their product was diluted, it should by no means be al lowed to stand for twenty days, as it would then turn into wine. It was within the letter of the law, so it was done. Following the same principle, people set up little stills in their back room and produced their own liquor, which soon became popularly known as ‘bath tub gin’. This too was perfectly legal until 1929. But these loopholes meant that the step to commercial production was a very small one indeed. Home stills soon expanded into an underground bootlegging industry, with entire net works of small-time operators coming under the control of organized crime. This was done entirely in accordance with the time-honoured, pre-industrial method of the ‘putting out’ system. Bootleggers set up stills with a limited capacity in apartments—a primitive but effective strategy. The liquor was col lected at set times. It was not easy to prove that alcohol was being produced commercially. Even when an operator was ‘caught out’, the damage was limit ed to the loss of a single production unit. Besides these small-scale, ramified bootlegging networks, there were also larger illegal distilleries. In remote sheds, often kept under permanent guard, bootleg liquor was turned out in sub stantial quantities. These and the small-scale ‘home’ producers supplied most of the market in illegal alcohol. Bootleggers had no difficulty obtaining the alcohol they needed as a basic ingredient; diverting it from the legal trade in industrial alcohol was a fairly simple matter. There had been an explosion in the industrial use of alcohol at the beginning of the 20th century. The new motor industry (with its anti freeze!) soon accounted for a large share of the market, but there was also a growing demand for alcohol in the cosmetics, leather-working, paint and syn thetic clothing industries. As alcohol was an essential raw material for these large and expanding branches of industry, this trade was difficult to control. The federal authorities endeavoured to curb the improper use of alcohol in tended for industry by passing legislation restricting industrial use to methylat

3

Woodiwiss 1988:11.


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[212]

ed spirits. But this adversely affected the quality of the bootleg liquor, causing illness and even deaths, which aroused doubts as to whether the remedy might not be worse than the disease. The second most important illegal supply source was alcohol smuggled out of neighbouring countries or from international waters. Liquor was trucked across the Canadian border on a grand scale, creating a boom for the Canadian whiskey industry along the border. And the rum-runners from just outside US territorial waters kept up a constant supply of liquor. The illegal supply grew to vast proportions. Norman Clark estimates for the north-western state of Washington that in 1920 there were some 10,000 producers of bootleg liquor; later there were even more. And on the subject of smuggling Clark writes: ‘The hundreds of miles of the Canadian border were impossible to patrol without a huge standing army, and the waters of the Pacif ic Ocean and Puget Sound with their adjacent wooded beaches provided a foggy and private paradise for the rumrunners. Anyone with a small boat could enter the business.’4 By 1922, those involved in such criminal activities in Washington state had become so confident that they held a public meeting to agree prices and to establish a common code of ethics: no trafficking in narcot ics. Prohibition also gave rise to a new phenomenon in the alcohol retail trade. While the Anti- Saloon League had dealt a devastating blow to public drinking rooms, with 170,000 saloons being forced to close down, in their place came a completely new kind of drinking establishment, and one far harder to control—the speakeasy.5 Speakeasies were back-street rooms—operating, need less to say, without a permit—where you could buy and consume a drink quickly and anonymously. They sprang up mainly in the big cities: in Detroit there were about 15,000 in 1925, and for New York the number estimated in 1930 was 32,000. In contrast, prior to Prohibition, no more than 12,000 per mits had been issued in New York for bars and liquor stores.6 So while alcohol consumption did decrease during Prohibition, alcohol was far from banished. There was a continuing demand for it, and an illegal supply developed to meet this demand. This illegal supply was able to flourish partly because the legislation was initially so ambivalent, and partly because

4

Clark 1988:153. It is not entirely true that these illegal drinking establishments had not existed before Prohibition; there was in fact an illegal circuit of cheaper bars before, but on a far smaller scale Elsewhere I have compared the rapid rise of the ‘coffee-shop’ in Amsterdam as a sales outlet for soft drugs in the Netherlands since the 1980s to that of the speakeasies during American prohibition (Gerritsen 1992). 6 Woodiwiss 1988:11; Warburton 1932:211. 5


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alcohol consumption proved to be more deeply entrenched in American socie ty than the Prohibitionists had believed. Partly because of Prohibition, the alcohol trade developed into an extreme ly lucrative activity—so much so that it became a fertile soil for criminal investment. The income derived from the illegal trade was not all translated into conspicuous consumption—though there was plenty of that. Much of it was ploughed back (without any intervention by the tax authorities) into new crim inal activity. And sometimes the profits were used to set up business within the legal economy. Yet the notion that Prohibition was a significant catalyst in the growth of organized crime in the United States of this period is far from universally en dorsed. Harry Levine, for instance, comments ‘The image of prohibition sup plied mainly by gangsters and giant organized crime syndicates was a movie and literary invention of later years.’7 Levine is right when he observes that Prohibition did not in itself create well-organized criminal gangs; these al ready existed before. But that Prohibition fostered the growth of these criminal organizations, and helped them become more deeply embedded in society, can scarcely be disputed. In comparison with other criminal activities, the illegal drink trade, with its combination of low production costs, a large market and poor controls (hence a low risk of discovery) was an immensely attractive source of income. And the combination of illegal production, smuggling and retail sales called for a good organization with strong leadership, one that was active in several regional areas. So having a good organization and a basis of mutual cooperation was a definite advantage in this line of business. ‘Local, regional, national and international ties soon developed among bootlegging entrepreneurs. [...] Some organizations specialized for good economic rea sons, and any large organization necessarily had ties with other organizations.’8 Without the illegal alcohol market, criminal organizations would prob ably never have been able to take on and maintain so many people. Prohibition therefore acted as a sort of ‘multiplier’ for these organizations. That money earned in the illicit liquor trade would strengthen the position of organized crime was something that neither the ASL and its supporters nor the federal authorities had envisaged. The temperance movement had always claimed that Prohibition would reduce crime; in this respect it is fair to say that the result was quite the opposite. Or, as Richard Henshel observes in his study of social problems and the unintentional consequences of policy: ‘Perhaps the ideal example of unanticipated consequences is the American Experience with

7 8

Levine 1983:195.

Woodiwiss 1988:13.


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Prohibition. The ‘noble experiment’ killed numerous drinkers of tainted liquor, reduced tens of millions to the nominal status of lawbreakers, increased cor ruption and contempt for the law; and—most significantly—created ideal conditions for the growth of organized crime. All of these results were totally un anticipated by the moral entrepreneurs of Prohibition, who simply wanted to do away with “Devil Drink”.’9 Compliance with the Volstead Act and the upsurge of corruption Because of the strong initial popular backing for the 18th Amendment, the federal authorities thought that a staff of 1,500 would be sufficient to monitor compliance. The Federal Prohibition Unit embarked on its task with a meagre annual budget of $2.4 million.10 The Unit’s work was thus hampered from the beginning by a shortage of human and financial resources. (This handicap may not have been unrelated to President Wilson’s lack of faith in the new legisla tion; after all, he had even tried to veto it). The Federal Prohibition Unit initial ly came under the Department of the Treasury, which did little to enhance its status as a law enforcement agency. Not until 1927 was it reallocated to the Department of Justice, renamed the National Prohibition Bureau. Meanwhile, its budget had been increased to $32.3 million. The substantial enforcement costs incurred by the legislation had not been envisaged any more than its tendency to foster crime. The costs would later become an argument in the political struggle to repeal Prohibition. The control apparatus proved extremely sensitive to corruption. In the first four years, 141 federal agents ended up in jail. And of the total of 17,816 agents who were attached to the service over the first ten years, 11,926 were dismissed on the spot, and another 1,587 lost their jobs for accepting bribes.11 Other officials too, such as customs officers and regular state police officers, as well as politicians of every rank and persuasion and even citizens performing jury service were discovered to be bolstering their income by aiding and abet ting the illegal liquor trade in some way. As more and more corruption was laid bare—and journalists became increasingly adept at uncovering it as the 1920s progressed—public indignation swelled, damaging the reputation and credi bility of federal government. And as the extent of the corruption became clear, doubts began to be expressed as to whether Prohibition was workable at all. The need to repair the credibility of federal government would become another argument in favour of repealing Prohibition. 9 10

Henshel 1990:140-41. ‘And that was for a population of over 100 million and a geographical area of over 35 million square miles’ (Warburton 1932:246).


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But the Federal Prohibition Unit, and later the National Prohibition Bu reau, did achieve a measure of success. In 1921 just under 10,000 bootlegging operations (worth about $8 million) were rounded up; the corresponding fig ure for 1930 was 16,000, with a total value of $29 million.12 Jails were gradually overburdened by the endless stream of individuals in and out of their cells who had been convicted under the Volstead Act and who had relatively short sentences to serve. In 1928, for instance, 15% of the jail population consisted of persons convicted under the Volstead Act. Between 1922 and 1924, there were an average of 31,000 Prohibition-related federal convictions for which non-suspended custodial sentences were imposed. The average sentence was 20-30 days.13 But for all the investigations and prosecutions, the availability of alcohol was scarcely affected. It was President Hoover who made the last attempt to enforce Prohibition. Hoover, who had won a convincing electoral victory in 1929, had spent much of his campaign proclaiming his commitment to the strict enforcement of the Volstead Act (in marked contrast to his rival contender for the presidency, Smith, who wanted the legislation repealed). At this point, a majority of Amer icans apparently still believed that the thing could be done. Hoover was true to his electoral pledges. The repressive Jones Act was passed, and the National Prohibition Bureau’s budget was further increased. Washington steeled itself to stamp out the illicit liquor trade once and for all. So when Al Capone was sentenced to 11 years in jail in 1931, there was an outburst of public enthusi asm. But the fact that Capone was convicted for tax evasion and not for offenc es under the Volstead Act should perhaps have tempered the enthusiasm; as it turned out, his widely acclaimed conviction remained an isolated event. The repeal of Prohibition In the space of a few years, public opinion on the feasibility of enforcing fed eral prohibition underwent a sea-change. One key factor that helped produce this change was the depression following the Wall Street crash in 1929, if only because Prohibition no longer commanded much interest; with the prosperous and relatively carefree 1920s very definitely behind them, the American peo ple now had more important things on their minds. While the chief motor behind Prohibition had been the Anti-Saloon League, the forces for repeal now ranged themselves behind the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, or AAPA. The AAPA had been founded 11 12 13

Woodiwiss 1988:14.

Warburton 1932:210.

Musto 1987:346, note 6.


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in 1919, and for many years it was dominated by those with direct interests to protect—brewers and other entrepreneurs in the alcohol industry. But in the late 1920s, the AAPA gained mounting support from wealthy private individuals, who were motivated by a mixture of economic, financial and moral con siderations. The economic argument for repeal was that a legal alcohol industry would create thousands of jobs, and in the depression this was of vital importance. The financial argument had to do with the pressure of taxation. After 1919, the American elite and the upper middle classes, together with industry, had been filling the financial gap that had arisen with the loss of alcohol duties by pay ing direct income tax and corporation tax. The prohibitionists had once held out the prospect of a drop in government expenditure, but instead rather the opposite seemed to have happened, as enforcing the Volstead Act had become a very costly business. So repealing the legislation seemed doubly attractive: it would not only save the taxpayer money, it would also revive an old source of income for the federal and state authorities—the alcohol duties of which feder al government had such fond memories and which it now desperately needed to fight the depression. Finally, the AAPA advanced moral arguments in favour of repeal. It point ed out that the general disregard for the law and corruption in the realm of alcohol legislation threatened to spread to other areas of society. Dismay at the lack of respect for the law together with the employment argument caused increasing numbers of industrial magnates and bankers to urge repeal. The newspaper magnate Hearst and the industrialist DuPont, together with former ASL supporters such as the Rockefellers, joined the swelling ranks of the AAPA, whose membership grew from 12,000 in 1928 to 432,000 in 1932. The Association developed into an influential organization and mouthpiece for wealthy industrialists and bankers. It also gained the support of the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform, which was founded in 1929 (in opposition to the WCTU) and boasted a membership of 300,000 within a year.14 These figures show that the tide turned around 1930, with popular support switching sides from the ASL to the AAPA. After Roosevelt’s election victory in 1932, he was able to repeal Prohibition without any difficulty whatsoever.15 In five states a limited form of prohibition remained in force after 1933. Texas, for instance, did not repeal the state ban on alcohol trade until 1935, and long

14 15

For the AAPA, see eg. Rumbarger 1988:191-94. The ratification of this 21st Amendment was effected even more swiftly than that of the 18th.


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after this several of its counties remained alcohol-free.16 But federal Prohibi tion, based on federal policy, had had its day; it was soon a dead issue. After repeal, the production of strong liquor and beer was concentrated in the hands of a few large companies, and the regulation of permits was decentralized again to local level, including the ‘local option.’17 One could be forgiven for assuming that repeal rendered the National Bu reau of Prohibition obsolete, but the truth is otherwise. From its earliest begin nings, this police department had a dual function: while its main work con cerned alcohol, it also had a small narcotics division to enforce the Harrison Act. In the 1920s, between 170 and 270 police officers, working throughout the United States, were engaged in this task.18 When the alcohol trade was legalized again in 1933, all attention within this repressive government instru ment shifted to the control of production and trade in those intoxicants that were still prohibited. When the National Bureau of Prohibition faced inevita ble disbandment, the narcotics division split off just in time, calling itself the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. This was the beginning of a glorious epoch for a new federal agency. The illegal market for opiates: 1912 to the present day US Prohibition was a very different matter from the ban on the production, trade and consumption of opiates—but not because two different classes of intoxicants are involved, which is of little consequence, but because the first was purely national in its scope, whereas the ban on opiates is supra-national. The countries that signed the international opium conventions undertook to adjust their domestic medical legislation accordingly. As the League of Na tions, and its successor the United Nations, became increasingly important, more and more countries joined in this global regulatory regime for opiates. As time went on, the scope possessed by sovereign states to enact legislation to regulate opiates as they saw fit gradually narrowed. The differences between states’ regulatory regimes are now chiefly expressed in their policy on—and priorities in—prosecution. In Britain and the Netherlands, the initial body of legislation—largely medical laws dating from the 19th century—was expanded on the basis of the first opium conventions with clauses governing the international opiate trade. In the United States the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) underwent a similar

16 17 18

McCarty 1980.

Levine 1983:197.

Musto 1987:184.


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metamorphosis. Thus the international opium conventions acquired in signato ry countries a kind of umbrella role, their principles being reflected in all do mestic bodies of legislation. In the United States this resulted in the Harrison Act (1914), in Britain in the Dangerous Drugs Act (1920) and in the Nether lands in the Opium Act (1928).19 The main concern of those whose actions led to the first Opium Conven tions (1912 and 1925)—especially the Chinese and Americans—had been to end the colonial opium trade plied by countries such as Britain and the Netherlands.20 But in the mid-20th century, with this goal largely achieved, the con ventions evolved into instruments for curbing the illegal supply of opiates in the Western countries themselves. This shift of purpose took place gradually and went almost unnoticed. Nowadays, the conventions concluded under the auspices of the United Nations are inspired totally by the problems that appear to be caused in Western societies by the trafficking in, and consumption of, these illicit intoxicants. The most recent conventions are geared towards curb ing the supply and demand of illegal intoxicants within Western societies. Where non-Western societies come into the picture, it is primarily as the coun tries of illegal production and transit. The illegal market: early 20th century At the beginning of the 20th century the illegal supply of opiates focused largely on the Asian demand for smoking opium and substitutes for it—which generally meant morphine. The morphine for this illegal market was siphoned away from the legal Western pharmaceutical trade in opiates. In his study of the situation in Britain after the signing of the first Opium Convention, Terry M. Parssinen concludes ‘that from 1911 to 1920, approximately 175,000 ounces of morphia per year, which could not be accounted for either by export or by domestic demand, was funneled into the nonmedical market, either in Britain or abroad.’21 ‘Abroad’ meant first and foremost China, where the mor phine ended up via countless transit stations to be snapped up by former opium eaters who had switched to morphine injection when opium was banned. Japan was a frequent transit haven in this illegal morphine trade; it had a certain

19

The 1919 Dutch Opium Act was based on the international Opium Convention con cluded in 1912 The 1928 Opium Act, which is still the basis for today’s legislation, was formulated in accordance with the international agreements set down in the 1925 Opium Convention, which went much further than the 1912 Convention. 20 For a detailed description of the international opium conventions, see the standard work by Chatterjee (1981). 21 Parssinen 1983:145.


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political interest in helping to ensure that China was dislocated by addiction.22 But morphine also reached the Chinese population by way of French IndoChina and two British crown colonies, Formosa and the free port of Hong Kong, the latter having actually been ceded as part of the settlement of the first Opium War. All this morphine originated from the pharmaceutical industry. But it was not only the users in China and the surrounding regions who drew their supplies from the legal Western pharmaceutical industry. There was also a certain demand for illegal opiates in the artistic margins of Western societies, where the habit had spread from the isolated Chinese seamen’s circles where it had started. The French writer Jean Cocteau is a good example of a Western addict. Though he had a preference for the opium pipe he occasionally took refuge in illegal morphine, for which he was treated on several occasions in a detoxification clinic.23 The number of morphine addicts in Western countries who had originally been prescribed the drug was now falling. In the United States, for instance, there were still people who had been treated with mor phine during the Civil War—a generation that gradually died out in the early 20th century. And some of the casualties of the First World War who had been given morphine for pain relief continued to use the drug illegally after their recovery.24 But once medical practitioners became more aware of the dangers of morphine, the category of medical opiate addicts rapidly dwindled. Never theless, there must have been a ‘transitional’ category of patients directly af fected by this change in medical practice. Possibly some medics found ways of continuing to prescribe the drug—in Britain and the Netherlands it was easier to evade restrictions than in the United States—and some patients may well have found their way to the black market. Whatever the case may be, the less scope medical practitioners in Western societies had to prescribe opiates legally, the greater was the demand for illicit opiates. This was especially true in the United States, certainly after the Su preme Court, in the case of Webb vs. the United States (1919), interpreted the 1914 Harrison Act to mean that medics were acting unlawfully if they pre scribed morphine to opiate addicts except as part of treatment—in other words as a step towards complete withdrawal. Until this ruling, opiate addicts had been able to fetch maintenance prescriptions. Some doctors had even special ized in prescribing opiates and other illicit intoxicants for a profit. ‘After the Harrison Act went into effect addicts, as unregistered persons, had to obtain a prescription for their drugs. Increasingly these prescriptions were written by

22 23 24

Hergé 1946.

Cocteau 1986 (1930).

Courtwright 1982:54-56; 212, note 35.


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fig. 23. Cocteau derived artistic inspiration from opium intoxication

‘dope doctors,’ licensed physicians who would for a fee provide the necessary service. During a single month one New York City doctor ‘wrote scrip’ for 68,282 grains of heroin, 54,097 grains of morphine, and 30,280 grains of cocaine.’25 Nonetheless the number of opiate addicts acquiring their drug on pre scription steadily fell—a trend that had already become noticeable at the end of the 19th century. Instead, between 1915 and 1935 a growing group of mar ginal users found ways of acquiring opiates without medical intervention. More and more frequently this meant heroin addiction.26

25 26

Courtwright 1982:107. This transformation of the population of opiate addicts in the period 1895-1935 is one of the central themes of David Courtwright’s study (Courtwright 1982:115).


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In the United States the curtailing of medical autonomy in this area had two consequences: first, the use of opiates shifted towards more marginal groups; and second, the restrictions boosted the black market. The black mar ket morphine and heroin came primarily—as did the illegal opiates in China and South-East Asia in the same period—from the regular pharmaceutical in dustry. ‘It has been calculated that 90% of all the narcotic drugs illegally han dled in the U.S. has first been manufactured in America, then shipped out le gally to Japan or elsewhere, then smuggled into China, and shipped back into the U.S. by smugglers.’27 Initially, the black market opiate trade in the United States was mainly in the hands of Chinese and Jewish organizations. After 1930 it was largely taken over by Italian organizations seeking an alternative to their income from the bootleg liquor trade.28 There was not much of a black market demand for opiates in the first half of the 20th century, however, and the market underwent little commercializa tion. David Courtwright has argued persuasively in his study Dark Paradise that while the US police maintained in 1919 that the country had over one million opiate addicts, the true figure was closer to 100,000 (out of a total population of over 100 million).29 According to Courtwright the number of non- medical opiate addicts in the United States stayed fairly constant around 100,000 for the entire period from 1920 to 1940. This black market demand was chiefly filled from the legal medical trade in morphine and heroin, with morphine soon losing the competitive battle with heroin for pharmacological reasons. In the United States the black market in heroin was concentrated from the outset in the major cities. In the 1920s and 1930s users tended to be young whites of Irish and Italian descent: ‘The composite heroin addict was thus a young white male who lived in a slum neighborhood in New York or a neigh boring Eastern city. [...] Poorly educated, when he worked at all he held a bluecollar job of an unskilled or semi-skilled variety.’30 During the Second World War the supply of opiates was blocked, and the total number of addicts in the United States fell below 14,000.31 After the war the trade flow of heroin to the

27 28

Graham-Mulhall 1926:207; see also Musto 1987:194-95.


29 The figure of one million addicts came from the Bureau of Narcotics, an organization

with a vested interest in a high incidence of addiction As far as this is concerned, little appears to have changed over the past fifty years (Courtwright 1982:116). See also Musto 1987. 30 Courtwright 1982:91.

31 Courtwright 1982:12, 116, 119.


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United States resumed, and the number of users—and of addicts—steadily rose again. But then the supply side too underwent a radical change. In Britain the black market in opiates, in the early 20th century, was smaller and different from that in the United States. There it was primarily in the small circle of Chinese immigrants and sailors—and among a few other mar ginal groups—that opium was smuggled and smoked on a modest scale. That the illegal consumption of opiates did not amount to much is clear from the number of criminal cases brought after the Dangerous Drugs Act came onto the statute-books in 1920. In the first three years an average of 250 judgments were given each year on the basis of this Act (with the total popula tion standing at 40 million). After this the number rapidly fell to fewer than 100 annually. Of these cases, over half, in the 1920s, concerned smoking opi um. The average culprit was a Chinese sailor or laundryman in his late thirties, and the charge was usually unlawful consumption rather than trade. These cas es were generally wound up with a small fine and/or deportation.32 The remainder of the cases brought under the Dangerous Drugs Act related to morphine and cocaine; heroin was as yet unknown in Britain. The offenders in these cases were British rather than Chinese. Those accused of taking mor phine included a strikingly large proportion of middle-aged women, often nurses. Many doctors and other professionals appeared in these cases, whether in the dock or in the witness-box, and the average age of offenders was over forty. Parssinen writes: ‘Nearly all serious morphia offences involved an indi vidual addict trying to obtain the drug illegally from a chemist or doctor. Forg ing prescriptions was the most common offence.’33 Most cocaine cases also involved British, not Chinese, suspects. Unlike morphine, however, cocaine was a popular intoxicant in the Britain of the 1920s and was associated with lower-class nightlife; the streets of London’s Soho district were the main marketing area. The average age of those charged with a cocaine-related offence was under thirty—much lower than in the opi um and morphine cases. Women were frequently involved—not nurses in this case, but prostitutes. Although the criminal cases involving breaches of the Dangerous Drugs Act received plenty of press coverage, the absolute figures certainly give the impression that the market for illicit intoxication in Britain was small and scarcely commercialized. This would be unchanged until the 1960s, partly be cause the law left medical practitioners relatively free to prescribe opiates.

32 33

Parssinen 1983:171.

Parssinen 1983:178.


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In the Netherlands the trade and consumption of illicit intoxicants in the first half of the 20th century was even more of a marginal phenomenon. So it would remain until 1966; from 1928 to 1966 there were an average of 23 irre versible convictions under the Opium Act each year. In the early 1930s the total addict population in the Netherlands was estimated at 33. Most of these were morphine addicts who obtained their drug through the legal or semi-legal medical trade.34 In the Netherlands as in the other countries studied, the black market in smoking opium was small-scale and fairly non-commercialized. And here too, this trade was in Chinese hands; most of those charged with possession of opium were Chinese.35 In 1929-1931, the authorities suspected that threequarters of the Chinese population of Rotterdam regularly consumed opium, but no-one was prosecuted unless found in the possession of more than a day’s supply. The black market in the latter half of the 20th century The centre of gravity of the black market in opiates gradually shifted in the course of the 20th century away from China and Southeast Asia to the United States and Europe. This meant several fundamental changes in the market it self. First and most obviously, Westerners accounted for a higher proportion of users than before. The United States was ahead of other Western countries in this regard: before the Second World War heroin had already become popular there in the big cities among small groups of young lower-class whites, espe cially among second generation immigrants. Another change was the gain in significance of refined heroin in comparison with traditional smoking opium. Finally, new organizations took to the black market trade in opiates, and the products reached the consumer along new trade routes. As long as the demand for smoking opium continued to dominate the black market in opiates (including that in Europe and the United States) this trade was firmly in Chinese hands. The free port of Hong Kong served as a global distribution centre. The crops were grown in the hinterlands of Southeast Asia, where wages were low and international control hard to achieve. The smoking opium reached Europe and the United States by way of the countless Chinese seamen in international shipping traffic. Retail sales, confined to the major ports, were also under Chinese control. But once the black market demand for

34 35

Meyering 1974:115.

Wubben 1986.


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heroin started to rise—in the United States this happened as early as 1920, with the arrival of strict legislation, while in Britain and the Netherlands it was not until 1970—other organizations too started supplying the drug. At first sight the withdrawal of the Chinese from the black market in opi ates may appear puzzling. It would have seemed more logical, given their experience with the supply of smoking opium, for the Chinese to have gained control of the lucrative illegal heroin trade from the outset. Yet this did not happen; control of the heroin black market was secured quite easily by West ern entrepreneurs. This is because Westerners had a monopoly of the knowl edge needed for the refinement procedure. To convert raw opium into mor phine, and morphine into heroin, may not be very complicated, but it does require a laboratory and a little knowledge of chemistry. It was the chemical knowledge in particular—indispensable for the refinement of morphine into high-quality heroin—that was particularly lacking among Asian opium grow ers and preparers. As there was no demand for heroin in the traditional Asian markets, they had no immediate incentive to master the necessary refinement technique. Virtually from the first moment at which a definite demand for heroin arose in the United States—in 1920—the supply came into the hands of the Mafia, with Jewish criminal organizations too playing a role in these early years. The involvement of the Italian syndicates was for many reasons an obvi ous development. The American branch of the Mafia owed its rapid ascendan cy largely to revenue gained from the bootleg liquor trade. It had plenty of experience in setting up illegal supply channels and distribution networks. While the Italian syndicates ploughed part of the profits they earned in the bootleg liquor trade back into the business, they also invested in other activi ties, the most important of which being gambling, prostitution and the illegal narcotics trade. This meant that the American Mafia gradually gained overall control of the illegal supply and distribution of heroin. The Mafia had another significant advantage. Given their ties with the Mediterranean region, the American Mafia found it relatively easy to make contact with the cultivation and refinement centres. They did not use the raw opium from Southeast Asia, preferring instead to deal with growers who were a good deal closer—in Turkey and the Middle East—the farmers, in fact, who traditionally cultivated opium for the legal pharmaceutical industry in Western Europe. The French port of Marseille hence became the centre of the heroin refinement industry. The raw products were shipped in without any hindrance from the Near East, and the end product was shipped out to Western markets just as easily. Thus once the American heroin market had revived after the Second World War, the illegal opium trade gradually shifted away from South


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east Asia to Asia Minor and the Middle East.36 The illegal opium producers in Southeast Asia took many years to catch up with the Westerners’ knowledge. It was not until the 1960s that Asian entrepreneurs mastered the refining tech nique necessary to produced heroin. Initially, refinement was done in major cities such as Hong Kong and Bangkok, but gradually heroin laboratories came to be situated near cultivation areas, with obvious advantages for trans port. And when the Vietnam war suddenly created an unlooked-for black mar ket for heroin in the Southeast Asians’ own ‘back yard,’ their opium fields were suddenly in the ascendancy again. The Asian heroin industry received an add ed boost when Turkey succumbed to American pressure in 1972 and imposed a clampdown on the growing of opium. For the Italian-controlled heroin indus try in Europe this meant the loss of an important producer of raw materials. The boom in Asian opium growing and its local heroin industry around 1970 was fed by the demand for heroin on the part of US soldiers fighting in Vietnam, where the use of this drug had spread like wildfire: ‘By mid-1971 US army medical officers were estimating that about 10 to 15 percent, or 25,000 to 37,000, of the lower-ranking enlisted men serving in Vietnam were heroin users.’37 This meant that after 1970 the Golden Triangle regained its importance as a source of illegal opium. Mountain tribes living in remote regions of South east Asia were traditionally well-versed in opium growing and the refinement of smoking opium for their own use or the local market. Until the late 1960s they were unable to prepare high-quality pure heroin; once they had mastered the necessary technique, both cultivation and refinement underwent rapid commercialization. The heroin producers of the Golden Triangle not only pos sessed a monopoly on the Vietnam market, they also secured a strong position elsewhere in the Western world, at the expense of the Mafia. The supply of illicit heroin to the American soldiers serving in Vietnam was a complicated business. Alfred W. McCoy’s revealing study demonstrates the CIA’s involvement in the production and transport of heroin.38 This study shows that the CIA effortlessly set aside the official repressive policy of the US government to prosecute those involved in the illegal heroin industry, in its

36 When we view the Mafia as a multinational company, one of whose activities was the illegal heroin trade—and this description has much to recommend it—the business had the following geographical set-up: the main company was in Sicily, the raw materials were purchased in the Middle East, the centre of production was Marseille, and the American branch of the Mafia functioned as a reliable trading post. 37 McCoy 1991:223. 38 McCoy 1991 The CIA tried unsuccessfully to suppress the publication of this study.


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determined struggle against an evil it deemed greater still—the spread of inter national communism. The US government would later play the same question able role when it supported the Afghan rebels in the closing stages of the Cold War. By the time the Vietnam War was nearing its end (1973), the opium grow ing and heroin production operations in Southeast Asia had been developed into a well-organized industry.39 One important gain in terms of efficiency was that raw opium was now being converted into high-grade heroin in the growing areas—Burma, Thailand and Laos. This saved a good deal in transport costs besides cutting out a link in the distribution chain. But in 1973, with the repatriation of most of the soldiers, there was an urgent need to find new markets. The solution was found in Europe. Thus the European market for illicit intoxication, which had until then been dominated by marijuana, LSD and amphetamines, was quite suddenly enriched by the arrival of heroin from the Golden Triangle. The supply and wholesaling busi ness was largely in the hands of Chinese syndicates, while the less lucrative retail trade was in due course left to local marginal groups who had closer contact with users or had actually been recruited from their ranks. Thus in 1972 large consignments of heroin arrived on the market in Am sterdam. Prices were low at first, but they were soon adjusted to reflect the suppliers’ monopoly position. The same was happening in other major cities all over Europe. The only difference was that in Britain commercialization took place somewhat later, in the late 1970s.40 But once heroin use reached the lower classes and became more widespread, in the 1980s, the British govern ment too resorted to a repressive regulatory regime. To cut a long (and often told) story short: since the mid-1970s heroin has won for itself a clientele in Europe that is increasingly recruited from the ranks of lower-class youth. There was some initial experimenting among artists and the children of the prosperous middle classes. But after a few years the Euro pean pattern followed that of America, with young people from the lower classes, and often from ethnic minorities, coming to predominate among the users of heroin.41

39 According to McCoy, 67% of the world’s illegal opium production, in 1970, came from Southeast Asia By 1989 this figure is estimated to have risen to 73% (McCoy 1991:495). 40 An important reason for this delay in comparison to other Western societies was that the regulation of illicit intoxication in Britain was traditionally seen as primarily a medical responsibility—the ‘British system’ (see Lewis 1986:5-49). 41 For the Netherlands I have described this process of diffusion elsewhere; see Gerritsen 1992b.


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Since the demand for illicit heroin has become firmly embedded—or so it would appear—in Western societies, the supply has been reorganized to reflect national and local differences. Thus the Italian Mafia has never had to surren der its share in the US distribution network altogether, although it has had to face competition from other groups—without exception ‘outsiders.’ And in Europe other immigrant groups have won the fight for the distribution and supply of heroin, sometimes succeeding temporarily in manipulating the mar ket. Pakistani organizations in Britain are a case in point. They have edged ahead of other would-be suppliers, profiting more from their colonial past. And in the Netherlands, Turkish organizations have come to dominate the her oin market, a success partly owing to the large size of the country’s Turkish community. All these national differences are merely variations of a single pattern: wherever opiates—and heroin in particular—are prohibited in Western socie ties, and where there is nevertheless a demand for heroin, the illicit supply of these drugs is a lucrative occupation. The winners in the struggle for domi nance of the black market trade—whether the victory is short-lived or more lasting—will be determined partly by local factors. Yet a few generalizations may be made: the struggle will almost without exception be won by a group of outsiders who have relatively poor access to the mainstream economy and who constitute a tightly-knit group based on ethnic and family ties. Groups that are spread out geographically, enabling them to organize production and refine ment processes as well as transport and distribution within their own ethnic group, have a definite advantage. National states vs. illicit drug multinationals National states, both individually and in collaborative frameworks, are now doing their utmost to block the multinational industry of illicit intoxicants. Entrepreneurs in this branch of industry, like other business people, aim to maximize their profits. To achieve this there is a ‘natural’ tendency to increase supply and expand the market. A clash between the authority of these national states and these entrepreneurs—criminal organizations that often operate on the market, given their ethnic and family ties, as a cartel42—is the inevitable result. As far as the individual national states are concerned, there are two aspects of this confrontation that are particularly striking. First, specialized investigat ing units have been created, with increasingly high levels of cooperation— 42

McBride 1984:537.


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fig. 24. Heroin addicts. Amsterdam, 1990


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locally, then nationally, and nowadays largely international. Second, these states are deprived of a large amount of potential revenue, because all trade in these illicit goods takes place without any payment of taxes or social security contributions. The establishment of separate narcotics brigades within the police—along with the growth of the juvenile units and vice squads—was part of a more general division of labour that made its entry into many types of organization in the 20th century. Soon after the introduction of the Harrison Act in the Unit ed States, the Dangerous Drugs Act in Britain and the Opium Act in the Neth erlands, separate police units grew up to enforce these laws. Sometimes spe cialized units within regional police corps were deemed inadequate. Whereas ordinary police work was organized locally, with district borders demarcating each corps’ working area, specialized police services often started operating nationally at an early stage. The territory of the entire national state became their working area. This division of labour within the police force took place earlier in the United States—and went further—than in Britain or the Nether lands. In the United States a separate narcotics squad was set up within the Na tional Prohibition Bureau—this was the service that enforced the Prohibition laws—in 1919. It had a staff of 170 and an annual budget of $270,000 with which to combat the production, trade and consumption of illicit intoxicants other than alcohol. In 1930 it became an independent organization, named the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The alcohol division moved to the Justice De partment, while the narcotics squad continued to operate under the auspices of the Treasury.43 By then its staff had grown to 270, and its annual budget fluc tuated between $500,000 and $750,000. With the growth of the investigating apparatus the number of convictions increased too: from a mere 2,400 in 1919 to over 10,000 in 1926, after which it fell to 8,700 in 1928. This was lower than the number of convictions under the Prohibition laws, but because offences under the Harrison Act carried relative ly stiff sentences (in 1928 the average was 18 months in prison) this category came to account for one-third of the total prison population—more than twice the number of detainees convicted under the Volstead Act.44 The Harrison Act not only led to a specialized investigating unit operating at federal level, after 1935 there were also separate federal prisons for offend 43

The Federal Bureau of Narcotics continued to operate under the Treasury until 1968, and only later, after a merger with the drugs unit of the Department of Health, to the Justice Department, under the new name of Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (Musto 1987:183, 254). 44 Musto 1987:346, notes 6-7.


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ers against this Act—‘narcotic farms,’ as they were called. These labour camps were intended for addicted convicts, whose prison sentences were combined with psychiatric treatment. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics underwent only modest growth in the period from 1930 to 1968.45 In 1968 it had a staff of around 300 federal agents, and its budget was only $6 million. But towards the end of the 1960s a new trend became visible: the agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics were in creasingly active outside the borders of the United States. In 1968 the Bureau was transferred to the Justice Department and renamed the Bureau of Narcot ics and Dangerous Drugs. The internationalization of the American control apparatus continued at a rapid pace in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1973 the Bureau of Narcotics and Dan gerous Drugs was replaced by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), which now plays a key role in the repressive American regulatory regime for illicit intoxicants. A substantial share of the DEA’s budget is spent on activities out side the United States. Thus the DEA has unintentionally grown into a second international intelligence agency; nowadays it has a global network of agents and branches rivalling that of the CIA.46 Other government bodies too concern themselves with the fight against illicit intoxicants: the FBI, the customs and coastguard, the army, the tax de partment and—for the regulation of retail trade and consumption—the local police.47 In 1978 the United States introduced a diplomatic body alongside the DEA, the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotic Matters, which conducts negotiations with countries where illicit intoxicants are produced. The United States has also taken the lead in the international war on these substances within the United Nations.48 The American repressive and formal regulatory regime for the drug market—which often operates informally, as is clear from the CIA involvement in heroin trafficking in Vietnam and Afghanistan described above—entered an upwards spiral in the late 1980s: more and more money, more and more per sonnel, but also more and more rival government instruments have been de ployed in the war on drugs. The total amount spent on this war rose between 1980 and 1984 from $537 million to $1.2 billion. And in 1991 the US govern ment spent $7,7 billion on police action against illicit intoxicants. For heroin 45

In the intervening period people in the United States were inclined to view a medical approach to the abuse of illicit intoxicants as more likely to produce favourable results than a repressive one This explains why the Federal Bureau of Narcotics scarcely expanded in this period. 46 Henman, Lewis and Malyon 1985. 47 Reuter and Kleiman 1986:308. 48 Malyon 1985:63-107.


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and cocaine the number of arrests made rose from 68,000 in 1980 to 181,000 in 1984.49 But despite the deployment of all these repressive instruments, the American government has as yet been unsuccessful in disrupting the dynamics of prohibition and illegal supply. Unintentionally, the government actually gives a certain boost to these dynamics: the high ‘business risks’ keep prices high and guarantee good profit margins for successful entrepreneurs, so that the market continues to exercise tremendous magnetic appeal. In Britain and the Netherlands too, law enforcement agencies specializing in illegal intoxicants have grown up in the 20th century, albeit on a less dramat ic scale than in the United States. In both countries the customs have had a prominent role in the fight against smuggling from the outset. In Britain the budget for drugs smuggling and the number of customs officers specializing in intoxicants rose sharply in the early 1980s: In 1979 there were 121 special investigators; by 1985 there were 262.50 The Dutch customs witnessed a paral lel trend of specialization and expansion. The police in both countries developed similar specialized units. In the Netherlands of the 1930s only the Rotterdam police had special opium investigators—largely to curb the Chinese opium trade. Amsterdam did not acquire a separate narcotics brigade until after the Second World War. Until 1965 two investigators were assigned to these duties; by 1975 there were thirteen. Then came the real growth: 23 in 1976 and 65 in 1984.51 Within Amsterdam’s nar cotics brigade there was a further division of labour; in 1985 it was divided into two squads, one for local and one for international trafficking.52 No sepa rate narcotics squad has ever been formed at national level in the Netherlands. The Narcotics Expertise Investigation Department has remained part of the general National Criminal Intelligence Service (CRI), although it has acquired more weight over the years.53 This trend towards specialization within police forces in the fight against illegal intoxicants is also visible in Britain.54 But in Britain and the Nether lands, these specialized police drugs squads never evolved, as they did in the United States, into autonomous units. They have always been part—formally, at least—of wider police organizations. 49 50 51

Reuter and Kleiman 1986:295-97. Wagstaff and Maynard 1988:86. Korf and De Kort 1990:50-75. 52 Nowadays (1992) the narcotics brigade of Amsterdam’s police force has been cut back again, through the decentralization of the municipal police apparatus, to about thirty offic ers who concern themselves, as the heirs to the International Trafficking squad, with organ ized crime related to illicit intoxicants The Local Unit has been disbanded. 53 National Criminal Intelligence Service 1992:57. 54 Wagstaff and Maynard 1988:105.


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The trend towards specialization has been paralleled by one of increasing international cooperation. Joint efforts—at European level, for instance, or bi laterally between the United States and individual European countries—are motivated by the international nature of the illicit intoxicants industry. But they can only exist by virtue of the increased uniformity between the formal systems of social regulation within these Western societies, a uniformity that derives from international conventions. And the more closely Western states integrate their efforts in this area, the more the international war on drugs ap pears to become a struggle of the prosperous Western societies where distribu tion and consumption are concentrated against the relatively underdeveloped and less prosperous societies where most of the illicit intoxicants are pro duced. Besides the development of specialized police units fighting the illegal drugs industry in increasingly close collaboration with one another, tax depart ments too are involved in the war on the illicit drugs industry, because of the way the industry undermines the monopoly of national states on taxation. Total global revenue from the illegal drugs trade is estimated to lie between $300 billion and $500 billion annually.55 These estimates remain entirely hypothet ical, of course; they offer quasi-statistical certainty on a subject that by its very nature is insusceptible to measurement. A similar quasi-statistic is the oftenquoted estimate that puts the total illicit volume of trade at ten times the amount intercepted.56 Whatever the true figures may be, however, no-one will dispute that huge sums of money are involved. Money is constantly changing hands. Modern Western societies are ar ranged in such a way that virtually every transaction means some financial gain for the national state under whose jurisdiction it takes place. The income from the trade in illicit intoxicants differs in one significant respect from most other flows of money generated by international trade: the money is ‘black.’ Essentially, this means that the financial transactions concerned are outside the supervision and authorization of a recognized government, thus evading the obligation to pay taxes. And since a country’s sovereignty stands or falls with its monopoly on taxation and the obligation of its citizens to pay taxes, the illegal drugs trade forms a fundamental threat to the system of national states. Tax evasion is not of course the exclusive province of the drugs trade—there seems to be a positive correlation between the pressure of taxation and the amount of black market money circulating—but given the scale expansion that 55 Zeigler 1990:23 For the purposes of comparison: a rough estimate of the turnover of the global alcohol industry for 1981 puts it at $170 billion (Cavanagh and Clairmonte 1985). 56 Likewise we shall never know the actual number of people who use illicit intoxicants.


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has marked the trade in illicit intoxicants, the sums involved here are relatively large. Furthermore, this money is being accumulated by a relatively small number of people. From this point of view, the United States, Britain, the Netherlands and other Western nation states are suffering serious financial losses from the drugs trade: money which would otherwise be circulating under the supervi sion of, and with guarantees furnished by, the global network of national states—and which is hence a continuous source of state revenue—is withheld from such circulation. For the entrepreneurs, this exclusion from the mainstream economy de tracts from the value of money earned on the black market as a universal means of exchange: ‘black’ money is worth less to the possessor than ‘white’ money. Entrepreneurs who have made a profit on their investments in illicit drug traf ficking are keen to launder part of their ‘black’ income. Only then can their money be used to make legal investments which do have the authorization of legitimate governments. While legal investments provide less spectacular re turns, they also involve fewer risks, and yield attractive profits—especially in the long term. So gaining access to the legal economy is a major objective of this category of criminal entrepreneurs, second only to the conspicuous con sumption that is often the drug barons’ initial passion. The legal economy of fers greater continuity, and the economic power possessed by those with legit imate assets compels the respect of society and gives access to political power. Criminal entrepreneurs have other reasons too for wanting to join the mainstream economy. For one thing, it would considerably diminish the risk of dying a violent and premature death. In criminal circles, where failure to pay taxes is the rule rather than the exception, the state’s other crucial monopoly— that on violence—is also flouted with equanimity. Another advantage of capi tal amassed legally is that it is easier to hand down legally to the next genera tion. (Such motives are not exclusive to drug barons; small drug dealers too often dream of using the money earned on the black market to secure a legal means of existence for themselves and their children.57) All in all, men who have earned vast sums of money on the black market have ample reason to seek to launder part of their income. On the other hand, the national governments that supervise their mainstream economy fear a large-scale influx of black market money, and hence the incursions of mem bers of criminal organizations. Guarding against such incursions is the service that governments are obliged to render respectable, legal entrepreneurs in ex change for their payment of taxes. This creates the paradoxical situation in

57

Williams 1990.


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which illegal entrepreneurs do their best to pay taxes and hence gain access to the mainstream economy while national governments do their utmost to hold them off. The laundering of black market money is a sophisticated financial service. It is a business in which large amounts of money circulate and attractive profits may be made. Recent publications suggest that it is developing into a new global industry, which has risen as a direct result of the scale expansion and internationalization of the illegal drug trade.58 The main actors in the moneylaundering industry are multinational financial institutions and national states that allow such institutions generous facilities without any accompanying con trols. Known tax havens and countries that preserve the confidentiality of bank accounts, in particular, attract a substantial proportion of such business opera tions with this strategy and turn a blind eye to the lucrative activities involved. In response to these weak links in the global money market, other countries are compelled to cooperate more closely. At the insistence of—and led by—the United States there has been a trend since 1985 towards the coordination and harmonization of controls on black market money.59 The ultimate aim is to ensure that countries now profiting from illegal financial services align them selves with the new control regime—voluntarily if possible, or under interna tional pressure if need be. The international campaign against the money-laundering business de rived its initial impetus and justification from the war against the illegal drug trade. But it has had the unintentional consequence of increasing the mutual dependency, harmonization and coordination between individual countries. For it is not only the financial transactions of the illegal drug industry that have been affected by this new, relatively harsher, global financial regime. Extrapo lating the current line, the fight against the laundering of drug money will eventually lead to something that was never intended: a uniform global regula tory regime, which will be applicable to all types of financial service. In this way the war on illicit intoxicants is helping to produce a far-reaching and unlooked-for integration of the countries of the world. Illegal drug markets: global features60 A complete statutory ban on the consumption of an intoxicant is a formal and external form of social regulation—whether or not an exception is made for 58

Federal Bureau of Investigation 1984; Ziegler 1990; Guiberson 1987; Maingot 1988.

Slats 1990.

This section is based on material from McBride 1984; Wagstaff and Maynard 1988;

Wisotsky 1986. 59 60


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consumption prescribed and supervised by medical practitioners.61 The inflex ibility of this type of formal state coercion leaves little room for more informal kinds of control, all the more so if this national prohibition is embedded in a system of international conventions with a global range. In a repressive climate of this kind, more informal modes of regulation—which certainly exist among users—are by definition confined to a twilight subculture that is a nat ural breeding-ground for crime and other expressions of counter-culture. A ban on certain intoxicants and the threat of criminal sanctions form an artificial obstacle to free market mechanisms. They put the market for these intoxicants under pressure. Both supply and demand are inhibited by these measures—that is precisely what is intended. Sometimes a repressive climate proves successful. US Prohibition achieved very little. Given the relatively small numbers of people using illegal opiates, the current regime may be de scribed as successful. But this success pales into insignificance when set against the efforts that societies have to make to achieve it, and against the social problems and individual tragedies that are caused by this regulatory re gime. And this is only one side of the coin. The criminalization of the market for particular intoxicants also impedes free competition between different suppli ers, particularly at the level of production and wholesaling. This obstacle fos ters the development of monopolies. It is precisely the existence of a statutory prohibition that enables monopoly suppliers to keep the price of illegal intox icants artificially high in relation to real production costs. Relatively high prof it margins mean that while there is a demand for these substances, there will soon be a supply to meet it. Indeed, the producers of illegal intoxicants have every reason to open up new markets, and are continually doing so. The risk of exposure and the judicial policy of imposing heavy sentences mean that this criminal industry is associated with relatively high investment risks. So the means of production will be paid off relatively fast, and wages will be higher because of the dangers involved. However, when production is concentrated—as it often is—in low-wage-countries, and when people are de ployed at the most vulnerable end of the retail trade who have few opportuni ties to participate in the mainstream labour market (or, cheaper still, are also users), the wages will not be much of a problem. Whatever the case may be, the big profits in this business are made not by the growers themselves but by the people who organize the production—the

61

In this connection it is striking that both during US Prohibition and under the present regime for opiates, medical practitioners were/are the only people in a position to supply the intoxicant legally.


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importers and major distributors. And often these most profitable links in the production process are in the hands of a single organization. Set against the extra costs of an illegal enterprise is the absence of many of the costs involved in a legal business. No money has to be paid to the govern ment and other supervisory bodies in the form of excise, taxes and social secu rity contributions. To put it more strongly, no government would accept such payments. These savings make the trade in illicit intoxicants particularly lucra tive. Sometimes the compulsory payments to the state are so substantial that it is worthwhile to set up an illegal production line alongside that of a legal intoxicant—alcohol, for instance—simply in order to avoid paying these additional costs. The skewed market conditions favouring illegal suppliers are exacerbated by the price- inelasticity of the demand for certain intoxicants because of habit-forming and addiction: in the short term, sales are guaranteed to remain sta ble. And because the supply is extremely opaque for consumers on a black market, established parties can maintain their high monopoly price for a rela tively long time, even when new, cheaper suppliers appear. Furthermore, while the increasingly stiff sentences imposed under the criminal law aggravate the risks on the supply side, they also boost the market position of those able to evade prosecution. The harsher the repressive measures, the greater the re wards for successful entrepreneurs, who have every reason to expand their market and increase the volume of their supply. Expanding the scale of supply is a logical and economically sensible rem edy for the individual entrepreneurs in this illegal industry to cover their high risks. But expansion has the unintended effect of increasing the risk of being caught. Or as Robert McBride puts it, ‘The tension between risk and growth is continuous: the best way to reduce risk is to grow, but growth at too rapid a rate increases risk.’62 In the long term the result is that the illegal industry is domi nated by increasingly large suppliers. The growth of the illegal industrial or ganizations leads to a growth of the control apparatus supervising law enforce ment (increasing the entrepreneur’s risks still further). The interplay between the illegal industry and the control apparatus set up to restrain it can best be compared to two cogs that cannot move without af fecting one another. Thus the greatly increased internationalization of the ille gal drug industry was rapidly followed by multilateral cooperation between various national control apparatuses and the creation of supranational police agencies.

62

McBride 1984:537.


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In a cogent analysis of the illegal heroin distribution industry in the United States, McBride identifies several features that are probably characteristic of the distribution of any illegal intoxicant.63 In the first place he sees an analogy between the distribution structure for illegal heroin and that for legal intoxicants such as coffee, tea and tobacco—consumer articles which are also pur chased regularly, and in small amounts, for immediate use. He describes it as a structure with numerous small retailers and small-scale consumers at the bot tom, who are supplied by relatively few wholesalers, importers and/or produc ers. In point of fact the analogy goes even further than McBride describes. For the wholesalers and importers are supplied in their turn by numerous smallscale growers and producers. The often fierce price war is fought out largely among the retailers on one side of the market and among the many small pro ducers on the other side, while the wholesalers, importers and producers on these markets combine a monopoly sales position with a monopsony for the procurement of their raw materials. This roughly describes the trade in coffee, tea and tobacco as well as that in heroin and cocaine. But certain differences remain between illegal and legal distribution. These differences have nothing to do with the type of intoxicant involved, but are a consequence of the criminalizing effects of a repressive and formal regu latory regime. The first is that the retailers of illegal intoxicants generally con fine their trade to a single article, of which they keep only small quantities in stock. Because the risk of arrest is greatest at the final transaction, between dealer and user, there is a tendency towards more links at the lower edge of the distribution chain, with every transfer of the illegal intoxicant there meaning a new owner and a price increase. For the upper section of the distribution pyramid, McBride points out the importance of a good organization that ensures that it is well-informed, partly by bribing officials, about any state initiative that might jeopardize its monop oly profits. Well-organized crime syndicates have a better chance of survival on the black market. Even rival suppliers are well advised to cooperate at na tional and international level—that is, to form cartels. Since ethnic and family ties provide the best guarantee of continuity and mutual trust in situations in which no appeal may be made to the regulatory resources of a government, organizations that supply illicit intoxicants are often structured on the basis of ethnic and family ties.

63

McBride 1984.


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The provenance of illicit intoxicants

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Where do illicit intoxicants come from? Where a substance is outlawed at lo cal, regional or national level, as in the case of alcohol during US Prohibition, smuggling from areas where no such ban is in force is the obvious source of an illegal supply. But an equally important source is the legal circuit, from which the substance may be siphoned off. I have already described the medical pro fessions’ frequently successful defence of their exclusive right to dispose of certain intoxicants—albeit sometimes with restrictions—even when trading in them was made illegal. From this legal trade, an intoxicant can be diverted into illegal channels, which is also a frequent occurrence. Another possibility is for an intoxicant to be produced illegally in the re gion where the ban is in force. This is relatively easy where alcohol is con cerned, but much harder when it comes to growing crops that may need special climatological conditions for an optimum yield. The large- scale commercial cultivation of a crop is in any case a difficult matter, although these days tech nical innovations have opened up new opportunities.64 Obviously, however, the control apparatus has access to the same new technology. The legal trade in intoxicants can also help fuel the illegal trade when a ban is worldwide. For the rest, the production and global distribution of illegal intoxicants is concentrated in parts of the world where the state power theoret ically responsible for enforcing the ban does not in practice consider itself strictly bound by international conventions. Sometimes rulers themselves may be involved in the production and sale of an intoxicant subject to a worldwide ban. In other cases the illicit production is concentrated in regions where the central state authority is weak and has little control over its own territory and population. Rugged areas that are hard to patrol and where local rulers hold sway are generally favoured. In other respects, the production of illegal intoxicants is subject to the same influences as that of legal crops. Thus when cultivation and refinement are labour intensive—which applies to both opium and coca—illegal produc tion is concentrated in areas where wages are low. Victimless crimes There is another curious feature of the trade and use of illicit intoxicants. Un like most other criminal offences, it is hard in this case to identify a direct victim or disadvantaged party. The motive most commonly advanced in justifi 64 The illegal cultivation of cannabis in the Netherlands and the United States is a good example of this.


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cation of prohibiting these substances is the threat they pose to public health and public order: the sale and use of illicit drugs cause a nuisance and tend to erode society. But the precise causal relationships remain vague. Is the threat to public health and public order the cause of the ban—or the result of it? The closed chapter of US Prohibition suggests that the threat to public order and the constitutional state and the menace to public health resulted from the ban on alcohol. The use and sale of illicit drugs are victimless crimes. The consumers of these drugs are not in general compelled by others to use them. The producers and retailers of these forbidden wares also operate quite voluntarily. They aim to maximize their profits and act—as outlined above—entirely in accordance with the laws applicable to any market of consumer goods. It is true that this category of victimless crimes often claims secondary victims. To raise the high monopoly price of their drug, the users of illicit intoxicants will often resort to other crimes to finance their drug use. This does claim victims. But these de rivative crimes are a direct consequence of the monopolistic price formation, which is in turn made possible by the limited price elasticity of addictive intox icants and the artificial market barriers that stem from the prohibition provisions.65 In the same way, all the crimes and misconduct among the rival suppliers on this market, and between the different links in the supply chain—the ‘set tling of accounts’ within the criminal world, say—result in part from the fact that the parties must solve their disputes among themselves without any super vision, out of the government’s sight—and beyond the reach of its monopoly of violence—and without any recourse to the rules of law. After all, dealers and users of illicit intoxicants can scarcely appeal to the civil courts to settle their disputes. The same applies to these criminal entrepreneurs’ tax evasion. This crime too, the victims of which are the state and—in the abstract—all its citizens, is a derivative of the market’s illegality. Trading and using illicit intoxicants hence belong to the category of vic timless crimes, a category that also includes—or once included—prostitution, gambling, homosexuality, euthanasia and abortion.66 It is a striking character 65

If the secondary crimes committed by users of banned substances are indeed a conse quence of the ban, they cannot possibly serve as justification for maintaining it. 66 The distinction between crimes with and without a victim is less clear-cut than this enumeration would suggest Some would certainly disagree with the inclusion of abortion and euthanasia in this category. For a detailed discussion of this subject, see Schur 1965. In the regulation of victimless crimes, governments often use the instrument of tolerance— i.e. turning a blind eye. It can scarcely be a coincidence that some countries adopt a rela tively non-repressive approach across the whole spectrum of victimless crimes, while other countries ‘score’ high for all the offences concerned.


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istic of victimless crimes that the initiative to prosecute generally rests with the state. This means that the number of prosecutions will largely depend on the priority that the rulers accord to the fight against the crime concerned—far more so than on its actual incidence.67 Surveying the spectrum of these victimless crimes helps clarify the social function of this formal state intervention in such cases.68 Euthanasia, abortion, homosexuality, gambling, prostitution, the sale and use of illicit intoxicants are all forms of forbidden, deviant or dubious behaviour that have some bearing on a society’s values and standards. Shared values and standards of behaviour ensure that people retain a common bond—they function as cohesive elements in a community. The identification and condemnation of outsiders—people who transgress against the shared norms and values—is the usual social mech anism for ensuring the constant endorsement of these shared norms and val ues. The punishment of criminal and deviant behaviour—especially the pun ishment of victimless crimes—thus acquires a social function that goes beyond the regulation of everyday human intercourse.69 The American sociol ogist Howard Becker has shown the key role played by a community’s ‘moral entrepreneurs’: these are the people who watch over the community’s value system, either by being among the first to explore new values or by constantly subjecting the events of everyday life to scrutiny in the light of an existing or idealized value system.70 In the development of regulatory regimes for alcohol and opiates it is easy to identify moral entrepreneurs in the periods that saw the balance shift towards a more formal and repressive regime. When viewed in this light, the legislation enacted to combat the sale and use of certain intoxicants emerges as a structure used to shore up a society’s system of norms and values. This explains why established groups within a society see the sale and use of these drugs primarily as a collective threat issu ing from groups of outsiders. It also explains why such activities attract a dis proportionate amount of public attention, especially when a community is coping with great socio-economic pressures. At the same time, repressive leg islation and its enforcement are indispensable preconditions for the genesis and growth of an illegal supply. 67

One striking consequence of this is an extraordinarily good success rate in solving crimes in this category. Towards the end of the 1980s, for instance, we find statistics setting the percentage of offences against the Opium Act that were brought to light at over 100%! One can only wonder at the statistical distortion that generated this strange figure (see Gerritsen 1992). 68 These acts are not prohibited in all countries Where a ban on such behaviour has been lifted, however, it is in general a recent development.

69 Durkheim 1956; Duster 1970.

70 Becker 1963.


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CHAPTER TEN

Summary and conclusions Why are some intoxicants prohibited and not others? This question prompted a comparative study of the social regulation of alcohol and opiates. Alcohol, in modern Western societies, is a socially acceptable intoxicant that is integrated into the fabric of everyday life, while opiates are banned. This study set out to investigate the roots of this discrepancy. My basic premise was that people control their own and others’ use of intoxicants by means of various forms of coercion. This coercion may take the form of legislation, of more informal types of coercion, or of self-control or deliberate, internalized ‘self-coercion.’ These diverse types of coercion do not exist in isolation from one another; on the contrary, they are closely interrelat ed. Thus harsh legislation leaves little scope for people to regulate the use of intoxicants informally. Repressive laws leave no margin for experimentation and discovering one’s limits. Furthermore, where strict laws are in place, fail ure to observe them generally means that the use of the intoxicant will be treat ed as a serious problem, whereas adequate forms of informal control and infor mal social coercion imposing ‘self-coercion’ have greater scope to develop where legislation is milder. I adopted the term ‘regulatory regime’ as an ex pression that accurately conveys this complex interplay of different types of coercion. The different types of coercion together make up a continuum. At one end of the spectrum is the coercion based on repressive state laws: legislation is a pre-eminently external and formal type of regulation. At the other end of the scale is the self-control that people exercise when they regulate their own use of intoxicants—internalized self-control which, through a process of sociali zation, has become a permanent element of their personality. Between these two extremes lies a multiplicity of hybrid types of control and coercion. The nature of a regulatory regime—whether it relies heavily on repressive legislation or on informal types of coercion and self-control—also determines the meaning that the use of an intoxicant has to the people concerned. Whether someone undergoes intoxication as a religious experience, a form of medical intervention, an artistic experiment, an expression of a counter-culture, or as a way of banishing cares and a mode of recreation, depends primarily on the regime and the guidelines based on it. The human experiential world is evi dently so malleable that we can adjust the effect of intoxication to suit the expectations and intentions that go with a particular regime.


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Regulatory regimes differ from one intoxicant to the next, as well as in place and time. These differences are closely related to the technical determi nants of the production and consumption of a substance. For instance, the scale expansion and mechanization of production affect a drug’s price, its exclusiv ity and its status. Also, changes in the regulatory regime are bound up with the concentration in which a substance is available, and with the invention and application of new, more efficient, techniques of consumption. Taking these general ideas about the social regulation of intoxicants as my point of departure, five themes presented themselves, in relation to which I set out to describe the changes in the regulatory regimes for alcohol and opiates over a fairly long period of time. I decided to confine myself, largely for prac tical reasons, to three countries—Britain, the United States and the Netherlands—and to the period from about 1850 to 1990. The five themes—state formation and state revenue, the professionalization of medical practitioners, industrialization and the anti-alcohol movement, addiction and cure, and pro hibition and the development of illegal markets—were not chosen solely on pragmatic grounds. They complement each other and reflect a sociological approach which regards the changing balance of power and interdependences between groups of people as providing the main explanation for changes in human behaviour: they are the leitmotifs of this book. I should like to review them once again here. State formation and the regulation of intoxicants The first theme concerns the relationship between the regulation of these sub stances and the processes of state formation. A recreational drug consumed in large quantities may be addictive not only for the users but for governments too. Controlling the production and distribution of popular intoxicants can be a lucrative business for states—either through excise taxes or because states are in a position to claim and exploit a monopoly on certain stages of the produc tion process. Britain, the Netherlands and the United States, each in their own way, have all enjoyed the fruits of the regulation of alcohol and opium, albeit that the United States’ opium earnings were very limited and short-lived. During the entire time that the Netherlands and Britain were present in Asia and the Indonesian archipelago as colonial powers, the revenue earned in the opium trade accounted for a substantial part of their colonial income, and hence contributed significantly to the colonial dimension of the process of state formation. Partly for this reason, the acquisition of overseas territories was affordable; indeed, there were years in which the opium profits even boosted the colonial powers’ domestic revenue.


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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

In comparison with Britain’s colonial opium trade, the Dutch equivalent was fairly uncomplicated. The Dutch state controlled the monopoly on the supply and distribution of smoking opium in the Dutch East Indies. This mo nopoly was turned into revenue almost throughout the 19th century by means of a franchise system, in which maximizing profits by ensuring the best possi ble turnover was the maxim. At the end of the 19th century this system was replaced by one of state control, in which state revenue remained important, but a secondary objective emerged—to curb opium consumption. During the next phase, in the first half of the 20th century, this secondary objective— partly under international pressure—gradually became the primary goal. The Japanese occupation of Indonesia and the ensuing decolonization finally elim inated the revenue that the Dutch government earned from the opium trade for good. The British colonial trade was a good deal more complex, because it out grew the confines of a domestic concern. The opium was cultivated in British India, and Britain exercised a monopoly both on that cultivation and on the preparation of smoking opium. China was to become the largest market for this product. But China was not a British colony; although it came within Britain’s sphere of influence it remained a sovereign state. Initially, it was China that benefited most from its trade with Britain. China exported large quantities of tea, silk and porcelain, which were scarcely offset by any imports. It was not until the 19th century that Britain succeeded in reversing its unfavourable bal ance of trade with China—and the product chiefly responsible for this reversal was smoking opium. The trade in smoking opium between British India and China was the crowbar with which Britain pried open the Chinese market. And although China’s rulers did their utmost to block the imports of smoking opi um, Britain conducted two military acts of intervention that safeguarded its own trading interests. Britain used the opium revenue primarily to finance the colonial administration of British India. Only when there was a credit balance was any money sent to London. In the course of the 20th century, the colonial opium trade came to an end. Largely due to the unflagging efforts of the United States, international con ventions were concluded in the League of Nations, in and after 1912, discred iting the colonial opium trade even more. When the United States gave its support to China, in what had hitherto been the latter’s futile battle against the opium trade, it had a surreptitious eye on the huge market to be gained. The competition that existed between the United States, then a rising world power, and Britain, a world power already in decline, played a part in this. Be that as it may, one result was the imposition of strict restrictions, worldwide, on the opium trade.


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The demise of the colonial opium trade was the beginning of a formal global regime which placed all trade in opiates under strict international con trol. This regime had a variety of unintentional and unforeseen consequences for the development of an illegal opiate market. The rulers of Britain and the Netherlands viewed their colonial opium rev enue primarily as a peripheral overseas affair. At home, on the other hand, they had a major interest, through the levying of excise taxes, in the regulation of another recreational drug—alcohol. The same applied in the case of the United States federal government. In all these countries, excise on alcohol accounted for a large proportion of total state revenue—varying from 25% to a little over 40%—throughout the 19th century. A state’s acquisition of the power to levy and collect uniform excise and other indirect taxes at national level—and excise on alcohol was one of the most important of these taxes—is a milestone in the process of state formation. National excise duties were a consequence of a shift in the domestic balance of power in favour of national government. Excise duties in turn consolidated this centralist trend, undermining the autonomy of local authorities. A national excise on alcohol was also the most effective instrument for those in power to ensure that the poorer sections of the population contributed substantially to the state’s revenue. Excise on alcohol was pre-eminently a class tax. Thus the well-to-do bourgeoisie, which paid direct taxes in return for which—in Britain and the Netherlands—it exercised voting rights, could re coup much of the state’s expenditure from the proletariat. The high costs of the Verstaatlichung of care arrangements such as public education and public health—arrangements that had been created to elevate and pacify the people— were passed on to a large extent to the poor people themselves. It was not until the advent of universal suffrage in Britain and the Netherlands that indirect taxes decreased, and direct taxes gradually became more important. The federal structure of the United States meant that excise on alcohol played a more complex role. There too, this tax was an important source of income for federal government—even more so than in Britain and the Nether lands. But in spite of the major financial interests at stake, Washington was obliged to forgo this source of income, under the pressure of a mass campaign of anti-alcohol activists who eventually achieved their goal of national Prohi bition. Yet federal Prohibition cannot be explained solely in terms of the vigour of the American anti-alcohol movement. It was also the outcome of the delicate balance of power between federal government and the individual states. Un like Britain and the Netherlands, where central government had gained abso lute dominance over regional and local authorities in the 19th century—which


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is one reason why the anti-alcohol campaigners in these countries never suc ceeded in having a national ban introduced—between Washington and the states, power was more evenly distributed. When local and regional adminis trators in the United States viewed federal Prohibition as a cure for the nation’s ills, Washington was incapable of resisting this pressure, despite the enormous loss of revenue that it would entail. The success of the anti-alcohol movement in the United States stemmed from its ability to make local and regional politi cians dependent on its support. Prohibition and the disappearance of excise revenue from alcohol, in the United States, had thus been made possible by the relative autonomy of the individual states. Paradoxically, however, the enforcement of federal Prohibi tion tended to promote centralization, with the balance of power gradually shifting towards Washington. To compensate for the loss of excise revenue, direct income tax was introduced on the eve of Prohibition. Furthermore, Pro hibition could not be enforced without federal police agencies such as the FBI and the Federal Prohibition Unit, and at the same time, the infrastructure for federal jurisdiction was rapidly expanded. So quite unintentionally, and in a manner that had not been foreseen, Prohibition helped to strengthen federal government, especially where domestic issues were concerned. Prohibition was not the only cause of these developments, needless to say; it was embed ded in a general current of progressive reforms and centralization. Physicians as suppliers The second theme elaborated in this study is the relationship between the pro fessionalization of physicians in the 19th century and the regulatory regime for opiates. Thousands of years ago people discovered a harvesting technique en abling them to extract raw opium from the poppy plant. Prior to this, the intox icating effect of opiates was known only from infusions of the plant. We can only guess at the changes wrought in the regulatory regime for opiates by this new harvesting technique. The same applies to the consequences of the inven tion of the technique of smoking, which made it possible to consume opium more effectively. It would appear, on the basis of the accounts of archaeolo gists and classical scholars, that partly as a result of these changes in harvest ing and consumption techniques, priests were able to secure a monopoly on the smoking of opium in the healing temples they controlled. This history has to a large extent repeated itself in more recent times. In the 19th century, a new refinement technique was invented, making it possible to extract the active ingredients of opium in a purified form—as morphine, for instance. Moreover, a new and more effective technique of consumption was


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developed, with the advent of the hypodermic needle. These changes resulted in a revised regulatory regime for opiates of which we have more definite knowledge. Once pure morphine became available, and when it could be administered by hypodermic needle, medical practitioners and pharmacists acquired a key role, in Western societies, in the regulatory regime for opiates. They set out to secure a monopoly on the preparation and prescription of opiates. Achieving this monopoly was far from easy, given the competition presented by drug gists, grocers and others who had been selling opiates freely and lawfully until then. This achievement of a monopoly coincided with the rise of the pharmaceu tical industry and the professionalization of physicians and pharmacists. The monopoly on the preparation, distribution and prescription of a new generation of opiates, as well as on the use of the hypodermic needle as a new technique of administration, was of great economic importance to physicians and phar macists, and indirectly contributed to their professionalisation. These two groups could only secure this monopoly by jointly claiming their rights to the government’s recognition and protection of their certified expertise. The weightiest argument that they could advance to back up their claims was the danger posed to public health by the unqualified use of the substances. In the Netherlands, the Preparation of Medicines Act 1865 formalized this develop ment in the regulatory regime for opiates, and the 1868 Pharmacy Act did the same in Britain. In the United States, physicians and pharmacists did not ac quire a similar monopoly at federal level until 1906, with the passing of the Pure Food and Drug Act, a delay attributable to the relatively late centraliza tion of power in the United States. The primacy of medical practitioners within the regulatory regime for opi ates, which is embedded in national legislation, has had far-reaching repercus sions. Because of the role they secured—as curators of opiates on the state’s behalf—the intoxicating effect of opiates acquired an exclusively medical function. In a medical setting, people indeed experience this intoxication as such; nowadays morphine is still used intravenously as an analgesic, especial ly for the terminally ill. This regulatory regime leaves no room whatsoever for more informal modes of regulation—let alone for the development of a more internalized kind of self-control—or only in a form viewed as a serious prob lem within marginal subcultures. In principle, the medical monopoly in this regime was a matter that each country regulated individually. The global ban now in place on the production and trade of opiates is of a different origin altogether, one quite unrelated to the medical monopoly—it sprang from a determination to halt the colonial opium


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trade. This worldwide ban, which has become ever more rigid since the first Convention concluded in 1912, has absorbed the various medical monopolies that Western countries had formalized in statutory legislation. Or, to put it the other way around, national states have amended their medical legislation with an ‘international’ paragraph. Within the regulatory regime for opiates, the bal ance between medical primacy and a global ban is still discernible. The balance is different from one country to the next, and changes in the course of time. Industrialization and the anti-alcohol movement The third theme is the relationship between 19th-century industrialization and the rise of a popular campaign against alcohol consumption. Whatever the dif ferences in this respect between the three countries that have been studied here, certain common features are discernible. The 19th-century anti-alcohol movement initially consisted of like-minded societies and associations. Using an informal social coercion to achieve ‘self-coercion,’ they endeavoured to moderate their own drinking habits. They focused primarily on curbing the consumption of strong liquor. The first generation of anti-alcohol campaigners had close ties with the Church; in the United States and Britain, Quakers and Methodists were particularly active. In socio-economic terms their ranks were drawn from the petty bourgeoisie—people who had their own means of pro duction and as small entrepreneurs made their living either alone or with a small staff, and were always present in the workplace. Their orientation and perspective tended to be local and regional rather than national—let alone in ternational. And their sympathies lay more with rural and small-town commu nities than with the life of the metropolis. Doctors, church ministers and teach ers were the virtually undisputed leaders and spokesmen of the temperance movement. The second generation of activists concerned themselves far more with the drinking behaviour of others. These ‘others’ were specifically the first genera tion of the industrial proletariat, whose drinking habits were the most visible and offensive to the petty bourgeoisie. According to the collective fantasies of the petty bourgeoisie, the life of the proletariat in the new, fast-growing indus trial cities was saturated with alcohol. Thus alcoholism among the lower class es became a symbol of a life lived in idleness and sin. This second generation of anti-alcohol activists made increasing use of obtrusive campaigns dominat ed by the shrill rhetoric of persuasion. What had started as a highly informal type of regulation, aimed at controlling one’s own and one another’s patterns of drinking, became a rigid anti-alcohol offensive in which the campaigners increasingly tried to impose their will on the lower classes.


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It was not only the strategy and objectives that changed—the ranks of the anti-alcohol movement also underwent a transformation. For membership of a temperance society became a way in which the vanguard of the working classes could work its way up out of the proletariat and gain a foothold in the world of the petty bourgeoisie. These new members did not however have the effect of making the anti-alcohol movement any less radical. In the Netherlands, the interest expressed among the working classes for the anti-alcohol campaign actually led to a unique symbiosis between the socialist workers’ movement and the anti-alcohol campaign. Towards the end of the 19th century the organ izations representing the fight against alcohol in all three countries increasing ly advocated far-reaching laws to curb drinking. Where it made political sense they would first approach local authorities, but they soon shifted their focus of attention to central government and urged the enactment of statutory legisla tion. Eventually they even went so far as to demand a total ban on alcohol, culminating in Prohibition in the United States from 1920-1933, but in Britain and the Netherlands such efforts were unsuccessful. The anti-alcohol campaigns of the 19th century were not isolated move ments. They were part of a general civilizing campaign conducted by the petty bourgeoisie with the aim of disciplining and pacifying the lower classes by elevating them. These efforts to civilize the masses were to a large extent driven by economic change. Industrialization was accompanied by a increas ing division of labour, scale expansion and mechanization in the production process. And alcohol—in particular strong liquor—is a poor companion for the mechanized production methods of a factory. This had everything to do with the adjustment of the drinking regime for industrial workers: there was no drinking in working hours, and outside the factory gates the quantities drunk could in any case not be such as to prevent the worker turning up the next day. The civilizing campaign—or ‘civilizing coercion’—was also related to a status struggle. With all their initiatives to elevate the lower classes, the tem perance campaigners drew a clear line defining the limits of social acceptabil ity. People’s drinking habits became a litmus test for separating rough, com mon working folk from the respectable established classes. Furthermore, for the women of the petty bourgeoisie, the anti-alcohol campaign functioned as a vehicle of emancipation. This applied to women in Britain and even more so to those in the United States; Dutch women were a good deal less active and articulate. Although the basic pattern was similar, the anti-alcohol campaign in the three countries displayed differences of timing, intensity and ‘peaks’—differences corresponding to the pace and intensity of industrialization in these


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countries. But other factors played a role aside from mechanization and the scale expansion of production: social changes which were closely bound up with industrialization, such as population growth and urbanization, made their mark on the course of the anti-alcohol campaign in these countries. The extreme fanaticism of the American anti-alcohol campaign and the remarkably widespread public support it enjoyed went along with the country’s rapid pace of industrialization, far-reaching urbanization and fast popula tion growth which had little to do with the birth rate and was primarily caused by immigration. The industrialization of the Netherlands, on the other hand, proceeded slowly, and the anti-alcohol campaign was mild and cooperative in tone. One reason that the campaign gave rise to less polarization and class conflict in the Netherlands than it did in Britain and the United States was the prominence of the workers’ movement in the Dutch campaign. Especially during the period when the alcohol issue ranked high on the political agenda (between 1914 and 1925), large numbers of socialist workers were active in the anti-alcohol movement. The social coercion imposing ‘self-coercion’ was successful: the quantity of alcohol consumed in the Netherlands was far lower than in the other two countries studied, and so it remained for two to three generations. The anti-alcohol campaign in Britain ran a course intermediate between that of the other two countries. It was more bound up with the class struggle and efforts to restrain the drunken rabble than its Dutch counterpart. Specific to Britain was the battery of licensing laws restricting the opening hours of public houses, with which the government in Westminster emphatically made its mark on the British drinking regime. The government in The Hague did little to intervene in the alcohol question, and the involvement of Washington—extreme though it became—was a very late development. Anti-alcohol campaigns proved to be a good breeding-ground (in the Netherlands somewhat more than in Britain or the United States) for the inter nalization of a more sober drinking regime. In all three countries, alcohol con sumption was appreciably lower in the first half of the 20th century than in the century before, as a result of which anti-alcohol organizations lost much of their appeal and social significance. Since then, organized group pressure as exerted by the temperance move ment on drinkers has given way to a subtle balance between internalized selfcontrol and social coercion to exercise ‘self-coercion.’ This latter kind of coer cion can take many forms. Where exercised in family circles or a group of friends it tends to be informal. But when an educational establishment or other employer attaches terms relating to alcohol consumption to an employment contract—a common enough occurrence—or when a doctor negotiating with


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heavy drinkers tries to persuade them to give up alcohol altogether, social coer cion exhibits more formal characteristics. In this respect there are few essential differences between the drinking regimes in Britain, the Netherlands and the United States. In all these countries the government adopts an arm’s length approach; their only intervention consists of legislation to regulate the supply and retail sales. Only when the welfare of third parties is at stake, as in the case of drink-driving, does the government set clear limits and intervene. Physicians as detoxifiers Besides their function as the state’s ‘curators’ of opiates, medical doctors are also involved in helping people to give up the use of intoxicants. Nowadays, physicians and paramedics have a key role in the supervision and cure of peo ple whose use of intoxicants has degenerated into a compulsive habit. In this respect there are scarcely any fundamental differences between Britain, the United States and the Netherlands. Yet between alcohol and opiates the differ ences are very great. No-one would dispute nowadays that curing someone of an alcohol addiction is a doctor’s task. But where an opiate addiction is con cerned there is also the criminal law to be reckoned with. A hundred years ago the police and justice authorities were also involved in the detoxification and regulation of alcoholics. Alcoholism was punished, for instance, with a prison sentence during which the individual would be placed in a special clinic and subjected to compulsory treatment. The treat ment of alcoholics was often regarded as a form of rehabilitation. But with the demise of the anti-alcohol movement, alcoholism was seen less and less as a reprehensible and sinful type of behaviour, and increasingly as an unfortunate illness—an illness watched over by a specific group of medics and paramedics who are busy developing new forms of treatment for it. It has become a spe cialism within which psychiatrists and psychologists are the dominant profes sionals. And although alcoholics have never entirely shaken off an aura of amorality, compared to a century ago they have at least emancipated them selves to the status of patients. This metamorphosis of the antisocial and criminal drunkard into a patient could only be effected once alcoholism had been shorn of its 19th-century class connotations. As long as alcoholism was regarded primarily as the mark of a socially degenerate working class—an association partly fostered by the anti-alcohol movement—medical practitioners found few people willing to hear an analysis that explained this ‘illness’ in terms of the individual’s psy chological makeup. Instead, people preferred to seek the explanation in a col lective Fall from grace, and the instruments they deployed to correct the be


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haviour were standardized repressive measures. Medical practitioners were not given the freedom to take care of the individual alcoholic as they saw fit— regardless of social class, age and sex—until alcoholism was no longer seen as a class attribute. Opiate addicts are in a different situation altogether. Since doctors have had a monopoly on prescribing opiates, and since a global regime has been in place in which people using these substances for non-medical purposes are liable to harsh sanctions, opiate addicts are most likely to be dealt with under the criminal law. Strikingly, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, morphin ism was an anomaly occurring primarily in well-to-do circles, for which spe cial health resorts and clinics existed. Morphine addicts were seen mainly as medical patients, and treated as such: there was no question of prosecuting them and sending them to prison. Nowadays, the criminal law and prison are among society’s preferred instruments for regulating opiate addicts. Even the medical treatment of opiate addicts tends to be a standardized approach with a strong element of compulsion and discipline, rather than a situation in which an individual patient seeks medical advice on a voluntary basis, as in the case of most other illnesses—including alcoholism. Although medical practitioners emphatically present themselves as the people best qualified to attend to opiate addicts, for the time being they must share responsibility with the more formal, repressive instruments of regulation, as exercised by the police and judiciary. The current detoxification regime for opiate addicts greatly resembles the 19th-century regime for alcoholics, while the current approach to alcoholics, dominated as it is by the medical profession, is more like the 19th-century treatment of morphine addicts. This leads me to conclude that the degree of repression and severity of a regime, and the degree of standardization, are de termined in the first place by the social status of the group concerned. When it is primarily social outsiders and the lower classes that are using a particular intoxicant, the addiction is more likely to be stigmatized as an amoral and reprehensible type of behaviour, and the answer is sought mainly in criminal sanctions combined with a standardized medical approach geared towards the inculcation of discipline. But where addicts are less uniformly associated with outsiders, with some even coming from respectable and established sections of society, the addiction is viewed more in the nature of an illness, and the regula tory regime for addicts is characterized by a more individualized medical treat ment, with criminal sanctions having no place in society’s response.


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The dynamics of prohibition and illegal supply

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The last theme that I studied was the dynamics of prohibition and illegal sup ply, focusing on the similarities and differences between the consequences of US Prohibition and those of the international opium conventions. During US Prohibition, while it is true that the authorities did not succeed in completely eliminating the consumption of alcohol, there was nevertheless a definite drop in the consumption of alcohol. Measured by the criterion of alcohol consumption, Prohibition was thus reasonably successful. A less fortu nate side-effect, however—and one that was completely unanticipated—was the expansion of the illegal alcohol market. The illegal alcohol industry func tioned as a multiplier for large, national—and sometimes international—criminal organizations. This was a particularly lucrative industry because it did not have to pay taxes. The large crime syndicates that were involved in the illegal alcohol industry eventually amassed so much money that they could invest in legal branches of industry. Widespread corruption was another common phenomenon during Prohibi tion. Because of the large financial reserves generated by the illegal alcohol trade, increasingly large interests were at stake. So there was a real risk of structural forms of corruption arising among police forces and other govern ment organizations involved in fighting the illegal supply of alcohol—and that is in fact what happened. Ranged against the purveyors of illegal alcohol were state instruments in tended to eliminate this supply. While the US federal police was not founded as a direct response to Prohibition, the enforcement of Prohibition decidedly fostered the further development of a control apparatus and the dispensation of justice at federal level, thus contributing to a greater federal integration. At the same time, however, the American justice and prisons systems were overbur dened by a flood of cases and convictions under the Volstead Act. Since the statutory prohibition of alcohol could not be enforced, and since the public were well aware of this and were indeed party to the infringements of the law—and since an increasing number of corrupt officials and politicians were exposed—the image of the American constitutional state as a whole was se verely damaged in the 1920s. That the law was being flouted on such a large scale was seen as a sign of general moral decay. Another unforeseen consequence of the dynamics of Prohibition and ille gal supply was that the illegal alcohol came onto the market primarily in the form of strong liquor. This was because strong liquor, with its relatively high alcohol content, had the best profit margins and the smallest risk of discovery. Much of what took place in the United States in the 1920s, under Prohibi tion, is now happening at global level with opiates and other intoxicants sub


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ject to a worldwide ban. The illegal market in opiates is heavily determined by a global effort of governments to completely eradicate the use of these and certain other intoxicants. Every available repressive resource is deployed to achieve this goal. This ongoing effort to enforce a total ban continues up to the present day in a paradoxical collusion with the illegal market it has made pos sible. For the attractions of a market with monopoly prices—and free of taxa tion and insurance premiums to boot—are irresistible. This is clear from the lack of success achieved in curbing the supply of illegal intoxicants despite the fact that no expense or effort is spared in this endeavour. It appears that people have forgotten that the global repressive regulatory regime for opiates had its origins in a desire to suppress the intra-Asian colonial opium trade. The colo nial opium trade has long been a thing of the past, but the global regulatory regime is still in place—it has even been tightened up and extended. Mean while, the market for opiates has undergone a fundamental change. The inter national opium conventions are now used primarily to prevent the population of Western societies from indulging in the non-medical use of opiates and oth er illicit intoxicants, while the profits made from this illegal market go mainly to non-Western criminal state enterprises that operate internationally, very of ten in countries and communities where international law and national author ities have little influence. The fight against the illegal opiate market has increasingly become a mat ter for the police, and in some cases even for the armed forces. Many national and international authorities are in a state of continuous warfare that is fought out in separate campaigns on a global battlefield. The two sides in this battle, the suppliers in the illegal market and those trying to stop them, appear to be locked into an arms race, with each constantly amassing more manpower and more—and more advanced—equipment, forcing each other to greater scale expansion and internationalization. It is true that this repressive and formal regulatory regime for opiates to some extent achieves its goal: many potential users are indeed deterred by the ban. But an unintentional side-effect of a repressive regime of this kind is that those belonging to the relatively small group that ventures to use opiates de spite the ban will often be caught up in a pattern of use that fosters crime and disease. Cause and effect are not easily separated here. Nevertheless, it is clear that illicit intoxicants are consumed primarily among groups that already be long to the margins of society for other reasons. The use of illicit substances can thus become a common denominator into which all disapproval may be compressed. And the use of illicit substances not only stigmatizes individual users, but often the groups to which they belong as well. Illicit drug use thus becomes the subject of public indignation in which particular groups of outsid


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ers are targeted and demeaned. Particularly in times of economic stagnation and high unemployment, when opportunities to succeed in society are relative ly scarce, this stigmatization is to the advantage of established social groups. And since negative preconceptions make it even harder for such marginal out siders to gain access to mainstream society, both the local retail trade in illicit intoxicants and the consumption of these drugs constitute an attractive alterna tive, offering a lucrative source of income and a pleasant form of recreation. The social toll taken by the current regime for opiates has become very heavy indeed. As in the days of US Prohibition, both the police and the judici ary are overburdened. There is now also the problem of criminal organizations that have amassed great wealth by trafficking in illicit intoxicants shifting their operations to the mainstream economy, which offers more long-term security. Just as the supply of illegal alcohol under Prohibition tended to concen trate on strong liquor, one of the effects of the global ban on opiates has been to ensure that the supply of opiates is dominated by its most powerful variant— heroin. And meanwhile it seems almost to have been forgotten that there used to be opiates—and coca derivatives too—in smaller concentrations and with a milder intoxicating effect, and that they were consumed on a large scale with out causing any appreciable social problems. Similarly, the less efficient tech niques of consuming opiates have been superseded, partly because of the ban and consequent high prices, by the hypodermic needle. On the basis of these considerations the following hypothesis could be formulated: every ban on the supply and consumption of an intoxicant will have the effect that the intoxicant will be supplied in higher concentrations, while users will gravitate towards the most efficient techniques of consump tion. Coda When the question of regulating intoxicants is raised, the discussion is often dominated by pharmacological, socio-psychological and legal aspects. This study has shown that it is useful to consider the subject from the vantage-point of sociological history. Alcohol and opiates have both been reviled and exalted at various points in time. This study has looked at the ways in which people in Britain, the Netherlands and the United States have used their inventive powers to exploit to the full in their society the intoxicating effect induced by these two drugs—in tune with the demands of the time—and to reduce and control their adverse effects on the individual and on society as much as possible. Their efforts have sometimes been successful, but they have often had unfore


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seen and undesirable consequences—consequences which in general appear to be inherent to a particular regulatory regime. The fierce and often universal public indignation about the abuse of intox icants is a striking feature of the regulatory regimes for opiates—from the out cry about alcoholism in the 19th century to that about opiate addiction in recent times. My conclusion is that this public indignation is not an isolated response, but that it is fuelled by dramatic changes in society and underlying social tension: tension between national states, and more importantly between social groups within a society. Again and again this subject brings like-minded people together and draws sharp lines within a community. These lines are drawn by the more established and more powerful groups in society. They reproach outsiders for practising unrestrained, forbidden or antisocial patterns of consumption, and in the fantasies they weave about these outsiders they attribute the censured behaviour of the few to the group as a whole, with all the repercussions of stigmatization and self-fulfilling prophecies that inevitably ensue.


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Wagstaff, Adam & Alan Maynard, Economic Aspects of the Illicit Drug Market and Drug Enforcement Policies in the United Kingdom. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Of fice, Home Office Research Study no. 95, 1988. Warburton, Clark, The Economic Results of Prohibition. New York: Columbia University, 1932. Webber, Caroline & Aaron Wildavsky, A History of Taxation and Expenditure in the West ern World. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986. Werkgroep Verdovende Middelen, Achtergronden en risico’s van druggebruik. The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij, 1972. Westermeyer, J. Poppies, Pipes and People. Opium and its Use in Laos. Berkely: Universi ty of California Press, 1982. Widdershoven, Guy A.M. & Ruud ter Meulen, ‘De drinker of de drank? Het alcoholisme concept in de 19e en 20e eeuw’. Tijdschrift voor Alcohol, Drugs en Andere Psychotrope Stoffen, 1989, 105-112. Wielsma, Piet H., ‘Working Class Culture: Alcohol Abuse or Abstinence’. In: Heerma van Voss & Holthoon, Working Class and Popular Culture. Amsterdam: IISG, 1988a. Wielsma, Piet H., ‘De geesel der eeuw’. Groniek. Gronings Historisch Tijdschrift, 1988b, 96-115. Wijngaart, Goof van de, ‘Methadon: geschiedenis en toepassing van een drug’. Maandblad Geestelijke Volksgezondheid, 1989, no. 2, 125-140. Wijngaart, Goof van de, Competing Perspectives on Drug Use. The Dutch Experience. Utrecht: Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, 1990. Williams, Terry, The Cocaine Kids. The Inside Story of a Teenage Drug Ring. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Limited, 1990. Wilson, George B. Alcohol and the Nation. A Contribution to the Study of the Liquor Prob lem in the United Kingdom 1800-1935. London: Nicholson & Watson, 1940. Wisotsky, Steven, Breaking the Impasse in the War on Drugs. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986. Wittop-Koning, D.A. Compendium voor de geschiedenis van de pharmacie van Neder land. The Hague: K.N.M.P., 1986. Woodewiss, Michael, Crime, Crusade and Corruption. Prohibitions in the US, 1900-1987. London: Pinter Publishers, 1988. Wrigley, E.A., Continuity and Change. The Character of the Industrial Revolution in Eng land. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Wubben, H.J.J., Chinezen en ander ongedierte. Lotgevallen van Chinese immigranten in Nederland, 1911-1940. Zutphen: De Walburg Pers, 1986. Ziegler, Jean, Die Schweiz wäscht weisser. Die Finanzdrehscheibe des internationalen Ver brechens. Munich: Piper Verlag, 1990. Zinberg, Norman E., ‘Addiction and Ego Function’. In: H. Shaffer & M. Burglass (eds.), Classic Contributions in the Addictions. New York: Brunnes/Mazel 1981.


267

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Update

Since the appearance of Gerritsen’s book in the original Dutch, as De politieke economie van de roes, numerous studies of alcohol and drug use have been published in the Netherlands. Only a few of them, however, place the subject in a definite socio-historical perspective. The three studies discussed below tackle the subject from rather different vantage-points. All three refer to Gerritsen’s work. Van der Stel (1995) praises Gerritsen for ‘having shown that the regulation of intoxicants was an essential part of state formation in Western countries in the 19th century’ (p. 26). De Kort (1995) vigorously endorses Gerritsen’s description of the opium conferences at the beginning of the 20th century as ‘unique in history’, because ‘this was the first time that efforts were made to achieve a worldwide ban on economic products, products, it should be added, that were in great demand’ (p. 44). Korf (1995) compliments Gerritsen in particular for his detailed description of the levying of excise duties as part of state formation. ‘Levying excise taxes is the longest-standing form of availability control in the Netherlands’ (p. 19). Unlike Gerritsen, Van der Stel confines himself to a single country (the Netherlands) and a single intoxicant (alcohol), but he examines a far longer period, extending from 1500 to the present day. He takes his inspiration very much from the work of Norbert Elias (as does Gerritsen), but he pays scant attention to the economic aspects that Gerritsen emphasises so strongly. His extremely detailed and thorough historical and sociological analysis of drink ing, alcoholic beverages and drunkenness in the Netherlands since the Middle Ages leads Van der Stel to conclude that the development of alcohol consump tion is characterised by an increasing degree of self-control. However, he also identifies certain peaks that at times appear to refute this long-term trend. There is no linear trend in either alcohol consumption or the attendant prob lems as described by contemporaries; both vary in the course of history. The same applies to society’s approval of ways and means of tackling the uses and abuses of alcohol. On one level, formal and informal approaches are each tried by turns; that is to say, societies sometimes try to impose strict controls, and sometimes exercise greater leniency. On a different level there are ‘moralising’ periods, in which all forms of inebriation and alcohol abuse attract society’s condemnation, and ‘medicalising’ periods in which attention focuses on spe cific categories of alcohol abusers who are amenable to socio-medical treat ment. The primary trend of the civilisation process, where alcohol consump tion is concerned, is towards formalising the contexts in which drinking is acceptable.


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UPDATE

Formalisation is generally accompanied by moralistic views about ‘what is right and proper’. From this perspective, alcohol abuse is generally described as a lack of self-control and/or willpower. In the Netherlands the temperance movement played an important part in disseminating such views in the rough period 1850-1950. In periods of ‘informalisation’, in contrast, one is less likely to encounter stern moralistic views on alcohol consumption and drinking hab its; alcoholism is defined as an illness rather than as some shortcoming for which an individual is to blame. Formalisation is the external control (Fremdzwang) that supports and di rects self-control (Selbstzwang). It provides a framework within which some one may develop drinking habits with a large measure of self-control (or ‘self coercion’) which makes it possible to introduce informalisation. And informalisation creates a need for fresh legislation and regulations. Moralising tars everyone with the same brush and hence creates a need for an approach with more attention for the individual, which will acquire status provided it is cast in a medical mould. The limited effects of medicalisation in turn consti tute a seedbed for a moralising offensive. Van der Stel distinguishes five peri ods in the civilisation process since the Middle Ages, where alcohol is con cerned: three characterised by formalisation and moralising (1500-1750; 1880-1930; 1975 to the present day); and two of informalisation and medical isation (1750-1880 and 1930-1975). It is striking that the swings in this cycle are becoming shorter, which Stelt interprets as meaning that society is becom ing more dynamic and that social paradigms are now less durable. The work of De Kort (1995, 1999) spans a shorter period and is largely confined to the Netherlands. He looks at the developments since the latter half of the 19th century, focusing on the drugs that are now illegal – opiates, co caine and cannabis. At the heart of his study is the inconsistency between the repressive and the socio-medical approaches in the period between the First Opium Act (1919) and the most important amendment to it in 1975, when cannabis was decriminalised. Like Gerritsen, De Kort discusses at length the Netherlands’ economic in terests in the colonial era. He does not confine himself to the opium trade, but also dwells at length on the cultivation of coca in the former Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) and heroin and cocaine factories in the Netherlands itself. These economic interests go a long way towards explaining the critical stance of the Dutch when the first international conventions on drugs were signed at the beginning of the 20th century. De Kort cogently documents and analyses the rivalry between representatives of the punitive line (police and criminal justice authorities) and those of the socio-medical line (e.g. the Public Health Department). Towards the end of the 19th century, a distinction was introduced between medicine and intoxicants as a result of the professionalisa


269

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[269]

UPDATE

[270]

tion of medical science. After the Opium Act entered into effect in 1919, med ical doctors managed to preserve their monopoly on supplying opiates and cocaine, as a result of which there was virtually no criminalisation of the users of these substances. This did not please the criminal justice authorities, who had to confine themselves to the (fairly unsuccessful) fight against the semi legal and legal trade in these substances. Until after the Second World War, Dutch drugs policy was characterised by a punitive approach to the illegal drugs trade and the lenient treatment of users, who were generally able to ob tain their drugs legally. In this period there was no real drugs problem as such in the Netherlands. Between the mid-1950s and the late 1960s the punitive approach was in the ascendancy, especially in relation to cannabis users. This was mainly because cannabis was strongly associated with a specific counter culture. But it also had to do with the fact that cannabis scarcely had any med ical applications, so that a socio-medical approach was deemed inapplicable. As part of a dramatic sea-change in Dutch society, a policy of toleration gradually emerged. One important factor that prepared the ground for the de criminalisation of cannabis in the 1976 amendment of the Opium Act was the fact that scientists and policymakers openly cast doubt on the effectiveness of the criminal law in questions of morality. Strongly influenced by current crim inological theories of labelling, stigmatisation and marginalisation, many were persuaded that action taken under the criminal law could have an extremely negative impact; as a result, the Dutch Government withdrew from active intervention in areas such as drug use, abortion, pornography and homosexual ity. Korf’s study (1995) deals mainly with formal control and the modern ille gal use of drugs in the Netherlands – and by comparison in Germany – and is heavily empirical and quantitative. In the formal social controls on alcohol and tobacco, the economic vantage-point emphasised by Gerritsen still plays an important role – not only through excise duties, but also through licensing. Alcohol is relatively easy to obtain in the Netherlands; beer and wine, at least, can simply be purchased in the supermarket. Liquor sales are restricted to offlicences and licensed sections of the hotel and catering trade. Tobacco occu pies a position intermediate between that of drinks with a low alcohol content and liquor, where availability is concerned. People can buy tobacco products at supermarkets (at the checkout counter) and numerous hotel and catering estab lishments (usually in slot-machines) as well as from tobacconists. Unlike Ger many, however, slot-machine sales in the street are taboo in the Netherlands. The sale of cannabis products (‘soft drugs’) is more restricted still, with the illegal but ‘tolerated’ sales being confined almost completely to ‘coffee shops’, most of which are found in the major cities. Those wishing to purchase drugs such as heroin and cocaine (‘hard drugs’; the similarity in terminology be


270

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UPDATE

tween drugs and alcohol is striking) are obliged to descend to criminal circles. Like De Kort, Korf discusses the decriminalisation of cannabis in the Netherlands in the 1970s. The de facto criminalisation of cannabis meant that people of some standing in society saw ‘their own children’ hauled before the courts. Arrestees no longer corresponded to the existing picture of ‘criminals’ – on the contrary, they were often young people from the middle and upper classes. Instead of expelling these children from the social order, the Dutch Government chose to create conditions in which they would become – and remain - more involved in mainstream culture. Korf refers to this process as the ‘embourgeoisement’ of cannabis. Looked at cynically, the rise of heroin in the early 1970s was highly opportune for the Dutch legislature. The authorities regarded heroin as a far more dangerous drug than cannabis – and it was quite inappropriate to subject them to the same regime under criminal law. Gerritsen describes the historical role played by medical practitioners as providers and detoxifiers. Both roles are reflected in the Dutch approach to heroin addicts. Doctors play a crucial role in this approach, in particular as methadone providers. Korf sees methadone programmes as a positive develop ment, at least as practised in the Netherlands, as a buffer to prevent lethal over doses. More in general, the provision of methadone acts directly or indirectly as a safety net for physical and other problems experienced by heroin users. However, it is also a snare, as it helps to prolong drug use. One important feature of methadone is that its users will not suffer too much from withdrawal symptoms provided they carry on taking it. In this sense, doctors unintention ally help to prolong addiction.


271

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[271]

Credits

fig. 1

The photograph at the beginning of the Introduction is by the Ger man photographer and artist Lothar Baumgarten: Baumgarten 1982, 126) fig. 2 (a/b) Illustrations from an introduction to the human brain: Joosse and Voorhoeve 1986, 109; 191 fig. 3 The famous engravings Gin Lane and Beer Street (1751) by William Hogarth were among his commentaries on everyday life in England fig. 4 The series of stills has been compiled from R.J. Forbes’s major work on the subject: Forbes 1970 [1948]. fig. 5 Rorabough 1979, 174 fig. 6 The opium poppy has been borrowed from Rhind’s botanical atlas (1868); see also M.D. Merlin, 1984, 2. fig. 7 Merlin 1984, 94. figs. 8, 9 The poppy goddess and the Kozani statuette, found during archeo logical excavations in Kozani, have likewise been taken from Mer lin 1984, 233; 241. fig. 10 Scott 1969, 36

fig. 11. Engraving by Thomas Allom; see also Collis 1946, 209.

fig. 12 The photograph of the state opium factory belongs to the collection

of the Royal Tropical Institute. fig. 13 The photographs of the opium smokers in the hospital have been taken (including the protection of the patients’ privacy) from the doctoral dissertation by De Mol van Otterloo, 1933. fig. 14 The photograph at the beginning of chapter 5 was by Wouter Klein looh. The painting belongs to the Professor van der Poel Tax Museum’s collection in Rotterdam. fig. 15 This image is also from the Tax Museum (see above) Photograph: Wouter Kleinlooh. fig. 16 Taken from McCoy 1991, 301. fig. 17 Taken from Mühlberg 1986, 82. fig. 18 Taken from Morgan 1981, 23. fig. 19 From Scheepmaker 1985, 34. fig. 20 Taken from Harrison 1971, 141. fig. 21 Rush’s thermometer comes from Shivelbush 1988, 173. fig. 22 Taken from Morgan, 1981, 74; 85. fig. 23 This photograph was taken by Jan Lankveld (Hollandse Hoogte). fig. 24 Cocteau 1986, 85.


272

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CREDITS

fig. 25 fig. 26

This photograph was taken by the author, whose study was one door removed from the scene shown. The cover photograph of the author was taken by Fred Spier. [273]


273

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Index

Abolitionist movement 76, 85 Abortion 239 Addiction – the science of 193 – syndrome 16-18, 20, 204-208 AIDS 203 Alkaloids 14, 19 Al Capone 215 Alchemists 27, 33 Alcohol consumption – in the United States 164 – in Britain 162 – in the Netherlands 178 – of women 163, 186 Alcoholics Anonymus 194 Alcoholism 189-194, 204-207 – psychological theories of 193 Amendment (18th) 172, 175, 209, 210, 214 Amendment (21th) 114 American Medical Association: 133, 134 American Pharmaceutical Association 133 Amstel 32 Anti Corn-Law League 148 Anti Opium Alliance 77,78 Anti Saloon League 169, 172, 210-215 Apothecaries 27, 33 Ardant, G. 93, 96 Association against the Prohibition Amend ment 215, 216 Baan Report, the 203 Baare, P. de 209 Balance of power, shift in the – of physicians & pharmacists 126 – of local & central authorities 130 – of Washington & the individual states 113, 176 Becker, H 83, 240 Beer 24, 25, 30-33, 97, 149, 152, 176, 210 Beerhouse Act (1830) 154 Beerhouse vs. Ginpalace 154 Berridge, V. 44, 120, 126 Black money 232 Bourgeoisie, the petty 146 – as the motor of the temperance move ment 146 – as the main junction for both upwards and downwards social movement 147


274

– and her intellectual leaders 147 – and the temperance movement 141 Breman, J. 74 Brent, bishop C.H. 83, 84 British & Foreign Temperance Society: 153 156 British System 201-203 Broers, J. 205 Brown, R. 64 Burden of taxation 89, 96, 97

Caffeine 47 Canton 58-61 Cavanach, J. 38 Central nervous system 14, 16-18 Charness, M.E. 17 Chartists, the 148 Chatterjee, S.K. 218 Chemistry 47 Chemists 48 Child Messenger Act (1901) 161 China as a market for opium 57 Chinese Exclusion Act 81 Chinese silver stocks 59, 60 Chlorodyne 117, 118, 128 Chloroform 47, 128 CIA 225, 230 Cirrhosis of the liver 176 Civil war in the United States 88, 107, 123, 137, 142, 219 Civilizing campaigns 145, 146, 180, 186, 190 Clairmonte, F. 38 Clark, N. 168, 212 Class awareness 175 Class contrasts 190 Class distinctions 173 Class tax 93, 101 Clinic 193 Clinic system 129, 201 Coca 13, 14, 19 Cocaine 11, 18, 199, 220 Cocoa 14, 154 Cocteau, J. 220 Codeine 47, 53 Coffee 14, 19, 30, 57, 66, 152, 181, 237 Compulsive gamblers 206 Conduct 144 Consumer taxes 36, 74, 87, 88, 91-94

19-04-2000, 14:10

INDEX Continuum of feeling 19 Coolies 74 Corruption 60, 214, 215 Courtwright, D. 81, 118, 120, 221 Cribb, R. 75 Cultivation of the opium poppy, the 43 – in British India 61-63 Cultural capital 147 Curtin, Ph. 57

D’Oranjeboom 32 Dangerous Drug Act (1920) 129, 196, 200, 218, 222, 229 Darby, W.J. 23, 25 Darwin, C. 20 Defence of the Realm Acts 162 Derosne and Sequin 46 Desire to distinguish – on the part of the well-to-do middle classes 152 – of the petty bourgeoisie 147 Diehl, F. 68, 69, 72 Dioskorides 45 Direct and indirect taxation 91 Distillation 27-29, 33-37 Division of labour, the 20, 141, 142 – within the pharmacists’ trade 47 Dole, V. 198 Drinking water 30 Drinking water supply 151, 152 Drug Enforcement Agency 230 Drug Trafficking Offences Act (1986) 202 Druggists and grocers 120, 127, 131 Drunkenness in public 148, 161, 175, 185, 186 Dutch Association for the Abolition of Strong Liquor (NVASD, 1901) 99, 177, 178 Dutch East Indies Company 52, 57, 64, 118 Dutch Licensing Act (1881) 102, 183-187 Dutch Society for the Advancement of Phar macy 130 Dutch Trading Company 65-67 Eck, F. van 30, 31 Edwards, G. 44, 126 Elias, N. 1-5, 88 Elite 33, 45, 89, 147, 148 – the American 216 – a religious 49 – the working class 156 Emancipation of women 168-170, 182 – suffragettes 148 Employment 32, 114, 216


275

– in alcohol industry 111 Endorphins 18 Engels, F. 145 English East India Companies 57, 59, 61 Ether 47 Ethology 19, 20 Everwijn, J.C.A. 37 Excise – the principle of 92 – basic rate 99 – taxes on alcohol 87-116 Excises – in the United States 106 – in Britain 103 – in the Netherlands 97 Extraction technique to harvest raw opium 43-45

Federal Bureau of Narcotics 229 f. Federal Income Tax 113 Federal Prohibition Unit 214, 215, 229 Federal tax department 109 – in the United States 111, 214 – in the Netherlands 98, 99, 231 – in England 231, 232 First World War 99, 162, 173, 219 – and the British excise on alcohol 105 Fiscal service 94 Flora, P. 95, 103 Forbes, R.J. 27 Forced farming system 65, 66 Franchise system 65, 78 Freud, S. 11, 12, 17, 193, 205 Galen 45 Gambling 82, 224, 240 General Dutch Anti-Alcohol Organisation 186 Giele, J. 143 Gin plague 36 Gist-Brocades N.V. 23 Global regulation of opiates 78, 209, 218 f. Global supply of alcoholic drinks 38 Goffman, E. 191 Goudsblom, J. 1, 141, 146 Grocers 127, 131 Guggenheim 143, 171 Gusfield 142, 170 Habitual Drunkards Act (1878) 161, 191 Hamilton, A. 107, 120 Hamm, R. 109, 110 Hard drugs versus soft drugs 13

19-04-2000, 14:10

[275]

INDEX

[276]

Harding, G. 118 Harrison Act (1914) 134, 135 Harrison B. 142, 158, 160 Hashish, marijuana 14, 226 Healing temples 49 Heineken & Co 32 Helmer, J. 81 Henschel, R. 214 Heroin, the use of 15, 47, 196 f., 225 f. – on the part of American soldiers serving in Vietnam 225 – on the part of ethnic minorities 226 Hippocrates 45 Hofstadter, R. 113 Hogarth, W. 36, 37 Hong Kong 61, 71, 219, 223, 225 Hoog Hullen 191 Houten, S. van 101, 144 Hufeland 190 Hyams, E. 29 Hypodermic syringe 49, 135-137

Illegal opium market 54 Illegal supply 108, 209 Illicent intoxicants, the use of 199 – as a discarded item of cultural baggage 206 Immigrants 31, 80, 81, 90, 141, 165, 173, 222, 227 Import duties 87, 107 Income tax 88, 91, 94, 103, 108, 109, 113-115 Indian Opium Commission 77 Indirect taxes 74, 96 Industrialisation and the temperance move ment 141-149 Inebriates Act (1898) 191 Inglis, B. 58, 60 International Narcotics Control Board 53 International Opium Commission 64, 84 International Opium Conferences 75, 84, 135 International Opium Conventions 129, 218

Jansen, A. 38

Jellinek, E.M. 193

Jones Act (1929) 210

King William I 66 Knippenberg, H. 95 Korsakoff – Wernickes – syndrome 18 Krafft Ebing 193 Kyvig, D. 171


276

Labour – intensiveness of opium – growing 44, 45 Laudanum 45, 52, 117, 118, 120, 126, 134 League of nations 53, 84, 85, 217 Ledermann, 194 Leeuwen, M. van 92 Leeuwenhoek, A. van 23 Levi, M. 106 Levine, H. 213 Lewin, L. 12 Liberal ideology of the temperance move ment 151 Libido, the economics of the Licence 31 – for alcohol 31, 36, 102, 105, 154, 159 161, 164, 165, 184 – for opium 70, 71, 73, 74, 129 Licensing Act (1872; 1874) 161 Licensing Act (1881) 183, 184, 192 Licensing Act (1904) 185 Licensing Act and Catering Act (1964) 185 Lint, J. de 185 Local option 150, 167, 182 Local veto 150, 158 LSD 226

Mafia 224-227 Magnus, A. 27 Maine 28 Gallon Law (1846) 167 Makela, K. 163 Mann, M. 89 Marx, K. 123, 124 McBride, R. 237 McCoy, A.W. 226 Medick, H. 37 Medical regime for opiate addicts – in the U.S. 197 f. – in England 200 f. – in the Netherlands 202 f. – in the Dutch East Indies 73 Medical regime versus a repressive regime 199 Meijring, K.H. 72 Merlin, M.D. 41 Methadone 48, 198, 199, 201, 203 Methodists 153, 165 Meulen, G. ter 194 Mill, J.S. 9, 87, 91, 151 Mintz, S.W. 35 Misuse of Drugs Act (1971) 202 Mitschell, B.R. 95 Mol van Otterloo, A. de 73 Monasteries 29, 30, 33

19-04-2000, 14:10

INDEX Monday absenteeism 145 Money, J.W.B. 65 Monopoly, the – on opium supply 54 – on the cultivation of opium 59 – of the medical profession on morphine and the technique of injection 49, 125 – of a class of priests on opium 49 – of pharmacists and medical practition ers on opium containing medicinal drugs 118 Monopoly on force, the state’s 88, 95 Monopoly on violence, the state’s 233 Monopoly price 68, 239 Monopoly profits 237 Monopolies, the development of 235 Moral treatment 191 Moral entrepreneurs 83, 148, 214, 240 Morphine 46-48, 135, 197 f. Morphinism 195 f. Murray, J. 41 Musto, D. 133, 196, 197, 215, 217, 221

Narcotic clinics 197 Narcotic farms 197, 230 Narcotics-brigades 229 Nation-formation 9, 94, 95 Nation Prohibition Bureau 214-216 National Committee against alcoholism (1908) 183 National Criminal intelligence Service 231 National Christian Teetotallers society 180 ev National Temperance League 157-159 Neurotransmitters 10, 15, 16, 18 New Deal policy 112-114 Nyswander, M. 198 Opium Act (1919 and 1928) 132, 196, 218,

Patent rights 102 Pater, B. de 95 People’s Association against Alcohol Abuse 179, 180, 183 Permissive Bill (1884) 158, 160 Peyote 14 Pharmaceutical industry 15, 45, 47, 55, 135, 219 Pharmaceutical Society 127 Pharmacists 48, 118, 123-131 Pharmacy Act (1868) 126-128 Physicians as detoxifiers 189-207 Physicians as suppliers of opiates 117-139 Physicians and pharmacists 125 preparation of Medicines Act (1865) 124, 131 Prestwich, P. 142 Price elasticity – of staples 93 – of illegal opiates 54 – of addictive intoxicants 239 Price mechanisms: – and the consumption of alcohol 151 – and illegal alcohol 176 – and opium 59, 68 Priests 49 Productschap voor gedestilleerde dranken 31 Professionalization – aspects of 138 – of pharmacists in the Netherlands 131 f. – of the medical occupations 125 Progressive movement in the U.S. 113 Prohibition in the U.S. 109, 171-176, 209-217 – and excise tax on alcohol 110-115 Prohibitionists 150, 158 f. Prostitution 82, 169, 222, 240 Psychical vs. physical dependence 16 Psychological approach to addiction 205 Public Health Movement 126-128 Public House Closing Act 160 Pure Food and Drug Act 124, 134, 135, 217 Putting out system 211

229 Opium as a profitable trade for England and the Netherlands 57-78 Opium factories 51, 70, 71 Opium society 65, 66 Opium war 61, 63, 76-78, 83, 219 Organised crime 210-214, 232-238

Quacks 52, 119 Quakers 153, 157, 165 Quinine 14, 47, 135

Papaver somniferum 41 e.v. Papaver syrup 118 Paracelsus 118 Parssinen, T.M. 218, 222 Pasteur, L. 23 Patent Medicine Bill (1884) 128 Patent remedies 119, 131

Recreational and medicinal drugs 13, 53 Ree, F. van 12 Ree, J.M. van 18, 19 Refining techniques 21, 46 f. Reform Act (1867) 156 Reform Act (1883) 106 Residual practice 202-204


277

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[277]

INDEX

[278]

Rivalry between doctors & pharmacists 133 Rockefeller 143, 171, 216 Roland Holst, H. 179 Rollestone Report (1926) 200 Roosevelt 216 Rorabaugh, W.J. 35, 36 Royal College of Physicians 126 Royal College of Surgeons 126 Rum-runners 212 Rush, B. 165

Saloon – in the U.S. 168-175 – opening hours 160-162, 184 Scabs 80, 82 Schiedam 37 Schumpeter, J. 89 Second World War 114, 221, 223 Secret remedies 53, 122 Self-medication 119 Self-sufficiency 54 Separate care 202-204 Seturner 46 Seward, D. 29 Shiman, L. 132 Siegel, R. 19 Significance 13 Slater, G. 103 Slave trade 35 Smith-Bader, R. 164, 168, 172 Smoking Opium Exclusion Act (1909) 82, 83, 134 Smuggling 238 – of opium 54, 60, 66, 67, 71 – of alcohol 93, 108, 212 – of opiates 221 Social advancement 147, 157, 179 Social dissemination of opium smoking 49 Social coercion inducing self-control 3, 194 Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade 76-78, 148 Society of Apothecaries 127 Society with rigid social divisions versus a society with differing socio-economic gra dations 147 Speakeasies and coffee-shops 212 Starr, P. 133 State control system (1894) 65, 68, 72, 74 State formation 26, 29, 88 – and excise taxes on alcohol 67 – and professionalisation of the medical occupation 125 – versus nation formation 90


278

– scabs 80, 82 state monopoly 52, 74, 90, 91 Status uncertainty 142, 170 – professional insecurity among physi cians 137 Stein, S.D. 63,64 Stelle, Ch. 79 Stigmatisation 192 – of Chinese immigrant groups 81 – of opiate addicts 201, 204 Strong liquor 26, 33-38 Strychnine 47, 135 Suffrage 91, 97, 106, 158 (voting rights) Sunday Beer Acts (1854; 1855) 158 Sunday closing 158 Surgeons 52, 126 Swaan, A. de 90, 146 Synthetic intoxicants 15

Tobacco 13, 14, 87, 107, 108, 23 Taste differences 38 Taxes – value added 92, 103 – the obligation to pay 232 Taxonomy 11 Tea 14, 30, 57-61, 152, 154, 181, 237 Teetotallers 151, 155-158, 180 Temperance movement 76 Therapy 17, 73, 189 f. Thirst - quencher 25, 30, 34 Thomas’s law 81 Thorbecke’s (1851) Municipalities Act 95 Tied house system 154 Tilly, C. 88 Tocqueville, A. de 165 Trade unions 175, 179 Trotter 190 Tuke 191

Underclasses – the lifestyle of the urban 125, 144-146 United Kingdom Alliance 158, 159 United Kingdom Band of Hope Union 157 159 United Nations 53, 85, 217 United Society of Chemists and Druggists 128 Urban versus rural life 142 Urbanisation 112, 141

Vanvugt, E. 54, 66, 67 Venereal disease 149 Venereal infection 170

19-04-2000, 14:10

INDEX Verstaatlichung of care arrangements 89, 90

Victimless crimes 238

Vietnam 225, 226

Vietorisz, T. 81, 82

Vlekke 143, 149

Volstead Act 110, 173, 209 f., 229

Von Brühl-Cramer 190

Vrankrijker, A.C.J de 93

War on drugs 230

Webb versus the United States (1919) 219

Webber, C. 89

Werkgroep Verdovende Middelen (see the

Baan Report) 203

Wheeler 171

Whisky Rebellion 107

Widdershoven, G. 194


279

Wiener, M.J. 192

Wine 24-26, 29

Wildavsky, A. 89

Willard, F. 169

Withdrawal treatment 73, 189 f.

Wittop Koning, D.A. 130 Womens’ Christian Temperance Union 168

170

World Health Organisation 206

Working classes 144 f.

– the upper echelons of the 156, 173, 174

Wright, H. 84

Yeast 23, 24

Zinberg, N.E. 54

19-04-2000, 14:10

[279]

The Control of Fuddle and Flash: A Sociological History of the Regulation of Alcohol and Opiates

The Spirits of America: A Social History of Alcohol

The Flash of a Firefly

the Flash Of a Firefly

The Flash of a Firefly

Regulation of Biological Control Agents

Regulation: the Social Control of Business Between Law and Politics

The Constitution and the Regulation of Society

Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol

A Sociological History of Christian Worship

The Encyclopedia of Drugs and Alcohol

Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol

Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol

Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory

The Regulation of Emotion

Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory

Distillation of Alcohol and Denaturing

The Tyranny of Health: Doctors and the Regulation of Lifestyle

Crime, Addiction and the Regulation of Gambling

The structure and regulation of financial markets

Regulation and the Natural Progress of Opulence

The Regulation of Science and Technology (Studies in Regulation)

A Great and Growing Evil?: The Medical Effects of Alcohol

Where the Sky Ends: A Memoir of Alcohol and Family

The A-Z Encyclopedia of Alcohol and Drug Abuse

The Essential Handbook of Treatment and Prevention of Alcohol Problems

Cell Fusions: Regulation and Control

Economics of regulation and antitrust

Visions of the Sociological Tradition

Alcohol: A Social and Cultural History

Alcohol: A Social and Cultural History

The Control of Fuddle and Flash: A Sociological History of the Regulation of Alcohol and Opiates

The Spirits of America: A Social History of Alcohol

The Flash of a Firefly

the Flash Of a Firefly

The Flash of a Firefly

Regulation of Biological Control Agents

Regulation: the Social Control of Business Between Law and Politics

The Constitution and the Regulation of Society

Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol

A Sociological History of Christian Worship

The Encyclopedia of Drugs and Alcohol

Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol

Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol

Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory

The Regulation of Emotion

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