These narratives fall into two distinct scholarly fields. The sense of entitlement that so clearly marks these letters does not fit easily into existing historical narratives about drugs in America. Their doctors were similarly outraged, and similarly unworried about being seen as “drug dealers.” Claiming to have “ladies who need these pills for pep,” for example, one Wisconsin physician fumed in 1977 that “if amphetamines are prohibited … I'll go underground or you'll see a big jump in the narcolepsy cases around here.” 5 Instead, they openly announced their dependence on amphetamine to federal authorities and complained about their supply being shut off. Yet the letter writers were conspicuously unconcerned about being targeted as drug addicts. On the other hand, the letters were also written by clients of what would in the twenty-first century be called a “pill mill,” that is, a clinic whose main purpose was to sell prescriptions for psychoactive pharmaceuticals-in this case, amphetamine. These were the kind of people who had enthusiastically supported “law and order” politicians and their war against drugs. Nixon through appeals to their sense of lost status in the face of civil rights and other social changes of the era. On the one hand, they shared the instantly recognizable political rhetoric of the so-called Silent Majority: white voters, many of them formerly Democrats, courted by presidential candidate (and then president) Richard M. These and other letters were a sign that something strange was happening in America's recently declared drug war. Whatever happened to free enterprise, or do we really have something else?” 2 Wrote another, “I, as one American citizen make demand at this writing to restore all the drugs people need … too many people are suffering because of being penalized on account of the drug abusers … if the drug works for them, they should have the American privilege to obtain it … this is still a free country, and we will not submit ourselves to dictatorial powers.” 3 “One by one they are disappearing-our freedoms-down the bureaucratic drain.” 1 Another woman wrote directly to the FDA: “I feel that my rights as a citizen of the United States has been infringed upon…. “I suppose I could be considered one of the silent majority,” an Arizona man wrote to his congressman. But the new limits also provoked other, less predictable protests. When the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed tightening limits on medical use of amphetamines in 1973, it expected howls from a pharmaceutical industry legendary for its antiregulatory prowess. Instead of seeing these as two separate stories-one a liberal triumph and the other a repressive scourge-both should be understood as part of the broader establishment of a consumer market for drugs segregated by class and race like other consumer markets developed in the era of Progressivism and Jim Crow. The resulting drug control regime provided inadequate consumer protection for some (through the FDA), and overly punitive policing for others (through the FBN). Second, it argues that access to psychoactive pharmaceuticals was a problematic social entitlement constructed as distinctively medical amid the racialized reforms of the Progressive Era. It argues, first, that addiction to pharmaceutical drugs is no recent aberration it has historically been more extensive than “street” or illicit drug use. It contains a thriving downtown and commercial district.This article rethinks the formative decades of American drug wars through a social history of addiction to pharmaceutical narcotics, sedatives, and stimulants in the first half of the twentieth century. Today the town's economy is a mix of tourism, agriculture, and industry. The terminus of the Manassas Gap Railroad reached the town before construction ended as a result of the Civil War.ĭuring that conflict the Confederate States of America established a large hospital complex in Mt. These two roads brought thousands of travelers to and through Mt. The latter originated in town and traveled to resorts in Orkney Springs and West Virginia. The first, the major north south highway in the area, passed through the center of town and defined downtown. Two Turnpikes, the Valley and Howard's Lick defined the town. The state made the decision, over the objection of some locals, to name the village, formerly known as Mt. Jackson began with an Act of Assembly on January 27, 1826. A tour of historic sites in the town of Mt.
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