THE COCAINE HABIT.

Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 275, 16 April 1898, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE COCAINE HABIT.

Cocaine (says the New Orleans "Times Democrat ") has superseded opium, and it is a question if cocaine is not doing more harm ti day than opium ever did. Indulgence in the cocaine habit is cheap. There is no stove needed, no needle, no long pipe. You can take cocaine in whisk}"-, you can inhale the white powder, or you can use it hypoderniically. Any one of the three methods ensures forgetfulness and recklessness 1 . Cocaine is dreamily maddening, it intoxicates, it deadens headaches and bodily pains. Ten cents worth of cocaine will last most victims of the habit from one to two days. Its extreme cheapness puts it within the reach of the most poverty-strikon. The police of large cities realise what harm the cocaine habit is doing, and are making overy effort to stamp it out. They are'malting; slight headway, though. Not a day passes that shattered wrecks of humanity, devotees of the drug, do uot drag their trembling forms from the prisoners' pen and take their medicine from the recorders in the shape of fines and imprisonments. When they have worked out their sentences they surrender themselves again to the benumbingly dolightful vice without the slightest delay. Once two things that had been women were broaghfc before the Second Recorder Bezou, and fined for disturbing the peace while under the influnce of the drug. There was scarcely a semblance of femininity about their faces. One of them, an old offender, had raved for 12 hours bohind the bars of her coll, and then sunk, whimpering, into a stupor. She seemed more beast than human when she faced the court. It was an old story with the habitues of the Court, and the prisoners attracted scarce more than passing notieo. "The cocaine habit," said a police officer, as the women were being led back to the dock, '' is responsible for more crime, for more immorality, and for more degradation than any of the standard ovils. Of course, it is against the law to sell the stuff, and anyone caught in the act would be bitterly proseouted, but there is no getting at the facts. There are many druggists who are ready to violate the law for the profit there is in it. No reputable druggist will furnish the drug, but, as detection is impossible and there is big money in selling the stuff, in spite of its comparative cheapness, a cocaine fiend never has any trouble in gratifying his appetite. "You can take cocaine anywhere. A pinch of the stuff on the back of the thumb-nail, a sniff, and the drug is at its work. I suppose cocaino is mostly taken this way. Inveterate users of the drug, I believe, get sooner or later, to using the " hypo." I remember, uot long ago, when we arrested a hoodlum and cocaine fiend and locked him up for creating a disturbance and using vile language, we searched him at the station, and took away his syringe and his supply of cocaine. When the effect of the drug already in his system wore off ha gave way to hysterical grief. Tough as ho was", ho wept and begged and prayed for his accustomed instrument and its deadly load. We refused to give him back his belongings. He grew hysterical, and at last we thought it safer to telephone the Charity Hospital for instruction?. We were told that it would be dangerous to keep him without the drug. "I carried the fellow his syringe and some cocaine. He danced and shouted for joy. Dissolving about a grain of the drug in a spoonful of water, ho roll°d up his sleeves. The marks left by previous injections were 5.0 thick that it was impossible for him to find a spot big enough to allow tho insertion of the neddle. The other sleeve was rolled up. There was the same result. At last it was necessary to insert the neddle point on the man's right thigh, where there wa3 an unpunctured spot the size of a dime. The man's skin looked as if he wore suffering from smallpox. It was a horrible sight. I believe he has died since. I never knew until then how awful the uso of the drug was.

" In my opinion the worst result of tho cocaine habit is that it absolutely kills all sense of self-respect and decency. Its users havo no morals, no consciencs. There is no depth too low for thorn to diva into to procure the money for supplying themselves with the drug. "There is no dividing lino in the use of the drug. Rousabouts uso it. Inmates of the swellest houses of sin find forgetfulness and stifle remorse in the drug. Those who havo accustomed themselves to the use of the drug will make absolutely any sacrifice to <ret it."