Harrison Narcotics Act: 38 Stat. 785 (Chapter 1, Public, No. 223), 17 December 1914
The 1914 Act requiring every person who produced, imported, dealt in, dispensed or gave away opium or coca leaves or their derivatives to register with the collector of internal revenue and pay a special tax. Only the Act's first page was read.
- Date
- 1914-12-17
- Kind
- case-file
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Docket
- 38 Stat. 785 (63d Cong., 3d Sess., ch. 1; Public No. 223)
- Rights
- An Act of Congress, a federal work in the public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The text was read from the Library of Congress's digitised United States Statutes at Large; the page image stored here is the Library of Congress scan of that page.
Page 785 of volume 38 of the Statutes at Large opens the public acts of the third session of the Sixty-third Congress. Chapter 1, dated December 17, 1914 and marked “[Public, No. 223.]”, is “An Act To provide for the registration of, with collectors of internal revenue, and to impose a special tax upon all persons who produce, import, manufacture, compound, deal in, dispense, sell, distribute, or give away opium or coca leaves, their salts, derivatives, or preparations, and for other purposes.”
From March 1, 1915, the Act provides, “every person who produces, imports, manufactures, compounds, deals in, dispenses, sells, distributes, or gives away opium or coca leaves or any compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, or preparation thereof, shall register with the collector of internal revenue of the district” (38 Stat. 785), and pay a special tax of $1 a year.
The name “Harrison Narcotics Act” is not printed on the page. The DEA Museum’s page on an opium order form says: “The act was the first comprehensive law in the U.S. to regulate whole classes of drugs.” Only page 785 was read; the order-form and prescription provisions on later pages are not described here.
Date: the Statutes at Large margin gives December 17, 1914. A National Archives search snippet seen during research gave December 27, 1914, but that page was not opened, and this archive uses the printed margin date.