1914, its first war on drugs,*13 passing the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, which restricted the sale of opiates and cocaine. The reasoning was unoriginal. "The use of cocaine by unfortunate women generally and by negroes in certain parts of the country is simply appalling," the American Pharmaceutical Association's Committee on the Acquirement of the Drug Habit had concluded in 1902. The New York Times published an article by a physician saying that the South was threatened by "cocaine-crazed negroes," to whom the drug had awarded expert marksmanship and an immunity to bullets "large enough to 'kill any game in America.' " Another physician, Hamilton Wright, the "father of American narcotic law," reported to Congress that cocaine lent "encouragement" to "the humbler ranks of the negro population in the South." Should anyone doubt the implication of encouragement, Wright spelled it out: "It has been authoritatively stated that cocaine is often the direct incentive to the crime of rape by the negroes of the South and other sections of the country.
( Ta-Nehisi Coates )
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