The Black Candle

Six years ago, when appointed a Police Magistrate and Judge of the Juvenile Court of Edmonton, the capital city of the Province of Alberta, I was astonished to learn that there was an illicit traffic in narcotic drugs of which I had been almost unaware, and of which the public was unaware.

Year by year, this traffic has steadily grown but still the Canadian public are comparatively unenlightened concerning the ravages the traffic is making.

I began to study the subject with considerable assiduity, my official position affording me the opportunity of gleaning information not readily available to writers generally. It also brought me into active and intimate touch with the addicts and pedlars themselves, so that I was enabled to study them at first hand learning the causes which were responsible for their downfall and considering those which might lead to their rehabilitation.

The responsibility for the traffic; the possibility of staying it; the methods that should be adopted to this end; these were the questions which pressed for an answer and which led to my publishing in Maclean's Magazine, Toronto, the articles which go to form Part I of this volume.

Since that time-for nearly two years-I have received hundreds of letters concerning the subject from different parts of Canada and the United States, and not a few from Great Britain. Some of the writers desired information; others had a wealth of it to give. To the latter, I desire to gratefully express my indebtedness.

Numerous letters came from families in which members thereof were addicted to some form of narcotic thus becoming a burden and often a shame to the other members. This is a problem that weighs heavily upon thousands of homes and which, in as many instances, has seriously crippled their efficiency and even their safety.

Such were the causes which led to a continued study of the subject, and to my embodying the results in Part II of this volume.

Although there are over two million drug addicts on the American Continent, and a vast unnumbered army who live by exploiting them, I cannot find that any volume dealing with the subject generally has ever been published.

There have been brochures on some phase of it, several medical works, and one or two books on a particular drug.

This is the more remarkable when we consider the religious, social, racial, medical, monetary and criminal aspects of the subject, and the urgent necessity for data concerning them.

It would have seemed that my study was to a purpose and my efforts to no end had I not essayed to make deductions therefrom and to have suggested remedial action. These suggestions are made, however, with deference to those specialists who are versed more fully on certain phases of the traffic. My suggestions will, at least, serve as points upon which experts may argue, or from which they may show us a better way.

While facing the drug evil without blinkers, I have endeavored to discuss it without offending the sensibilities of the readers.

All honest men and orderly persons should rightly know that there are men and women who batten and fatten on the agony of the unfortunate drug-addict-palmerworms and human caterpillars who should be trodden underfoot like the despicable grubs that they are.

And all folk of gentle and open hearts should know that among us there are girls and glorious lads who, without any obliquity in themselves have become victims to the thrall of opiates,

"Till they perish and they suffer
Some, 'tis whispered—down in hell."

It is fitting then, that as both readers and writers we should approach this urgent matter with teachable spirits, with tolerance for each others' opinions, and with wills ready to act in conjunction where duty seems to direct.

Edmonton, May 1922.

CONTENTS

PART I.

PART II.