Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs

The Downtown Eastside is a Vancouver, Canada neighborhood that was known in the 1990s and 2000s as an area of widespread drug addiction, homelessness, mental illness, and an extraordinarily low life expectancy rate. In the late 1990s, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) was founded there to prevent drug overdose deaths. VANDU had remarkable success, and in 2003 the area became the first in North America with a legal supervised injection site. In a 10-year period, the area’s life expectancy rose by 10 years.

The Federal Bureau of Narcotics was an agency within the Department of the Treasury. It was formed in 1930 as a continuation of the Department of Prohibition. Harry Anslinger served as the Bureau’s commissioner from its establishment in 1930 until his retirement in 1962. When the US overturned alcohol prohibition in 1933, the Bureau began to focus solely on narcotics that the Harrison Act had outlawed in 1914. The Bureau was dissolved in 1968.

The Harrison Act was a federal law passed in 1914 that registered, regulated, and taxed the production, importation, or distribution of opiates and coca products. The law effectively banned all narcotics yet allowed doctors to prescribe them to patients during treatment.