Julian Crowley
The coca leaf has been used by people indigenous to South America for thousands of years, although the isolation of cocaine itself, by the German chemist Friedrich Gaedcke, was not achieved until 1855. It will probably come as no surprise by now that the drug widely known as coke used to be freely available to buy over the counter in Europe and the United States.
Anesthetic toothache powders and congestion relief medicines all contained cocaine at one time. These products (as well as Coca-Cola, which really did use cocaine as an ingredient when it was first produced, and later coca leaves until 1906) could be easily procured at the local pharmacy.
Drug companies like Parke-Davis (a subsidiary of Pfizer) and Merck sold it in forms ranging from cigarettes to powders to a mixture for injecting!
It was only later — in 1914 in the US — that the sale and distribution of cocaine was outlawed, its dangers having been entwined with American social and racial moral panics. Today, substances such as lidocaine replicate cocaine’s numbing effects without the general euphoria that comes with it.
2. Quaaludes
The drug commonly known in America as Quaaludes, “ludes,” Mandrax or Sopors was produced using the sedative-hypnotic drug methaqualone.
Originally synthesized in India in 1951, it soon made its way to Europe and Japan as an allegedly safe alternative to barbiturates.
Having been available over the counter in Germany in the early ’60s, it appeared in America as the sedative known as Quaaludes in 1965, and by 1972 widespread abuse of the drug had become a problem. Ludes were extensively in use among ’70s college students, who took them in order to experience a dreamy high. However, the risk of overdosing was high, particularly if they were washed down with alcohol.
By 1973, it was illegal to be in possession of the drug without a prescription in the US, but that didn’t stop unscrupulous doctors from prescribing it. Still, by 1984, methaqualone had been reclassified as a Schedule I drug, effectively outlawing it.
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1. Heroin
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Amazingly, heroin — the notoriously addictive illegal drug today used by 50 million people on a regular basis — was once far more readily available than it is now.
Yes, heroin could be acquired over the counter with consummate ease in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in UK and the USA. Synthesized by German chemist Felix Hoffmann, it was commercially produced by Bayer Pharmaceutical from 1898 onwards for medicinal purposes — including as a cough syrup for children and as a “non-addictive morphine substitute.”
Surprisingly, its importation and manufacture was not banned in the United States until as late as 1924. It was only with the passing of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act in 1914 that heroin’s sale and distribution was controlled in the US.
It was widely available without a prescription in the UK until 1926. Alarmingly, Bayer sold the substance as a cure for morphine addiction only for it to be discovered that the body quickly processes it into morphine, actually making it a faster-acting and doubly potent alternative.
