The Drug Habit.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18364, 23 April 1925, Page 8

The Drug Habit.

Tho condition ol affairs revealed in a special message to "Tho Press" yesterday from Auckland is probably not peculiar to Auckland. So far as drugtaking is an American-Australian habit —so far, that is 1o say, as supplied are move easily obtained in tliosc countrios, both for consumption and export ~nd and Woi'iuglon will have more drug-ud.iic-'.s than ChristcHureh and Dnnediu. Bui; Court, records show, what'is in any ease known to every observer, that tnorc arc victims of

opium and its fieriveUvcs in every important centre in the Dominion,, and if the restraint pi>. the. said o£ drugs is conscientious rather t-buu legal,, we are extremely lucky .is a community that the number of victims is still so small. There will of course always be smuggling, but if it is true tint our Poisons Act is "forty years out ol' date" the smuggler is taking risks which do not Beem worth while. At tlio came tune there is a good deal of nonsense talked ,'about opium by people who have not taken the trouble to acquaint themselves with the facts. So far as New Zealand is concerns;! it may be said that any use of opium which is not medically advised is dangerous and to be condemned. The taking of morphia or of heroin, of cocaine or any allied substance, forms a "habit" and a "craving," and ultimately—doctors say in every single case—physical and moral disaster. It should therefore be absolutely prohibited except under medical supervision, and the supervision must be conscientious and strict. But the caso is quite different in some parts of the work]. It was made very clear by the spokesman for Britain, at the recent Qpi«m Conference at Cfpucva that there can be'a popular use of opium,

as well as a popular abuse, and that if comes perilously near the absurd to clamour for the instant abolition of a

drug -which has been "in general and "continuous use in Asia, since the days "of Babylon." In Persia, Turkestan, Arabia and India opium is eaten — sometimes as a stimulant, sometimes as a narcotic, sometimes to reduce fever; but it 13 very seldom abused. The smoking of opium, on the other hand, is more or less confined to China, and to places like Burmah and the Malay Peninsula, which have Marge Chinese populations; and the effects arc quite different. The opium-eating of an Arab or of a Hindu is something like the tobacco-smoking of a European—neiiher a good habit nor a bad one, if the test is the effect on health. The opium-smoking of the Chinese, though i- may be harmless for a time, seldom remains so. There is an undoubted tendency to the development of a "craving," and so to excess and ruin. But it is the use that is made of opium in America—injecting it, ov its derivatives, directly into the circulation —that is drug-taking in its worst and most enslaving form; and it is the American habit that threatens Xe-.v Zealand.