Heroin legislation

As a result, the temperance movement in the United States, in the early twentieth century led to increased legislation to curb the use of opium and its derivatives. In 1905, the U.S. Congress banned the sale of opium, and the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1917 required patients to receive prescriptions for potentially harmful drugs. By 1923, most narcotic substances, including heroin and morphine, were banned from over-the-counter sale. 

At the Federal level, controlled substances are listed within a system of five schedules in the Controlled Substances Act. These Schedules are described in Table 1.2. Schedule I contains the most strongly controlled substances, while Schedule V includes the most moderately controlled. Those drugs contained in Schedules II to V may be prescribed, while those in Schedule I may not. The data in the table illustrate a point which requires to be addressed, particularly at cross-border (International, State or County) levels, that is, one of nomenclature. In the United Kingdom, heroin is taken to mean the mixture of products resulting from the synthesis of diamorphine from morphine. Both compounds are listed separately in UK legislation, although heroin is not. However, in the United States, heroin can sometimes be taken to mean diamorphine and the two are sometimes used interchangeably. 

Many northern states, however, also had anticannabis laws as early as 1915. To the legislators of Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York, a narcotic was a narcotic, whatever its name. Cannabis was considered a narcotic and therefore was accorded the same status as opium, morphine, heroin, and codeine, all of which were proscribed. Thus, when New York City s Board of Health prohibited cannabis from the city s streets in 1914, the New York Times (July 30, 1914) reported that the drag was a "narcotic [with] practically the same effect as morphine and cocaine... [and] the inclusion of cannabis indica among the drags to be sold only on prescription is only common sense. Devotees of hashish are now hardly numerous here to count, but they are likely to increase as other narcotics become harder to obtain."... 

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