Webb v. United States

Summary

The Harrison Narcotic Act, signed on 17 December 1914, was written as a revenue law. Anyone who imported, manufactured, sold or dispensed opium, coca leaves or their derivatives had to register with the collector of internal revenue and pay a special tax, and sales had to be made on official order forms. The act exempted drugs dispensed or prescribed by a registered physician to a patient in the course of his professional practice. Within a few years federal prosecutors began to test how far that exemption reached. Dr. Webb, a Memphis physician, and Goldbaum, a Memphis druggist, were convicted in federal court of conspiring to violate the act. As the facts were certified by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Webb wrote morphine orders for habitual users at fifty cents apiece, not to cure the habit but in whatever quantities the users wanted to continue it, and Goldbaum, having stocked up through official order blanks, filled them. In eleven months Goldbaum bought thirty times the morphine of an ordinary druggist and filled over four thousand of Webb's orders. Unsure of the law, the appeals court certified three questions to the Supreme Court: whether section 2 barred a druggist from selling to a person who had neither an order form nor a valid prescription; whether that prohibition was constitutional; and whether an order written for an addicted person simply to keep up his customary use counted as a prescription. The defense position was that the statute was a tax law whose formal requirements the two men had met, that Congress could not use its taxing power to dictate medical practice, and that a registered physician's order was a prescription on its face. The government answered that the exemption protected genuine medical treatment and that a system of fifty-cent orders for maintenance was a scheme to evade the act's controls. The Court decided the case on 3 March 1919, the same day it upheld the act in United States v. Doremus. Justice Day's short opinion relied on Doremus to answer the first question yes and the second no. On the third he wrote that to call such an order a physician's prescription would be so plain a perversion of meaning that no discussion was required. Chief Justice White, joined by Justices McKenna, Van Devanter and McReynolds, dissented for the reasons he had given in Doremus, so the vote was five to four. The library text is the opinion as reported, with the appeals court's certified statement of facts; the wording of the three questions themselves does not appear in it, and notes are dropped. Federal agents and prosecutors read Webb as forbidding maintenance prescribing, and thousands of physicians and druggists were charged in the following years. In Linder v. United States (1925) the Court narrowed that reading, holding that a doctor's good-faith provision of small doses to an addicted patient was beyond the Harrison Act's reach.

Plot or Argument

• A case sent up on certificate

  Day explains that the case arrives not by appeal but by a certificate from the Sixth Circuit, which asks the Court to settle points of law before it rules, and that it turns on the Harrison Act already construed in Doremus.

• The facts in the appeals court's words

  The certificate, quoted at length, describes Webb's practice of writing morphine orders at fifty cents each, Goldbaum's enormous purchases on official order blanks, and the visitor Rabens, who received ten orders at once under fictitious names.

• Questions one and two: Doremus controls

  Because Doremus had just held that section 2 forbids sales outside the order-form and prescription channels and that the act is a valid exercise of the taxing power, the first question is answered yes and the second no.

• Question three: not a prescription

  Day dismisses the claim that a maintenance order is a prescription in a single sentence, calling it a perversion of meaning that needs no discussion.

• The dissent by reference

  The Chief Justice and three colleagues note their dissent for the reasons they had given in Doremus, where they argued the act was a regulation of local conduct disguised as a tax.

Characters

• Dr. Webb, physician and defendant

  Memphis doctor, registered under the act, who wrote thousands of morphine orders for habitual users.

• Goldbaum, druggist and co-defendant

  Memphis retail druggist who used official order forms to buy morphine and filled Webb's orders.

• Justice William R. Day, author of the opinion of the Court

  Wrote the brief opinion answering the three certified questions against the defendants.

• Chief Justice Edward Douglass White, dissenter

  Dissented for the reasons he had given in Doremus on the limits of the taxing power.

• Rabens, figure in the certified facts

  An out-of-state user who received ten orders at one time, each made out in a different invented name.

Lessons

• A tax law that governs medicine

  The Harrison Act never said that addiction could not be treated. It set up a registration and tax system with an exemption for prescriptions, and the meaning of the word prescription became the real battleground. Webb shows how a revenue statute, read by courts and enforcement officers, came to shape what doctors could do.

  • Why did Congress write a narcotics law in the form of a tax measure in 1914?
  • How does the meaning of a single exemption decide the outcome of the case?
  • Should Congress be able to reach a matter indirectly that it could not regulate directly?

• What makes an order a prescription?

  Day treats the answer as obvious: an order written at a set price, without examining the patient, in whatever amount the buyer wants, is not a prescription in any ordinary sense. The certified facts emphasize volume, payment and invented names. The case invites students to ask what separates a professional judgment from a sale.

  • Which facts in the certificate seem to weigh most heavily with the Court?
  • What would a physician have had to do differently for the order to count as a prescription?
  • Can a word have a meaning so plain that a court need not explain it?

• Deciding by reference to another case

  The opinion is short because its real reasoning sits in Doremus, decided the same day. Both the majority and the dissent simply point back to that case. Reading Webb teaches students that judicial opinions often depend on a web of companion decisions.

  • What did the Court decide in United States v. Doremus, according to Day?
  • Why might the four dissenters have chosen not to write a separate opinion in Webb?

• Maintenance and cure

  The certified facts contrast orders written to cure the habit with orders written to continue it. That distinction between treatment aimed at ending use and supply aimed at maintaining it would be argued over by physicians, lawmakers and judges for decades afterward.

  • How does the certificate describe the difference between a good-faith attempt to cure and Webb's practice?
  • Who should decide what counts as legitimate treatment: doctors, legislators or courts?
  • How did Linder v. United States later limit the reach of Webb?

Context

In the late nineteenth century morphine and other opiates were sold widely in patent medicines and prescribed freely, and the number of habitual users in the United States grew. International conferences at Shanghai (1909) and The Hague (1912) committed the United States to controlling the trade, and Congress, doubting its power to regulate medical practice directly, chose the taxing power as the vehicle for the Harrison Act.

Composition

The Sixth Circuit, hearing the appeal of Webb and Goldbaum from the Western District of Tennessee, certified its questions to the Supreme Court rather than deciding them itself. The Court received Webb alongside United States v. Doremus, which challenged the act's constitutionality directly, and announced both decisions on 3 March 1919 by identical five-to-four divisions.

Reception

The Treasury Department's Narcotic Division treated Webb, together with Jin Fuey Moy v. United States (1920) and United States v. Behrman (1922), as authority to prosecute physicians who supplied maintenance doses, and municipal narcotic clinics opened around 1919 were closed within a few years. Linder v. United States (1925) cautioned that the act did not regulate medical practice as such, but historians such as David Musto describe the Webb-era decisions as setting the course of American narcotics policy for half a century.

Comparisons

• linder-v-united-states

  Six years later a unanimous Court held that a Spokane doctor's few tablets for an addicted patient were not shown to be outside professional practice, narrowing the maintenance rule read into Webb.

• robinson-v-california

  In 1962 the Court addressed addiction from the other side, ruling that a state could not make the condition of being addicted a crime in itself.

• mcculloch-v-maryland

  Marshall's broad reading of the means Congress may choose to carry out its powers underlies the majority's willingness to sustain a regulatory scheme built on the taxing power.

• hippocratic-writings

  The Hippocratic oath's promise to give no deadly drug when asked frames the old question behind Webb of whether a physician may supply whatever a patient requests.

• gonzales-v-raich

  A later dispute over federal drug control and medical use, decided under the Commerce Clause rather than the taxing power.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The opening explanation that the case comes up on a certificate from the Sixth Circuit.
• The appeals court's figures on Goldbaum's purchases and the number of orders filled.
• The episode of the visitor who received ten orders under invented names.
• How the Court answers the first two questions by pointing to No. 367, United States v. Doremus.
• The single sentence that disposes of the third question.

Key terms and names

Harrison Narcotic Act

The 1914 federal statute requiring registration and a special tax for those dealing in opium and coca products, with an exemption for physicians' prescriptions.

Certificate

A procedure by which a federal appeals court sends specific questions of law to the Supreme Court for answers before deciding the case.

Order form

The official blank, issued by the revenue collector, on which registered dealers had to order narcotic drugs under section 2 of the act.

Conspiracy

An agreement between two or more persons to commit an offense against the United States, punishable under section 37 of the Penal Code.

Maintenance

Supplying an addicted person with enough of a drug to continue regular use rather than to end it.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What did Webb and Goldbaum each do, according to the certified facts?
2. Comprehension How does the Court answer each of the three certified questions?
3. Comprehension Which justices dissented, and where does the text say their reasons can be found?
4. Interpretation Why does Day think the third question needs no discussion, and do the certified facts support that confidence?
5. Interpretation What does the phrase good faith attempt to cure suggest about how the appeals court understood legitimate medical practice?
6. Big Question When a patient asks for a drug that relieves suffering but sustains a habit, what does a physician owe that patient?

Faith Connections

• 1 Corinthians 6:12 (Scripture)

  Paul writes that all things are lawful unto him but that he will not be brought under the power of any, a verse often read in connection with habits that master the will.

• Proverbs 31:6-7 (Scripture)

  The counsel to give strong drink to one who is ready to perish raises the ancient question of when relief from suffering is mercy.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Because Doremus upheld the Harrison Act and read section 2 to confine sales to order forms and prescriptions, the only remaining issue was whether Webb's orders were prescriptions; the Court reasons that an order written to sustain a habit, for a fee and in the quantity desired, falls outside any honest meaning of the word.

Rhetorical device: argument from plain meaning. Day declines to define prescription at all, asserting that calling Webb's orders by that name would be so plain a perversion of meaning that no discussion is required (quote 0).

Debate: Resolved: that a physician's written order for a drug should be judged a prescription by the physician's own professional judgment rather than by a court.

Memory Work

to call such an order for the use of morphine a physician's prescription would be so plain a perversion of meaning that no discussion of the subject is required

It was the intent of Webb and Goldbaum that morphine should thus be furnished to the habitual users thereof by Goldbaum and without any physician's prescription issued in the course of a good faith attempt to cure the morphine habit.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Explain how the Court in Webb turned a tax statute into a rule about medical practice, and identify which facts in the certificate made that result seem obvious to the majority.

Comparison with Linder v. United States: Compare the facts of Webb with those of Linder, and explain why a unanimous Court in 1925 reached a different result for a physician who also supplied morphine to an addicted person.

Medical Lens

Webb is a landmark in the history of American addiction medicine and narcotics law. The certified facts distinguish orders meant to cure the morphine habit from orders meant to continue it, and the Court's refusal to treat maintenance orders as prescriptions was read by federal enforcement as a ban on maintenance prescribing, shaping physicians' practice with opiate-dependent patients until later decades revisited the question.

• Certificate of the Circuit Court of Appeals, sentence beginning: It was Webb's regular cus tom and practice to prescribe morphine for habitual users

  The appeals court's description of Webb's practice, contrasting orders intended to cure or break the habit with orders written for continuing use; the stored text splits the word custom.

  Addiction Opium Laudanum
• Opinion of the Court, answer to question three: to call such an order for the use of morphine a physician's prescription

  Justice Day's one-sentence holding that a maintenance order is not a prescription, the line later used to restrict physicians treating opiate dependence.

  Addiction Opium Laudanum

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Hold a moot court on the third certified question: one team argues for Webb that any registered physician's written order is a prescription, the other for the United States that the exemption covers only genuine treatment.

• Essay

  Draft the brief the Sixth Circuit might have expected from the government, using only the facts stated in the certificate.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation in 1919 between a Memphis physician who believes in gradual withdrawal and a federal revenue agent explaining what the new decision means for his practice.

• Essay

  Write the separate dissent Chief Justice White might have filed in Webb, explaining in his own reasoning why a tax law should not decide what counts as a prescription.

Further Reading

• The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control, David F. Musto

  Standard history of the Harrison Act and the court decisions that shaped its enforcement.

• Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America, David T. Courtwright

  Traces who used opiates before and after 1914 and how the law changed the population of users.

• Creating the American Junkie: Addiction Research in the Classic Era of Narcotic Control, Caroline Jean Acker

  Examines how researchers and physicians understood addiction in the decades after the Harrison Act.