Published at: 08/10/2025 09:00 PM

(The New York Times Magazine, October 10, 2018; LIFE, March 15, 1965 and The National Library of Medicine)

• By 1965, the United States had a universe of 500,000 customary heroin users, 12 million addicted to cannabis sativa, and cocaine dependence was reappearing, whose pandemic of mass addiction seemed like a thing of the past.
• In 1914, President William Taft declared cocaine “Public Enemy No. 1 of the United States.” It was then the main ingredient in Coca Cola. This was the first recorded drug pandemic in the history of that country. It was eradicated through the application of a restrictive law (Harrison Act), not by murdering innocent fishermen.
• Today, an estimated 50 million Americans eventually use cocaine hydrochloride, 18 million of whom are addicted.
• In the 1960s, the heroin boom broke out in the United States, starting the current pandemic, initially imported by veterans of the Vietnam War. Epidemic fueled by “pain killers” (opiates) on sale in all pharmacies.
• LIFE magazine, in its 1965 report, managed to capture the scene of “The Fatal Overdose”:
  • A woman, Karen, makes desperate attempts to stop her partner, Bill, from dying of an overdose, following a lethal injection in her arm.
  • Both addicts allowed themselves to be interviewed to warn about this overdose crisis on the streets of New York.
• In 1969, in other parts of the world, in San Francisco, California, the film “The Strawberries of Bitterness” portrays for posterity a young addict embracing a parking meter, while a policeman attempts to revive him from heroin shock.
• In April 1976, Betty Ford stated: “My name is Betty Ford, I am the first lady of the United States and I am addicted to prescription pills.” At the end of that month, she publicly acknowledged that she was also an alcoholic. The mix of alcohol and prescription opioids wreaked havoc on his health and family life. She founded several rehabilitation centers and remained sober until she was 93 years old.
• Even older, during the Civil War or Civil War (1861-1865), the invention of the hypodermic syringe, by the Scottish doctor Alexander Wood, promoted the use of morphine in military hospitals, serving as a catalyst for the first case of street drug addicts, historically recorded in the United States.
• In short, after more than a century of drug crises and pandemics, today, several of these coexist in the United States at the same time:
  • 47.7 million people over the age of 12 are addicted to opioids.
  • 18 million regular users of cocaine.
  • 29 million alcoholics.
  • 105,740 people die from an opioid overdose.
  • 178,000 people die from alcoholism.
  • 35,000 people die from overdoses of psychotropic stimulants and cocaine.
  • And according to other, more reliable reports, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The U.S. government recently suspended its financial support to scientific institutes to keep the database on consumption statistics and the death rate from drugs and alcohol up to date.

Mazo News Team