The Drug Economics of World War I

Is Big Pharma part of the military industrial complex? Plus: trading drugs with the enemy...

Today’s post explores the economics and geopolitics of the pharmaceutical industry during World War I. Major themes include:

• the issue of German patents

• global opioid politics

• the wartime cocaine boom

• the US military’s drug stockpile provided by Dow, Eli Lilly, + Parke-Davis

• a bill from 1917 to nationalize drug production in the US

Much of my work has focused on World War II (1939-1945) and its various outgrowths. But it is important to understand that the themes I’ve discussed go back considerably further than World War II. Today I’d like to take a look at the political and economic aspects of the pharmaceutical industry during its antecedent, World War I (1914-1918).

The war broke out in Europe in 1914. That same year, the Harrison Narcotics Act was passed in the US (who had not yet joined the war), permanently affecting the political status of not only opioids but also cocaine—both of which were still then pharmaceutical products—for the worse. The US entered the war a few years later in 1917.

A copy of an industry trade magazine called Drug & Chemical Markets from that year provides an excellent window into the pharma politics of WW1. What does it reveal? Let’s see.

The issue of German patents