Eisenhower Administration, Dwight

Dwight D. Eisenhower was born in October 1890 and died in March 1969. Eisenhower served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961 and was followed by John F. Kennedy in January 1961. During the 1950s, overall rates of illegal drug use remained relatively low.

However, amphetamine, barbiturate, and heroin use began to increase, and the public grew increasingly concerned. Armed with this heightened concern and an increasingly anti-drug public sentiment, the federal government renewed its push toward eradicating drugs from American society. To reduce drug use, the government adopted a strategy of deterrence, based on the idea that increasingly harsh penalties would stop illegal drug activity. At the same time, the position of the World Health Organization was that addicts should be committed to psychiatric hospitals.

The tone of strict anti-drug laws that existed during Eisenhower's administration was established prior to him taking office when the Boggs Act was passed in 1951. Congress believed the punishment for drug trafficking was too lenient and increased penalties to four times what they were, while also establishing mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes. It was commonly believed that marijuana was a gateway drug to inevitable addiction to heroin or cocaine. As a result, similar legislation being passed at the state level increasingly included provisions that made marijuana punishable under the statutes. Five years later the 1956 Narcotic Control Act increased penalties for drug law violations to eight times those established by the Boggs Act.

In contrast to the deterrence approach adopted by the Eisenhower administration, international opinion was adopting a more therapeutic approach [Page 278]toward drug use and abuse. This approach became apparent when the United Nations (UN) passed the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961. According to the policy, drug users and alcoholics who committed a crime, as well as noncriminal drug abusers, should be admitted to a care facility such as a nursing home. In stark contrast to the increasing criminalization of drugs by the United States, the UN defined addiction as a health issue.