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Who really said it

Cocaine Isn't Habit-Forming. I Should Know. I've Been Using It for Years

Tallulah Bankhead — but not in the words you know Tallulah Bankhead 1902–1968 · American stage and screen actress
Disputed In copyright

The line is Bankhead’s, and Hammett’s only role in it is that he is the man she said it to. She printed her own version in Tallulah: My Autobiography (1952), where she offers a bottle of cocaine lozenges around a party; the telling in which she shouts it at Hammett comes from Lillian Hellman’s 1973 memoir Pentimento. The crisp sentence in circulation is neither — it is the wording Leslie Halliwell printed in his quotation book.

Last verified 8 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“Cocaine Isn't Habit-Forming. I Should Know. I've Been Using It for Years” Tallulah Bankhead (1902–1968), though not in these words. Bankhead's own version is in Tallulah: My Autobiography (Harper & Brothers, 1952), pp. 100–101: "Cocaine habit-forming? Of course not. I ought to know. I've been using it for years." The wording above is as printed in Leslie Halliwell's The Filmgoer's Book of Quotes (Granada, London, 1973; Arlington House, 1974), p. 15. Hammett appears in the story only as the man she said it to, in Lillian Hellman's 1973 memoir Pentimento; he never said it. Via quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Tallulah Bankhead and Harper & Brothers (New York, 1952); the polished wording is separately controlled by the Leslie Halliwell estate and his publishers, Granada Publishing (London, 1973) and Arlington House (New Rochelle, 1974).). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the themes of doubt and truth. Theme: "Cocaine Isn't Habit-Forming. I Should Know. I've Been Using It for Years". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Cocaine Isn't Habit-Forming. I Should Know. I've Been Using It for Years". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The party trick, in her own book

Speaker
Tallulah Bankhead — Hammett is the listener in the story, not the speaker
Source
Tallulah: My Autobiography
Published
Harper & Brothers, New York, 1952 — quote pages 100–101
This exact wording
Leslie Halliwell, The Filmgoer’s Book of Quotes (Granada, London, 1973; Arlington House reprint, New Rochelle, 1974), page 15

I’d hold it out to my friends: “Have some cocaine?” “Tallulah, isn’t it habit-forming?” “Cocaine habit-forming? Of course not. I ought to know. I’ve been using it for years.”

Bankhead’s own text, as transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗ from the 1952 first edition. By her own account the bottle was real: pale lozenges labelled “Cocaine and Menthol,” dispensed at Boots in London against a prescription for the laryngitis that dogged her stage work — though Quote Investigator cautions that she is an unreliable narrator on exactly this subject. The tighter sentence people quote today — “I should know — I’ve been using it for years” — is Halliwell’s rendering (Granada, 1973; Arlington House, 1974), not the book’s.

First-edition scan
Tallulah: My Autobiography (Harper, 1952) at the Internet Archive
Quote Investigator: every printed version, 1945 to 1974

How the line moved

  • 1945 — a drug-free ancestor. The earliest printed relative documented by Quote Investigator ↗ is a sleeping-pill gag in the Omaha World Herald of 15 October 1945, reprinted the same year in Bennett Cerf’s Laughing Stock: an unnamed “famous star” told her pills are habit forming answers, “Don’t be absurd. I’ve been taking them for 20 years.”
  • 1952 — Bankhead prints it herself. In Tallulah: My Autobiography ↗ she describes waving the lozenge bottle at friends and delivering the retort. Quote Investigator ↗ verified the passage on paper at pages 100–101.
  • 1973 — Hammett enters the story. Lillian Hellman’s Pentimento ↗ stages the remark as a row: Hammett says he dislikes being around people who take dope, and Bankhead shouts the line back at him. Quote Investigator ↗ cites the exchange at page 177.
  • 1973/74 — the modern wording is fixed. Leslie Halliwell’s The Filmgoer’s Book of Quotes ↗ files “Cocaine isn’t habit-forming. I should know — I’ve been using it for years” under Bankhead. Quote Investigator ↗ verified it at page 15 of the Arlington House edition of 1974, noting that volume reprints a 1973 Granada edition published in London — so Halliwell’s wording is contemporaneous with Pentimento rather than a response to it. That is the form the internet copies.
In copyright

Not public domain. The line’s documented home is Tallulah: My Autobiography, published by Harper & Brothers in 1952 — comfortably inside US copyright — and the Internet Archive’s scan ↗ is accordingly lending-restricted rather than open. The familiar polished wording is later, first documented in Leslie Halliwell’s The Filmgoer’s Book of Quotes (Granada, London, 1973; Arlington House reprint, New Rochelle, 1974), so both the sentence people quote and the book it came from remain in copyright; quote it briefly and with attribution.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The words she published, and the words you know

Nobody is falsely credited here: the quotation books, Wikiquote and Quote Investigator all file this under Bankhead, and Bankhead is who said it. What drifted is the wording. The sentence in circulation is a later, tidier rewrite of what she actually printed — and the best-known telling of the story puts a second famous name in the room who never spoke the line at all.

Dashiell Hammett Listener, not author

Hammett is the listener, not the talker. In Lillian Hellman’s 1973 memoir Pentimento, Hammett tells Bankhead he dislikes being around people who take dope — and she shouts back, “I tell you cocaine isn’t habit-forming and I know because I’ve been taking it for years,” as documented by Quote Investigator ↗. He appears on Quote Investigator’s Hammett tag ↗ for this article as the man complaining about her drug use, and his Wikiquote page ↗ carries no such line.

Tallulah: My Autobiography (1952) Later polish

The crisp version everyone repeats is not the sentence Bankhead published. Her book, verified on paper at pages 100–101 by Quote Investigator ↗, reads “Cocaine habit-forming? Of course not. I ought to know. I’ve been using it for years.” The smoother “I should know — I’ve been using it for years” is the form printed in Leslie Halliwell’s The Filmgoer’s Book of Quotes (Granada, London, 1973; Arlington House reprint, New Rochelle, 1974), page 15.

An anonymous “famous star” Earlier gag

The earliest printed version documented by Quote Investigator ↗ is not about cocaine: a 15 October 1945 item in the Omaha World Herald, also collected in Bennett Cerf’s Laughing Stock, has an unnamed star told her sleeping pills are habit forming and replying, “Don’t be absurd. I’ve been taking them for 20 years.” Quote Investigator conjectures this was a sanitised version of a Bankhead remark already in circulation, while allowing that it might instead have inspired her.

An unnamed constituent in a 1954 newspaper column Retold, unverified

Senator George A. Smathers is not claimed as the author of anything here; the column puts the words in a constituent’s mouth. A syndicated column of 9 February 1954 hangs the same self-defeating logic on an indignant constituent of the Florida senator, defending a restricted “health-giving nostrum” because she had been taking it daily for twenty-five years. Quote Investigator ↗ presents the anecdote as being of uncertain veracity.

Quote Investigator ↗ concludes that Bankhead made a remark of this type, while cautioning that she and Hellman are both unreliable narrators about her drug use — Bankhead was, in Quote Investigator’s reading, deliberately projecting a persona and fully aware the line contradicts itself. What is not in doubt is that Hammett did not say it.

Context

A joke built to refute itself

The line survives because it is a perfect small machine: a denial that supplies its own disproof, delivered with total confidence. That is also why it travels badly: a gag this good is repeated far more often than it is checked, and the sentence being repeated is not the one Bankhead published. It has been smoothed, and the story around it has picked up a second famous name — Dashiell Hammett’s — who is in the room but not speaking.

Bankhead was explicit that the shock was manufactured. In her 1952 autobiography she describes starting the myth herself — declining a drink at parties with an offer of cocaine instead — and says the lozenges she waved around were a genuine prescription, sprayed and dosed for the laryngitis that plagued her stage runs. Whether the persona was ahead of the habit or behind it is a question Quote Investigator declines to settle, noting that both Bankhead and Hellman are unreliable narrators here.

Hammett is not the punchline. He is the straight man.

The versions, in order

1945. The earliest printed relative is not about cocaine at all. A joke in the Omaha World Herald of 15 October 1945, reprinted the same year in Bennett Cerf’s Laughing Stock, has a doctor warn “a famous star” off sleeping pills: “They’re habit forming.” — “Habit forming! Don’t be absurd. I’ve been taking them for 20 years.” Quote Investigator conjectures this is a sanitised retelling of a Bankhead remark already circulating, but allows that the influence could run the other way.

1952. Bankhead prints her own version, addressed to friends at a party rather than to anyone in particular.

1954. A syndicated columnist attaches the same logic to an indignant constituent of Florida Senator George A. Smathers, complaining that her “health-giving nostrum” has been restricted: “I know it’s not, because I’ve been taking it every day for twenty-five years!” Quote Investigator flags the anecdote as of uncertain veracity.

1973. Hellman’s Pentimento puts it in a room with Hammett, who had told Bankhead he disliked being around people who took dope — in his Pinkerton days, he said, he feared them more than murderers.

1973/74. Halliwell’s quotation book files the smoothed, modern wording under Bankhead, and that is the form the internet inherited. Quote Investigator verified it at page 15 of the Arlington House edition of 1974, which reprints a 1973 Granada edition published in London — so it runs alongside Pentimento, not after it.

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Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: the full chronologyquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation. Traces the line from a 1945 sleeping-pill joke through Bankhead's 1952 autobiography, a 1954 newspaper anecdote, Hellman's 1973 Pentimento and the 1973/74 Halliwell quotation book, with page-verified citations.
Wikiquote: Tallulah Bankheaden.wikiquote.org

Lists the modern wording under its Tallulah: My Autobiography (1952) heading — a citation this page's own evidence corrects, since that wording is Halliwell's, not the book's.
Wikiquote: Dashiell Hammetten.wikiquote.org

The control check: Hammett's own quotation page carries no habit-forming remark of any kind.
Tallulah: My Autobiography (1952)archive.org

Scan of the Harper & Brothers first edition — the primary source for Bankhead's own telling. Lending-restricted, as an in-copyright book.
The Filmgoer's Book of Quotes (1974)archive.org

Leslie Halliwell's compilation — the book that prints the exact wording now circulating. This Arlington House edition of 1974 reprints a 1973 Granada edition published in London.
Pentimento (1973)archive.org

Lillian Hellman's memoir, the source of the telling in which Bankhead delivers the line to Hammett.
Wikipedia: Tallulah Bankheaden.wikipedia.org

Biography and life dates (31 January 1902 – 12 December 1968); quotes the Hellman wording of the remark.

The woman who actually said it

Tallulah Bankhead

Tallulah Bankhead

1902–1968 · American actress & professional scandal

Tallulah Bankhead was an American actress who conquered the London stage in the 1920s and Broadway in the 1930s and 1940s — The Little Foxes, The Skin of Our Teeth, Hitchcock’s Lifeboat — and who built a second, louder career out of being quotable. Her husky voice and calculated outrageousness made her one of the most reliably attributed wits of her century, which is exactly why lines like this one detach from her and drift toward other famous names. By her own account in Tallulah: My Autobiography (1952), she cultivated the drug rumours deliberately: the cocaine lozenges were a real prescription for her laryngitis, and the joke was the point.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Chicago

Bankhead, Tallulah. Tallulah: My Autobiography. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952, 100–101 (“Cocaine habit-forming? Of course not. I ought to know. I’ve been using it for years.”). The familiar modern wording — “Cocaine isn’t habit-forming. I should know — I’ve been using it for years” — is as printed in Leslie Halliwell, The Filmgoer’s Book of Quotes (London: Granada Publishing, 1973; repr. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1974), 15. Both page citations are as verified on paper by Quote Investigator ↗.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Cocaine Isn't Habit-Forming. I Should Know. I've Been Using It for Years’?” Last verified 8 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/cocaine-isnt-habit-forming-i-should-know-ive-been-using-it/

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