F-2002-00928 INITIAL REQUEST

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 00780990
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: July 13, 2023
• Document Release Date: November 16, 2022
• Case Number: F-2018-01210
• Publication Date: May 21, 2002

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May 21, 2002
The Information and Privacy Coordinator
Attention: Kathryn
FOIA Office
The Central Intelligence Agency
VIA FACSIMILE: 703-613-3007
Dear Kathryn,
As per the instructions oldie CIA's Public Affair's Office, I am faxing a request under the
Freedom of Information Act, for any and all records, files, documents, references, cross references, etc.,
regarding:
letter,
The Amphetamine Research Project
Address
Date of Operation:
Administrators
Sponsor
Funded in part by thc
University of California Medical Center, Dept. of
Pharmacology, San Francisco, California AND at the Haight
Ashbury Free Medical Clinic, 409 Clayton Street, San
Francisco, CA.
May 1968 �Nov. 1969
Dr. Frederick Meyers, Dr. Roger C. Smith. Dr. David E. Smith
The Haight Ashbury Medical Clinic
National Institute of Mental Health
I am attaching the first pages of LWO articles about the Amphetamine Research Project to this
1 am willing to pay whatever costs are incurred for the processing and/or duplicating of the
information requested.
Thank you very much for your assistance in this matter.
Sincerely,
Torn O'Neill
(Two pages are attached to this letter)
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The World of the Haight-Ashbury Speed Freak
ROGER C SMITH, D. CRIM.1
Very little is currently known about the kinds of
experiences which individuals have who arc compulsively
injecting large doses of methamphetamine or "speed."
This is partially due w the fact that the "speed freak" as
we know him today is a relative newcomer to the drug
scene. Perhaps most important, however, is the frantic
and violent life style which makes on-the-street observa-
tion both difficult and dangerous. The researcher or
observer, regardless of his intentions, is suspect and not
likely to be drawn into the life of a group using speed.
The Amphetamine Research Project is in a unique
� position in San Francisco's Haight-Ashhury community,
however. Since irs inception, in June of 1968, the
project has served dual roles of treatment and research.
The staff has been of assistance in matters of obtaining
housing, food, and legal services and obtaining help, but
did not require that the patient subject himself to the
questions of the researcher. In short, the staff was repre-
sented to the community as both helpful and interested
in the problems of "speed" abuse.
This paper is concerned with the kinds of experi-
ences with which individuals enmeshed in the speed
scene have to deal, how they interpret these experiences,
and how this shapes the direction they may rake within
the speed scene. It is by no means a complete picture.
The research is currently in progress, and there are many
gaping holes in our information. The data to be pre-
1. Formerly the Director of the Amphetamine Research
Projeer of the University of California Medical Center; presently
at the Marin Open House in San Rafael. California.
Journal of Psychedelic Drugs
77
senred represents both formal taped interviews with
speed users as well as observations made during informal
contacts both in the research offices arid on the street.
Much of what will be said is frankly speculation, based
on some of the hunches we have about the typical career
of the "speed freak."
No attempt is made to analyze the many social or
psychological variables which pre-date involvement in
the speed scene, since these factors appear to be less
important in determining what happens to an individual
who involves himself in speed use than such factors as
drug availability, subjective interpretations of the drug
experience, the quality of social interactions, the san-
ctions which the community imposes on certain types of
behavior, and the crucial problems which the speed freak
is forced Co confront as a result of his particular pattern
of drug use.
Turning on to speed is almost always(accomplished
within a group setting, where the majority of individuals
present are using speed. There are great pressures to use
for the newcomer. He may be completely overwhelmed
by the compulsive talking, the frantic activity, and
apparent euphoria and friendliness of the drug using
members of the group. It is also true that the individual
In such a group who is not "high" is unable to communi-
cate with others in the group, for talk and the activity
seem to have little meaning or relevance for him.
Since MOSE of the young people we have seen come
from middle-class backgrounds, the notion of sticking a
needle in their arm may initially be repugnant to them.
For many, the presence of outfits and spoons is reminis-
vol. 2 (No. 2)�Spring, 1969
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The Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs
by Edward M. Brccher and the Editors of Consumer Reports Magazine, 1972
Chapter 37. Enter the "speed freak"
Amphetamines taken orally can be used in excess with unfortunate
results; but enormous quantities of oral amphetamines were consumed in
the United States during the 1940s and 1950s with apparently little
misuse. As late as 1963, indeed, the American Medical Association's
Council on Drugs, while recognizing the possibility of misuse, reported
that "at this time compulsive abuse of the amphetamines COILStitUteS -
. a small problem (in the United States]." I Much the same finding was
reported from Sweden (see Chapter 39).
The intravenous injection of large doses of amphetamines, in contrast,
is among the most disastrous forms of drug use yet devised. The early
history of amphetamine mainlining has been explored by a California
criminologist and authority on illicit drug use, Dr. Roger C. Smith, in
an, unpublished study he made available for this Report. Dr. Smith is
now director of Mario Open House, a comprehensive center for drug and
other problems in San Rafael, California. The Smith study was a part of
the San Francisco Amphetamine Research Project, financed by the National
Institute of Mental Health and launched by Dr. Smith in May 1968, in
cooperation with the Haight-Ashbury Medical Clinic in San Francisco.
Much of this chapter is drawn from Dr. Smith's study, "The Marketplace.,
of Speed: Violence and Compulsive Methamphetamine Abuse," and from a
report by a California psychiatrist, Dr. John C. Kramer, entitled
"Introduction to Amphetamine Abuse," published in the Journal of
Psychedelic Drugs in 1969. Dr. Kramer began his amphetamine research
while he was on the staff of thc California Rehabilitation Center in
Corona, California� a center in which "speed freaks" as well as heroin
addicts are incarcerated; he is at this writing on the faculty of the
University of California at Irvine and on the staff of Dr. Jerome H.
Jaffe's Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention in Washington,
D.C.
The earliest reference to the intravenous use of amphetatnines that Dr.
Smith was able to unearth concerned groups of American servicemen
stationed in Korea and Japan during the early 1950s. 2 These men were
said to have learned to mix amphetamines� then nicknamed "splash" with
heroin and to inject the combination. This was, in effect, the
traditional "speedball," with amphetamine substituted for cocaine.
Servicemen brought the custom home with them after the Korean War. No
doubt other small groups also learned to mainline amphetamine, alone or
with heroin, during the 1950s; but no public finer was raised against
the practice� and it did not spread alarmingly� until the 1960s.
Sigmund Freud's first dispensing of cocaine to a patient, it will be
recalled, was to help his pain-wracked friend, Fleischl-Marxow, get
along without morphine. During the late 19$0s, in the San Francisco Bay
Tmn O'Neill
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