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Saturday, November 22, 2008
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DRUG
USE
IN THE PRE-
AIDS ERA
A temporal association between the
onset of extensive use of recreational drugs and the AIDS epidemic is also lacking.
The widespread use of opiates in the United States has existed since the middle
of the 19th century (Courtwright, 1982); as many as 313,000 Americans were addicted
to opium and morphine prior to 1914. Heroin use spread throughout the country
in the 1920s and 1930s (Courtwright, 1982), and the total number of active heroin
users peaked at about 626,000 in 1971 (Greene et al., 1975; Friedland, 1989).
Opiates were initially administered by oral or inhalation routes, but by the 1920s
addicts began to inject heroin directly into their veins (Courtwright, 1982).
In 1940, intravenous use of opiates was seen in 80 percent of men admitted to
a large addiction research center in Kentucky (Friedland, 1989).
While cocaine use increased markedly
during the 1970s (Kozel and Adams, 1986), the use of the drug, frequently with
morphine, is well-documented in the United States since the late 19th century
(Dale, 1903; Ashley, 1975; Spotts and Shontz, 1980). For example, a survey in
1902 reported that only 3 to 8 percent of the cocaine sold in New York, Boston
and other cities went into the practice of medicine or dentistry (Spotts and
Shontz). After a period of relative obscurity, cocaine became increasingly popular
in the late 1950s and 1960s. Over 70 percent of 1,100 addicts at the addiction
research center in Kentucky in 1968 and 1969 reported use or abuse of cocaine
(Chambers, 1974).
The recreational use of nitrite inhalants
("poppers") also predates the AIDS epidemic. Reports of the widespread use of
these drugs by young men in the 1960s were the impetus for the reinstatement
by the Food and Drug Administration of the prescription requirement for amyl
nitrite in 1968 (Israelstam et al., 1978; Haverkos and Dougherty, 1988). Since
the early years of the AIDS epidemic, the use of nitrite inhalants has declined
dramatically among homosexual men, yet the number of AIDS cases continues to
increase (Ostrow et al., 1990, 1993; Lau et al., 1992).
In the general population, the number
of individuals aged 25 to 44 years reporting current use of marijuana, cocaine,
inhalants, hallucinogens and cigarettes declined between 1974 and 1992, while
the AIDS epidemic worsened (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration,
1994).
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