Editing Harrison Narcotics Tax Act (section)

==Hearings==

[[Theodore Roosevelt]] appointed Dr. [[Hamilton Wright]] as the first opium commissioner of the United States in 1908.<ref name="hamilton">{{cite news|url=http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/e1910/worstfiend.htm|author=Edward Marshall|title=Uncle Sam is the Worst Drug Fiend in the World|date=March 12, 1911|newspaper=The New York Times|access-date=2014-01-01}}</ref> Wright testified at the hearing about the dangers alleging that drugs made blacks uncontrollable, gave them superhuman powers and caused them to rebel against white authority.{{sfn|Cockburn|St. Clair|1998|p=71}} He said cocaine was often "the direct incentive to the crime of rape of white women by Negroes".{{sfn|Gray|2023|p=206}}  He also stated that "one of the most unfortunate phases of smoking opium in this country is the large number of women who have become involved and were living as common-law wives or cohabitating with Chinese in the Chinatowns of our various cities".<ref name="Cora">{{cite book|last=Wetherington|first=Cora L.|author2=Alan I Leshner|year=1999|title=Drug Addiction Research & the Health of Women|publisher=Diane publishing|isbn=0-7881-8053-3}} Wetherington states that the 1909 Shanghai Commission made this comment.</ref> 

Dr. Christopher Koch of the State Pharmacy Board of Pennsylvania testified of the dangerous "cocaine-crazed" blacks in the South: "Most of the attacks upon the white women of the South are the direct result of a cocaine-crazed Negro brain".{{sfn|Musto|1999|p=305}}{{sfn|Cockburn|St. Clair|1998|p=71}}{{sfn|Kennedy|1985|p=96}} 

Writing in 1953 [[Rufus G. King]] explained that the Harrison Act was "intended partly to carry out a [[International Opium Convention|treaty obligation]], but mainly to aid the states in combating a local police problem which had gotten somewhat out of hand."{{sfn|King|1953|p=736}}