How did pharmaceutical companies react to the drug regulations of 1970?
They tried to put those on Schedule II. The lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry had succeeded in excluding six thousand different amphetamine products from Schedule II, and they got put on Schedule III. Only I think it was six fairly low-selling methamphetamine, injectable methamphetamine, was placed on Schedule II. So only injectable methamphetamine was initially placed on Schedule II because of the drug industry lobby. At least that argument has been made. But the 1970 legislation gave the Bureau of Narcotics, the forerunner of the DA, and the FDA the right to reschedule drugs and they did that. The next year in 1971 they rescheduled amphetamine, methamphetamine and methylphenidate to Schedule II and said that you can produce as much as can be legitimately justified medically. There is no preventing doctors from prescribing it. It is just that when they prescribe it, special records are kept, or whatever. When they announced the rescheduling of amphetamines, but before the rule came into affect, amphetamine consumption by prescription jumped sixty percent. So obviously, there are a lot of medical-amphetamine users who felt that their medical amphetamine use was not going to be justifiable once the scheduling came into affect. By 1972 medical use of amphetamine had dropped to one tenth.
