You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [70]
Creating a brand name was easy. By November of 1898, Dreser had presented the new drug — Heroin — to the Congress of German Naturalists and Physicians, claiming it was ten times more effective as a cough medicine than codeine but had only a tenth of its toxic effects. He told them it was also more effective than morphine as a painkiller, that it was safe, and that it wasn’t habit-forming.
At the time, tuberculosis and pneumonia were then the leading causes of death, and even routine coughs and colds could be severely incapacitating. Heroin, which both depresses respiration and, as a sedative, gives a restorative night’s sleep, seemed a miracle solution. In its initial release, Heroin had over four times the potency of the morphine from which it was derived.
Dreser had written about Heroin in leading medical journals, and studies had endorsed his view of it as an effective treatment in asthma, bronchitis, phthisis and tuberculosis. The Bayer Company mailed out thousands of free samples to physicians in Europe and the United States. The label on the side displayed a lion and a globe, along with the Bayer name.
By 1899, Bayer had already produced a ton of Heroin and had exported the new drug to twenty-three countries. Because of the large population of morphine addicts in the United States, a craze for patent medicines, and a relatively lax regulatory framework, Heroin became an immediate hit. Manufacturers of cough syrup were soon lacing their products with Bayer Heroin.
Bayer never advertised Heroin to the general public, at whom they targeted their consumer drug, Bayer Aspirin. However, the samples and brochures directed at the physicians stated: “Heroin: the Sedative for Coughs…order a supply from your jobber.” Soon, there were Heroin pastilles, cough lozenges, tablets, water-soluble salts and elixirs. The drug’s popularity encouraged imitators, and a St. Louis pharmaceutical company offered a “Sample Box Free to Physicians” of its “Dissolve on the Tongue Antikamnia & Heroin Tablets.”
“It possesses many advantages over morphine,” wrote the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in 1900. “It’s not hypnotic, and there’s no danger of acquiring a habit.” The philanthropic Saint James Society in the United States. mounted a campaign to supply free samples of Heroin through the mail to morphine addicts who were trying to give up their habits. But worrying rumors were surfacing.
In 1902, when Heroin sales were accounting for roughly 5 percent of Bayer’s net profits, both French and American researchers were reporting cases of “heroinism” and addiction. In the next three years, at least 180 clinical papers on Heroin were published around the world — most of them favorable. The American Medical Association then approved Bayer Heroin for general use and advised that it be used “in place of morphine in various painful infections.”
There had been an explosion of Heroin-related admissions at New York and Philadelphia hospitals, and in East Coast cities a substantial population of recreational users was reported. Many supported their habits by collecting and selling scrap metal, hence the name “junkie.” In another year, the use of Heroin without a prescription was outlawed in the United States. By 1913, with prohibition inevitable, the Bayer Company decided to stop production. Other companies, however, continued production of the drug.
The growing dimensions of heroin addiction finally convinced authorities that heroin’s liabilities outweighed its medical merits, and in 1924 both houses of Congress unanimously passed legislation outlawing the import or manufacture of heroin. The deputy police commissioner of New York reported that 94 percent of all drug addicts