llowing, occurred late in the 1870s. If caught smoking opium in a den or smoking house, these laws imposed heavy fines, and in some cases, imprisonment. Following these first prohibitive laws, the cessation of opium smoking was nowhere to be found, in fact, dens moved underground, and even though our government knew this, they had not the resources to take hold of the “problem” of smoking opium in dens. A few years later, 1883 marked a hike in the tariff imposed on opium importation by six to ten dollars per pound on legally imported opium. No one enjoys paying taxes, much less such a steep one; therefore underground importation channels began to emerge. 1887 marks the next step in racially influenced anti-drug law. Importation of weak opium, and any importation by the Chinese was outlawed. By this time, drug smuggling was exploding. A typical pusher could make up to Two Hundred Thousand dollars tax-free per year. The average profit margin from start to finish of one kilo of Heroin was in the neighborhood of Twenty Thousand Percent. Because of the enormous amounts of money at stake, gangs, and other drug-related violence began to break out. Seeing no decrease in opium use, our government decided to restrict the manufacture of smoking opium to American citizens in 1890. This year also marked another tariff increase from ten to twelve dollars per pound. During passage of these restrictions, opium use increased steadily. In an attempt to stem the rapidly increasing opium smuggling industry, the United States Government lowered the insatiable tariff back to six dollars per pound. This had little effect on the already established black market, as no tariffs were charged there. Unfortunately, the end of the nineteenth century marked the inception of actual social problems beginning to arise primarily as a result of the newly established smuggling regime, and the forcing underground of opium distributors and users. ...
