BBC News Magazine looks at When heroin was legal:
“The Case for Heroin” — so ran the headline for the Times leader column of Tuesday, 14 June 1955.In the course of a short, lucid article the newspaper which had long been the mouthpiece of Establishment Britain set out its argument in favour of heroin.
In the context of all that has happened since, from heroin’s link with violent crime to the transfer of HIV among users who share needles, as well as countless other social ills, such an article today would seem unthinkable in all but the most libertarian of newspapers.
But in mid-1950s Britain, the spectre of drug addiction was a long way from the top of the public’s concerns.
In fact, as the Times editorial states, in 1955 there were only 317 addicts to “manufactured” drugs in the whole of Britain, of which just 15% were dependent on heroin. That’s a national total of 47.5 heroin addicts. History, regrettably, does not record the precise circumstances of the half-addict.
By contrast, in the US, where heroin was outlawed in 1925, it was said to be a “major social problem”.