Narcotics Control Act

The Narcotics Control Act (NCA) of 1956 was proposed in order to help eradicate the use and trafficking of narcotic drugs and marijuana. At the time of its proposal, the government estimated that 60,000, or 1 in 3,000, people were addicted to drugs and that approximately $219 million was spent annually for drugs obtained through illegal sources.

Prior to the passing of the Narcotics Control Act, the Boggs Act, proposed by Senator Hale Boggs (D-LA) and signed and enacted in 1951, provided minimum mandatory sentences for firsttime drug violators and brought together drug legislation of narcotics and marijuana for the first time. After the Boggs Act was passed, the government reported significant declines in drug arrests in the United States. Prior to the enactment of the Boggs Act, the average sentence for a narcotics violation was 18 months, but after the Boggs Act was passed, the average narcotics violator spent approximately 43 months in jail. The Narcotics Control Act was expected to achieve subsequent success in the eradication of illicit drug traffic by further increasing penalties for narcotic and marijuana law violations.

Specifically, the Narcotics Control Act imposed the following penalties: 2 to 10 years for a first offense of narcotic or marijuana possession; 5 to 20 years for a second offense; 10 to 40 years for a third offense; up to a $20,000 fine for any drug law violation; 5 to 25 years on a first time conviction for sales or smuggling; 10 to 40 years thereafter with a separate penalty of 10 to 40 years for sale by an adult to a minor, and 10 years to life imprisonment for heroin sale to a minor, with possible death sentence at the jury's discretion.

The Narcotics Control Act also eliminated the opportunity for probation, suspension of sentence, and parole for firsttime offenders. Although the Boggs Act had imposed heavier mandatory penalties for repeat offenders, it also assigned lighter punishments to firsttime offenders. However, proponents of the NCA believed that in order to prevent people with previous drug violations from recruiting people without such violations for trafficking, it would be necessary to impose stricter penalties on firsttime offenders. It was thought that stricter penalties for firsttime offenders would dissuade citizens from becoming involved in drug trafficking.

The Narcotics Control Act also, for the first time, included penalties for the use of communication facilities, including all public and private instruments used in the transmission of writings, signs, pictures, signals, and sounds by mail, telephone, wire, or radio in the violation of narcotic and marijuana laws under the NCA. Violators are subject to imprisonment for a period of two to five years and a fine of up to $5,000.

Several measures in the act were designed to permit police and other law enforcement agents to operate more effectively. The NCA authorized more effective searches and seizures in narcotics cases. It also authorized the commissioner, deputy commissioner, assistant to the commissioner, and agents of the Bureau of Narcotics of the Department of the Treasury and officers of the U.S. Customs Service to carry firearms to execute and serve warrants and to make arrests without warrants for narcotic violations in which the violation is committed in the presence of the person making the arrest or in which there are grounds to believe that the person being arrested has committed, or is committing, such a violation. This subsection of the NCA also relaxed restrictions governing the issuance of search warrants in cases in which violations of the narcotic and marijuana laws are involved, allowing for the issuance of search warrants even if there was no direct evidence that the narcotic drugs sought were in the premises to be searched.

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