Lindesmith, Alfred

Alfred Lindesmith graduated from Carleton College in 1927 and received a masters in education from Columbia University in 1931. He received his doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1937, and taught at the University of Indiana from 1936 to 1976. Over this period, Lindesmith was the most persistent critic of U.S. drug laws, and was frequently targeted for criticism and harassment by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and its commissioner, Harry Anslinger. In contrast to the prevailing theories of the time, Lindesmith argued that drug addiction should be treated as a medical condition rather than through the criminal justice system, and that drug laws were ineffective in reducing illegal drug use.

Based on unstructured interviews with approximately 70 heroin addicts contacted with the assistance of prominent criminologist Edwin Sutherland and Broadway Jones, Lindesmith challenged existing theories of addiction that emphasized predisposing factors or genetic characteristics. Grounded in the symbolic interactionist tradition associated with Herbert Blumer at the University of Chicago, Lindesmith's theory, initially articulated in an article published in the American Journal of Sociology in 1938, emphasized the cognitive factors involved in [Page 472]the process of becoming addicted and distinguished between physical and psychological addiction. He argued that addicts derived no inherent pleasure from opiate consumption and that they continued to use drugs because they were concerned about the physical distress associated with withdrawal.

Lindesmith developed this theory further in his 1947 book Opiate Addiction. According to John Galliher and colleagues, the major themes of this book were (1) drug addicts and traffickers are found in all races and social classes, (2) high-level drug traffickers are predominantly white, (3) law enforcement efforts toward drugs typically focus on low-level dealers, (4) addiction is a sickness, (5) addictions to legal and illegal drugs are basically the same, (6) cocaine is not necessarily physically addictive, and (7) law enforcement control of drugs is impossible.

As David Keys notes, Lindesmith's sociological theory of addiction was not well received in the academic and medical communities. Lindesmith's critics focused on the fact that his sample of drug addicts was biased—almost all his subjects were male, white, and lower class with prior criminal records, and most were over 30 years old and had been addicts for long periods of time.

In addition to his academic work and service as president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems in 1959–60, Lindesmith wrote several articles in the popular press criticizing federal drug laws. As noted above, this activism attracted the attention of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, whose agents tapped his phone, and, it is believed, tried to set him up for arrest by planting drugs in his home or car. Although there is no evidence indicating that Lindesmith ever used illegal drugs, in 1939, Anslinger directed the Chicago district supervisor of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics to notify Indiana University that one of their professors was a drug addict, and attempted to have him fired.