RETROSPECTIVE Dallas’s First War On Drugs

More than 100 years ago in Dallas, cocaine and morphine could be purchased at the cor-ner drugstore for pennies an ounce. A laissez-faire attitude prevailed, and prominent members of the community profited from the legal sale of drugs. Ignored at first, by the 1890s drug use was recognized as a social problem that threatened the very core of a moral society. Reformers reacted, and Dallas was probably the first city in Texas to pass legislation against drug usage.



A frail black youth of about twelve or thirteen years walked aimlessly down the street; time and destination were of no importance. Midway into her perambulation, she was stopped by a police officer, arrested, and hauled to the city jail. Earlier in the evening she had robbed a man of a $20 gold piece, gone to Apperson’s Drug Store on the corner of Main and Poydras streets, bought a supply of cocaine, and, after taking the drug, had gone out in the warm September night, enjoying her temporary euphoria. She was booked as “Texas Joe.” a notorious streetwalker and “coc fiend” who, according to the police, had been living on the streets for the past four years.

Charles Bass, half brother of the famous and late outlaw Sam Bass, was found cold dead in the home of bartender Walter S. Stone on Romine Street, where he had gone for care. Friends said he would never have taken his own life, so when he was found with his chest bared “and sprinkled with small red spots where the morphine syringe had been introduced,” they knew he had taken an accidental overdose. Bass was known to have been “a morphine fiend.”

Unclothed, on a makeshift bed in his shop, was found popular barber Charles Deppe. His work place on Main Street, boasting of several chairs and hot baths, was a popular spot with some very influential citizens. His death was a surprise. Near his body lay an empty bottle of morphine. A coroner’s postmortem found traces of morphine in his stomach and his death was ruled a suicide.

“Texas Joe.” Bass, and Deppe were three of many 19th-century Dallasites who abused drugs and paid the price. The black girl cruised the streets in the mid-1890s. Bass died on December 7. 1898. and Deppe killed himself on January 19, 1883. They were not alone. Drug use crossed all social, economic, racial, and religious lines. Many people of wealth and position used drugs as casually as the impoverished people who inhabited “The Reservation.” that area in Dallas’s First Ward that centered around the business district of the city.

While certain drugs made from natural substances, particularly opium and cocaine, had been around for a long time, it was the acceleration of technology in drug development following the Civil War that allowed for a greater proliferation of drug use. Chloral hydrate, paraldehyde, veronal, and heroin, to name a few. were introduced between 1869 and 1899. They were all heralded as medical breakthroughs to help ease pain, soothe frail nerves, and cure insomnia. Doctors, poorly trained and ignorant of the drugs’ long-term effects, freely prescribed these drugs for fevers, chills, coughs, menstrual cramps, depression, sleeplessness, and a myriad of other complaints. The tradition of home doctoring-including the use of cheap and easily accessible mail-order patent medicines heavily laced with opiates-promoted drug use and addiction. The development of the hypodermic syringe. which allowed for under-skin injections without “mainlining.1’ further encouraged drug use. Generally, morphine was the scourge of Dallas during the 1870s and 1880s. Cocaine and opium became popular during the last decade of the century.

Our grandfathers knew little about the effects of repeated drug use. Morphine had been used extensively during the Civil War on both sides as a painkiller. Many veterans with lingering wounds, injuries that never healed or that caused infections, continued to use opiates throughout their lives. American and European doctors experimented with certain opiates as aids for painless surgery. Texas doctors also reported their findings for beneficial uses of cocaine and morphine, and encouraged their use to treat children’s summer complaints and in some obstetric cases.

One potion used to quiet restless children was the popular Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, which contained cocaine. Purchased for twenty-five cents from any drugstore or through mail order, Mrs. Winslow’s remedy was hawked to regulate children’s bowels, aid teething, and induce general good health. During the 1880s, Dallas’s daily newspapers carried advertising for Winslow’s tonic to “give rest to the mother, and relief and health to the child . . . It is perfectly safe to use in all cases.” the ads stated. As early as 1882, however, some doctors cautioned against its use and warned that it was a child killer. Nevertheless, Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup started many youngsters upon a life of addiction.

Before 1900, using drugs was not a crime; no law at any level of government forbade their use. There was no criminal underground distributing drugs to the American people. Clandestine meetings between a dealer or pusher and a user were unnecessary. Anyone could buy cocaine or opiates, such as morphine and opium, from a local drug store, no prescription needed. Druggists sold opiates cheaply; during the 1880s and 1890s, ten to fifty cents would buy enough drugs to commit suicide or feed a habit for several days. Since drugs were relatively easy to get, crime was not necessarily a stepchild of addiction.

In Dallas between 1874 and 1901, more than 100 deaths were reported due to drug use. There were probably more, since not all incidents were reported. Few bodies were given post-mortems; many of the deaths, when reported, were credited to heart failure.

It is estimated that between 1877 and 1901 there were at least 100 suicide attempts using drugs alone. In April 1882, the Dallas Daily Herald, reporting on the suicide of Amanda Robinson, a black woman living near the Dallas and Wichita railroad track, exclaimed that “Dallas ought to take the palm as the town for morphine suicides. Notwithstanding the numerous cases which have occurred, another one was discovered yesterday,”

One of the most dramatic drug suicides occurred on June 15, 1877. A man named Garner had been paid to kill the ex-sheriff of Rockwall County. Garner was tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged. In an act of mercy, the authorities allowed him to spend his last night on earth with his wife. On execution day, the two were found dead in his cell. The devoted wife had smuggled in enough morphine to kill them both. The couple left behind four children, the eldest eight, the youngest but a “babe.” Mrs. Garner, in a suicide note, confessed she could not live without her husband. The Daily Herald acidly commented that “the devotion of the wife is touching, and we wished it had been attached to a more worthy object than her guilty husband.”



By the 1890s drug use had become a social issue in Dallas. Reformers began to see its debilitating effects on individuals and families, and on the morals of an entire society. Doctors who had once been infatuated with the uses of morphine, opium, and cocaine became cautious. As use became abuse, more and more Dallas citizens were becoming alarmed. By 1892, at least one Dallas doctor. William B. Brooks, editor of The Texas Courier-Record of Medicine and a practicing physician, called for some legislation to restrict the indiscriminate sale of opiates. He was not alone in calling for reform in Texas.

The druggists who sold opiates came under fire. Doctors, unhappy because druggists made money from them and their patients when dispensing prescription drugs, criticized the pharmacists for their indiscriminate sale of drugs in Dallas. By May 1894, pressure had built and a meeting of Dallas’s pharmacists was called.

In a “spicy meeting” on May 29,1894, the Dallas Pharmaceutical Association gathered to consider sending a petition to the Dallas City Council asking for an ordinance to restrict the free sale of drugs. Tempers flared, and positions were divided. One group wanted state regulation; another did not. And the doctors challenged the druggists’ motives for wanting any regulation at all.

L. Myers Connor, former president of the Texas State Pharmaceutical Association, a lawyer, and owner of the Belt Line Drug Store, was “inalterably opposed to any action on the part of this [Dallas] association that would place any impediment . . .in the path of the retail druggists of this city,” Local legislation would only hurt local business, he claimed, If Dallas were to restrict the sale of drugs, it would only send the people to Fort Worth to buy them. Connor argued that such legislation was puritanical and resembles the crusade against the liquor and social evil question. If you undertake to regulate the morals of this city.” he said, “you will have a gigantic task. Cocaine will not poison my brains, but there are people who will have it like they will have whiskey. The point is,” Connor continued, “that it will cut off revenue for the druggists. I have sold twenty-five ounces of morphine in a month. I don’t know that it killed anybody, and if it did,” the druggist emphasized, “I do not know that there would be any loss.”

Other than argue the issue, little was done by the Dallas druggists. Connor’s resolution against drug legislation won the day. To satisfy those who had “full sympathy” for the “poor unfortunates who use those horrible poisons,” the group unanimously resolved “that we do not endorse the indiscriminate use of cocaine or morphine.”

Dr. M. Arista Bingley, who favored regulation, summed up the meeting this way. The druggists had been inconsistent, he said; they condemned the use of harsh drugs, but not their sale. Bingley believed that eventually they would see the error of their ways and embrace drug control. “The public should understand that the indiscriminate use of these poisons is working incalculable harm to the citizens of Dallas.”Bingley said. “We can have little hope for the confirmed victims of these deadly poisons; there is no relief for the great majority of them but the gasping grave. And it is for the younger and growing generation,” he pleaded, “that I would invoke the strong arm of the law.”

Public sentiment was turning against drugs, but it was not until August 1901 that David R. Long, councilman for the Eighth Ward in Dallas, had drug legislation drafted by assistant city attorney James J. Collins and introduced in council. The Daily Herald claimed it caused much commotion in the city. “Persons in all walks of life have spoken on it and opinions both pro and con have been expressed.” the paper said, Though optimistic about its passage, the newspaper warned that “the city will find itself in a controversy with certain druggists who now sell quite a quantity of opium, morphine, and cocaine.1”

The ordinance was introduced on August 26, 1901, without fanfare. In fact, the day it was introduced, the Morning News described the council meeting as one attended . by “dog day dullness.”

“An Ordinance regulating the sale or giving away of Cocaine. Morphine, and Opium” was simple and straightforward. It made it unlawful for “any druggist, apothecary, physician, or other persons to sell or give away any cocaine, morphine, or opium in any quantity whatever except upon a prescription of a regularly licensed physician. . .” The prescription could be used only once. Doctors and dentists could use the drugs to conduct their business. A fine for a violation was not in excess of $200. The drug ordinance was signed by Mayor Ben E. Cabell on October 23, 1901.

Dallas may have been the first city in Texas to address the drug epidemic through legislation. The Paris Advocate claimed that its city also needed an ordinance, and the Houston Post said “that is the kind of an ordinance every town needs along with its enforcement, of course.”

Pressure continued to mount in Texas against the free use of drugs. In mid-March, 1903, Representative R.C. Duff from Beaumont introduced House Bill 107. known as the “anti-cocaine bill.” Similar to Dallas’s ordinance, it forbade the selling or dispensing of drugs without a licensed physician’s prescription. Going further, the bill stated that all prescriptions had to be kept on file, and made it an offense for doctors to write a prescription for anyone “known to be an habitual user” except “in cases of actual sickness.” Supported by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which denounced drugs as fervently as it did alcohol, the bill passed with little or no opposition on April 6. 1903, fifteen days after being introduced. Texas”s first war on drugs was over.