"That's something that everyone knows [the identity of the heroin dealers] and it's only us, those who don't have money to defend ourselves, it's only us who suffer persecution and arrest, while those who are trafficking are given every opportunity to defend themselves."
- A San José shoemaker and heroin user under police questioning, 1933
Beginning at the end of the 19th Century, it was not uncommon to find excessive amounts of marijuana and opium use in San José. They were not clearly illegal yet and Costa Ricans took full advantage. With the beginning of the 1900s, the use of narcotic drugs also began due to the expansion of medical prescriptions and pharmacies. Addiction to morphine began in only the higher social classes, but in 1929 there was widespread panic in San José when it was discovered that hundreds of young workers and artisans were using heroin. At the time, Costa Rica was an important bridge in the international trafficking of opium because they had lax import/export taxes.
Retrieved from: The History of Costa Rica: Brief, Up-to-Date, and Illustrated, By Iván Molina Jiménez and Steven Palmer
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