In a time when the use of many drugs is illegal in the United States and the public is inundated with information on such drug use, it is probably surprising that this set of circumstances is a historically recent phenomenon. Throughout most of the history of the United States, the manufacture, possession, and use of most drugs nowconsidered addictive were legal, and very little was known about these drugs, their use or abuse.

Other than ALCOHOL (through the TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT), the drug that first captured the attention of policymakers and medical and public-health sciences was OPIUM. An interest in the addiction to opiates in the United States can be found as far back as 1877, when Dr. Marshall conducted a study of the number of opiate addicts in Michigan. However, this and the handful of similar efforts at epidemiological research conducted through 1920 were...