Salazar Viniegra Morphine Dispensary Experiment

On March 9, 1940, Mexico opened its first state-run morphine dispensary at 33 Calle Sevilla in Mexico City — the spearhead of a national program, developed under Dr. Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra, to create a state monopoly supplying morphine at nominal prices to registered users, thereby destroying the illicit traffickers’ market and keeping addicts in contact with physicians.

The experiment ran for four months. On July 3, 1940 the Cárdenas government published the “indefinite” suspension of the Drug Addiction Regulation; ten days later the Sevilla Street dispensary was closed. The suspension followed sustained pressure from US Federal Bureau of Narcotics commissioner Harry Anslinger and the State Department, who had lobbied since 1938 for Salazar’s removal and threatened narcotic-supply embargoes. Going forward, Mexican drug agencies operated in fear of US reaction; prohibitionism hardened.

The episode is historiographically crucial because it demonstrates that a genuinely different trajectory for Mexican drug policy — public health rather than punitive — was available, was tried, and was deliberately foreclosed by US pressure.