STARTLING FACTS ABOUT DRUG FIENDS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 211, 22 September 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

STARTLING FACTS ABOUT DRUG FIENDS.

WARNINGS AGAINST A HABIT WHICH CAUSES MORE HAVOC THAN DRINK. To what extent is the war le.rponsvble for the alarming growth of the drug habit? Chemists in the West-end of London will tell you that the demand for cocaine and other deleterious tonics has of late become greater than at any time they can recall, and doctors, too, will testify that the habit is on the increase among all classes of people. Not long ago a well-known physic an who has intimate knowledge of the ravages of this terrible ,evil>declared that a person who habituates himself or herself to the use of drugs is nothing less than a potential lunatic; and many tragic events have from time to time been revealed which amply justify this startling statement. Here is a case in point. At Westminster Police-court not many weeks ago two well-to-do persons were accused of obtaining goods from a Westend stone by false pretences. Both of them, it was stated, were victims of the morphia Habit, and the effect had been to produce a condition aliin to insanity. One of the defendants, a married woman, had been taking th,2 drug for four years, and had become so accustomed to it that she took it in doses of foui teen grains a day. Similar havoc had l>een wrought on the other defendant—one of the smartest young men on the Stock Exchange until he fell a victim to the scourge. Another recant case in London was that of the son of a stockbroker who had been secretly taking drugs ana had become so addicted to the habit that he suffered from delusions, and eventually died from opium poisoning. Bottles bearing the eadly label of laudanum, which had been bought from forty-eight chemists, were discovered in his desk after he had paid the penally i for his folly. The first harmful result of drug-tak-ing is, often enough, not physical, but moral. Cocaine, ev,en more than morphia, destroys the moral sense. Psychologists arc puzzled as to why th-s destruction of the moral sense is accomplished, but the fact remains that it is. When questioned on the subject a chenvst answered, somewhat bluntly. " When a woman comes to me and asks for cocaine or morphia or chloral I, of course, fill in the doctor's prescription. This is my business. But I take care to keep a close ey© on that customer'!, fingers all the tin 1 ,? she is in the shop. The cocaine fiend will steal anything ,f she thinks she can do it unobserved.''

That is but the beginning of the narcot'c curse. The moral effects are, after a time, followed by indescribabl 3 depression of spirits, sleeplessness, and distaste for food. Then there is the inevitable mental breakdown, which frequently ends in death—and sometimes suicide. In peace-time people who were mos; addicted to tho drug habit were prefessional men —doctors, writers, acton and actresses, artists, and women in society'or those who live b,l> rain-work But since the war broke out, with all its attendant worries and anxieties and sorrows, the testimony of social workers, mental experts, and police officials justifies the assertion that the ravages of this vice have spread among other classes.

Even soldiers have become a prey to the habit. Although it is an offemv under the Defence of the Realm Act to sell or supply cocaine to Army or naval men unless prescribed by a medical man, cases have come to Vght in wh !> they have obtained the drug by clandestine means, or through having fairen into the hands of unscrupulous per. sons who profit by the growing deman 1 for drugs of one kind and another. All poisons must, of course, be signed for by the person who purchases them, and some of them can only l>e sold on doctors prescriptions. But the confirmed drug-taker overcomes alt tho c e difficulties by making a round of many chenrsts' shops, so that no one really knows how much he buys or consumes. Then, again, the cocaine habit tin le carried on secretly. For a tinr: evi-11 the nearest friends of the victim h«v3 no suspicion of it. It has none of the repulsiveness of ordinary intox.cv.tion It grows on on." with amazing rapidity and gives little or no warning c£ tie harm it is doing until the evil is accomplished almost beyond recall. In many cases from twelve to twentv doses arc, before long, taken in 0 single day. This costs money. Cocaine hydrochlorate, the form of the drug used for this purpose, is very expensive Wholesale it costs 2os. an ounce, and reta'l usually about three times as much. Some men are known to have ten or twenty doses a day, and at that rate loz. would last but a week. It is a well-known fact that some people contract the habit of taking drugs in the effort to cur<e drunkenness; others get a craving for one in tlw effort to stop a desire for the other. Cocaine is occasionally given to kill a desire for morphia; morphia to dissipate the wish for cocaine. So it frequently happens that the one ; s dnvoi away only to leave the other in possession. The list of morphia vict'ms in this country, if it could be given, would bo amazing. In the national life of any country the "dope fiend" is a menace of the worst description. The real remedy seems to lie not in attempting to cure tho victims of tiie vice they have cultivated, but in striking at the root of the evil and prohibiting by law the sale of drugs in any form except on the prescription of a medical man. Drug-taking is a social canker that must be stamped out, and it is hoped the appeals that reach the Home Office from those who are now taking an act. ive part in the campaign to suppress the cocaine traffic will not be made in vain.