Page images
PDF
EPUB

ILLICIT NARCOTICS TRAFFIC

(New York, N. Y.)

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1955

UNITED STATES SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NARCOTICS

OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE JUDICIARY,

New York, N. Y.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to recess, at 10:20 a. m., in room 618, United States Courthouse, Foley Square, New York, N. Y., Senator Price Daniel (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Senators Daniel and Butler.

Also present: C. Aubrey Gasque, general counsel; and W. L. Speer, committee investigator.

Senator DANIEL. The committee will come to order.

Dr. G. H. Stevenson.

Dr. Stevenson, you do solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give to this subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Dr. STEVENSON. I do.

STATEMENT OF DR. GEORGE HERBERT STEVENSON, VANCOUVER,
BRITISH COLUMBIA

Senator DANIEL. You may be seated, Doctor.
Will you state your name for the record?

Dr. STEVENSON. George Herbert Stevenson.

Senator DANIEL. And you live in what place in Canada?

Dr. STEVENSON. I live in Vancouver, British Columbia; and I am director of the drug addiction research under the auspices of the University of British Columbia.

Senator DANIEL. Dr. Stevenson, first, I want to express the appreciation of this committee for your coming here to be with us. We appreciate the work that you have been doing in Canada. As you know, the chairman of your Senate committee investigating narcotics sat with us at our opening session in Washington. We appreciate the cooperation that we have had from the Canadian Senate committee, and especially appreciate your appearance here today, sir. Dr. STEVENSON. It is a pleasure to be here, sir; and I appreciate the invitation, and I would like to say just at this point, too, how grateful I am personally, and our Canadian scientists, especially in the field of psychiatry and addiction, how much they have appreciated all the help they have had from our American colleagues in

the United States Public Health Service, Mr. Anslinger's division, and others; it has been a great help to us in Canada.

Senator DANIEL. Doctor, as I understand it, you have had occasion to study both sides of the argument for and against the legal sale of narcotics?

Dr. STEVENSON. Yes, sir.

Senator DANIEL. Do you have a prepared statement?

Dr. STEVENSON. I have no prepared statement.

I have a paper which has been published, and which deals with the arguments for and against the legal sale of narcotic drugs.

It was published in the bulletin of the Vancouver Medical Association last June.

Senator DANIEL. May we make that a part of our record?

Dr. STEVENSON. Yes, certainly. It was made a part of the record of the Canadian Senate committee.

Senator DANIEL. This paper by Dr. Stevenson entitled "Arguments for and Against the Legal Sale of Narcotics" will be made a part of the record of the committee.

(The document referred to will be found in the appendix at p. 1756.) Senator DANIEL. Now, Doctor, will you relate to us a little about your background and experience in the medical professional insofar as narcotics are concerned, and how you happened to make a study of the so-called clinic plan or legal sale plan.

Dr. STEVENSON. Well, I have been in the practice of psychiatry for 35 years as superintendent of a mental hospital in Ontario, and professor of psychiatry at the University of Western Ontario, and in those capacities had addicts for many years, had them in our hospitals from

time to time.

When I retired 3 years ago, after returning from Europe, I was invited to go to British Columbia for a 3-year period to set up and direct a research on drug addiction, and I have been up there now for 2 years, nearly 2 years, and have been fully occupied with the problems of drug addiction.

When I went out there I learned that an organization which had a narcotics addiction committee, had made a recommendation for the legal sale of narcotic drugs, and in my relationship with that_committee I told them that we would be studying that problem, and that when we had come to certain conclusions about it, that they would be made public, and they, on their part, agreed not to push their plan until we had made our report, and this paper you have before you is our report.

Senator DANIEL. What organization was it that had endorsed the legal sale of narcotics plan?

Dr. STEVENSON. The Vancouver Chest had a committee on narcotic drugs, and it was their committee.

Senator DANIEL. Then did you have a staff in your research agency that assisted you in making the study?

Dr. STEVENSON. Yes. Our group is small. There are just three of us full time, myself as a psychiatrist and director; a psychologist and a social worker, part-time internist, but we always have an advisory committee from the University of British Columbia with which I meet every month or so.

Senator DANIEL. Were you in a position to approach this question from an objective viewpoint or had you ever made up your mind one way or the other before you actually started into your research?

Dr. STEVENSON. No. I had given no consideration to the matter until I started the research project.

Senator DANIEL. Did you have any inclinations one way or another about the matter?

Dr. STEVENSON. No. At that time it just had never occurred to me. It had never been brought to my attention at that time.

Senator DANIEL. Doctor, will you just relate to the committee what your findings were, the nature of your study, and exactly what conclusions you came to, anything that you might think would be of interest to this committee in forming our decision or our recommendation to the United States Senate on this question of legal sale of narcotics or furnishing narcotics to drug addicts,

Dr. STEVENSON. I don't know whether I should go through the paper page by page

Senator DANIEL. Any points you wish to go through.

Dr. STEVENSON. We have studied, and I personally interviewed more than 500 addicts, so that I feel that I know the drug addicts very well; and I have heard their arguments for legal sale, and the arguments of the committee that I referred to.

Dr. Ranta was chairman of that committee, and the report that they made is sometimes known as the Ranta report, and the argument that is commonly-one of the arguments that is commonly offered is what it would take it would take the profit out of the illicit market.

Well, in my reading on that, so far as I could see, wherever there had been legal sale, the illicit traffic continued to be present, and even increase in some places. Way back in the last century, I am sorry to say that Canada had some opium; Canada had opium factories way back at the end of the last century, and some of their opium, operated by Chinese, was smuggled into the United States.

Also when the United States had legal sale the middle of the last century, I have read that opium was smuggled into the United States in large quantities.

In Hong Kong and in Formosa, after the Japanese took over, in some years the amount of the illegal traffic exceeded the amount that was used in the legal traffic.

In China, where drugs were legal for a long period of time, the smuggling and illegal traffic flourished right along with it.

I have not been able to find any historical evidence that drugs being legal blotted out the illicit traffic.

As a matter of fact, the evidence has usually been that the illicit traffic even increased in some places.

Senator BUTLER. Doctor, did you look into the cause of that phenomenon?

Dr. STEVENSON. The what, sir?

Senator BUTLER. Did you look into the cause of that phenomenon? It is unusual that that would be the case. What did you find to be the cause for that?

Dr. STEVENSON. I don't know that I can answer that question with

any assurance.

It is well known, of course, that narcotic drugs are produced in excessive quantities, and that all that is not used for scientific and medical purposes presumably gets into the black market, and if people who operate illicit traffic can get it cheaply, and they can meet legal prices, it is something the same as the question

Senator BUTLER. Then it is not true that simply because you give narcotics away or sell them at the going price that everybody would adopt that plan. You still would have illicit users.

Dr. STEVENSON. Yes. I would not expect to see any reduction in the illicit market merely because drugs were made legal.

Senator BUTLER. The testimony that we had yesterday led me to believe, and I think the witnesses gave the impression, that if this plan was adopted, everybody would immediately leave the illicit market and come over to the other side, and it would dry up completely.

Dr. STEVENSON. I think that is entirely incorrect that that would happen. Unless drugs were to be given to addicts in unlimited quantities to satisfy their wants rather than any need they might have, they would get their surplus from the black market the same as they do now, and people who were going to start in to drugs, the same as young people get started in drugs now, they could not get it in a legal market, would still get it from the black market.

The remarks that were made yesterday about marihuana, if marihuana is still to be sold by peddlers in the black market, they would still carry heroin as one of their lines.

I see no reason at all-I think the black market would welcome legal sale as a means of increasing their own market.

Mr. GASQUE. You mean it might tend to give it a source of respectability?

Dr. STEVENSON. Well, it would make it more commonly used, and a certain degree of public acceptance and respectability or pseudorespectability.

Senator DANIEL. What were your findings as to the actual practice in the clinics that had been attempted in the various countries, Doctor? I would like your conclusions as to the operation of these clinics. Please read that into the record, or at least summarize that to us.

I notice on page 6 of your paper you point out the chief defects of these earlier narcotic clinics. They might be listed as follows-you are speaking there of the clinics operated in the United StatesDr. STEVENSON. Yes, sir.

Senator DANIEL (continuing). In 1919, 1920?

Dr. STEVENSON. Yes, sir. My information there is one of your own documents, so that while it is here it is simply copied or taken from your own official documents; perhaps one of your own witnesses from the United States might be a more suitable person to give that evidence. But at least it is listed here, and it is available if you wish it read into the record, sir.

Senator DANIEL. I am thinking now about page 6 of your report. Is this a conclusion of your committee based on your study of these clinics there on page 6 of your report where you say:

The chief defects of these earlier narcotic "clinics" might be listed as followsIs that your conclusion after having studied all of the information. you could obtain concerning the clinics?

Dr. STEVENSON. No. Those statements are made in that booklet published by the United States Government entitled "Narcotic Clinics in the United States."

Senator DANIEL. Did you agree with these findings after your study?

Dr. STEVENSON. Well, I had no reason for disagreeing with them. They were stated as facts.

Senator DANIEL. I see.

Dr. STEVENSON. The information given yesterday from some of these clinics, of course, was just from some of the clinics. There are a lot of other clinics listed in that booklet which did not have nearly as much did not have nearly as satisfactory a time with them as some of those that were read into the record yesterday.

Senator DANIEL. Well, let me take up these points here just to see if you found similar experiences from other countries or similar reports from other countries. First it says, in listing these defects:

1. "Clinics" brought criminals and drug addicts from areas where no "clinics" were available, increasing the number of idle, delinquent, and prostitute classes in the cities where there were "clinics."

Did you find that experience in any other countries?

Dr. STEVENSON. I don't know any other country that has had clinics. This refers entirely to the United States. As a matter of fact, I do not know any country at all that has had clinics except the socalled clinics that were in the United States in 1919-23. I think that is a misuse of the word "clinic," too, but that is a sideline.

Senator DANIEL. What about the system they tried in Singapore of free narcotics to addicts? Did you make a study of that?

Dr. STEVENSON. Well, I have read in the bibliography, you will see, several books there dealing with China and the Far East, and practically all of those books have a section on smuggling and illicit traffic, and your own Senate committee back in 1906 had somewhat similar reports of smuggling in these various places.

Smuggling was very common and was the chief thing that people advocating legal sale or responsible for legal sale in those days had to fight against.

Senator DANIEL. Well, now, do we have anything in England such as the clinic system? Every once in a while someone talks about the English system as though they had an system by which addicts could easily get the drugs necessary to maintain or satisfy their addiction. Dr. STEVENSON. That is a complete misapprehension, of course, and yet it is amazing how many people believe that the English system is different from our own.

The University of California Law Review had an article on narcotics-had a whole issue on narcotics-and spoke that we might try the English system, and yet the English system is, for all practical purposes, the same as our own in this continent, in the United States and Canada.

England has never had clinics, and I deal with the English system on pages 7 and 8 here, and I also have the report with me of Mr. Walker, who is the representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs.

He gave this report to the Canadian senate committee. It was read into the evidence there, and you stated yesterday you had also been to England and talked with him.

But Mr. Walker insists that the English system does not and never has had a clinic system, and it has never had a system that gave free drugs or at nominal cost to addicts merely for perpetuating their addiction.

« PreviousContinue »