No Quick Drug Fix

‘Americans will be coming over here to study the advantages of monarchy twenty years after we’ve become a republic,” grumbled a distinguished London doctor who had been asked to explain “the British system” of treating drug addicts. Just as some Americans conventionally believe, without much real knowledge, that British television is better, overall, than American television, so the belief lingers that Britain has a better way of dealing with the drug problem.

There was a difference once. At the turn of the century the opium trade had become a major scandal, and the American Government was afraid that it might spill over into the Philippines. International treaties at the end of the First World War banned the trade. America, where the mood that led to Prohibition was already flowing, wanted all the signatories to forbid the domestic use of narcotics no less strongly—a ban that would include doctors.

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Anthony Lejeune

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‘Americans will be coming over here to study the advantages of monarchy twenty years after we’ve become a republic,” grumbled a distinguished London doctor who had been asked to explain “the British system” of treating drug addicts. Just as some Americans conventionally believe, without much real knowledge, that British television is better, overall, than American television, so the belief lingers that Britain has a better way of dealing with the drug problem.

There was a difference once. At the turn of the century the opium trade had become a major scandal, and the American Government was afraid that it might spill over into the Philippines. International treaties at the end of the First World War banned the trade. America, where the mood that led to Prohibition was already flowing, wanted all the signatories to forbid the domestic use of narcotics no less strongly—a ban that would include doctors.