David F. Musto | Drug-policy expert, 74

David F. Musto, 74, an expert on drug-control policy who wrote an important history of drug use in the United States and government efforts to control it and served as a government adviser on drug policy during the Carter administration, died Friday in Shanghai, apparently of a heart attack.

Dr. Musto, who lived in New Haven, Conn., was in China to attend a ceremony marking the donation of his books and papers to Shanghai University and the creation there of the Center for International Drug Control Policy Studies.

Dr. Musto, a professor of child psychiatry in the Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine and a professor of the history of medicine, broke new ground in 1973 with The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control. In offering a comprehensive account of drug use and government drug policy from the 1860s to the present, the book struck a nonpolemical tone rare in a field dominated by partisan zealots. Among its findings was the close correlation, historically, between public outrage over certain drugs and their use by feared or hated minorities.

Two years before its publication, President Richard M. Nixon had officially declared a war on drugs, and in June 1973 he created the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Dr. Musto was named a consultant to the president on drug-control policy in 1973, and in 1978 President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the White House Strategy Council on Drug Abuse.

He is survived by his wife, Jeanne; daughter Jeanne-Marie Musto of Sewanee, Tenn.; sons David of Philadelphia, John of Manhattan, and Christopher of Boston; and four grandchildren. - N.Y. Times News Service