On President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Cocaine Use

Jews and their supporters often try to a-historically weaponize the medications prescribed to Adolf Hitler by his doctors like Theodor Morell to describe Hitler as a ‘drug addict’ (1) which is both completely unfair as well as intellectually dishonest.

An easy way to demonstrate this is the fact that historical research has uncovered that all of Hitler’s opposing leaders – i.e., Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (hereafter FDR) – were all themselves uses of copious amounts of drugs for similar reasons that they prescribed by Morell and others to Hitler.

In this example let me quote at length from a recent biography of FDR which covers this little-known aspect of his life:

‘Because there were no antibiotics to treat the underlying sinus infection, McIntire was forced to rely on daily treatments to relieve the symptoms. The therapeutic goal was to diminish the swelling of nasal mucosa and thereby increase the patient's ability to breathe. The key was to reduce the swelling without producing dryness or crusting. McIntire had a few options available to him. He could have used cotton swabs to manually clear Roosevelt’s sinuses. Attorney General Francis Biddle observed McIntire performing the procedure when he went to see the president a few days after Pearl Harbour. “He was swabbing out F.D.R.’s nose,” Biddle noted.

It is also likely that McIntire “flushed” or irrigated the sinuses. This could be accomplished by inserting a curved hollow needle up the nose and into his sinuses. The needle would be connected to a machine that would pump saline solution into the sinus cavity. Oftentimes, the same machine would have the capability of then sucking of the fluid along with the pus and mucus.

But in the 1930s and 1940s, it was also common for physicians to use cocaine as part of these treatments. “They most likely used cocaine,” observed Dr. Jordan S. Josephson, the direct of the New York Nasal and Sinus Center. “Cocaine was the drug of choice for any ENT treating a nasal problem.” The physician would apply the diluted cocaine solution directly to the sinuses using cotton swabs. The cocaine would shrink the tissue, offering immediate relief, while also numbing the area, preparing it for the insertion of the needle for flushing. “Cocaine is a very good constrictor,” reflected Dr. Murray Grossan, a prominent ENT who recalled that cocaine was still being used when he started his residency in the 1950s. “It was not that unusual for an ethical doctor to use a one or two percent solution. In those days that was quite common.”

As late as 1959, standard textbooks on otolaryngology recommended that physicians apply “1 per cent ephedrine sulphate, or 1 per cent ephedrine sulphate and 1 per cent cocaine hydrochloride” solution for “temporary relief” of nasal swelling. As recently as 1975, after reviewing the medical literature on the subject, the Western Journal of Medicine noted that “cocaine remains a vital instrument in the otolaryngologist’s armamentarium.” Many doctors still use cocaine today for sinus surgery.

Beginning in the nineteenth century, cocaine became widely available in the United States and was used for a variety of medical ailments. Physicians used the drug as a local anaesthesia, and manufacturers sold a host of over-the-counter panaceas that included it. Sigmund Freud called it a “magical” drug. Cocaine was also the active ingredient in Coca-Cola, originally sold as a cure for headaches. (In the 1980s, the new Coca-Cola Company sold the drink as both a “sovereign remedy” and a pleasurable drink.) Cocaine fell out of favour in the twentieth century as social reformers campaigned against it, and by the time Roosevelt was elected president, cocaine had been banned in the United States. It survived only as a surgical anaesthetic and as a treatment for eat, nose, and throat problems.

Even if McIntire did use a cocaine solution as part of his regimen, it remains unclear whether it would have had any impact on FDR’s behaviour. The effect would depend on the strength of the solution, and there does not appear to have been a common standard treatment in 1941. Dr. Josephson believes the cocaine would have been powerful enough to produce a brief sense of euphoria and a temporary burst of energy. Dr. Grossan stated that most patients would probably have no reaction, but a few could “get a jack” from the treatment. Dr. Robert Lofgren, who graduated medical school in the 1950s and practised for many years at Massachusetts’ Eye and Ear Hospital, believes hat the solution would likely have been too diluted to have any measurable impact.

Even if McIntire had used a strong dose of the drug, the cocaine effect would have been short-lived, providing FDR with only a temporary respite from the grim news of the day. The draining of the sinuses, however, would have provided him with noticeable and sustained relief and helped prepare him for the long evening ahead.

It is likely, though not certain, that FDR was getting treated on a regular basis, included the day of the Pearl Harbor attacks, with a diluted form of cocaine. But if he was, he almost certainly did not know it. The medical literature of the time instructed physicians not to tell their patients that they were using the drug. “The habit-forming properties… of this drug are well-known and must be ever guarded against,” one medical textbook at the time explained. “Patients are never informed as to the nature or name of the drug used because in itself this may act suggestively.” Eleanor worried about the daily nasal treatments her husband received. “I always worried about this constant treatment for I felt while it might help temporarily, in the long run it must cause irritation,” she reflected FDR, however, never seemed to question the treatments or inquire about his medical condition.’ (2)

What is clear from this lengthy passage that I have quoted from Steven Gillon’s biographical work on FDR is both that Gillon is sufficiently intellectually honest to realise that the implication of FDR taking daily – or almost daily – dosages of cocaine even in a medical context and under medical supervision to ‘help with his sinuses’ clearly suggests that it is rather more likely addiction to cocaine more than McIntire’s treatment of FDR’s sinuses especially as it wasn’t a short-term thing but went on by all accounts for years even decades.

Further Gillon is at pains to try and – in essence – ‘research his way out of’ this conclusion by taking several medical opinions but even then, comes back to the fact that FDR was clearly taking a lot of cocaine even if it was in smaller doses – Gillon is also clear that we don’t know how much cocaine McIntire was giving FDR but rightly implies it was probably more than he (or most people) are comfortable with – and was almost certainly addicted to it albeit he quite possibly – like Hitler taking doses of Pervitin (an early form of methamphetamine) at Morell’s prescription – had no idea what he was actually being given and only knew that it worked.

The point then stands that if Hitler was a ‘meth head’ as jews like to claim then FDR – like Stalin as it happens – was a ‘coke fiend’ while Churchill was addicted to what we’d now call speed (amphetamine) and spent the war years both high and drunk (also like Stalin).

References

(1) For example: Norman Ohler, 2015, ‘Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany’, 1st Edition, Penguin: New York

(2) Steven Gillon, 2011, ‘Pearl Harbor: FDR leads the Nation into War’, 1st Edition, Basic Books: New York, pp. 76-78