On this day in April Fools: Opium Exclusion Act of 1909

This article goes to demonstrate how long the drug (pharmaceutical) cartel has been in power in the United States.

On April 1, 1909, the Opium Exclusion Act was signed into law.

America's Hundred Years War On Drugs

the Opium Exclusion Act,  totally prohibiting the importation of smoking opium into the U.S.  The Act, which took effect on April 1, 1909, marked the true beginning of national drug prohibition. From that point on, the U.S. government became progressively involved in the business of suppressing illicit substances.  There ensued an escalating government policy of seizures, raids, prosecution, imprisonment, and progressive criminalization.   One immediate consequence of the Opium Exclusion Act was a rapid shift in the drug market from smoking opium to morphine, heroin, and other drugs that were still not regulated.

US Congress:

SIXTIETH CONGRESS, February 9, 1909

HR 27427.  Act to prohibit the importation and use of opium for other than medicinal purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That after the first day of April, nineteen hundred and nine, it shall be unlawful to import into the United States opium in any form or any preparation or derivative thereof: Provided, that opium and preparations and derivatives thereof, other than smoking opium or opium prepared for smoking, may be imported for medicinal purposes only, under regulations which the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby authorized to prescribe, and when so imported shall be subject to the duties which are now or may hereafter be imposed by law

This Act served to create a monopoly on Opium for the pharmaceutical industries. After the Act, common opium derived from the Opium poppy, and mainly imported from Turkey, and Iran and India to a lesser extent, could be confiscated. The so-called pharmaceutical, medicinal grades of Opium, morphine and heroin, of the cartel, produced in Germany, could still be imported.

Heroin was developed in 1898 at Freidrich Bayer’s Elberfeld Farberifabrik works in Germany. Morphine was first isolated between 1803 and 1805 by German pharmacist Friedrich Sertürner. This is generally believed to be the first isolation of an active ingredient from a plant. Merck began marketing Morphine commercially in 1827. Merck also developed cocainum hydrochloricum in 1862.

Later in 1912, The 1912 Hague International Opium Convention met to expand the prohibition on non-medicinal Opium. Everything had to come from Pharma, solidifying an international monopoly.

THE TRAFFIC IN NARCOTICS, Harry Ansliger

The Hague Convention bound the contracting parties to adopt provisions of control and regulation for raw opium, prepared opium, and the manufactured substances--- medicinal opium, morphine, diacetylmorphine (heroin), and cocaine. The production of raw opium was to be controlled and its distribution regulated. Import or export should be made only by duly authorized persons, and each contracting party was required to limit the number of towns, ports, or other places through which export or import was to be permitted. Export to countries prohibiting the import of raw opium was to be prevented, and controlled to countries which restricted its import.

Harry Anslinger was a drug trafficker. He is best known for his ridiculous persecution of cannabis smokers, a safe and preferred alternative to Opium. “By the early 1900s, cannabis extract was so popular that doctors were prescribing it for just about every ailment.” Cannabis was used by some doctors to treat Opium addiction dating back to at least 1887 (1).

Anslinger also apparently secretly married a young boy dressed to look as a girl, although publicly he married the niece of Andrew W. Mellon. Mellon provided the transportation of narcotics into the United States from Germany.

A debate broke out between pharma-shill doctors and honest doctors over their prescriptions of Heroin. I’d say the pharma shills won.

Heroin Boys

By 1902, then, a Heroin Debate had commenced in the pages of medical journals. Physicians who’d experimented with heroin as a morphine step-down cure, reported that it produced abstinence symptoms that were as bad as those arising from morphine addiction, if not worse, and accusing their colleagues of creating “heroinists.”

The problem has only grown over time. The United States pursues a policy to punish the victims, not the pharmaceutical CEOs who hide behind the “limited liability” of their corporations. One of the policies that the United States should pursue is to prosecute and execute the dealers of death with the same vigor that they applied to common citizens in the “Drug Wars.” Instead, States have chosen to sue the manufacturers, taking a percentage of their profits, thereby making themselves a party to the crime. By not prosecuting these death merchants, and returning the same to them, this is how we get things like Plandemics, Remdesivir, mRNA, and the Prep Act over time.

Charles Wright

(1). The Use of Indian Hemp in the Treatment of Chronic Chiorai and Chronic Opium Poisoning, BY E.A. BIRCH, M.D., 1889.

Here there was the well-known train of symptoms-insomnia, anorexia, disordered bowels, conscious delusions, though there was no confusion of ideas in conversation, and so forth. Again I resorted to cannabis, commencing with only a quarter of a grain of the extract, gradually increasing it to half a grain, one grain, and one grain and a half three times a day, with the happiest result. Ability to take food and retain it soon returned, and after a time an appetite appeared; he began to sleep well; his pulse, which could not be counted at first, exhibited some volume; flesh rapidly accumulated; and after three weeks he was able to take a turn upon the verandah with the aid of a stick. After the lapse of six weeks he spoke of returning to his post, and I never saw him again.

I have never before or since had such typical cases of this class to deal with, but I have lost no opportunity of testing the cannabis in the direction indicated as far as possible, and I am satisfied of its immense value. The chief point that struck me was the immediate action of the drug in appeasing the appetite for the chloral or opium, and in restoring the ability to appreciate food. It seems to supply the place of the poison, to stimulate the appetite, to increase the heart’s power, and thus to procure sleep indirectly, as well as directly, by its own sedative effect. Moreover, I am convinced that it is a diuretic, and that this action helped in the above cases. I prescribed the cannabis simply with a view to utilising a well-known remedy for insomnia, but it did much more than procure sleep. I think it will be found that there need be no fear of peremptorily withdrawing the deleterious drug.