Posted 13 years ago
Bluangel88
(1 item)
I am posting these 2 pictures of Special Tax Stamps to see if anyone out there can tell me about them. Also if they have any value.
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Wow, I didn't know that the dispensed Opium in the 1940s legally. Looks like legal drug dealers...
Me either I'd like to know more!!
This isn't an area I know anything about but I think that the revenue stamps were a result of the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Narcotics_Tax_Act
There was also a Marihuana Tax Act in 1937:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marihuana_Tax_Act_of_1937
According to Scott's Stamps:
"The Revenue Act of 1918 imposed a tax of 1 cent per ounce or fraction thereof on opium, coca leaves, and their derivatives. The tax was paid by affixing Narcotic stamps to the drug containers. The tax lasted from Feb. 25, 1919 through Apr. 30, 1971."
These appear to a different tax, but probably under the same act that levied a tax on the Doctors/ Pharmacists who sold the drugs ($1 per year in order to legally sell).
Scott
Thank you Scott! Very interesting! Now are they worth anything?
Yes.
The actual "Narcotic" stamps for bottles start at less than a dollar to several hundred.
I'd say this is somewhere in that range!
Probably not as valuable or rare as most would initially think, but valuable and desirable as a curiosity.
Scott
scott, with all due respect, perhaps there is a typo in "Scott's Stamps." It is always a possibility that I am misinterpreting what I have read. Again, I have no knowledge in any of these areas and know your knowledge, in many areas, is vast and very impressive.
According to the information I read, The Revenue Act of 1918 raised income tax rates. From the Internal Revenue Service:
"1918 - The Revenue Act of 1918 raised even greater sums for the World War I effort. It codified all existing tax laws and imposed a progressive income-tax rate structure of up to 77 percent."
http://www.irs.gov/irs/article/0,,id=101101,00.html
From the Schaffer Library of Drug Policy:
" In 1918, after three years of the Harrison Act and its devastating effects, the secretary of the treasury appointed a committee to look into the problem. The chairman of the committee was Congressman Homer T. Rainey; members included a professor of pharmacology from Harvard, a former deputy commissioner of internal revenue responsible for law enforcement, and Dr. A. G. Du Mez, Secretary of the United States Public Health Service. This was the first of a long line of such committees appointed through the years. Among its findings 10 were the following:
- Opium and other narcotic drugs (including cocaine, which Congress had erroneously labeled as a narcotic in 1914) were being used by about a million people. (This was almost certainly an overestimate; see Chapter 9.)
- The "underground" traffic in narcotic drugs was about equal to the legitimate medical traffic.
- The "dope peddlers" appeared to have established a national organization, smuggling the drugs in through seaports or across the Canadian or Mexican borders-especially the Canadian border.
- The wrongful use of narcotic drugs had increased since passage of the Harrison Act. Twenty cities, including New York and San Francisco, had reported such increases. (The increase no doubt resulted from the migration of addicts into cities where black markets flourished.)
To stem this apparently rising tide, the 1918 committee, like countless committees since, called for sterner law enforcement. It also recommended more state laws patterned after the Harrison Act. Congress responded by tightening up the Harrison Act."
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/cu8.html
Full text of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, 1914:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/history/e1910/harrisonact.htm
I think you have it right-- the 1914 Act taxed the producers and sellers with a tax.
The Revenue Act of 1918 went taxed the consumers.
Scott
Let me try that again:
The 1914 Act taxed the producers and sellers.
The Revenue Act of 1918 taxed the consumers.
Scott
These items are quite common and sell (often) for $10-15 each to stamp collecting specialists.