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A History of Adolescent Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Use in America

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A History of Adolescent Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Use in America Selected Papers of William L. White www.williamwhitepapers.com Collected papers, interviews, video presentations, photos, and archival documents on the history of addiction treatment and recovery in America. Citation: White, W. L. (1999). A history of adolescent alcohol, tobacco and other drug use in America. Student Assistance Journal, 11(5), 16-22. Posted at www.williamwhitepapers.com A History of Adolescent Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Use in America1 William L. White Emeritus Senior Research Consultant Chestnut Health Systems [email protected] The approach of a new millennium Native children had cultural access to invites reflection into our past and such drugs only within the framework of speculations about our future. This paper such rituals. There is little early evidence will detail the evolution of adolescent of secular or recreational drug use or alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) misuse among Native American tribes use in America and identify those factors until distilled alcohol came to be used that have and will likely continue to against them as a tool of economic, influence the rise and fall of adolescent political and sexual exploitation ATOD use. (MacAndrew and Edgerton, 1969; Mancall, 1995; Westermeyer, 1996). I. ATOD Use in Native and Colonial Europeans brought to the America Americas a taste for alcohol and a comparatively limited knowledge of At the time of European contact, Native psychoactive medicines. Alcohol was American tribes had an extremely the “Good Creature of God”--a gift from sophisticated knowledge of botanical the Almighty that was integrated into psychopharmacology and utilized a wide nearly every aspect of Colonial life. Men, spectrum of psychoactive drugs within women and children drank alcohol daily, Native medicinal and religious rituals. not so much from a desire for alcohol’s 1This research was supported by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration under grant number Tl11320. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not represent official positions of CSAT or any other governmental agency. Comments or requests for reprints should be directed to the author at 720 West Chestnut, Bloomington, IL 61701. williamwhitepapers.com 1 intoxicating effects as it was the lack of community health and hospitality) gave alternative liquids. Contaminated water way to the urban saloon (a symbol of that could and did spread lethal disease drunkenness, vice, and political earned alcohol its designation as aqua corruption), and moderate drinking within vitae--the “water of life” (Vallee, 1998). a family context shifted to excessive Children (even infants) were provided drinking by unattached and socially warmed alcohol (usually in combination disruptive males. These alarming with bread or other food), and young changes incited a century-long boys entered taverns to be taught by their temperance movement whose goal was fathers the arts of storytelling and nothing short of completely banishing drinking (Rorabaugh, 1979; Steinsapir, alcohol’s threat to children, families, 1983). While alcohol was valued in communities, and the country Colonial America, drunkenness was (Cherrington, 1920; Lender and Martin, highly stigmatized as a sinful misuse of 1982; Rorabaugh 1979). this gift from God. While many pre- The temperance movement revolution laws were passed to prevent forced a cultural reassessment regarding drunkenness in the Colonies, there is children and adolescents’ access to little evidence of special concerns about alcohol and tobacco. Local and state limiting the age of access to alcohol. laws were passed in the second half of When age ordinances did begin, they the 19th century that required usually restricted access to alcohol for temperance education in all public those under the age of sixteen (Mosher, schools and prohibited the sale of alcohol 1980). Well into the late 1700s, drinking and tobacco to those under the age of by students and faculty was an accepted first 18 and later 21 (Mosher, 1980). and expected part of American campus Children and adolescents were enlisted life (Brown, 1966; Warner, 1970). in the temperance movement (the Slave Codes denied Americans of “Children’s Crusade”), and special African descent access to alcohol, but branches of temperance reform clubs many slave masters practiced a ritualized were organized for adolescents and degradation of slaves with alcohol during young adults experiencing alcohol- holidays. There is no evidence of drinking related problems (White, 1998). Not by slave children, and African slaves surprisingly, colleges and universities were as a whole such a sober people, began to alter their previous tolerance that they were long thought to be immune and promotion of alcohol on campus to the effects of alcohol (Douglas, 1855). (Warner, 1970). In spite of lurid journalistic tales of II. Growing Concerns about Juvenile children seduced into the doorways of ATOD Use in the Nineteenth Century opium dens, there is little evidence that adolescents were involved in any America went on an extended widespread drug experimentation during drunken binge in the post-Revolutionary the 19th century. There were, however, War decades. Annual per capita alcohol concerns about the growing exposure of consumption tripled, drinking tastes infants and children to drug-laced shifted from fermented alcohol to distilled medicines and tobacco. Opiate-laced alcohol, the colonial tavern (a symbol of preparations in products like Children's williamwhitepapers.com 2 Comfort and Mother Bailey's Quieting norms all played roles in the rise of early Syrup were so popular for calming infants 20th century juvenile narcotic use. Drug and children that warnings began to use became ritualized within newly appear about the deadly possibilities that emerging drug cultures that offered a could accompany their use (Haller, 1989; haven to youth who, whether by choice Pollard, 1858). By the late 1900s, reports or exclusion, had become detached from of neonatal narcotic addiction also began the broader culture (Courtwright, 1982). to appear that were the result of maternal Following the repeal of the opium use during pregnancy and while Eighteenth Amendment in 1933, alcohol nursing (Fischer, 1894; Mattison, 1896). and tobacco were destigmatized and then glamorized--in fact, ceased being III. Juvenile Narcotic Addiction and viewed as “drugs,” while use of other Alcohol/Drug Experimentation during drugs became increasingly criminalized. the Prohibition Years The wounded anti-alcohol and anti- tobacco movements retained only The 20th century opened with the enough power to pass age limits on culmination of decades of anti-alcohol alcohol and tobacco--an effort that and other anti-drug movements. These succeeded in part by arguing that there now mature movements used the was a direct link between tobacco and vulnerability of youth as an ideological early alcohol use and juvenile platform to support a ban on the non- delinquency (Gehman, 1943). The late medical use of narcotics and cocaine 1920s and 1930s saw new youth- (1914) and the non-medical and non- oriented anti-drug campaigns launched religious use of alcohol (1919). Following that led, in 1937, to marihuana being implementation of these laws, illicit added to America’s list of prohibited alcohol and drug cultures emerged. drugs. Youthful experimentation with alcohol, The marijuana plant had long tobacco and other drugs became a sign been used in America for its fiber, and of chicness and independence within cannabis tinctured in alcohol had been these cultures. Particularly alarming was used in 19th and early 20th century the first significant episodes of juvenile medicine--even as an adjunct in the narcotic addiction. treatment of alcoholism and narcotic The 19th century profile of opiate addiction. Its use as an intoxicant in the addiction--that of women addicted to U.S. was introduced by a young school opium or morphine as a consequence of teacher, Fitzhugh Ludlow, who wrote of medical treatment--gave way in the early his experiments with the drug in his 1857 20th century to young males seeking not book, The Hasheesh Eater. While there relief from pain but pleasure from a newly followed periodic journalistic exposés of released narcotic, heroin. Heroin use “hashish houses” in the 1870s, the drug rose among the children of first remained relatively invisible until its use generation white immigrants who were rose during the 1920s. It was in this crowded within the slums of America’s period that marijuana became linked to largest cities. Explosive immigration, Mexican migrant workers at a time of urban poverty, and the breakdown of growing racial and class conflict in country-of-origin cultural and family Southwestern United States. The anti- williamwhitepapers.com 3 marihuana campaign of the 1920s and 1953). There was also a marked a 1930 linked the drug to crime, violence change in the ethnic composition of and insanity and portrayed young people America’s young addicts. The incidence as exceptionally vulnerable to the drug’s of heroin addiction among young African effects (Anslinger and Cooper, 1937; Americans and Latinos exploded in the Rowell, 1937, 1939). There is little 1950s as minority neighborhoods--the evidence of widespread youthful same neighborhoods that witnessed marijuana experimentation during the white ethnic narcotic addiction at the turn 1920s and 1930s, but the prohibition of of the century--were flooded
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