As the pressures of
modern living increased, the social exploitation of drugs was stepped
up. Opium was refined into morphine and heroin; mescaline was synthesized
from the psychotropic element in peyote; and for a short time early
in his career, Sigmund Freud's researches into cocaine turned from
the scientific to the purely recreational.
It was only after the Second World War, however,
that drugs and industry really came together. In 1952, Seconal,
the first of a new range of barbiturates, came onto the market.
In 1954, the first tranquillizer, Thorazine, went on sale. Then
came Miltown, followed by Stelazine, Mellaril, Valium, Librium,
Elavil and Tofranil.
As a result, annual sales of tranquillisers dramatically
rose from $2.2 million in 1955 to $150 million in 1956. Today, individual
pharmaceutical companies throughout the world announce annual profits
equivalent to the GNP of small nations.
The drug with the greatest promise, however, turned
out to be the most difficult to handle. First launched onto the
market by the Swiss company Sandoz back in 1948 under the brand
name Delysid, lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD, eventually
became the stuff of nightmares.
Before turning into the psychedelic drug of choice
for disaffected 1960s youth and consequently becoming illegal, LSD
started out as a plaything for the great and the good. Patriarchal
founder of Time Life Inc, Henry Luce, enjoyed the drug while playing
golf. Hollywood movie star Cary Grant publicly praised its enlightening
effects. Vice president of the Morgan Guarantee Bank, Gordon Wasson,
dedicated his not inconsiderable resources to the study of psychedelic
mushrooms, otherwise known as ‘God’s flesh’. While
Aldous Huxley saw LSD as the starting point for a whole new spiritual
renaissance.
Less benignly, both the CIA and the Chemical Weapons
Division of the US Army were interested in using such drugs as weapons,
frequently testing them on people without their knowledge or consent.
Major General William Creasey went so far as to lobby the US Senate,
proposing that hallucinogenic gases be tested in crowded American
subways. ‘I do not contend that driving people crazy, even
for a few hours, is a pleasant prospect,’ he argued, ‘but
warfare is never pleasant.’
Too uncontrollable to be a weapon, too weird to
be therapeutic, LSD was outlawed in 1966 and subsequently consigned
to the underground drugs lab of history.
Read on …
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