History of Drugs

Compiled by K. Cole

Last Updated May 24, 2007

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5000 B.C. Peyote cactus buttons are found in Shumla Cave in southern Texas. They have been radiocarbon dated to 5,000 B.C.

5000 B.C. The Sumerians use opium, suggested by the fact that they have an ideogram for it which has been translated as HUL, meaning "joy" or "rejoicing."

5000 B.C. Hallucinogenic mushrooms were used in the Tassili plateau of Northen Algeria and depicted in cave paintings of mushroomed humanoids.

3500 B.C. Earliest historical record of the production of alcohol, the description of a brewery in an Egyptian papyrus.

2500 B.C. Earliest historical evidence of the eating of poppy seeds among the Lake Dwellers of Switzerland.

2000 B.C. Earliest record of prohibitionist teaching, by an Egyptian priest, who writes to his pupil: "I, thy superior, forbid thee to go to the taverns. Thou art degraded like the beasts."

1500 B.C. The Eleusinian Mysteries begin. In these initiation ceremonies, they drank an entheogenic brew called kykeon. Some scholars think the tea contained ergot the precursor to LSD. Other scholars think the wine contained psilocybin or fly agaric mushrooms. They were held every five years in worship of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece. Of all the mysteries celebrated in ancient times, these were held to be the ones of greatest importance. Initiates could participate in the Mysteries only once in a lifetime and were forbidden by law to speak of their mystical experience, under penalty of death. One theory suggests that both Plutarch and Socrates may have been sentenced to death for speaking of the Mysteries.

1000 B.C. Central and Southern America cultures built temples to mushroom gods and carved "mushroom stones". These stone carvings in the shape of mushrooms, or in which figures are depicted under the cap of a mushroom, have been dated to as early as 1000-500 B.C. The purpose of the sculptures is not certain, but they may have been religious objects.

350 B.C. Proverbs 31:6-7: "Give strong drink to him who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress; let them drink and forget their poverty, and remember their misery no more."

300 B.C. Theophrastus (371-287 B.C.), posed origin of the use of tea in China.

300 B.C. Theophrastus (371-287 B.C.). Greek naturalist and philosopher, records what has remained as the earliest undisputed reference to the use of the poppy juice.

250 B.C. Psalms 104:14-15: "Thou dost cause grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the heart of man."

350 A.D. Earliest written mention of tea, in a Chinese dictionary.

4th century St. John Chrysostom (345-407), bishop of Constantinople: "I hear man cry, 'Would there be no wine! O folly! O madness!' Is it wine that causes this abuse? No. For if you say, 'Would there be no wine!' because of drunkenness, then you must say, going on by degrees, 'Would there were no night!' because of the thieves, 'Would there were no light!' because of the informers, and 'Would there were no women!' because of adultery."

450 Babylonian Talmud: "Wine is at the head of all medicines; where wine is lacking, drugs are necessary."

1000 Opium is widely used in China and the Far East.

1493 The use of tobacco is introduced into Europe by Columbus and his crew returning from America

15th century Sahagun's writes of the peyote cactus, called peiotl, that was ceremonially used by the Chichimaca.

1521 With Cortez's defeat of the Aztecs, the Europeans began to forbid the use of non-alcohol intoxicants, including sacred mushrooms/teonanácatl.

1525 Paracelsus (1490-1541) introduces laudanum, or tincture of opium, into the practice of medicine.

1600 Shakespeare: "Falstaff . . . If I had a thousand sons, the/1st human principle I would teach them should/be, to foreswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack." ("Sack," a term now obsolete, referred to a type of wine.)

17th century The prince of the petty state of Waldeck pays 10 thalers to anyone who denounces a coffee drinker.

17th century In Russia, Czar Michael Federovitch executes anyone on whom tobacco is found. "Czar Alexei Mikhailovitch rules that anyone caught with tobacco should be tortured until he gives up the name of the supplier."

1613 John Rolfe, the husband of Pocahontas, sends the 1st shipment of Virginia tobacco from Jamestown to England.

1650 The use of tobacco is prohibited in Bavaria, Saxony, and Zurich, but the prohibitions are ineffective. Sultan Murad IV of the Ottoman Empire decrees the death penalty for smoking tobacco: "Wherever the Sultan went on his travels or on a military expedition his halting-places were always distinguished by a terrible increase in the number of executions. Even on the battlefield he was fond of surprising men in the act of smoking, when he would punish them by beheading, hanging, quartering, or crushing their hands and feet . . . . Nevertheless, in spite of all the horrors of this persecution . . . the passion for smoking still persisted."

1680 Thomas Sydenham (1624-1680): "Among the remedies which it has pleased the Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium."

1690 The "Act for the Encouraging of the Distillation of Brandy and Sprits from Corn" is enacted in England.

1691 In Luneberg, Germany, the penalty for smoking (tobacco) is death.

1717 Liquor licenses in Middlesex, England, are granted only to those who "would take oaths of allegiance and of belief in the King's supremacy over the Church."

1736 The Gin Act ( England) is enacted with the avowed objects of making spirits "come so dear to the consumer that the poor will not be able to launch out into an excessive use of them." This effort results in general lawbreaking and fails to halt the steady rise in the consumption of even legally produced and sold liquor.

1745 The magistrates of one London division demand that "publicans and wine-merchants should swear that they anathematized the doctrine of Transubstantiation."

1762 Thomas Dover, an English physician, introduces his prescription for a "diaphoretic powder," which he recommends mainly for the treatment of gout. Soon named "Dover's powder," this compound becomes one of the most widely used opium preparations during the next 150 years.

1770 Women in New England organize boycotts against tea imported from Britain; some of these associations call themselves "Daughters of Liberty," their members pledging themselves not to drink tea until after the Revenue Act is repealed. They also popularize various tea substitutes such as brews of raspberry, sage, and birch leaves--the most popular of which, made from the 4-leaved loosestrife, is called "Liberty Tea."

1773 To protest [British tea policies], a band of Bostonians, dressed as Mohawk Indians, boards 3 British ships in Boston Harbor and throws overboard 342 chests of tea (December 16, 1773). This episode leads to the passage of the Coercive Acts (1774) by the British Parliament, which in turn leads to the assembly of the 1st Continental Congress (September 5, 1774) and to the War of Independence and the birth of the U.S. as a nation.

1785 Benjamin Rush publishes his Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits on the Human Body and Mind; in it, he calls the intemperate use of distilled spirits a "disease," and estimates the annual rate of death due to alcoholism in the U.S. as "not less than 4,000 people" in a population then of less than 4 million.

1789 The 1st American temperance society is formed in Litchfield, Conn.

1790 Benjamin Rush persuades his associates at the Philadelphia College of Physicians to send an appeal to Congress to "impose such heavy duties upon all distilled spirits as shall be effective to restrain their intemperate use in the country."

1792 The 1st prohibitory laws against opium in China are promulgated. The punishment decreed for keepers of opium shops is strangulation.

1794 The Whiskey Rebellion, a protest by farmers in western Pennsylvania against a Federal tax on liquor, breaks out and is put down by overwhelming force sent into the area by George Washington.

1797 Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes "Kubla Khan" while under the influence of opium.

1800 Napoleon's army, returning from Egypt, introduces cannabis (hashish, marijuana) into France. Avant-garde artists and writers in Paris develop their own cannabis ritual, leading, in 1844, to the establishment of Le Club des Haschischins.

1801 On Jefferson's recommendation, the Federal duty on liquor is abolished.

1804 Thomas Trotter, an Edinburgh physician, publishes An Essay, Medical, Philosophical, and Chemical, on Drunkenness and Its Effects on the Human Body: "In medical language, I consider drunkenness, strictly speaking, to be a disease, produced by a remote cause, and giving birth to actions and movements in the living body that disorder the functions of health . . . The habit of drunkenness is a disease of the mind."

1805 Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Serturner, a German chemist, isolates and describes morphine.

1822 Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater is published. He notes that the opium habit, like any other habit, must be learned: "Making allowance for constitutional differences, I should say that in less than 120 days no habit of opium-eating could be formed strong enough to call for any extraordinary self-conquest in renouncing it, and even suddenly renouncing it. On Saturday you are an opium-eater, on Sunday no longer such."

1826 The American Society for the Promotion of Temperance is founded in Boston. By 1833, there are 6,000 local temperance societies, with more than one million members.

1839-1842 The First Opium War. The British force upon China the trade in opium, a trade the Chinese had declared illegal.

1840 Benjamin Parsons, an English clergyman, declares: ". . . alcohol stands preeminent as a destroyer . . . I never knew a person become insane who was not in the habit of taking a portion of alcohol every day." Parsons lists 42 distinct diseases caused by alcohol, among them inflammation of the brain, scrofula, mania, dropsy, nephritis, and gout.

1841 Dr. Jacques Joseph Moreau uses hashish in treating mental patients at the Bicetre.

1842 Abraham Lincoln: "In my judgment, such of us as have never fallen victims, have been spared more from the absence of appetite, than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have. Indeed, I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class."

1844 Cocaine is isolated in pure form.

1845 A law prohibiting the public sale of liquor is enacted in New York State. It is repealed in 1847.

1847 The American Medical Association is founded.

1852 Susan B. Anthony establishes the Woman's State Temperance Society of New York, the 1st such society formed by and for women. Many of the early feminists, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Abby Kelly, are also ardent prohibitionists.

1852 The American Pharmaceutical Association is founded. The association's 1856 constitution lists one of its goals as: "To as much as possible restrict the dispensing and sale of medicines to regularly educated druggists and apothecaries."

1856 The Second Opium War. The British, with help from the French, extend their powers to distribute opium in China.

1862 Internal Revenue Act enacted, imposing a license fee of $20 on retail liquor dealers, and a tax of $1 a barrel on beer and 20 cent a gallon on spirits.

1864 Adolf von Baeyer, a 29-year-old assistant of Friedrich August Kekule (the discoverer of the molecular structure of benzene) in Ghent, synthesizes barbituric acid, the 1st barbiturate.

1868 Dr. George Wood, professor of the theory and practice of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, president of the American Philosophical Society, and the author of a leading American text, Treatise on Therapeutics, describes the pharmacological effect of opium as follows: "A sensation of fullness is felt in the head, soon followed by a universal feeling of delicious ease and comfort, with an elevation and expansion of the whole moral and intellectual nature, which is, I think, the most characteristic of its effects . . . the intellectual and imaginative faculties are raised to the highest point compatible with individual capacity. . . . It seems to make the individual, for the time, a better and greater man. . . . The hallucinations, the delirious imaginations of alcoholic intoxication, are, in general, quite wanting. Along with this emotional and intellectual elevation, there is also increased muscular energy; and the capacity to act, and to bear fatigue, is greatly augmented."

1869 The Prohibition party is formed. Gerrit Smith, twice Abolitionist candidate for President, and associate of John Brown, and a crusading prohibitionist, declares: "Our involuntary slaves are set free, but our millions of voluntary slaves still clang their chains. The lot of the literal slave, of him whom others have enslaved, is indeed a hard one; nevertheless, it is a paradise compared with the lot of him who enslaves himself--especially of him who has enslaved himself to alcohol."

1874 The Woman's Christian Temperance Union is founded in Cleveland. In 1883, Frances Willard, a leader of the WCTU forms the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

1882 The 1st law in the U.S., and in the world, making "temperance education" a part of the required course in public schools is enacted. In 1886, Congress makes such education mandatory in the District of Columbia, and in territorial, military, and naval schools. By 1900, all the States have similar laws.

1882 The Personal Liberty League of the U.S. is founded to oppose the increasing momentum of movements for compulsory abstinence from alcohol.

1883 Dr. Theodor Aschenbrandt, a German army physician, secures a supply of pure cocaine from the pharmaceutical firm of Merck, issues it to Bavarian soldiers during their maneuvers, and reports on the beneficial effects of the drug in increasing the soldiers' ability to endure fatigue.

1884 Sigmund Freud treats his depression with cocaine, and reports feeling "exhilaration and lasting euphoria, which in no way differs from the normal euphoria of the healthy person. . . . You perceive an increase in self-control and possess more vitality and capacity for work. . . . In other words, you are simply more normal, and it is soon hard to believe that you are under the influence of any drug."

1884 Laws are enacted to make antialcohol teaching compulsory in public schools in New York State. The following year similar laws are passed in Pennsylvania, with other States soon following suit.

1885 The Report of the Royal Commission on Opium concludes that opium is more like the Westerner's liquor than a substance to be feared and abhorred.

1887 Amphetamine was first synthesized in Germany in 1887 by Uranus Corpeus.

1889 The Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore, Md., is opened. One of its world-famous founders, Dr. William Stewart Halsted, is a morphine addict. He continues to use morphine in large doses throughout a phenomenally successful surgical career lasting until his death in 1922.

1893 Methamphetamine was first synthesized from ephedrine by chemist A. Ogata in Japan.

1894 The Report of the Indian Hemp Drug Commission, running to over 3,000 pages in 7 volumes, is published. This inquiry, commissioned by the British Government, concludes: "There is no evidence of any weight regarding the mental and moral injuries from the moderate use of these drugs. . . . Moderation does not lead to excess in hemp any more than it does in alcohol. Regular, moderate use of ganja or bhang produces the same effects as moderate and regular doses of whiskey." The commission's proposal to tax bhang is never put into effect, in part, perhaps, because one of the commissioners, an Indian, cautions that Muslim law and Hindu custom forbid "taxing anything that gives pleasure to the poor."

1894 Norman Kerr, an English physician and president of the British Society for the Study of Inebriety, declares: "Drunkenness has generally been regarded as . . . a sin, a vice, or a crime. . . . [But] there is now a consensus of intelligent opinion that habitual and periodic drunkenness is often either a symptom or a sequel of disease considered as one of a group of nervous affections. . . . The victim can no more resist [alcohol] than a man with ague can resist shivering."

1898 Diacetylmorphine (heroin) is synthesized in Germany. It is widely lauded as a "safe preparation free from addiction-forming properties."

1900 James R. L. Daly, writing in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, declares: "It [heroin] possesses many advantages over morphine. . . . It is not hypnotic; there is no danger of acquiring the habit. . . ."

1901 The Senate adopts a resolution, introduced by Henry Cabot Lodge, to forbid the sale by American traders of opium and alcohol "to aboriginal tribes and uncivilized races." These provisions are later extended to include "uncivilized elements in America itself and in its territories, such as Indians, Alaskans, the inhabitants of Hawaii, railroad workers, and immigrants at ports of entry."

1901 In Colorado, a bill is introduced, but is defeated, making not only morphine and cocaine but also "malt, vinous and spiritous liquors" available only on a physician's prescription.

1902 The Committee on the Acquirement of the Drug Habit of the American Pharmaceutical Association declares: "If the Chinaman cannot get along without his 'dope,' we can get along without him."

1902 George E. Petey, writing in the Alabama Medical Journal, observes: "Many articles have appeared in the medical literature during the last 2 years lauding this new agent. . . . When we consider the fact that heroin is a morphine derivative . . . it does not seem reasonable that such a claim could be well founded. It is strange that such a claim should mislead anyone or that there should be found among the members of our profession those who would reiterate and accentuate it without 1st subjecting it to the most critical tests, but such is the fact."

1903 The composition of Coca-Cola is changed, caffeine replacing the cocaine it contained until this time.

1904 Charles Lyman, president of the International Reform Bureau, petitions the President of the U.S. "to induce Great Britain to release China from the enforced opium traffic. . . . We need not recall in detail that China prohibited the sale of opium, except as a medicine, until the sale was forced upon that country by Great Britain in the Opium War of 1840."

1905 Sen. Henry W. Blair, in a letter to Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts, superintendent of the International Reform Bureau: "The temperance movement must include all poisonous substances which create or excite unnatural appetite, and international prohibition is the goal."

1906 The 1st Pure Food and Drug Act becomes law; until its enactment, it was possible to buy, in stores or by mail order, medicines containing morphine, cocaine, or heroin, and without their being so labeled.

1909 The U.S. prohibits the importation of smoking opium.

1910 Dr. Hamilton Wright, considered by some the father of U.S. antinarcotics laws, reports that American contractors give cocaine to their Negro employees to get more work out of them.

1912 A writer in Century magazine proclaims: "The relation of tobacco, especially in the form of cigarettes, and alcohol and opium is a very close one. . . . Morphine is the legitimate consequence of alcohol, and alcohol is the legitimate consequence of tobacco. Cigarettes, drink, opium, is the logical and regular series." And a physician warns: "[There is] no energy more destructive of soul, mind, and body, or more subversive of good morals, than the cigarette. The fight against the cigarette is a fight for civilization."

1912 The 1st international Opium Convention meets at The Hague, and recommends various measures for the international control of the trade in opium. Subsequent Opium Conventions are held in 1913 and 1914.

1912 Phenobarbital is introduced into therapeutics under the trade name of Luminal.

1912 A patent for MDMA, referred to as methylsafrylamin, was originally filed on December 24 by the German pharmaceutical company Merck, after being first synthesised for them by German chemist Anton Köllisch at Darmstadt earlier that year.

1913 The 16th Amendment, creating the legal authority for a Federal income tax, is enacted. Between 1870 and 1915, the tax on liquor provides from 1/2 to 2/3 of the whole of the internal revenue of the U.S., amounting, after the turn of the century, to about $200 million annually. The 16th Amendment thus makes possible, just 6 years later, the 18th Amendment.

1914 The Harrison Narcotic Act is enacted, controlling the sale of opium and opium derivatives.

1914 Congressman Richard P. Hobson of Alabama, urging a prohibition amendment to the Constitution, asserts: "Liquor will actually make a brute out of a Negro, causing him to commit unnatural crimes. The effect is the same on the white man, though the white man being further evolved it takes a longer time to reduce him to the same level." Negro leaders join the crusade against alcohol.

1916 The Pharmacopoeia of the United States drops whiskey and brandy from its list of drugs. Four years later, American physicians begin prescribing these "drugs" in quantities never before prescribed by doctors.

1917 The president of the American Medical Association endorses national prohibition. The House of Delegates of the association passes a resolution stating: "Resolved, The American Medical Association opposes the use of alcohol as a beverage; and be it further Resolved, That the use of alcohol as a therapeutic agent should be discouraged." By 1928, physicians make an estimated $40 million annually by writing prescriptions for whiskey.

1918 The Native American Church was fully incorporated.

1918 The Anti-Saloon League calls the "liquor traffic" "un-American, pro-German, crime-producing, food-wasting, youth-corrupting, home-wrecking, [and] treasonable."

1919 The 18th [Prohibition of Alcohol] Amendment is added to the U.S. Constitution. It is repealed in 1933.

1920 The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture publishes a pamphlet urging Americans to grow cannabis (marijuana) as a profitable undertaking.

1920-1933 The use of alcohol is prohibited in the U.S. In 1932 alone, approximately 45,000 persons receive jail sentences for alcohol offenses. During the 1st 11 years of the Volstead Act, 17,972 persons are appointed to the Prohibition Bureau, 11,982 are terminated "without prejudice," and 1,604 are dismissed for bribery, extortion, theft, falsification of records, conspiracy, forgery, and perjury.

1921 The U.S. Treasury Dept. issues regulations outlining the treatment of addiction permitted under the Harrison Act. In Syracuse, N.Y., the narcotics clinic doctors report curing 90% of their addicts.

1921 Thomas S. Blair, MD, chief of the Bureau of Drug Control of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Health, publishes a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association in which he characterizes the Indian peyote religion a "habit indulgence in certain cactaceous plants," calls the belief simply a "superstition" and those who sell peyote "dope vendors," and urges the passage of a bill in Congress that would prohibit the use of peyote among the Indian tribes of the Southwest. He concludes with this revealing plea for abolition: "The great difficulty in suppressing this habit among the Indians arises from the fact that the commercial interests involved in the peyote traffic are strongly entrenched, and they exploit the Indian. . . . Added to this is the superstition of the Indian who believes in the Peyote Church. As soon as an effort is made to suppress peyote, the cry is raised that it is unconstitutional to do so and is an invasion of religious liberty. Suppose the Negroes of the South had a Cocaine Church!"

1921 Cigarettes are illegal in 14 States, and 92 anticigarette bills are pending in 28 States. Young women are expelled from college for smoking cigarettes.

1921 The Council of the American Medical Association refuses to confirm the association's 1917 resolution on alcohol. In the 1st 6 months after the enactment of the Volstead Act, more than 15,000 physicians and 57,000 druggists and drug manufactures apply for licenses to prescribe and sell liquor.

1921 Alfred C. Prentice, MD, a member of the Committee on Narcotic Drugs of the American Medical Association, declares: "Public opinion regarding the vice of drug addiction has been deliberately and consistently corrupted through propaganda in both the medical and lay press. . . . The shallow pretense that drug addiction is a 'disease' . . . has been asserted and urged in volumes of 'literature' by self-styled 'specialists.'"

1924 The manufacture of heroin is prohibited in the U.S.

1925 Robert A. Schless: "I believe that most drug addiction today is due directly to the Harrison Anti-Narcotic Act, which forbids the sale of narcotics without a physician's prescription. . . . Addicts who are broke act as agents provocateurs for the peddlers, being rewarded by gifts of heroin or credit for supplies. The Harrison Act made the drug peddler, and the drug peddler makes drug addicts."

1928 In a nationwide radio broadcast entitled "The Struggle of Mankind Against Its Deadliest Foe," celebrating the 2nd annual Narcotic Education Week, Richmond P. Hobson, prohibition crusader and antinarcotics propagandist, declares: "Suppose it were announced that there were more than a million lepers among our people. Think what a shock the announcement would produce! Yet drug addiction is far more incurable than leprosy, far more tragic to its victims, and is spreading like a moral and physical scourge. . . . Most of the daylight robberies, daring holdups, cruel murders, and similar crimes of violence are now known to be committed chiefly by drug addicts, who constitute the primary cause of our alarming crime wave. Drug addiction is more communicable and less curable than leprosy. . . . Upon the issue hangs the perpetuation of civilization, the destiny of the world, and the future of the human race."

1928 It is estimated that in Germany one out of every hundred physicians is a morphine addict, consuming 0.1 grain of the alkaloid or more per day.

1929 About one gal. of denatured industrial alcohol in 10 is diverted into bootleg liquor. About 40 Americans per million die each year from drinking illegal alcohol, mainly as a result of methyl (wood) alcohol poisoning.

1930 The Federal Bureau of Narcotics is formed. Many of its agents, including its 1st commissioner, Harry J. Anslinger, are former prohibition agents.

1936 The Pan-American Coffee Bureau is organized at the 1st Pan-American Coffee Conference, in Bogota, Colombia. A principal objective of the bureau is "to formulate a cooperative effort for the promotion of increase in per-capita consumption of coffee in the U.S. through the creation of a fund to conduct an educational and advertising campaign." During the 1st 4-year period from the start of the bureau's advertising (1938 to 1941), U.S. coffee consumption increases approximately 20%, while it takes 24 years (1914 to 1937) for another similar increase to occur.

1937 Shortly before the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act, Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger writes: "How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries, and deeds of maniacal insanity it [marijuana] causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured."

1937 The Marijuana Tax Act is enacted.

1938 Since the enactment of the Harrison Act in 1914, 25,000 physicians have been arraigned on narcotics charges, and 3,000 served penitentiary sentences.

1938 Dr. Albert Hofmann, a chemist at Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland, synthesizes LSD. Five years later he inadvertently ingests a small amount of it, and reports its effects on himself.

1941 Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek orders the complete suppression of the poppy; laws are enacted providing the death penalty for anyone guilty of cultivating the poppy, manufacturing opium, or offering it for sale.

1942 From 1942 until his death in 1945, Adolf Hitler was given daily intravenous injections of methamphetamine by his personal physician, Theodor Morell, as a treatment for depression and fatigue.

1943 Col. J. M. Phalen, editor of the Military Surgeon, declares in an editorial entitled "The Marijuana Bugaboo": "The smoking of the leaves, flowers, and seeds of Cannabis sativa is no more harmful than the smoking of tobacco. . . . It is hoped that no witch hunt will be instituted in the military service over a problem that does not exist."

1946 According to some estimates, there are 40 million opium smokers in China.

1949 Ludwig von Mises, leading modern free-market economist and social philosopher: "Opium and morphine are certainly dangerous, habit-forming drugs. But once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments. A good case could be made out in favor of the prohibition of alcohol and nicotine. And why limit the government's benevolent providence to the protection of the individual's body only? Is not the harm a man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily evils? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and seeing bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and from hearing bad music? The mischief done by bad ideologies, surely, is much more pernicious, both for the individual and for the whole society, than that done by narcotic drugs."

1950s Project MKULTRA (also known as MK-ULTRA) was the code name for a CIA mind-control research program that began in the 1950s. There is much published evidence that the project involved the use of many types of drugs to manipulate peoples' mental state and to alter brain functioning. Headed by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, MKULTRA was started on the order of CIA director Allen Dulles on April 13, 1953, largely in response to alleged Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean use of mind-control techniques on U.S. prisoners of war in Korea. The CIA wanted to use similar methods on their own captives. The CIA was also interested in being able to manipulate foreign leaders with such techniques, and would later invent several schemes to drug Fidel Castro.

1950s Operation Midnight Climax was established by Sidney Gottlieb and placed under the direction of Narcotics Bureau officer George White under the alias of Morgan Hall for the CIA as a sub-project of Project MKULTRA, the CIA mind-control research program that began in the 1950s. The project consisted of a web of CIA-run safehouses in San Francisco, Marin, and New York. It was established in order to study the effects of LSD on unconsenting individuals. Prostitutes on the CIA payroll were instructed to lure clients back to the safehouses, where they were surreptitiously plied with a wide variety of drugs, including LSD, and monitored behind one-way mirrors. Several significant operational techniques were developed in this theater, including extensive research into sexual blackmail, surveillance technology, and the possible use of mind-altering drugs in field operations.

1951 According to UN estimates, there are approximately 200 million marijuana users in the world, the major places of use being India, Egypt, North Africa, Mexico, and the U.S.

1951 Twenty thousand lbs. of opium, 300 lbs. of heroin, and various opium-smoking devices are publicly burned in Canton, China. Thirty-seven opium addicts are executed in the southwest of China.

1954 Four fifths of the French people questioned about wine assert that wine is "good for one's health," and 1/4 hold that it is "indispensable." It is estimated that 1/3 of the electorate in France receives all or part of its income from the production or sale of alcoholic beverages; and that there is one outlet for the sale of alcohol for every 45 inhabitants.

1955 The Prasidium des Deutschen Arzte-tages declares: "Treatment of the drug addict should be effected in the closed sector of a psychiatric institution. Ambulatory treatment is useless and in conflict, moreover, with principles of medical ethics." This view is quoted approvingly, as representative of the opinion of "most of the authors recommending commitment to an institution," by the World Health Organization in 1962.

1955 The Shah of Iran prohibits the cultivation and use of opium, used in the country for thousands of years; the prohibition creates a flourishing illicit market in opium. In 1969 the prohibition is lifted, opium growing is resumed under state inspection, and more than 110,000 persons receive opium from physicians and pharmacies as "registered addicts."

1955 Mazatec curandera Maria Sabina provided R. Gordon Wasson and his companion photographer Allan Richardson with Psilocybe caerulescens during a Velada (mushroom ceremony).

1956 The [ U.S.] Narcotic Drug Control Act is enacted; it provides the death penalty, if recommended by the jury, for the sale of heroin to a person under 18 by one over 18.

1958 Ten percent of the arable land in Italy is under viticulture; 2 million people earn their living wholly or partly from the production or sale of wine.

1960s The first anthropologists participate in and observe Peyote hunts. They were permitted by Huichols to accompany them on several pilgrimages.

1961 Dr. Timothy Leary received grant money from Harvard University to study the effects of LSD on test subjects. 3,500 doses were given to over 400 people. Of those tested, 90% said they would like to repeat the experience, 83% said they had "learned something or had insight," and 62% said it had changed their life for the better.

1961 The UN's "Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 10 March 1961" is ratified. Among the obligations of the signatory states are the following: "Art. 42. Known users of drugs and persons charged with an offense under this Law may be committed by examining magistrate to a nursing home. . . . Rules shall be also laid down for the treatment in such nursing homes of unconvicted drug addicts and dangerous alcoholics."

1962 Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas declares: "The addict is under compulsion not capable of management without outside help. . . . If addicts can be punished for their addiction, then the insane can also be punished for their insanity. Each has a disease and each must be treated as a sick person."

1962 Ketamine was first synthesized as a safer alternative to PCP.

1963 Tobacco sales total $8.08 billion, of which $3.3 billion go to Federal, State, and local governments in excise taxes. A news release from the tobacco industry proudly states: "Tobacco products pass across sales counters more frequently than anything else--except money."

1964 The British Medical Association, in a Memorandum of Evidence to the Standing Medical Advisory Committee's Special Subcommittee on Alcoholism, declares: "We feel that in some very bad cases, compulsory detention in hospital offers the only hope of successful treatment. . . . We believe that some alcoholics would welcome compulsory removal and detention in hospital until treatment is completed."

1964 An editorial in The New York Times calls attention to the fact that "the Government continues to be the tobacco industry's biggest booster. The Dept. of Agriculture lost $16 million in supporting the price of tobacco in the last fiscal year, and stands to lose even more because it has just raised the subsidy that tobacco growers will get on their 1964 crop. At the same time, the Food for Peace program is getting rid of surplus stocks of tobacco abroad."

1964 Project MKULTRA was renamed MKSEARCH. The project attempted to produce a perfect truth drug for use in interrogating suspected Soviet spies during the Cold War, and generally to explore any other possibilities of mind control.

1965 Independently predicting that MDMA might be psychoactive, a chemist named Alexander Shulgin synthesizes MDMA while working at Dow Chemical. Shulgin had made Dow a tidy sum of money with his prior work on a biodegradable insecticide, and as his reward was allowed to pursue whatever field of research appealed to him. Shulgin chose to study psychoactive drugs...a decision that would eventually impact the entire world.

1966 Sen. Warren G. Magnuson makes public a program, sponsored by the Agriculture Dept. to subsidize "attempts to increase cigarette consumption abroad. . . . The Dept. is paying Warner Brothers $106,000 to insert scenes designed to stimulate cigarette smoking in a travelogue for distribution in 8 countries, and is also spending $210,000 to subsidize cigarette commercials in Japan, Thailand, and Austria." An Agriculture Dept. spokesman corroborates that "the 2 programs were prepared under a congressional authorization to expand overseas markets for U.S. farm commodities."

1966 C. W. Sandman, Jr., chairman of the New Jersey Narcotic Drug Study Commission, declares that LSD is "the greatest threat facing the country today . . . more dangerous than the Vietnam War."

1967 New York State's Narcotics Addiction Control Program goes into effect. It is estimated to cost $400 million in 3 years, and is hailed by Governor Rockefeller as "the start of an unending war. . . ." Under the new law, judges are empowered to commit addicts for compulsory treatment for up to 5 years.

1967 The tobacco industry in the U.S. spends an estimated $250 million on advertising smoking.

1966 LSD was made Illegal in the United States.

1968 The U.S. tobacco industry has gross sales of $8 billion. Americans smoke 544 billion cigarettes.

1968 Canadians buy almost 3 billion aspirin tablets and approximately 56 million standard doses of amphetamines. About 556 million standard doses of barbiturates are also produced or imported for consumption in Canada.

1968 Six to 7% of all prescriptions written under the British National Health Service are for barbiturates; it is estimated that about 500,000 Britons are regular users.

1968 Psilocybin and psilocin became illegal in the United States.

1968 Abram Hoffer, MD, and Humphry Osmond, MD, claim that "strong evidence supporting the use of LSD in a treatment program for alcoholism comes from all parts of the world. It is one of the brightest hopes for the victims of a long-neglected, little-understood disease."

1968 Brooklyn councilman Julius S. Moskowitz charges that the work of New York City's Addiction Services Agency, under its retiring commissioner, Dr. Efren Ramirez, was a "fraud," and that "not a single addict has been cured."

1969 The legal alcoholic beverage industry in the U.S. has a gross sale of $12 billion--more than is spent on education, medical care, and religion combined. Americans consume approximately 650 million gal. of distilled spirits, 100 million barrels and 6 billion cans of beer, 200 million gal. of wine, 100 million gal. of moonshine (illegal whiskey), and an unknown amount of homemade wine and beer.

1969 The world production of tobacco is 4.6 million metric tons, with the U.S., U.S.S.R., China, and Brazil as the leading producers; of wine, 275 million hectoliters, with Italy, France, and Spain as the leading producers; of beer, 595 million hectoliters, with the U.S., Germany, and the U.S.S.R. as the leading producers; of cigarettes, 2,500 billion, with the U.S., U.S.S.R., and Japan as the leading producers.

1969 U.S. production and value of some medicinal chemicals: barbiturates: 800,000 lbs., $2.5 million; aspirin (exclusive of salicylic acid): 37 million lbs., value "withheld to avoid disclosing figures for individual producers"; salicylic acid: 13 million lbs., $13 million; tranquilizers: 1.5 million lbs., $7 million.

1969 A report issued by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization discloses that, despite warnings about the deleterious effects of smoking on health, the consumption of cigarettes throughout the world is growing at the annual rate of 70 billion cigarettes. The U.S. exports tobacco leaf to 113 countries; tobacco accounts for 1/3 of all Greek exports, and 1/5 of the Turkish exports.

1969 The parents of 6,000 secondary-school pupils in Clifton, N.J., are sent letters by the Board of Education asking permission to conduct saliva tests on their children to determine whether or not they use marijuana.

1970 New York State assemblyman Alfred D. Lerner introduces a bill to ban the sale of candy cigarettes in New York State, "to deglamorize smoking in the eyes of children."

1970 Per-capita cigarette smoking increases, "from 3,993 for each smoker in 1969, to 5,030 for each one in 1970."

1970 Tobacco consumption is increasing rapidly in Russia: "In 1960, Soviet retail stores sold $1.5 billion rubles of tobacco products. By 1968, the figure had risen to $2.5 billion, more than a 50% rise."

1970 Having passed both houses of Congress by unanimous votes, the Comprehensive Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Prevention, Treatment, and Rehabilitation Act of 1970 is signed into law by President Nixon.

1970 According to a release of the U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, "An estimated 1.3 billion prescriptions were filled in 1970, at a consumer cost of $5.6 billion. Of these, 17%, or 214 million, were for psychotherapeutic drugs (antianxiety agents, antidepressants, anti-psychotics, stimulants, hypnotics, and sedatives)."

1970 Henry Nargeolet, chief of the Central Service of Pharmacy and Drugs of the French Ministry of Public Health and Social Security, declares, after the French National Assembly adopts a new antidrug bill, that drug addiction will henceforth be considered as a contagious disease in France, as are alcoholism and venereal disease.

1970 The world production of tobacco is 4.7 million metric tons; of wine, 300 million hectoliters; of beer, 630 million hectoliters; of cigarettes, 2,600 billion.

1970 The U.S. passes The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, Pub. L. No. 91-513, 84 Stat. 1236 (Oct. 27, 1970). It is a United States federal law that, with subsequent modifications, requires the pharmaceutical industry to maintain physical security and strict record keeping for certain types of drugs. Controlled substances are divided into five schedules (or classes) on the basis of their potential for abuse, accepted medical use, and accepted safety under medical supervision. Substances in Schedule I have a high potential for abuse, no accredited medical use, and a lack of accepted safety. From Schedules II to V, substances decrease in potential for abuse. The schedule a substance is placed in determines how it must be controlled. Prescriptions for drugs in all schedules must bear the physician's federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) license number, but some drugs in Schedule V do not require a prescription. State schedules may vary from federal schedules.

The Controlled Substances Act (CSA), Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, is the legal foundation of the government's fight against the abuse of drugs and other substances. This law is a consolidation of numerous laws regulating the manufacture and distribution of narcotics, stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, anabolic steroids, and chemicals used in the illicit production of controlled substances.

1970 Crack cocaine was first developed.

1971 President Nixon declares that "America's Public Enemy No. 1 is drug abuse." In a message to Congress, the President calls for the creation of a Special Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention.

1971 New York City mayor John Lindsay testifies before a House subcommittee that "with intensive research it should be feasible to develop an inoculation against heroin which would be administered to youngsters in the same way as vaccines against smallpox, polio, measles . . . and only a Federal scientific task force approaching the scale proposed for cancer research can bring the sort of breakthrough we need."

1971 A survey of smoking habits and economics by the Sunday Telegraph (London) reveals that: in Spain, tobacco is a state monopoly, with annual gross income last year at $210 million; in Italy, it is also a state monopoly, with profits at $10.3 billion or 8% of the total tax revenue; in Switzerland, government revenue from tobacco taxes was $60 million, or 5% of the total; in Norway, it was $70 million, or 3% of the total; and in Sweden, it was $350 million, or 2% of the total tax revenue.

1971 On June 30, 1971, President Cevdet Sunay of Turkey decrees that all poppy cultivation and opium production will be forbidden beginning in the fall of 1972.

1971 John N. Mitchell, Attorney General of the U.S., declares: "I refer to the fact, acknowledged now by all professionals in the field, that alcoholism as such is not a legal problem--it is a health problem. More especially, simple drunkenness per se should not be handled as an offense subject to the processes of justice. It should be handled as an illness, subject to medical treatment. . . . [We] know that it does little good to remove alcoholism from the purview of the law if you do not substitute a full-dress medical treatment--not only a detoxification process, but a thoroughgoing program aimed at recovery from the illness of alcoholism. Again, the program must include the closest cooperation and communication, starting at the top level, between the public health officials and law-enforcement officials. The police must have an understanding that their role continues--not in an arresting capacity, but in one of helping subjects in the designated health centers, voluntarily if possible, involuntarily if necessary."

1972 Myles J. Ambrose, Special Assistant Attorney General of the U.S.; "As of 1960, the Bureau of Narcotics estimated that we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 55,000 heroin addicts ... they estimate now the figure to be 560,000 addicts."

1972 The Bureau of Narcotic and Dangerous Drugs proposes restricting the use of barbiturates on the ground that they "are more dangerous than heroin."

1972 The House votes 366 to o to authorize "a $1 billion, 3-year Federal attack on drug abuse."

1972 At the Bronx House of Correction, out of a total of 780 inmates, approximately 400 are given tranquilizers such as Valium, Elavil, Thorazine, and Librium, "'I think they [the inmates] would be doing better without some of the medication,' said Capt. Robert Brown, a correction officer. He said that in a way the medications made his job harder ... rather than becoming calm, he said, an inmate who had become addicted to his medication 'will do anything when he can't get it.'"

1972 On December 23, Reuters reports: "The Italian Government has approved a law under which drug addicts would be treated as sick people rather than criminals. A government statement said that under the new law ... an addict would face minimal penalties and none at all if he agreed to submit to medical treatment."

1972 In England, the pharmacy cost of heroin is $.04 per grain (60 mg.), or $.00067 per mg. In the U.S., the street price is $30 to $90 per grain, or $.50 to $1.50 per mg.

1972 President Nixon calls "drug abuse the nation's Public Enemy No. 1," million for fiscal 1973 "to battle the drug problem from poppy-grower to pusher."

1973 According to Barron's, the weekly financial newspaper, health care is the largest industry in the U.S. In fiscal 1973, Americans will spend $90 billion on health care, compared with $76.4 billion for defense. Only 32% of the total bill is paid for directly, 30% coming from insurance companies, and 38% from the Government.

1973 A nationwide Gallup poll reveals that 67% of the adults interviewed "support the proposal of New York governor Nelson Rockefeller that all sellers of hard drugs be given life imprisonment without the possibility of parole." Among the typical comments cited by Gallup: "The seller of drugs is not human ... therefore he should be removed from society."

1973 MKULTRA records were deliberately destroyed by order of the CIA Director Richard Helms, it is impossible to have a complete understanding of the more than 150 individually funded research projects sponsored by MKULTRA and related CIA programs.

1973 Myles J. Ambrose, Special Attorney General in charge of the Office for Drug Abuse, defending the methods used by his agents in apprehending alleged drug abusers: "Drug people are the very vermin of humanity ... Occasionally we must adopt their dress and tactics."

1973 "Citing opposition from 'misguided soft-liners,'" Governor Rockefeller signs into law "the toughest antidrug program in the nation." He also requests the legislature "to provide funds to nearly double the State's narcotics treatment facilities.... The new law calls for mandatory minimum jail terms for drug pushers and possessors but will allow parole under lifetime supervision."

1973 Michael R. Sonnenreich, executive director of the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, declares: "About 4 years ago we spent a total of $66.4 million for the entire Federal effort in the drug abuse area. ... This year we have spent $796.3 million, and the budget estimates that have been submitted indicate that we will exceed the $1 billion mark. When we do so, we become, for want of a better term, a drug abuse industrial complex."

1974 The New York Times reported that the CIA had conducted illegal domestic activities, including experiments on U.S. citizens, during the 1960s. That report prompted investigations by both the U.S. Congress (in the form of the Church Committee) and a presidential commission (known as the Rockefeller Commission) into the domestic activities of the CIA, the FBI, and intelligence-related agencies of the military.

1975 In the summer of 1975, congressional hearings and the Rockefeller Commission report revealed to the public for the first time that the CIA and the Department of Defense had conducted experiments on both cognizant and unwitting human subjects as part of an extensive program to influence and control human behavior through the use of psychoactive drugs such as LSD and mescaline and other chemical, biological, and psychological means. They also revealed that at least one subject had died after administration of LSD.

1977 On the Senate floor, Senator Ted Kennedy said, "The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an 'extensive testing and experimentation' program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens 'at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign.' Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to 'unwitting subjects in social situations.' At least one death, that of Dr. Olson, resulted from these activities. The Agency itself acknowledged that these tests made little scientific sense. The agents doing the monitoring were not qualified scientific observers."

1977 A friend of Shulgin's, psychologist Leo Zeff, begins to prepare for retirement from his practice. While starting to clean out his office of memorabilia, he invites Shulgin over to see if the chemist would like any of the items. Shulgin, in turn, brings him a gift: A small vial of MDMA, and a suggestion that he might find the material worthwhile. Leo, who was experienced with psychoactive drugs and had used them in his practice for some patients, accepted the gift without committing to whether or not he might try it. Several days later, Shulgin receives a phone call from Leo. He has tried the MDMA. He no longer wants to retire. Instead, he begins to utilize the new drug, first in his own practice, then introducing other therapists to it. The ability of MDMA to help patients overcome emotional barriers was so striking that one psychiatrist dubbed it "penicillin for the soul." When Dr. Zeff passed away years later, his widow estimated that the network of therapists using MDMA had grown to about 4,000.

1978 John Lilly publishes The Scientist, a book documenting the his ketamine, LSD, and isolation tank experiments.

1984 All hell breaks loose. The growing networks of therapists, chemists and users, which had managed to stay largely below the radar of the government, becomes impossible to ignore when Michael Clegg begins openly selling MDMA in Texas, using advertising, a 1-800 number to place orders, and even offering shipping. A former seminary student, Clegg considered himself an 'Ecstasy missionary' (having given the drug that name himself) destined to help bring MDMA to the public. At its peak, he was delivering half a million pills a month to the Dallas area. Responding to the crisis of people being able to get high without risking arrest, the Drug Enforcement Agency announced its intent to Emergency Schedule MDMA, placing it into Schedule 1 (the most restrictive class of drugs, such as heroin) for a year while it was decided how it should be permanently Scheduled. Shocked and angered by the DEA's plans to completely ban access to a drug that had become an important and valued part of their practices, psychiatrists, therapists, and other scientists and doctors challenged the Scheduling, resulting in government hearings on how MDMA should be Scheduled.

1985 The hearings began. The DEA appointed Judge Francis Young to hear the case. Months of testimony and sometimes bitter argument went by as the hearings dragged on through the summer, autumn and into winter.

1986 On May 22nd, Judge Young released his decision on the laws, science, and use surrounding MDMA, declaring that MDMA was safe when used under medical supervision, did not have a high potential for addiction, and had legitimate medical use. As such, Judge Young said, it was not legal to place MDMA higher than Schedule 3. This much less restrictive category would have allowed doctors to continue to use MDMA, but would have still made sale without a prescription illegal. Angered by these findings, the DEA condemned Judge Young as biased, shortsighted, and incorrect in his interpretation of the laws. They rejected his non-binding ruling and declared MDMA permanently Schedule 1. Outraged by the DEA's attempts to re-write the laws and ignore the science, the groups that had first challenged the Scheduling of MDMA sued, taking the DEA to court.

1988 After several years of motions, hearings, and angry debate, the doctors and scientists appeared to have achieved victory: On January 27, the courts agreed with Justice Young's original opinion and ordered the Drug Enforcement Agency to reassess its Scheduling decision. In the meanwhile, MDMA is removed from Schedule 1, becoming briefly legal once again. The DEA, complying with the court order, 're-evaluated' their decision. And decided that they had been right all along, and the doctors, scientists, and courts were the ones that were wrong about the science and the law. They permanently declared MDMA Schedule 1, taking effect on March 23, 1988. Vindicated in their interpretation of the law, in the science and in court but beaten down by sheer political power, the doctors and scientists were defeated. The prohibitionist bureaucrats had lost every battle but won the war, and MDMA has remained in Schedule 1 since.

1991 Alexander Shulgin's legendary book, "PIHKAL" is published, and the world discovers what 'Sasha' has been up to in the past few decades. (The book's title is short for "Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved", a reference to the basic chemical structure he based his work on.) The book itself is divided into two parts: The autobiographies of Alexander and his wife Ann; and a massive drug section describing the structures, dosages, effects, and synthesis of nearly 180 psychoactive drugs, most of which Shulgin had invented; many of which were new to science. (The Chemistry section is available on-line.)

1993 The Congress passes the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that allows The Native American church to sacramentally and legally use Peyote.

1999 An increase in the illicit use of ketamine at raves prompted its placement as a Schedule III Controlled Substance in the United States.

2000 William Leonard Pickard and Clyde Apperson were convicted of operating the largest LSD lab ever busted in the United States. Pickard was sentenced to life in prison and Apperson was sentenced to 30 years. Their lab produced about 90% of the world's supply and brought them profits of millions of dollars each month.

2001 Alarmed by skyrocketing use of MDMA and their own clear inability to stop it, the US government increases penalties, making the distribution of MDMA ten times more severely punished, dose for dose, than heroin. In spite of being opposed by prominent scientists and even the former head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse as irrational and a diversion of resources from the control of truly dangerous drugs, the measure passes easily.

2001 The US Food and Drug Administration gives approval for human testing of MDMA for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. MAPS, a group made up of many of the same doctors and researchers that had originally fought tooth-and-nail to keep MDMA available to doctors, is conducting the research as part of their plan to gain full FDA approval of MDMA as a prescription drug. The next two years would prove to be a long, difficult struggle to gain IRB approval (Institutional Review Board oversight is needed to conduct human research.)

2003 The infamous MDMA researcher George Ricaurte, who's work had been the cornerstone of MDMA prohibition and anti-MDMA government ad campaigns, confesses: One of his most recent and sensational studies, claiming that a "common recreational dose" of MDMA could cause extensive brain damage and Parkinson's-like symptoms never actually happened. The monkeys used in the experiment had actually been given near-lethal doses of methamphetamine; not MDMA!

2003 With Ricaurte disgraced, the "it'll eat holes in your brain" house of cards began to come tumbling down; MAPS was finally granted IRB approval for human research with MDMA.

2004 The first dose of MDMA in MAPS' post-traumatic stress disorder study is administered.

2006 On Feb. 21 the UDV Wins Supreme Court Decision allowing their use of ayahuasca