How sedatives took hold in South Africa

JULIE PARLE

IN THE 1960s, pharmacists and government authorities were of the view that South Africa had experienced key aspects of a “pharmaceutical revolution” over the previous 40 years.

These were fulcrum decades in which new medicines became important. Most in demand were antibiotics. But synthetic hypnotics, sedatives and tranquillisers were also important.

In the 1930s the substances posed challenges to those who sought their control. Enmeshed in issues of chemical, commercial, professional and regulatory definition, timid controls were proposed in 1937. These failed to gain support, facilitating a permissive market for those who could afford the new drugs – white South Africans.

Markets remained limited. Nevertheless, many pharmacists, manufacturers, importers and consumers were quick to embrace the therapeutic aspirations and chemical technologies.

The 1950s was a decade of a greater variety and popularity. In 1954 a new classification, that of “Potentially Harmful Drugs”, was established. Pharmacies’ discretion over sales was limited. Dozens of products were available on prescription. This was often on the back of unsubstantiated claims that their chemical properties would take away anxiety. Others were attainable as over-the-counter products.

White South Africans consumed pharmaceuticals for a variety of ailments. The popularity of the new drugs might be explained in terms of the quest for a white, “modern” identity. As a historian puts it, in the prosperous decades of post-war South Africa and in the 1960s, theyfashioned their appearance, public architecture, and consumer and lifestyle choices to demonstrate their distinctness from the non-white majority and to advertise their modernity.

By the 1970s, white women and (generally) male medical practitioners become unwitting agents in a reciprocal relationship of need and aspiration. Some substances were ineffectual. Others gave relief to those who suffered from sleep deprivation, anxiety and other socially or psychologically induced torment. Some proved dangerous. Many also possessed damaging powers when taken in combination with other substances (such as alcohol) or if imbibed, ingested or injected, in excess or over extended periods.

In the 1960s, there were few black doctors outside the cash-strapped mission hospitals prescribing to middleclass private patients. Chemists were concentrated in the urban areas. Unregulated “traditional” medicines sector remained significant. But apartheid capitalism required the growth of black consumer markets while enforcing racial segregation. Pressure to extend education and training of black technicians, assistants and pharmacists gathered momentum. South Africa had been unevenly propelled towards a new phase of “pharmaceutical modernity”. This, too, would be marked by pharmaceutical politics.

By the 1970s, manufacturing had grown. On the recommendation of the Steenkamp Commission of Inquiry into the Pharmaceutical Industry of 1978, reporting after the Soweto uprising, the apartheid regime’s support for the domestic manufacture of chemicals and medications was to grow “in case of boycott or war”.

This ominous atmosphere was reflected in the pharmaceuticals sector. An advertisement for Medigesic portrays an atmosphere of stress for many white South Africans. The ad projected their physical and mental state of being under siege. Medigesic invoked the state’s “traditional” staunch commitment to their “safety” and “defence”. | The Conversation.

Parle is an Honorary professor in History at the University of Kwazulunatal

Ritchie is a journalist and a former newspaper editor.