In addition, the government gave munitions workers and those laboring in other defense-related factories methamphetamine tablets to increase their productivity. The tablets were distributed to pilots for long flights and to soldiers for combat, under the trade name Philopon (also known as Hiropin). The Japanese imperial government sought to give its fighting capacity a pharmacological edge, and so it contracted out methamphetamine production to domestic pharmaceutical companies for use during the war effort.

German, British, American, and Japanese forces ingested large amounts of amphetamines during World War II, but nowhere did the drug’s use have a more long-lasting societal impact than in Japan. And thus, the stage was set for large-scale pill pushing to reach the battlefield when the next war broke out.

“Bennies” were widely promoted as a wonder drug for all sorts of ailments, from fighting depression to obesity, with little apparent concern for or awareness of their addictive potential, and of the risks of longer-term physical and psychological damage. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.Īlles sold it to the Philadelphia pharmaceutical company Smith, Kline & French, which brought it to market as the Benzedrine inhaler in 1932 (an over-the-counter product to treat asthma and congestion), before introducing it in tablet form a few years later. The Benzedrine inhaler hit the market in 1932 as an over-the-counter remedy for asthma and congestion. But it was not until amphetamine was synthesized in 1927 at a UCLA laboratory by the young British chemist Gordon Alles that a formula was available for commercial medical use. Ogata, developed a synthetic substitute for ephedrine. In 1887, Japanese chemist Nagayoshi Nagai successfully extracted the plant’s active ingredient, ephedrine, which closely resembled adrenaline and in 1919, another Japanese scientist, A. This relatively scarce desert shrub has been used as an herbal remedy in China for more than 5,000 years and is often ingested to treat common ailments such as coughs and colds and to promote concentration and alertness-including historically by night guards patrolling the Great Wall of China. While produced entirely in the laboratory, amphetamines owe their existence to the search for an artificial substitute for the ma huang plant, better known in the West as ephedra. Methamphetamine is a particularly potent and addictive form of the drug, best known today as “crystal meth.” All amphetamines are now banned or tightly regulated around the globe.

Whether in the air or in the trenches, the war enabled the rapid proliferation of a synthetic stimulant that was particularly well-suited to sleepless work and intense concentration.Īmphetamines-often called “pep pills,” “go pills,” “uppers,” or “speed”-are a group of synthetic drugs that stimulate the central nervous system, reducing fatigue and appetite and increasing wakefulness and imparting a sense of well-being. “World War II probably gave the greatest impetus to date to legal, medically-authorized as well as illicit black market abuse of these pills on a worldwide scale,” wrote Lester Grinspoon and Peter Hedblom in their classic 1975 study, The Speed Culture. With the possible exception of opium during the Opium Wars, no drug has ever received a bigger stimulus from armed conflict. In fact, the introduction of what is now Japan’s most popular illegal drug began as a result of the state promoting its use during the war. Amphetamines, the quintessential drug of the modern industrial age, arrived relatively late in the history of mind-altering substances-commercialized just in time for mass consumption during World War II.

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