THE DRUG HABIT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 23 May 1913, Page 4

THE DRUG HABIT.

It is a regrettable iact (says the Melbourne Age) with regard, to the drug habit that an, increase in Victoria is revoaled by Dr W. E. Jones in his report on the State inebriate institutions. The morphia habit appears to be most widely distributed, as the cases quoted include a physician, a chemist, a plumber, a farmer, a commercial traveller and a' hardware traveller. Several of these unhappy patients incurred the habit from the use of morphia as a palliative in disease; one had the habit for twelve years, and one took ten grains daily. The cocaine cases seem to be most frequent among pnysicians. A medical student, whose case was not traceable to heredity, had been taking morphine and cocaine tor five ysars prior to admission into a State institution. An army officer confessed to taking 200 grains of -cocaine when admitted. On discharge he died from heart failure^ —it was suspected by the inspector from' an overdose. A physician 'had been taking, in tne course of 30 years, morphine, and then morphine, cocaine and alcohol. Two opium smokers —a labourer and a bootmaker —were treated. The latter had bcon smoking for twenty years.- Among the female patients one was addicted to alcohol and morphia, having contracted the habit in the treatment of asthma; another was enslaved by alcohol and veronal; a third by alcohol and laudanum, and a fourth by morphia.