Vol. XXIX.

THE

HARRISON

LAW.

The Harrison anti-narcotic

BILL BECOMES bill passed the House of Representatives on the afternoon of Thursday, December 10, and went forward for President Wilson's signature. This was duly affixed, as it was well known it would be, and all doubt as to what might or might not happen to the Harrison bill was at an end.

It will be recalled that the bill passed the Senate last August, after having been hung up there for nearly a year. It then went back to the House, and thence to conferees of both House and Senate. The conference report was promptly adopted by the Senate, but the House failed to act before adjournment in October.

However, when Congress convened in regular session in December one of the first acts

No. 1.

of the House was to take up the narcotic measure and push it through. The law now goes into effect March 1, 1915.

PROVISIONS OF

THE NEW ACT.

The Harrison law is, in a sense, a taxation or revenue measure, and it therefore reaches into every State and affects every citizen in it. It is not a measure drawn under the interstate commerce clause of the Federal constitution, and affecting only traffic between the States. This distinction ought to be clearly understood by everybody. The law is universal in its application. The chief features of the act, expressed in our own language, are as follows:

1. The bill covers opium, coca leaves, and any compound, manufacture, salt, derivative or preparation thereof. Exemption is provided for preparations in each ounce of which there is not more than 2 grains of opium, grain of morphine, % grain of heroin, 1 grain of codeine, or salts or derivatives of any of these. Exemption is also provided for liniments, ointments or other preparations legitimately prepared for external use only, unless they contain cocaine.

2. Every dealer in or dispenser of these narcotics must register with the collector of internal revenue in his district and must pay a special tax of $1.00 per year. This includes physicians, dentists and veterinarians as well as retail druggists, wholesale druggists, manufacturing druggists, importers or anybody else who has occasion to handle or dispense narcotics. Mere possession of any of the narcotics involved, if the possessor be not registered, will be deemed evidence of a violation of the law.

3. No one may order narcotics except he write the order in duplicate on blanks provided by the collectors of internal revenue. The buyer and the seller shall each preserve his copy of the order, and it shall be open to inspection by the proper officers of the government, and also by the State or municipal authorities charged with the enforcement of local anti-narcotic laws.

4. These blanks shall bear the name of the registered dealer who buys them of the Internal Revenue Department, and an unregistered dealer who uses them will violate the law.

5. Narcotics may not be sold or dispensed by any one except on orders filled out in this manner, and received from registered persons. The only exceptions are that