Opium Exclusion Act

The Law: Federal law banning the importation of opium and opium compounds, except those used expressly for medicinal purposes

Date: Became law on April 1, 1909

Significance: Designed to prevent the importation of mass quantities of opium into the United States, this law was one of the first attempts by the U.S. government to limit the importation of a specific substance.

The Opium Exclusion Act targeted one of the social ills of its era. Opium-based commerce became a highly visible issue during the mid-nineteenth century, and the dangers of opium abuse were further highlighted by the elevated rate of opium addiction in Great Britain, whose government actually fostered opium production in its Asian colonies. Restricting access to opium became an important component of American foreign policy as the United States called for the global outlawing of opium at the inaugural Shanghai Opium Commission meetings in January, 1909. Eager to prove that the nation was willing to enforce this policy at the domestic level, the U.S. Congress drafted and passed the Opium Exclusion Act in the spring of 1909.

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The act itself called for the banning of the importation of opium or any opium containing compound beginning on April 1, 1909, with an exception made for opium used for medicinal purposes. This importation also included derivatives of opium such as morphine, codeine and heroin—various narcotics that were gaining in popularity in the early twentieth century. The regulation of the sale of opium, and other narcotics, was further restricted in the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914.

Bibliography

Berridge, Virginia, and Griffith Edwards. Opium and the People: Opiate Use in Nineteenth-Century England. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981.

Maccoun, Robert J. Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Vices, Times, and Places. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Walker, William O. Opium and Foreign Policy: The Anglo-American Search for Order in Asia, 1912-1954. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.