In 1943, SKF filed suit for patent infringement against one of these manufacturers, a New Jersey concern named Clark & Clark, producer of both 10-mg Benzedrine look-alike tablets and colorful diet pills containing metabolism-boosting thyroid hormone and 5 mg of amphetamine. Off-brand pills manufactured by smaller companies dominated this market. 19Īlong with growth in amphetamine use for psychiatric indications, the war years also saw an explosion of amphetamine consumption for weight loss, although this medical usage was not yet approved by AMA and not advertised by SKF. For instance, in a 1945 army survey of fighter pilots, of the 15% (13 of 85) who regularly used amphetamine in combat, the majority “made their own rules” and took Benzedrine whenever they “felt like it” rather than as directed. 18 However, these were not well observed. 17 Of course, not all amphetamine supplied by the military was ingested by servicemen, nor did users ingest it ad libitum there were rules limiting the drug’s use. 16 The British military also supplied Benzedrine tablets during the war, and the German and Japanese military supplied methamphetamine. The US military also supplied Benzedrine to servicemen during the war, mainly as 5-mg tablets, for routine use in aviation, as a general medical supply, and in emergency kits. 14 The war years did nothing to diminish the drug’s growth in popularity by 1945, SKF’s civilian amphetamine tablet sales had quadrupled to $2 million, including $650000 in sales of the firm’s new “Dexedrine” dextroamphetamine tablets. 13 Thus, by World War II, amphetamine in tablet form was finding commercial success and gaining credibility as a prescription psychiatric medication (the first “antidepressant”), despite sporadic reports of misuse. 12įueled by advertising and marketing urging general practitioners to prescribe the drug for depression, and at the same time promoting Myerson’s rationale for that use, annual sales of Benzedrine tablets (mainly 10 mg) grew steadily to about $500000 in 1941, over 4% of SKF’s total sales. Because Meyerson understood minor depression as anhedonia caused by suppression of natural drives to action, amphetamine represented an ideal depression therapy to him. SKF-funded Harvard psychiatrist Abraham Myerson played a particularly influential role, theorizing that amphetamine adjusted hormonal balance in the central nervous system by creating or amplifying adrenergic stimulation so as to promote activity and extra-version. 11) Amphetamine therapy for minor (“neurotic”) depression quickly found acceptance among psychiatrists and neurologists in the late 1930s. 10 (The voluntary AMA “Seal of Approval” system, in which mainly academic medical experts evaluated data submitted by manufacturers before allowing advertising in cooperating journals, was the only drug efficacy regulation at the time. 9 In 1937, the American Medical Association (AMA) approved advertising of SKF’s “Benzedrine Sulfate” racemic amphetamine tablets for narcolepsy, postencephalitic Parkinsonism, and minor depression. 8Īt the end of 1934, Alles transferred his patent on amphetamine salts to SKF, and the firm sponsored the drug’s further clinical development. 6 Although no legal category of prescription-only drugs existed in the 1930s, 7 the Benzedrine Inhaler was advertised for over-the-counter sale upon its introduction in 19 and for the next 15 years. For congestion, one was meant to inhale amphetamine vapor every hour as needed. SKF marketed it as the Benzedrine Inhaler, a capped tube containing 325 mg of oily amphetamine base and little else. 5 Meanwhile, possibly inspired by Alles’s work, the Philadelphia firm Smith, Kline and French (SKF) investigated the base form of amphetamine and patented it in 1933. Alles published his first clinical results with the compound in 1929, 4 began amphetamine’s clinical development in collaboration with pharmacologists and clinicians at the University of California, and received a patent on its orally active salts in 1932. Searching for a decongestant and bronchodilator to substitute for ephedrine, in 1929, biochemist Gordon Alles discovered the physiological activity of beta-phenyl-isopropylamine (soon to be known as amphetamine). The original amphetamine epidemic was generated by the pharmaceutical industry and medical profession as a byproduct of routine commercial drug development and competition.
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