In 1914 Congress, pressured by the government's own representatives and the increasingly obvious need for greater measures against drug use, passed the Harrison Narcotic Act, which authorized the federal government, under its revenue collection authority, to record narcotics transactions and to restrict their use to clearly medical purposes. The act carried penalties for the violation of its various provisions and acknowledged the responsibility of the federal government to address an aspect of public health policy that was entirely different from and more pressing than those it had previously addressed.

The American public had increasingly come to view the open trade, distribution, and use of narcotics as threatening the nation's moral health and public safety. Earlier concerns had focused almost entirely on the proper use of narcotics for therapeutic or medicinal purposes and the fear that certain consumable goods contained narcotic additives...