Pipes made from animal bones dating back to 2000BC provide early evidence that people sought ways to smoke or inhale substances. Various herbal texts from 1500AD onward described plant-based substances with narcotic or intoxicating effects. Attitudes continued to change over time, as poets and scientists in the 18th century experimented with various legal and illegal drugs, while temperance societies in the early 20th century pushed for restrictions on substances deemed dangerous or linked to social problems. International drug conventions in the 1960s further shaped global policies around controlled substances.

1. How attitudes have changed

2. 2000BC
Pipes made from the bones of Puma’s…

People must have been keen to smoke something!

3. 
Theophrastus…a friend of Sophocles wrote a
very large book called Inquiry into Plants.
Categories included…

4. 
Bay of Biscay 1670 – An English sea captain
and his crew get wasted after watching the
locals having such a good time on a strange
substance called…
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5. 

1500AD onwards… more printed accounts of
plant based substances (herbals) and their
effects – some being called ‘narcotic’.
Stories of witchcraft included tales of strange
ointments…

6. Thomas Beddoes (13 April 1760 – 24 December 1808)
Convinced that chemistry was the way forward
for medicine. So he conducted an experiment…


7. 
Beddoes recognised that chemicals could
give humanity control over pleasure and pain

8. 
Poets in the mid to late 18th century were
developing a new language of expression…and
did a fair bit of experimenting with substances at
the same time!

9. 
Loads of intriguing drugs were available in
your local pharmacy

10. 

1909 The American Medical Association
published a list of dangerous substances.
Before this Temperance societies emerged on
both sides of the Atlantic as a result of social
breakdown seen to be caused in large part by…

11. 
1961 the United Nations Single Convention on
Narcotic Drugs was launched