PROFESSOR DAVID COURTWRIGHT DISCUSSES SOCIETY'S TOLERANCE OF PSYCHOACTIVE DRUGS

LINDA WERTHEIMER, host: It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm
Linda Wertheimer.

ROBERT SIEGEL, host: And I'm Robert Siegel.

The war on drugs is not a war on caffeine and its purveyors. For that
matter, no one would think to criminalize the international sugar trade.
But sugar, coffee, tea and tobacco are psychoactive drugs just as cannabis,
opium and alcohol are. Historian David Courtwright recounts how these
drugs became global commodities, licit or illicit, and how other drugs
remained local phenomena. He's written a book called, "Forces of Habit:
Drugs and the Making of the Modern World," and he says that he found three
big surprises in his research. For starters, he was surprised by the
extent of worldwide caffeine dependency.

Professor DAVID COURTWRIGHT (Author, "Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making
of the Modern World"): The closer I looked, the more I became convinced
that caffeinated beverages were a big part of the story. And I also came
to realize that caffeine dependence is a much more widespread and
economically significant phenomenon than is usually accepted or that people
are aware of.

SIEGEL: The second thing that surprised you so much was the, as you say,
early opposition to non-medical tobacco use. And one of the features of
many, many of the drugs that you write about is that they enter Western
civilization as medicines, renowned for some great powers they have
elsewhere in the world, and then they leave the control of the medical
authorities. Even with tobacco, this was the case.

Prof. COURTWRIGHT: That's true. Initially, tobacco was a rather exotic and
rather expensive drug. But then it made its way into the underworld of
early modern Europe. Sailors in taverns, men in brothels, etc., would
indulge in this vice. In many European nations it drew a lot of opposition
from clerical and royal officials, in some cases, the king himself. Part
of this was simply the bizarre appearance of someone who was smoking. If
you stop and think about it, this is not simply taking a drug in the form
of ingesting the drug like you would swallow something; but you're inhaling
it and you are blowing out the smoke, which seemed diabolical to many early
modern Europeans. As long as it was done in a medicinal context, for
certain diseases, such as warding off the plague, it was not as
controversial. But when it became a recreation, when it became, as it were,
a vice, that's when royal and ecclesiastical officials were most likely to
object.

SIEGEL: But actually, people did believe that tobacco would, say, ward off
the plague. I think--is it Samuel Pepys whom you quote as remarking about
no tobacconists succumb to the plague in London?

Prof. COURTWRIGHT: That's correct; and it is generally the case that as
long as psychoactive drugs are confined to limited and recognized medical
purposes, they're relatively non-controversial. But the general pattern is
that when they spread beyond the realm of the therapeutic, that's when they
become controversial.

SIEGEL: Then you were surprised by the degree to which drugs have been used
in a variety of ways to palliate or control or exploit labor. For example?

Prof. COURTWRIGHT: Well, the most famous example probably is the use of
opium to keep the Chinese indentured laborers, also known as coolies, in a
state of more or less permanent bondage. These people left China, and they
worked on a variety of projects. They worked in the mines, they worked on
the railroads, and so forth. But many of them also smoked opium. They'd
either learned how to smoke opium in China or they acquired the practice
when they went overseas, and that was a fairly expensive habit. But as
indentured laborers, people who owed money for the price of their passage
overseas, if they spent all of their money on opium and other vices, they
would never really be in a position to pay back their debt and be able to
earn enough money to end their term of service.

SIEGEL: Some people would say that the truth about psychoactive substances
is that ever since Noah in the book of Genesis, people have been altering
their consciousness, that there's something essentially unchanged about all
this. You take the approach, no, there really is a revolutionary moment in
early modern history when there is a change in how people relate to
psychoactive substances.

Prof. COURTWRIGHT: That's exactly right. There was a change in scale of
the use. Drugs, or most drugs, were isolated prior to about 15 or 1600.
Tea, opium, coca, many other drugs originally were found only in certain
regions of the world, but as a result of the voyages of discovery and the
spread of colonies and so forth, they became global crops and global
commodities. And as they did so, the price came down and millions of
people who had not previously been able to use these drug products became
consumers.

SIEGEL: Well, Professor Courtwright, thank you very much for talking with us.

Prof. COURTWRIGHT: You're quite welcome.

SIEGEL: David Courtwright is professor of history at the University of
North Florida, and the author of "Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of
the Modern World."