CORRESPONDENCE

Taranaki Daily News, 4 March 1921, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE

SPREAD OF DRUG HABIT (To the Editor.) Sir, —An article appears in your paper of February 26 with the above sub-heading, and to it I ask leave to draw public attention. The article. Is on crime as it is In America, and Is based on the report of the special correspondent of the London Times; it winds up, howwith a special fling at prohibition. . We have been having too much of this sort of thing lately. The anti-prohibitionists seize on anything that Is bad as a result of prohibition, and we get it craftily inserted in the Press so as to form public opinion adverse to the great reform that is n6w being carried out in America. In the article above referred to it Is insinuated that the drug habit—the habit of using drugs sUch as cocaine and morphia—is the result of prohibition. This, however, is quite wrong. It is the other way about. The drug habit springs from the drink (alcohol) habit, for the drink habit is a drug habit, and it is for the alcohol (“the kick’’ some call it) that is in the drink that men take it, “Alcohol and the Human Body,’’ by Sir Victor Horsley and Dr. Sturge, 6th edition, page 19, says:— “Prohibition of alcohol taking in the U.S.A, has resulted in a lessened amount of drug addiction. Many institutions for the reform of drug victims have been able to -close down. This Is but natural, seeing that alcohol is the weakest in a series of dangerous narcotics, and that unstable persons start with this, and then gradually go on to the stronger drugs. Whisky leads to cocaine.” This is from the standard work on alcohol and its doings. Reference to this topic may well be made to “Alcohol: Its Action .on the Human Organism,” from H.M. Stationery Office, London, in chapter VIII., but perhaps direct testimony from. America will be the bfist. From New York we learn that tl : e Health Department’s Drug Clinic was opened in April, .1919, in order to care for thg number of drug addicts, which was expected to be increased owing \o prohibition, but it had to be closed for want of business. This last item is .a plain proof that prohibition does not develop a drug habit. So much’ for the drug habit as a result of prohibition., Then we have the reports that crime increase is another result of the drug regime. This, too, Is easily met py facts and figures. The latest is from Boston, Mass., of January, 1921, and, comparing the last of license with the year of prohibition, it shows very large decrease in all crimes. I enclose a copy of the report, from which, Sir, perhaps you may find room in your widely read paper for some extracts.— I am, etc., B.H.M. New Plymouth, March 2, 1921.