Controlled Substances

Day 118: In the early 1900s, my maternal grandfather came out west to serve as the first pharmacist in a small pioneer community in northeastern Washington where he remained for several years before taking a schoolteacher to wife and relocating to a more established location. There, he set up a Rexall Drug Store where he spent the remainder of his working years. Even then, the sales of narcotics were controlled by the Federal Government, but such things as opium and cocaine were commonly prescribed by physicians, and pharmacists had only to obtain a license from the Internal Revenue Service to be allowed to sell them.