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From the late 1800 through the early 1900's, reputable drug companies like Park, Davis and Company  manufactured drug kits containing heroin or cocaine and a hypadermitc needle and marketed these drug kits through the Sears catalog.  Anyone could buy  morophine, heroin or cocaine and self administer these drugs at home.  These kits were packaged attractively in an engraved tin carrying case.

Laudanum (opium in an alcohol base) was also a very popular elixer that was used to treat a variety of ills.  Laudanum was administered to childeren as freely as aspirne is used today.  Charles Dickens was known to conume laudanum for pain.  Edgar Allen Poe and Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of the President, were also regualr constumers.  Preperations were given such comforting names as  Dr. J. Collis Browne's Chlorodyne and Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup, recommended for teething children.  Unfortunately, opium overdoses were not uncommon among small children, resulting in many young deaths.

Newspapers and magazines of the time carried advertisments for these and other narcotic products, unchecked by any legal restrictions.  The drug companies producing these products promoted their use as the cure all for all types of physical and mental aliments ranging from alcohol withdrawal to cancer, depression, sluggishness, coughs, colds, tuberculosis, aches, female trouble, headaches and even old age.  Most of the elixirs pitched by traveling "snake oil salesman" in their medicine shows contained one or more of these narcotics in their mix.

There were no regulations or government oversight of these narcotics consequently drug addiction was running rampant and out of control in America until the 1920's.  The public outcry to the government to stop this plague was hear and congress enacted legislation that brought the distribution of these drug under control.  Unfortunately by the time the laws were in place by 1925 their were over 200,000 heroin addicts alone in the United States.  If you add opium, cocaine and morophine to the list there were nearly as many addicted people in this country in 1925 then there are today.

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