Many people in the United States were understandably terrified. The war was going to end sooner or later, and at that point the streets of America were going to swell with an unprecedented number of junkies. They believed the pharmaceutical theory of addiction—so this was the only outcome that made any sense. Their brains and bodies were being hijacked by the drug, so, as Senator Harold Hughes of Iowa warned: “Within a matter of months in our large cities, the Capone era of the ’20s may look like a Sunday school picnic by comparison.”
