North Korea Kim Jung un, Cyber Theft of Currency

Posted on July 31, 2017July 31, 2017 by Denise Simon

Going back to the 1970’s, North Korea was counterfeiting U.S. currency. In 2006, it was the super note, a perfect $100 dollar bill.

Training for such skills as counterfeiting, illicit drugs, weapons, cyber warfare and bootleg merchandise comes out of Office 39. Clandestine and fraudulent transactions including management operations flowing through Office 39 is estimate in the $6-8 billion range.

In 2014, one defector fleeing to Russia had $5 million of the Office 39 funds money with him.

Those highly selected North Koreans assigned to Office 39 arrive from having received an education in these specialties from elite universities or academies in China and Russia. Other highly selected North Koreans are also required to attend an in country school known as Mirim College. This school was founded by Kim Jong Il in 1986.

According to a defector:

this college has a highly confidential mission—education of world-class IT warriors—its security is so exhaustively kept that individual guard units are dispatched to the college solely for security. The security manual distributed to guards indicates that, “Without the permission of the college commander, no car should be allowed entrance to college grounds except for that of Kim Jong Il.”

Students of the college wear the same uniform as military officials, but on their shoulders they brandish special stars, on which hak (meaning is learning) is printed. A “Kim Il Political Military University” badge is worn on the left side of the chest.

Kim Jung Il lived the high life while his own people suffered to not only beatings but to death by starvation. His son, Kim Jung Un, taking over the country lives much the same yet due to sanctions and isolation by the international community, illicit activities continue.

Counterfeiting of currency is not so much a common practice in North Korea and the country has been dabbling in bitcoin fraud and now through cyber activity, they steal currency.

Just recently, Reuters published an item referring to a report analyzed suspected cyber attacks between 2015 and 2017 on South Korean government and commercial institutions, identified another Lazarus spinoff named Andariel.

“Bluenoroff and Andariel share their common root, but they have different targets and motives,” the report said. “Andariel focuses on attacking South Korean businesses and government agencies using methods tailored for the country.”

Pyongyang has been stepping up its online hacking capabilities as one way of earning hard currency under the chokehold of international sanctions imposed to stop the development of its nuclear weapons program.

North Korea has cooperated with China, Russia and Iran to improve their cyber capabilities. China is especially complicit in that cooperation by providing the communications network inside the DPRK and inside China. Additionally, China has provided hardware, servers, routers. Russia is not without major blame and shares the guilt by dispatching Russian professors from Frunze Military Academy to train North Koreans to be professional hackers.

Additionally, Russia has sold to North Korea GPS jamming equipment in the area of sea navigation and also provides financial aid to North Korea supporting it’s abilities to interfere and disrupt command and control systems.

North Korea operates yet another location known as Office 91. It has four units:

110= Technology Reconnaissance Team for DDoS attacks

35= External Offensive Cyber Operations

121= Strictly assigned for cyber attacks on South Korea

204= Enemy Secret Cyber Psychological Warfare Unit

In total, it is estimated that North Korea has close to 10,000 people assigned the the cyber and hacking operations in country. Additionally, North Korea maintains a force of up to 1000 in China performing cyber warfare.

While it is common for headlines to refer to Kim Jung Un as a nutcase, that is hardly a fitting description for him. While he may be militant and spontaneous, he is well educated. He attended Liebefeld-Steinhölzli Schule, a Swiss state school gaining access to Western culture, but had lousy grades. He has two degrees, one in physics from Kim il Sung University and another as an Army officer obtained from the Kim Il Sung Military University.

He does maintain an asymmetrical military strategy that has astounded the West and countries in the region with his advanced missile systems and launch abilities. All this is funded by cyber theft of currency and information and cooperation with Iran, China and Russia. North Korea does have IP proxy locations for operations that include New Zealand, Malaysia, Indonesia an several others. The ‘darknet’ is full of countries co-opting servers and jump points all doing the same thing.

The Frunze Military Academy Panorama

The Military Spooling of Countries Due to N. Korea

Posted on July 30, 2017July 30, 2017 by Denise Simon

At present, there are 8 B-1B bombers at the Andersen AFB, Guam (6 from Dyess AFB). This includes in theater 192 conventional 1,200-km range JASSM-ER cruise missiles for as many aim points. In addition deployed are Tomahawk SLCMs on ships, SSNs, SSGNs.

At the UN, Nikki Haley said that China must now condemn North Korea for its repeated missile tests.

“China must decide whether it is finally willing to take this vital step,” she said.

“The time for talk is over. The danger the North Korean regime poses to international peace is now clear to all.”

Earlier on Saturday the US flew two supersonic bombers over the Korean Peninsula.

The B-1 bombers were escorted by South Korean fighter jets as they performed a low-pass over an air base near the South Korean capital of Seoul before returning to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam.

Admiral Scott Swift of the Pacific fleets says he would launch a nuclear attack if ordered to do so.

Meanwhile: U.S.-South Korea Conduct Training in Response to North Korean Missile Launch

Eighth Army Public Affairs

HUMPHREYS GARRISON, Pyeongtaek, South Korea, July 28, 2017 — U.S. Eighth Army and South Korean army personnel today conducted a second combined training event to exercise assets in view of today’s North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile launch, Eighth Army officials here announced today.

This exercise once again utilized the Army Tactical Missile System and South Korea’s Hyunmoo Missile II, which fired missiles into territorial waters of South Korea along the country’s eastern coast July 5.

The ATACMS can be rapidly deployed and engaged and provides deep-strike precision capability, enabling the U.S.-South Korean alliance to engage a full array of time-critical targets under all weather conditions.

It is scheduled that one more operational test launch of an AFGSC Minuteman III IBM is slated for Aug. 2 – Aug. 4 from Vandenberg AFB.

WASHINGTON, July 30, 2017 — The Missile Defense Agency and soldiers of the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade from Fort Bliss, Texas, conducted a successful missile defense test today using the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, according to a Missile Defense Agency news release.

A medium-range target ballistic missile was air-launched by an Air Force C-17 Globemaster III over the Pacific Ocean. The THAAD weapon system, located at Pacific Spaceport Complex Alaska in Kodiak, detected, tracked and intercepted the target.

The test, designated Flight Experiment THAAD (FET)-01, was conducted to gather threat data from a THAAD interceptor in flight, the release said.

“In addition to successfully intercepting the target, the data collected will allow MDA to enhance the THAAD weapon system, our modeling and simulation capabilities, and our ability to stay ahead of the evolving threat,” said Air Force Lt. Gen. Sam Greaves, Missile Defense Agency director.

Soldiers from the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade conducted launcher, fire control and radar operations using the same procedures they would use in an actual combat scenario. Soldiers operating the equipment were not aware of the actual target launch time, the release said.

15th Successful Intercept

This was the 15th successful intercept in 15 tests for the THAAD weapon system.

The THAAD element provides a globally-transportable, rapidly-deployable capability to intercept ballistic missiles inside or outside the atmosphere during their final, or terminal, phase of flight. THAAD is strictly a defensive weapon system. The system uses hit-to-kill technology where kinetic energy destroys the incoming target, according to the release.

The mission of the Missile Defense Agency is to develop and deploy a layered ballistic missile defense system to defend the United States, its deployed forces, allies and friends from ballistic missile attacks of all ranges in all phases of flight, the release said.

***

Additionally, the U.S. Delivered Two C-208B Aircraft to Philippine Air Force. They are ntelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft. The delivery of the aircraft is part of a $33 million package through the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act Building Partnership Capacity Program to provide equipment and training to improve Philippine counterterrorism response capability. The Philippines has been fighting for months a terror group known as Abu Sayyaf.

Secret Service has Large Quiet Office in Hoover, Alabama

Posted on July 24, 2017July 24, 2017 by Denise Simon

Primer: The U.S. Secret Service maintains Electronic Crimes Task Forces, which focus on identifying and locating international cyber criminals connected to cyber intrusions, bank fraud, data breaches, and other computer-related crimes. The Secret Service’s Cyber Intelligence Section has directly contributed to the arrest of transnational cyber criminals responsible for the theft of hundreds of millions of credit card numbers and the loss of approximately $600 million to financial and retail institutions. The Secret Service also runs the National Computer Forensic Institute, which provides law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judges with cyber training and information to combat cyber crime.

HOOVER, Ala. — The classrooms, tucked above a municipal court here in the Birmingham suburbs, are a long way from the White House. But walk through a set of secured doors and into the futuristic-looking work space, and you will find an important wager by the agency best known for protecting presidents, the Secret Service.

Only it has almost nothing to do with earpiece-wearing agents or armored cars.

Though the Secret Service may be better known for keeping government executives safe, it also has a mandate to investigate and fight financial and other cybercrimes. And in an era of overworked protection details and nonstop cybercrime, it could use some help.

So here at the National Computer Forensics Institute, the pupils are hardened police officers, prosecutors and, occasionally, a judge. Instruction mimics what the agency teaches its own special agents. And tuition is not only free, but the Secret Service throws in travel, room, board and, for police officers, tens of thousands of dollars of technology to set up their own forensics labs back home.

Data is extracted from mobile phones for use in a class on prosecution in Hoover. Kevin D. Liles for The New York Times

In exchange, the Secret Service has quietly empowered a network of thousands of law enforcement officers across the country capable of processing digital evidence and indebted to the agency that taught them.

“The threat nature has increased in the world, and the threats are all more and more integrated with the digital world,” said Ben Bass, the special agent in charge of the institute. “So assimilating that into what we do is really important.”

The institute opened in 2008 as a partnership between the Secret Service and the state of Alabama, which contributed space and money for its construction. At the time, few state and local law enforcement agencies had the capability to process digital evidence found on computers and cellphones, even as it was exploding in volume and importance. That left agencies heavily reliant on the Secret Service and the F.B.I. for processing and created a years long backlog in many cases.

The Secret Service reasoned that it would be critical to the future of its mission — not to mention the effectiveness of local and state law enforcement — to try to change that. The program remains the only one of its kind and scale in the country.

Though its protective mission occupies the public’s attention, the Secret Service has been investigating crimes since 1865, when President Lincoln saw the need to create a small force of investigators within the Treasury Department to combat counterfeit currency that was undermining American markets. That mandate has changed and widened in the decades since, along with threats to the country’s financial systems, and the agency now investigates bank fraud, credit card fraud, identity theft, child exploitation as well as counterfeiting.

It does so with a reasonably small force. The majority of the Secret Service’s 3,300 agents work out of field offices. The F.B.I., by comparison, has more than 13,000. To amplify its effect, the agency relies on dozens of electronic and financial crimes task forces across the country, where local and state law officers and people in academia and businesses work alongside its own agents.

The help has arrived at the right time for the agency, where in recent years low morale, high attrition and more people to protect in more places have conspired to pinch resources. Because protection is a nonnegotiable task, investigations often take the hit.

The effect can be significant. In the 2016 fiscal year, the agency spent 65 percent of its time on protection and 35 percent on investigative work, according to calculations it shared with members of the House Oversight Committee. That was an election year, when protection demands are highest. But it appears the ratio for this fiscal year — which only included the last month or so of the campaign — has not changed much, with 60 percent of time going to protection through the end of May. Typically it would be about 40 percent for a post-campaign fiscal year.

Robert Novy, the deputy assistant director for investigations, said the task forces help ensure that cases continue to move forward regardless of protection demands. He also said that they have begun to free the Secret Service’s own staff to focus on larger-scale cyberthreats and high-dollar financial crimes.

“By elevating their capacities and capabilities, it allows us to focus on finding ways to counter more significant financial threats,” Mr. Novy said.

Still, building the program has proved challenging. A decade after it first opened its doors, the institute trains about 1,100 people a year. But it is running at between 30 percent and 40 percent of capacity because of a shortage of federal funds. For some programs, would-be enrollees can wait as long as three years.

Its financial outlook remains uncertain. President Trump’s 2018 budget proposal zeroed out the program, though Randolph D. Alles, the agency’s new director, told lawmakers last month that he considered it “critical” to the agency and would move money from elsewhere in his budget to pay for it if need be. At the same time, lawmakers in the House and Senate have introduced legislation that could stabilize its funding.

A break room at the institute.

Kevin D. Liles for The New York Times

The institute’s finances appeared to be on few minds on a recent early summer day in Hoover, where a class of two dozen prosecutors sat in neat classroom rows, computers humming beside their feet, as data from the cellphone of a fictitious drug smuggler flashed onto their computer screens. The evidence was all there in ordered folders: call logs, texts, even compromising photographs of a would-be drug dealer, made visible by powerful software and a few patient instructors.

One room away and a few hours later, two dozen police officers packed into a wood-trimmed mock courtroom listened to another instructor hold forth from the witness stand on the ins and outs of being a good forensics witness. The key, he said, is balancing the use of technical details like “master boot records” and “disk partitions” with the bigger picture a less tech-savvy jury can more easily grasp.

“I need to be able to understand it so I can translate it when I go before a panel of 12 people,” said Jennifer Eugene, a prosecutor from New Jersey, describing her experience in front of a jury. “The law has not caught up with where the technology is.”

A five-week course for police on the basics of computer evidence recovery is the most popular, and graduates of the course leave here with $28,000 worth of technology and the ability to search seized computers for evidence of a crime. A similar course on mobile devices is growing in popularity. And more advanced courses cover network intrusion.

A classroom where a course on network intrusion is taught.

Kevin D. Liles for The New York Times

Prosecutors and judges can take shorter courses meant to familiarize them with digital evidence, which is still relatively new to many courtrooms.

But the mutual benefits of the program were on display, too. Frank Garibay, a detective with the San Antonio Police Department who had returned to the institute as a proctor after taking coursework himself, said his training here had transformed what his department could do.

It had also meant that when officials from the Texas Rangers and Homeland Security Investigations zeroed in on an illegal gambling ring in Texas, they could turn to the Secret Service’s San Antonio-based electronic crimes task force, including Mr. Garibay, for help.

The Secret Service paid for members of its task force to travel to the small South Texas town of Falfurrias for a weekend to set up a war room to process digital evidence.

The operation ended up taking down about a dozen illegal casinos, recovered almost $6 million, exposed drug and human trafficing rings, and ultimately public corruption.

Kushner’s Chinese EB-5 Investment Ploy

Posted on July 21, 2017July 21, 2017 by Denise Simon

Exclusive: Jared Kushner’s White House connection still being used to lure Chinese investors

CNN: Jared Kushner’s status as a top aide to President Donald Trump was used to lure Chinese investors to his family’s New Jersey development, even after his family’s company apologized for mentioning his name during a sales pitch in May, CNN has found.

References to Kushner are part of online promotions by two businesses that are working with Kushner Companies to find Chinese investors willing to invest in the 1 Journal Square development in exchange for a US visa.

The promotions are posted in Chinese and refer to Kushner Companies as “real estate heavyweights,” going on to mention “the celebrity of the family is 30-something ‘Mr. Perfect’ Jared Kushner, who once served as CEO of Kushner Companies.”

One posted online in May by the company US Immigration Fund, a private business based in Florida, also contains a reference to Kushner’s appearance on the cover of December’s Forbes Magazine, under the headline “This guy got Trump elected.” The post was removed shortly after CNN contacted the company for comment.

Haaretz

For US Immigration Fund’s WeChat page: click here

The promotions are aimed at bringing in investors who pay at least $500,000 apiece and in exchange get US visas, and potentially green cards, for themselves and their families if the development meets certain criteria. The deals are part of a legal US government program called EB-5, which grants up to 10,000 immigrant visas per year.

One webpage posted in March by Chinese company Qiaowai that remains on the company’s page on the popular Chinese social media site WeChat mentions Trump and suggests he supports the program: “Even some members of Trump’s family have participated in the growth of the EB-5 program … the “Kushner 88″ panoramic New Jersey apartment project … The lead developer on the now-completed project was Kushner Companies which is linked to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.” It goes on to say, “Given this, in the Trump era, the EB-5 program is likely to receive support and be expanded.”

From Qiaowai WeChat page: click here

A Kushner Companies spokesperson, in response to CNN’s questions about the webpages, said “Kushner Companies was not aware of these sites and has nothing to do with them. The company will be sending a cease and desist letter regarding the references to Jared Kushner.”

A former White House ethics expert tells CNN the EB-5 program already raises a potential government-backed quid pro quo — favorable immigration status in exchange for investment dollars. And he says any use of the President’s son-in-law as a marketing tool is ethically unacceptable.

“What is not authorized is any arrangement where someone gets preference for their visa if they give money to a company that is controlled by the family of a United States government official,” said Richard Painter, a former chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush.

“And unfortunately,” says Painter, “that implication was made in the selling efforts for this project.”

Painter is referring to an investment “road show” that Nicole Meyer attended in May in Beijing. Meyer, the sister of Jared Kushner, was speaking at an event in which she was trying to attract wealthy Chinese investors to the 1 Journal Square project.

During the presentation, Meyer reminded investors of her brother’s recent role in American politics: “In 2008, my brother Jared Kushner joined the family company as CEO,” Meyer told a crowd, adding he “recently moved to Washington to join the administration.”

The comments coincided with a visual display, which included a photograph of Trump.

Meyer’s comments led to strong criticism that the Kushner family was using Jared Kushner to attract investment dollars through the EB-5 program.

The company quickly apologized, and separately, Jared Kushner’s attorney released a statement saying Kushner had no knowledge of the promotion and was no longer involved financially in the 1 Journal Square project.

“As previously stated, he will recuse from particular matters concerning the EB-5 visa program,” Kushner’s attorney, Blake Roberts, said in a statement.

US Immigration Fund, a company based in Jupiter, Florida, seemed to blame others for the post, saying in a statement, “The post in question was originally posted by a 3rd party immigration consultancy firm on its company WeChat and was reposted to USIF’s WeChat by the company’s Chinese social media consultant. The post is several months old and hasn’t had any interaction by followers, however, it has since been removed from the company WeChat.”

Qiaowai, a Chinese immigration company that organized the events where Kushner’s sister spoke, did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. The webpage on its WeChat site that references Kushner remained online as of Wednesday afternoon.

EB-5 investment advisor Michael Gibson tells CNN it makes sense that the companies marketing the Kushner project in China have continued to use Kushner’s name to promote their project, because he says Chinese investors are drawn to developments they believe are backed by individuals with government connections: “They want to make sure they get the green card,” Gibson told CNN. “So if they see a public official associated with the project that gives them the impression that this project is safe enough for them to invest in.”

The EB-5 program has faced criticism for straying from its original intent. The program was designed by Congress in the 1990s to bring foreign money into rural and blighted urban areas to spark development and job growth.

After the economic recession of 2008, the program began expanding to become a low-interest source of income for developers who have used EB-5 investment money to fund high-end residential towers and retail projects in areas like Manhattan, Jersey City, New Jersey, and Miami.

Gary Friedland, a scholar in residence at New York University’s Stern School of Business who has studied the program, said developers have found ways to manipulate census tract data to place their projects within “targeted employment areas,” which legally reduces the amount investors must pay — down from $1 million to $500,000 — to qualify for EB-5 benefits.

Emails obtained by CNN from the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development show a representative for US Immigration Fund in January asked a New Jersey official to issue a letter certifying the Kushner’s 1 Journal Square as within an area with low employment.

After an official responded that the project did not qualify due to its location within a census tract with an unemployment rate below the national average, a consultant for another company asked that the state combine six census tracts together. Days later, the state approved the Kushner Companies’ project, documents show.

Friedland says practices like this allow luxury developers to take advantage of incentives meant to lure investments to lower-income areas: “The money flows to affluent areas, not the targeted areas Congress intended to benefit,” he said.

On June 1, three Democratic lawmakers wrote a letter to Kushner Companies current president Laurent Morali asking for an explanation on the company’s ongoing use of the EB-5 program and the nature of its relationships with Qiaowai and US Immigration Fund.

Kushner Companies has not yet responded to the letter, according to the office of Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont.

Opioid Crisis Then and Now

Posted on July 20, 2017July 20, 2017 by Denise Simon

The Opioid Crisis Is Dire. Why We Need a National Conversation About It Separate From Obamacare.

Let’s be honest—the opioid crisis in America is huge, it is severe, and it is devastating. But this partisan-fought legislation just isn’t the place to put that funding. And it would likely do little to help stem and reverse the opioid crisis.

First, it’s not as though funding for opioid treatment and recovery has been absent from the federal budget. As recently as last month, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, was touting signed legislation that spent more than $1 billion to fund recovery programs.

This money was authorized separately from the debate over Obamacare in two pieces of legislation known as the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act and the 21st Century Cures Act.

We know that prevention programs have worked in the past, whether they pertain to forest fires or drunk driving or, for that matter, the massive reduction in drug use we witnessed in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Such a prevention program for the opioid crisis must start with leadership from the White House in leading these conversations and highlighting the devastation of substance abuse initiation.

It requires detailing what is driving the opioid epidemic—namely, illegal fentanyl, heroin, and other illegal drug use and diversion. It requires more law enforcement—from border and customs policies and cracking down on cartels to international initiatives. And it requires messaging to our youth. More here.

Socrata

This Isn’t the First U.S. Opiate-Addiction Crisis

Doctors overprescribed painkillers in the 19th century. Eventually, they stopped.

Problem and solution. Source: Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago/Getty Images

Bloomberg: The U.S. is in the throes of an “unprecedented opioid epidemic,” reports the Centers for Disease Control. The crisis has spurred calls for action to halt the rising death toll, which has devastated many rural communities.

It’s true that there’s an opioid epidemic, a public health disaster. It’s not true that it’s unprecedented. A remarkably similar epidemic beset the U.S. some 150 years ago. The story of that earlier catastrophe offers some sobering lessons as to how to address the problem.

Opioids are a broad class of drugs that relieve pain by acting directly on the central nervous system. They include substances such as morphine and its close cousin, heroin, both derived from the opium poppy. There are also synthetic versions, such as fentanyl, and medications that are derived from a mix of natural and synthetic sources, such as oxycodone.

Opioid addiction can take many forms, but the current crisis began with the use and abuse of legal painkillers in the 1990s, and has since metastasized into a larger epidemic, with heroin playing an especially outsized role.

All of this is depressingly familiar. The first great U.S. opiate-addiction epidemic began much the same way, with medications handed out by well-meaning doctors who embraced a wondrous new class of drugs as the answer to a wide range of aches and pains.

The pharmacologist Nathaniel Chapman, writing in 1817, held up opium as the most useful drug in the physician’s arsenal, arguing that there was “scarcely one morbid affection or disordered condition” that would fail to respond to its wonder-working powers. That same year, chemists devised a process for isolating a key alkaloid compound from raw opium: morphine.

Though there’s some evidence that opiate dependency had become a problem as early as the 1840s, it wasn’t until the 1860s and 1870s that addiction became a widespread phenomenon. The key, according to historian David Courtwright, was the widespread adoption of the hypodermic needle in the 1870s.

Prior to this innovation, physicians administered opiates orally. During the Civil War, for example, doctors on the Union side administered 10 million opium pills and nearly three million ounces of opium powders and tinctures. Though some soldiers undoubtedly became junkies in the process, oral administration had all manner of unpleasant gastric side effects, limiting the appeal to potential addicts.

Hypodermic needles by contrast, delivered morphine directly into a patient’s veins with no side effects, yielding immediate results. As Courtwright notes: “For the first time in the entire history of medicine near-instantaneous, symptomatic relief for a wide range of diseases was possible. A syringe of morphine was, in a very real sense, a magic wand.”

An enthusiastic medical profession began injecting morphine on a vast scale for all manner of aches and pains, much the way that a more recent generation of doctors began prescribing Oxycontin and other legal drugs in a reaction against widespread undertreatment of pain. Wounded veterans became addicts, but so, too, did people suffering from arthritis. Women also became addicts en masse, thanks to the practice of treating menstrual cramps – or for that matter, any female complaint of pain – with injections of morphine.

Skeptics in the medical profession warned about the dangers of administering too much morphine. Yet these warnings generally fell on deaf ears. Some of the problem lay with the doctors themselves. One well-regarded doctor put it this way: “Opium is often the lazy physician’s remedy.”

But distance played a role, too. Doctors traveling dirt roads on horseback couldn’t always follow up with patients in pain, and so they left their charges with vials of morphine. Well-meaning doctors who might otherwise resist administering morphine also faced pressure from patients and families to do so. If they refused, it was easy to find a doctor who would comply.

In the end, though, the medical profession largely solved the problem on its own. As awareness of physicians’ role in fostering addiction spread, medical schools taught aspiring doctors to avoid prescribing morphine except under carefully controlled circumstances. The growing availability of milder analgesics – salicylates like aspirin – made the job easier, offering a less powerful, but far safer, alternative to morphine.

While the younger generation of doctors stigmatized morphine, the problem was increasingly linked to older, poorly trained doctors who had come of age in an era when the hypodermic needle was touted as a cure-all. A study in 1919, for example, found that 90 percent of opiate prescriptions in Pennsylvania came from only a third of the state’s doctors, most of whom were over 50 years old.

As the medical profession started to police its ranks, shaming those who enabled addiction, the epidemic began to burn itself out. “Old addicts died off faster than new ones were created,” writes Courtwright. The smaller group of addicts who became the face of opiate addition tended to be poorer “pleasure users” who picked up the habit in the criminal underworld.

Today’s opioid epidemic is similar to the one that came and went over a century ago. While there is plenty of room for government assistance in funding treatment for addicts, never mind regulation of drugs, history suggests that the medical profession will ultimately play the most important role.

There are some promising signs. The number of opioid prescriptions written by doctors has dropped by small amounts over the past few years, though some of the evidence suggests that the decline has more to do with patients anxious about the potential for addiction.

Still, it took decades during the 19th century for doctors to shy away from injecting patients with morphine for the slightest complaint. It may take just as long before doctors kick the habit of prescribing powerful pain pills.