ABSTRACT
The Harrison Act, passed in 1914, profoundly changed the nature of the narcotics problem in the United States. This law was intended as a revenue and control measure and was not designed to penalize the user of the drug, to whom no direct reference was made. The Jones-Miller Act specified that mere possession of the drug was sufficient evidence for conviction unless the defendant could explain the possession to the satisfaction of the jury. The fact that opium smoking became a fad in the American underworld probably provided the original grounds for the idea that there is an inherent connection between crime and addiction and provided the impetus for anti-narcotics legislation. The agencies which enforce anti-narcotics legislation have become a vested interest in the status quo, and the fact that addicts in most of the other nations of the West are not nearly as criminal as those of the United States has been ignored.
