Developing A Strategy to Combat Drug Abuse in Philadelphia, 1960-1973

Abstract

How did Philadelphia develop its first drug control strategy between 1960 and 1973? This study argues that Philadelphia's drug control strategy was part of an array of collaborative responses to the composite challenges of urban decay and was influenced by concerns for development, law enforcement, and fiscal survival. In the early 1960s, a focus on development and a combination of overt racism and the more subtle psychological process of racial othering made drug abuse a low-priority, policy issue in Philadelphia. At mid-decade, the growing institutionalization of law enforcement overshadowed additional attention drug abuse might have gained at that point. By 1970, “White involvement,” as Medical Examiner Joseph Spelman termed it, provided the impetus for a more active and institutionalized public response. As the nation progressed from a War on Poverty, to a War on Crime, and then to a War on Drugs, problems of sustainability and fiscal exhaustion became paramount. When Philadelphia’s Coordinating Office for Drug and Alcohol Abuse Programs produced its Comprehensive Plan for Drug and Alcohol Abuse Treatment and Prevention, 1973-1974, it codified a years-long, work-in-progress to address the complex adaptive system that substance abuse represented. Though the strategy did not rectify the larger environmental issues of race, stability, and sustainability with which Philadelphia contended, it did provide a balanced approach and a starting point for future implementation and refinement.