An opium smoker questioned, "If I should gain heaven for a pice (coin), why should you be envious?

His question is based on two lies. The smoker does not gain heaven, and we are not envious.

Certain slack-twisted persons of both sexes, in search of possible adventures, or desirous of surcease from the pain of their own inefficiency, may be led to think there is something felicitous in the smoker's "heaven," as here set forth, but they think amiss.

One has but to come closely in touch with the smoker to know that his vaunted "pipe dreams" are not invariable visions of moon-haunted nights, flower-starred islands, and the hushing of velvet wings.

On the contrary, he dreams more often of tremendous glooms and fatal slopes, and that he cries for help with a voiceless throat.

Instead of a heaven, his open-eyed dream ultimately becomes a terrible hell, "a dwelling deadly code, full of bloody eagles and pale adders."

Opium addicts, especially if they be poetic, throw a lure over their vice and write of it as "a song that sleeps in the blood," but few write of their tears that are bitter as ink, and how they get to know all the untold sorrows of the world.

Of course, they do not tell these things, for every drug-fiend is a liar, the dream in their blood is only a morbid and clamorous appetite—yes, and a vulgar one.

Besides, an inveterate user of drugs has no more blood in his body than a shrimp. Indeed, because of their pallor and extreme emaciation the Chinese denominate the advanced addicts as "opium ghosts." And the name is apt, being descriptive above all others to these ashy-faced, half-witted droolers; these unfortunate cringing creatures who are so properly castigated by the whips and scorpions they have made for themselves.

"Why then do they smoke?" you ask. Again I reply, for forgetfulness. Maybe, they smoke too for the excitation of the senses, an effect which the new smoker gets on five grains but which, it is said, required as high as 270 grains for an old smoker. Through its medium, the seduction of women addicts becomes easy. By the continuous use of the drug, this excitation disappears and, in cases of men, results in impotency.

Sometimes, a man will come to the magistrate to tell of his domestic infelicity and how his wife has deteriorated both mentally and physically. She has become careless of her appearance, and indolent; neglects her home, and remains away all night, or even for days. He has thought of every reason but opiates, and is staggered when the idea is first suggested to him. Then, he begins to understand why she stole money from him; the reason she sold her jewelry; why she has become so ill-looking and her face so fretted with wrinkles. He begins to comprehend the case of her continuous despondence and her desire to commit suicide, and why she is "gey ill to live wi'."

A man or woman who becomes an addict seeks the company of those who use the drug, and avoids those of their own social status. This explains the amazing phenomenon of an educated gentlewoman, reared in a refined atmosphere, consorting with the lowest classes of yellow and black men. It explains, too, why sometimes a white woman deserts or 'farms out' a half-caste infant, or on rare occasions brings it to the juvenile court for adoption.

Under the influence of the drug, the woman loses control of herself; her moral senses are blunted, and she becomes "a victim" in more senses than one. When she acquires the habit, she does not know what lies before her; later, she does not care. She is a young woman who is years upon years old.

Realizing that no woman may become or remain degraded without all women suffering, you may attempt something in the way of salvage, only to find that to reform her would be about as difficult as making Eve from the original rib. Unrestrained by decorum, void of delicacy of soul, moulded by vice, the companion of debauchees and drabs, she seems to be one of those desperately "down-and-out" women who, for her life dictum has taken the world "Evil, be thou my good."

Sometimes, her husband takes her to another city; or the police may gather her in for a term in jail. Sometimes, she goes to the asylum, and sometimes she dies, but more often she just lives on, a burden and heart-scald at home and abroad.

When we consider the quiet, insidious way in which the drug habit lays hold on those who dally with it; how it distorts the moral sense of the habitué, and the enormous human wastage that results therefrom, we cannot but agree with Dr. C. E. Terry who describes drug addiction as "one of the most vast, complex, and depressing chapters of national and international life, and one which has no parallel in all the stories of human misery and misunderstanding."

But while we have been speaking of opium smoking, it should be borne in mind that this is the least common form of drug addiction owing to the difficulties attending its practice, and the greater probabilities of its detection by the police.

Its derivatives, such as morphine, heroin, and codein are, however, used enormously, especially by the male portion of this Dominion. The same ratio of male addicts to females prevails in the United States. In this connection Mr. Charles B. Towns who has studied the question for years says, "Women, though constitutionally more liable than men to feel the need of medicines, form the lesser portion of the drug-taking class."

Women are more given to the use of veronal, trional, sulfonal and other habit-forming drugs which are taken to relieve insomnia, without the users realizing the attendant dangers. Those drugs are coal-tar derivatives and do not come under the drugs prohibited by the Opium and Drugs Act of Canada.

It may come about that, some day, regulations governing the use of these will be thought advisable for, after all, the man who said "Anything that acts like an opiate IS an opiate," was talking very sensibly. The users do not speak of these drugs as opiates but as "hypnotics" although discriminating persons might prefer the former word. Physicians say the effect of these coal-tar derivatives is to thin the blood and disturb the heart's action, thereby producing neurotics.

Perhaps the most popular of the prohibited drugs in Canada is cocaine, in that its use does not require pipes as for opium, nor sub-cutaneous injections as for morphine. It is also more easily smuggled and gives a quicker and more intense result than any other drug. Indeed, the snuffers of cocaine are frequently designated as "happy-dusters" because of their sense of exhilaration and satisfaction. Cocaine has the distinction, too, according to an eminent authority, of providing for its users "the shortest cut to the insane asylum; it takes them across lots." These are the folk who hear buzzing and imperious voices from the night, or from the republic of deadmen. Remorse, jealousy, and fear make themselves faces that leer, glower and threaten while an unknown persecutor pours electricity into their bodies, or poisons their food. Their mood varies from fierce elation to that of sullen, sardonic melancholy.

Cocainomaniacs are commonly called "cokies," and as a rule, get scant sympathy from the medical man or police officials who are obliged to deal with them.

And yet, in our more leisurely hours, the most case-hardened of us, recalling their deplorable condition and fear-haunted faces, must perforce recall the words of the poet who said,

"I have looked into all men's hearts.
O secret terrible houses of beauty and pain,
And I cannot be gay, and I cannot be bitter again,
Since I have looked into all men's hearts."

It has been found in different countries that the use of noxious drugs changes from time to time, the maximum addiction passing to the one most easily procurable.

In the United States, in 1907, cocaine was the drug most used because of the breaking up of opium smoking. Two years later, opium had a revival and claimed 25 per cent. of the addicts.

In 1909, morphine had driven out nearly all competitors and was favored by 98 per cent. of the addicts.

In 1910, heroin began to be used and by 1916 it was the daily "dope" of 81 per cent. of the addicts, the balance depending largely on morphine.

Heroin, which is put up in tablets, is a derivative of morphine and is three times stronger than its parent drug.

In enquiring into the growth of the drug habit in Canada, it is hard to secure reliable data outside that given in the Government Reports. For one thing, we are not given to tabulating our cases and it is, therefore, difficult to get evidence that would stand in a court of justice. For another thing, we lack the scientific attitude of mind, desiring to bolster up our theories or pet prejudices, rather than to set forth the naked truth.

Many prohibitionists will advise you not to say publicly that the drug habit has increased, lest "the liquor people" make unfair use of your statement.

Conversely, the liquor people make absurd and sweeping statements concerning the ill-effects of prohibitory enactments, without adducing facts or figures to substantiate their claims.

The same difficulties, in a somewhat lesser degree, are encountered when one enquires from the pharmacists, physicians, military authorities, customs officials, alienists and even the police themselves. People are prejudiced, indifferent, ignorant, or fear to express themselves lest they get into trouble with their superior officers or with their departments. The great majority, however, are merely unobservant and inattentive. The constable on beat who can tell whether a man has a fit, is a drug addict, or only sleeping off the results of "squirrel" whiskey, is a very clever fellow indeed, and heading straight for the chief's chair and the chief's salary.

In this respect, he differs little from those of us who are magistrates. We are too hurried and too worried to enquire closely into the causes of mania. We like to think this is the province of the doctor, and that it does not concern us. We do not know whether the person committed pending the orders of the Attorney-General, has been an habitual user of narcotics, and some of us do not even care.

In most asylums the patients are only housed, bathed and fed. They are seldom individualized for treatment as if they were ill at home, or if in the wards of a hospital.

Similar conditions prevail in the majority of prisons. No one seems to know who many convicts are drug-users. One jail surgeon will tell you the numbers are negligible; others will say that they are alarming and that it is difficult to prevent the traffic of drugs, or to keep the prisoner's friends from supplying him surreptitiously.

There are, nevertheless, a fine majority of official persons who are not afraid of the truth. If prohibitory enactments lead to an increase of drug addiction, they desire to know it in order that they may prepare for and intelligently cope with the menace, even as they are doing with the liquor traffic.

Among the other classes mentioned, we are indebted to a few officials who are concerned deeply, and who are eager for a vigorous policy of suppression on the part of the Federal Government. May their tribe live and increase!

When we come to examine the Reports of the Inland Revenue Department, the Board of Health at Ottawa, and to read Hansard and the Blue Books, we find a wealth of data that is absolutely reliable, upon the narcotic drug traffic.

Here we ascertain that, until six months ago, when certain drastic restrictions were made, the magnitude of the drug traffic in Canada was admittedly appalling.

In the year 1912, only 35 ounces of cocaine were imported into this country. Seven years later, the imports had jumped to 12,333 ounces.

In the year 1915, a remarkable drop in imports occurred, the number of ounces being only 50.

In the same year corresponding drops occurred in morphine and crude opium.

Mr. D. A. Clark, the Assistant Deputy Minister of Health, says this is probably accounted for by the fact that owing to the disturbances of the war the avenues of trade had not yet become adjusted, and stocks of these drugs were being held up by interested parties in the hope of sale for war purposes at very greatly enhanced prices.

In 1907, Canadians imported 1,523 ounces of morphine. Ten years later, we were importing 30,000 ounces.

When we come to speak of opium imports, it should be borne in mind that the quantity is computed in pounds, and not in ounces, as with morphine and cocaine.

In 1907, 67,464 pounds of opium passed through our Customs. The next year, 88,013 pounds went through. After this time, the imports began to decrease till, in 1916, they fell to 1,741 pounds. By 1913, they had risen again to 34,263 pounds.

It is well at this point to consider the source of our supply. In 1918, the United States supplied Canada with 1,913 pounds of crude opium; Persia sent us 2,853 pounds, and the British Empire 7,705 pounds.

In the same year, we got 4,795 ounces of morphine from Great Britain and 5,043 ounces from the United States.

For cocaine also, the United States is our chief source of supply. In 1918, we bought from that country 3,754 ounces, as against 923 ounces from Great Britain.

A few months ago, our Department of Health went into co-operation with the Department of Trade and Commerce to actively suppress the trade in narcotics to the lowest legitimate point, and the result as developed may reasonably be looked upon with some degree of pride, the trade having depreciated nearly 200 per cent.

This came about 1919, through the passing of the following Order-in-Council:—

"That it is expedient to provide that every person who imports or exports from Canada any coca leaves, cocaine or any of their salts of preparations, or any opium or its preparations, or any opium alkaloids or their salts or preparations, without first obtaining a license therefor from the Minister who is presiding over the Department of Health, shall be guilty of an offence, and shall be liable upon summary conviction to a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars and costs, or for a term not exceeding imprisonment for one year, or to both fine or imprisonment, and that these provisions shall be read as one with the Opium and Drug Act, chapter seventeen of the Statutes of 1911, and everything in the said Act which is inconsistent with this resolution be repealed."

It is stated on excellent authority that more than 95 per cent. of the whole quantity used in Canada is imported into or about the City of Montreal, and most of the remaining 5 per cent. is bought by other dealers in Quebec. While it may be true that several of the largest wholesale drug firms in Canada are situated in Montreal, it is also known that that city is the headquarters for illicit distribution of this type of drug, and that a very large percentage must be smuggled into the United States.

Whether this claim is correct we cannot say, there being no figures to cover operations in smuggling. Our government officials claim that, in the United States the regulations against importation has raised the price of drugs in that country, and has caused illicit vendors to look to Canada for a supply.

The "Survey" for February 1919, published in the United States, says "Drugs are smuggled from Canada and Mexico and sold by bootleggers and unscrupulous physicians." This statement may be true to some extent, but there is evidence to show that we are subject to a similar plague of drug-peddling from the United States.

Previous to the passing of the Harrison Law in 1914, in the United States, their people consumed more habit-forming drugs than even the people of China. Their opium alone cost $18,000,000, and it was believed there were 5,000,000 addicts, or one in every twenty persons. This is probably an exaggerated figure, but it was definitely discovered that about 90 per cent. of the amount of opiates imported was used for the corrupting of youths and maidens between the ages of 17 and 22.

How much of this 90 per cent. was smuggled into Canada for a similar purpose we are unable to state, but we know the proportion was large.

Be this as it may, our Canadian Government, through the Opium and Drugs Act, has taken upon itself the duty of striking strongly at narcotic drugs by its police arm and are deserving of the highest commendation.

Notwithstanding this, it is plainly palpable that the illicit traffic in our Dominion has grown to menacing proportions and, as yet it remains to be grappled with. There is no gainsaying the immensity of the undertaking, but it will never be so easily dealt with as now. That the Government needs to take sharply remedial measures, especially in dealing with the addicts themselves, is also palpable. Since the war we have gleaned new ideas about the wastage of human material, and the duty of conserving life.

Where the addicts are concerned, we must not let ourselves fall into the pagan and horribly callous attitude of the late Dowager Empress of China, known to her people as "the Old Dragon." When urged not to sign the decree against opium on the grounds that there were over nine million addicts in the Empire and that their sufferings would be painful beyond comprehension, she asked "How many will die?" Her advisers informed her about three millions. "That is not many in proportion to the benefit" she replied imperially.

In this country it is our desire to have the benefits from its suppression without destroying our people or unduly impairing their efficiency. Such desirable results cannot be accomplished without careful plans, legislative sanction, and ample backing from the public.

But, undoubtedly, Mr. W. L. MacKenzie King, in his report published in 1908 on "The Need for the Suppression of the Opium Traffic in Canada," struck the right note on this phase of the subject when he said:—

"Other instances of legislative enactments to suppress the opium evil, and to protect individuals from the baneful effect of this drug might be given, if further examples were necessary. What is more important, however, than the example of other countries, is the good name of our own. To be indifferent to the growth of such an evil in Canada would be inconsistent with those principles of morality which ought to govern the conduct of a Christian nation."

Mr. King wrote these words in 1908, when the Chinese residents had presented claims to the Federal Government for losses occasioned by the anti-Asiatic riots during which seven of their opium factories were destroyed.

Mr. King, then the Minister of Labor, further said that the amount consumed in Canada, if known, would probably appal the ordinary citizen who is inclined to believe that the habit is confined to the Orientals. The Chinese with whom he had conversed assured him that almost as much opium was sold to white people as to Chinese, and that the habit was making headway, not only among white men and boys, but among women and girls.

This was eleven years ago, and no particular attention was paid Mr. King's warning, with the result that all the provinces of Western Canada are, today, suffering immensely from this evil. In referring to the traffic in drugs, the Editor of the Edmonton Journal, said in December 1919:—

"It is known that vast forces are now engaged in peddling morphias, opiums, and lesser known and even more devilish narcotics and stimulants. A few days in the Edmonton police court would reveal the extent of the system here in the far north, and it is certain that a vast international organization is handling the importation and supply of huge quantities of every sort of vicious drug. Action cannot be taken too soon."

Anyone who has lived in British Columbia knows that where the Chinese have their own districts, much smoking is indulged in.

Several years ago, with two plain clothes men known as "dope cops," I visited Chinatown in Vancouver, that queer district where men seem to glide from nowhere to nothing.

In entering Shanghai Alley, I was warned to stand clear of the doorways lest a rush be made from inside, when I would be trampled upon.

In passing up a narrow staircase of unplaned boards, one detective walked ahead and one behind me, each carrying a flashlight. "Why do you keep me between you?" I asked. "Gentlemen should precede a lady up a stairway."

Without replying, the head man stopped about midway up, and inserted a long key into a board when, to my amazement, a door opened where no door had been visible. Here, in a small cupboard, without a window—a kennel of a place—lay four opium debauchees or, as the police designate them, "hop-heads."

The hole was absolutely dark and the men slept heavily. Although plainly narcotised, the police might not apprehend the sleepers. One may only arrest those found in the act of smoking. It would seem that here, as in the best English circles, the eleventh commandment is "Never interrupt."

And so, in like manner, several doors were opened for me, to show how I was being protected from a stealthily opened panel, and all this might mean to a witless, worthless, lamb like me. As you looked and looked again on these prostrate, open-eyed insensates it began to dawn on you what Bret Harte meant when he spoke of "The dread valley of the shadow of the drug."

In one of these dens, the detective suddenly pointed like a dog on game. "Opium!" he said, "I smell opium."

Almost immediately from over our heads, we heard the pad of running soft-shod feet, for the game was up and afield. Upon entering the room above, no one was to be seen, but the room was filled with the sickly fumes of cooked opium. Only the month before, a half-dazed unhappy wretch in an attempt to escape from the police threw himself off the roof of a building and died on the pavement beneath. The other Chinamen, to have revenge, swore that one of these detectives had thrown the man off. The detective charged with this crime was the one ahead of me with the long key.

"An open-eyed insensate in the dread Valley of the Shadow of the Drug."—Chapter I, Part I. "When she acquires the habit, she does not know what lies before her; later she does not care."—Chapter I, Part I.

While the drug habit affects all classes of society in Canada, there would seem to be more addicts, per capita, of the population, in some districts than in others.

Sometimes, one is inclined to think otherwise, and that the seeming difference is due to the various methods adopted in its detection.

In Edmonton, Alberta, our morality squad, or "plain-clothes men," who find inhibited drugs in the possession of any person are awarded half the fine by the magistrate. Indeed, any informant is awarded this if a conviction be made.

In Toronto, Winnipeg and other cities, this procedure is not pursued. It is claimed that if it were generally practised, the detectives would do no other work.

We think this is a mistaken contention for, here in the north, we have as large a quota of convictions for other criminal offences as they have in the more southerly cities.

But apart from the sharpening of the official senses where the ferreting out of drugs is concerned, a moiety of the fines ought to be paid to the men who trail down the addicts and the illicit vendors. The traffic in drugs is carried on with such strict secrecy that the utmost caution and patience are required to secure information and evidence. This being secured, to force an entry to a drug den at two o'clock in the morning when the "dopers" are irresponsible either wholly or in part, is an unpleasant and often a dangerous task. A man needs to take his courage in both hands for, generally speaking, infuriated dopers are no herd of sheep.

In smoking, the Chinaman reclines on a mattress on the floor, having beside him a pan which contains the opium "lay-out." The cracks of the windows and doors are packed with wet cloths that the odor of the smoke may not escape. For the same reason, the keyhole of the door is plugged, thus preventing its being locked with a key. The door is secured with a butcher knife driven into the door-jamb.

Finally, the available furniture is piled against the door to guard against surprises. It is this butcher knife in the door-jamb, that constitutes the chiefest danger to the detectives who come with an order for search, although more than one officer has been killed by a bullet sent through the panel of the door. Two years ago, the Chief of Police at Vancouver and one of his men were murdered in this way while waiting in a hall-way for a dope-fiend to give entry.

In Toronto, they tell us that the Chinese used to smoke openly. but since 1911 when the Opium and Drug Act came into force, open smoking ceased and, as a result, there are fewer convictions.

Knowing the Chinese temperament and habits, one conjectures whether smoking is not as freely indulged in as formerly, but with probably more careful precautions and safeguards.

But if Toronto pays no douceur to the morality squad, still it has given considerable attention to the examination of the books and prescriptions of the druggists. If a druggist is selling more narcotics than other druggists he must render an accounting or lose his license.

On one occasion, to show the officers how easily it could be done, a drug "fiend" without a prescription from a physician, dentist or veterinary, went out from the police station and bought several No. 1 Parke Davis drug-kits from different pharmacists, the money having been supplied him by the detectives. It must not, however, be deduced here that this is possible in every pharmacy, for in Toronto, as elsewhere, the disreputable dispenser of drugs is greatly in the minority.

In Toronto, too, an inspector from the College of Pharmacy inspects the books of the different drug shops in order that he may scrutinize and compute the sales.

It is their claim, also, that the drug habit is not increasing in the Queen City.

Without seriously questioning this claim it is nevertheless, hard to credit that any densely populated portion of Canada has had no proportionate share in the consumption of narcotic drugs, the importation and sale of which have so enormously increased during the past six years, especially when no special preventive efforts have been taken, other than those which obtain elsewhere. No reason has been given for this phenomenon unless we accept the theory that a vastly higher moral standard prevails in Toronto than in other cities. Without being facetious, we are prepared to acknowledge that this is possible and may be quite true.

In Winnipeg, it is officially stated that the habit is growing rapidly, and that the police have on their lists the names and addresses of hundreds of persons who are inveterate users of narcotics.

It was recently declared by an investigating committee in California that the drug distribution centre for all America is in Western Canada. The evidence upon which this astounding assertion is based has not been made public but it is quite possible, even probable, that this assertion is true.

Owing to the vigilance of the narcotic squads whose work it is to search in-coming vessels on the Western Coast of the United States, smuggling from the Orient is becoming more difficult all the time, although the International Year Book of 1918 says that probably one-half of the opium which enters the United States is brought in by smugglers, and that despite restrictive legislation, the amount has certainly not diminished.

It was found that opium was being brought to America in chests of tea; in coal-bunkers; in the beams of the vessels; under the stairways; behind panels in the saloon; in water tanks, and even in the ship's piano. Sometimes, it was smuggled by means of nut shells. The nut was cut in half, the kernel removed; the cavity filled with opium and the two parts glued together again. It was sold to the drug-users in this form. Indeed, the Chinese used to smuggle opium in chairs which they said were family heirlooms but, one day, the truck of a stevedore struck an heirloom on a gang-plank and released eighty pounds of opium. It was found that even the legs of this chair were stuffed with the drug.

It is claimed that less adroitness is required to land contraband in Canada than in the States, and that it is brought here daily in many and various containers, even in musical instruments.

Other than the assumption made by government officials at Ottawa that opium was being smuggled into the States from Montreal, it had occurred to few of us, if any, that an immensely greater traffic might have gained foothold in Western Canada. We took for granted that the commerce in drugs was directly between the United States and China, not dreaming that Canada might be the intermediary in the same.

It is alleged that this nefarious traffic in the States has been partially carried on by Pullman-car porters and even by customs officials who grew rich in the trade. We are unable to vouch for the truth of this, but it might not be too hard for officials, at certain specified points to release bonded consignments of opium which were camouflaged as tea, preserved ginger, or bamboo shoots.

These modern-day buccaneers could well afford to pay $5,000 to an official on a consignment which would net them $50,000 in profits.

"But our officials in Canada would not be guilty," you say. Certainly not. We do not even suggest it. We are only telling the Federal Customs Department what might happen here if our immunity to bribes were not absolutely above suspicion.

When, however, it comes to railway porters—Ah well! there are some we know of personally whose liberty is more attributable to their good luck than their good behaviour. Indeed, we know a certain blackamoor—an erstwhile porter—who, at the present moment, is languishing in prison on a term imposed by ourselves. This fellow is also under penalty for having in his possession what must assuredly have been the most obscene literature ever printed.

One can hardly imagine anything more dangerous than a filthy-minded drug-addict in charge of a coach of sleeping people, whatever his color may be.

When this man's quarters were raided, six pipes, a quantity of prohibited drugs and a woman were taken. The woman who had a kind of zig-zag appearance, assured us in court that she had just "happened in" the opium rooms by the merest accident, but the tremor of an isolated muscle in her face; her trembling gait; her leaden pallor; the closely contracted pupils of her eyes; and her stupefaction which approximated senile dementia, were all definitely symptomatic of recovery from an opium debauch.

Where their Pullman-car employees are concerned, the railway companies leave no stone unturned to secure well-recommended porters, and to supervise these as closely as circumstances will permit, but it is not humanly possible for companies to prevent men, if these be so disposed, from giving rein at times to ignoble and swinish appetites. Even the Old One himself couldn't do it.

Having said this about porters, one cannot in fairness, leave the subject without paying tribute to those other faithful "boys" in the service who are so solid and sensible that they seem almost super-civilized. It takes rare probity of character to keep returning purses, watches, diamond rings and other mere impedimenta that careless folk lose daily in every Pullman berth, to say nothing of overcoming the desperate desire of testing the contents of flasks that protrude invitingly from pockets on nearly every clothes-hanger.

Yes! there are many porters, however depleted their finances, who will have absolutely no truck with the scoundrelly business of drug-pedlary.

Railway detectives tell us that on the West Coast of Canada, opium is thrown overboard in rubber bags, or other receptacles, from in-coming steamers. This flotsam is taken into open boats, at certain points in the harbors, by confederates of the smugglers, thus evading discovery in the customs-house. They also tell us that unless you are accustomed to handling it, you might not even recognize opium as such. Commercially, it comes in different forms but, most frequently, in square plugs that are the color and shape of chewing tobacco, or in lumps like oval dumplings.

The Police allege that an inter-provincial traffic is carried on by means of agents. The opium is carried in tin cannisters by one man who passes on the residue to another man at the borders of the next province, and so on across the Dominion.

When it comes to smuggling narcotics across the boundary line between Canada and the United States, a whole volume could be written on the subject, but one has no desire to teach "Smuggling without a Master," so one refrains. Suffice it to say, that detectives now look with closer scrutiny into the extra car-tire at the back of motors.

Opium is the juice of the white poppy (papver somniferum) and is the sap which exudes from incisions made on the outside of the capsules when they have attained their full growth after the fall of the petals. The poppy was well known to ancients, its cultivation being mentioned by Homer, and its medicinal properties by Hippocrates.

Morphine is an alkaloid of opium—that is to say, its active vegetable principle having alkaline qualities.

Codein is also a derivative of opium.

Opium and its derivatives are distinguished by a flavor that is acrid, nauseous and bitter.

Opium is smoked; morphine is taken hypodermically, or by the mouth. Hypodermic injections are more favored by the users of this particular drug in that they become intoxicated without the disagreeable effects of the substance. Then, too, when morphine is swallowed, it takes longer to produce its solacing effect.

Contrariwise, the use of the hypodermic is attended with dangers from an infected solution or from a dirty needle. Frequently, morphine habituŽs will insert the needle into their arms without the precaution of rolling up their sleeves. This infection results in the formation of abscesses.

Last year, a young bride of three months who had married an addict, and had herself become one, was charged with having opium in her possession unlawfully.

During the trial, she became hysterical and began to beg piteously for morphine of which she had been deprived from the day previously. She complained of intense neuralgia, chills, thirst and abdominal pains. Finally she collapsed. Surely, the soul of her was "full of scorpions: she had supp'd full with horrors."

On stripping her for a hypodermic injection, the physician and matron found her body to be literally covered with angry-looking carbuncles which the physician said were due to infection from the needle. She became quiet immediately after she had received her daily dose.

Her husband who was charged conjointly, was in hardly a more comfortable condition, complaining of muscular cramps and profuse sweating.

This man who came from a notable Canadian family, had already served several terms in jail for breaches of the Opium and Drugs Act. He, too, had to receive attention from the doctor who showed me the victim's condition.

The upper part of the man's body was so punctured by the needle that there was no flesh available for fresh "shots" except on his back. His arms and chest looked more like a perforated milk-skimmer than anything else. He told us his skin had become so thick and hardened, he broke many needles in trying to insert them. He also confessed to having lost his sense of taste and that he was losing his memory. He has taken so much morphine that he will soon be immune from it as a poison and can hardly be killed by it, a state which is known to physicians as Mithridatism.

Surely, the late Earl of Shaftesbury who devoted his life to the study of social problems such as these, was wholly within the mark when he described drug-addiction as the greatest of modern abominations.

The difference between the opium smoker and the morphinist, is that the opium smoker does not fear the slavery of the habit while the morphinist does. For a truth, the latter always suffers from a sense of uncertainty and dread. The sword of Damocles is forever hanging over his head.

The smoker of "the soothing pipe" is usually quiet unless fearful of arrest, or when deprived of the drug; then he becomes highly irritable.

One who has tried the effects of the pipe puts them in this order: (1) vertigo; (2) stimulation; (3) tranquility; (4) after three or more pipes, profuse perspiration, prickly heat, thirst, fear, intense desire to sleep. The novice usually becomes talkative.

The sleep which succeeds is a prolonged one. The following morning, the smoker has a headache that aches, no appetite worth mentioning, and his tongue is furred like a brown musquash pelt.

On the other hand, the morphinist gets no pleasure, but merely forgetfulness of life. If use of the drug be persisted in, he becomes egotistical, quarrelsome and difficult; also, he is subject to terrifying hallucinations. He ages quickly; becomes indolent, parasitical, totter-kneed, and without enough brawn to throw a puppy dog.

But in whatever form these drugs are taken, they degrade the morals and enfeeble the will. No matter what their status has been, inveterate users of drugs become degraded. All are liars; nearly all become dishonest. Being deprived of the drug, they will go any length to get it, even to thievery and prostitution. While sober they are uncomfortable, and prolonged abstemiousness hurts them like nails driven into the flesh.

Because her craving for the drug had to be satisfied, a young woman from one of the rural districts, sold her handbag, dressing-case, fur coat, and wedding-ring in Edmonton. We were not able to recover these, having no one to corroborate her statements. When not shut up, her days and nights were spent in garages and opium joints.

After all her negotiable apparel had been sold, we got her a railway ticket and persuaded her to go home. She is making a tremendous effort to recover from "the grey peril," and it is now a year since she has visited town. Being superstitious, and realizing the danger of boastfulness, we are here "touching wood."

In answer to the question, "What constitutes an addict?" Dr. James A. Hamilton, Commissioner of Correction for New York City, says, "If a person takes opium or its derivatives for three months steadily, taking three hypodermics a day, he will become a true addict, and were he to stop abruptly he would show decided withdrawal symptoms. As a rule, addicts must increase the dosage as they go along in order to obtain the desired results."

A victim has given us a similar answer in which he addresses Morphia as a goddess who has turned to be a dragon.

"One swift prick was enough
In days gone by to invoke her:
She was incarnate love
In the hours when I first awoke her.
Little by little I found
The truth of her stripped of all clothing.
Bitter beyond all bound,
Leprous beyond all loathing.
Dragon of lure and dread,
Tiger of fury and lust,
The quick in chains to the dead,
The slime alive in the dust."

Clannishness is one of the most notable features of opium smokers. Like the drinking of wine, it makes for a foregathering.

Because of the dangers attending its detection, much care must be exercised in its use, especially in Canada where neighbors are inclined to be friendly and to call at unseasonable hours. Yes! and neighbors may even be curious. "Of course, I am interested in my neighbor," says one. "Why shouldn't I be? That fence between us only whets my appetite."

As a result, in certain houses and hotels—both rural and urban—the users of the pipe borrow the "lay-out" belonging to the Chinese cook. Should the noisome, insinuating odor escape, no one is suspected but Ah Sin. Should the place be raided, Ah Sin is apprehended for being in the unlawful possession of opium. He pays the fine, this sallow, unsmiling Oriental, and says nothing for, after all, he loses nothing but his inconsiderable reputation.

"The Boss he pay back, allee light. Boss he hop-head allee samee China boy."

Do you say this thing is abhorrent and hardly credible?

Sirs and Madames, on such evidence we, ourselves, have issued orders for search and warrants for apprehension. The evidence is usually obtained by secret service men in the employ of the police departments.

We said awhile ago that opium smokers liked company, a fact that frequently tends to their undoing, for when an addict has been in custody for a day or so, he will often give the names and resort of his particular coterie if, by this means, he can secure even one smoke to satisfy his craving.

Sometimes, a group of entertainers will live at a house where all the lodgers are drug-takers. Recently, a landlady and three of her lodgers were charged before us with having opium in possession for other than scientific or medicinal purposes. The boarders, all of them under twenty-two years of age, were dancers and singers at cabarets. All were fined except the landlady, a bleared, toneless, half-awake creature, who was committed to jail.

Not so long ago, a Scotch detective brought in a Chinaman and a girl whom he found smoking in a piano case, underneath a curtain of hemp sacking. The girl who was rarely beautiful and only seventeen years of age, was released from custody on suspended sentence to take a position as a stenographer in a legal firm.

This same Scotch detective, whose nose has been specially constructed for smelling cooked opium, found a negro smoking the drug in a wardrobe with a white woman on either side of him. Over their heads they had a thick tartan which our detective calls "a pled," and into this the negro blew the smoke which the women inhaled. By this means the three persons became intoxicated on one pipe. Folk must exercise thrift these days when card-cakes are high.

This misuse of the tartan was, to our Scotchman, the evidence of an amazing effrontery; the proof of a unique unscrupulousness, with which the breach of the Opium and Drugs Act was a mere bagatelle.

We spoke of "card-opium" just now. For the uninitiated, it is here explained that for selling in a small way, opium is made into cakes about the size of a fifty-cent piece. This is placed on the centre of a playing-card, and the card is bent in half, the opium adhering to the inside like a wad of chewing gum.

This opium is smoked over two or three times, as the residue of ash is large. By some, this ash is called yen shee. After repeated smokings, to give it piquancy it is mixed with a sort of salt which is a Chinese preparation.

Or the ash may be mixed with cocoanut-oil and taken internally. These are called "hop-pills." There are one-pill men; two-pill men, and three-pill men.

Or, again, the ash may be made into a thick gummy liquid. This is drunk with black tea, or Boston coffee, but not with water.

The faces of inveterate smokers are darker than those of the morphinists, and anyone who has to deal with drug-fiends may learn to know the difference. The smoker's face becomes sallow and dead-looking. Sometimes, his head looks like a mere mummified skull.

In chapter one we said that opium and its derivatives were frequently used by people for their aphrodisiacal qualities, but that the end was impotence and sterility.

A young woman who came to my office after her release from jail, complained bitterly that now, because she had become normal again, she was liable to motherhood. Physicians have since assured me that the woman's claim was correct; that drug-addiction leads to amenorrhoea.

While it is well that opium addicts tend to become impotent yet, in face of a persistently falling birth-rate, this phase of drug-addiction is of the utmost importance, and is another reason why the scourge should be firmly dealt with in Canada.

"The long flute-like pipe through which the devotee of the drug takes deep inhalations, blowing the smoke through his nostrils."—Chapter I, Part II. "Sometimes his head looks like a mere mummified skull."—Chapter IV, Part I. "Once a woman has started on the trail of the poppy, the sledding is very easy, and downgrade all the way."—Chapter I, Part II. The Keeper of an opium den in Northern Canada

Dr. C. W. Saleeby has recently pointed out that in Great Britain, in 1919, for the first time, the deaths have actually exceeded the births. He also points out that there are more Germans in Germany than there are Britons in the whole of our Empire, and contends that in a generation or so, these prolific Germans, with the equally prolific Russians, and the still more fertile yellow races, will wrest the leadership of the world from the British.

Wise folk ought to think about these things for awhile.

In the excellent provisions of its Narcotics Act; its administration, and in the treatment afforded to drug-addicts, the Province of Manitoba probably leads Canada. Of the results achieved, we shall speak later, our attitude for the moment being directed to mixed addiction, but particularly to cocaine and heroin.

B. J. McConnell, M.D., of Winnipeg, the Administrator of the Narcotics Act, who is putting both energy and good thought into his work, says in a recent letter, "The drugs used in Manitoba are; 1st morphine; 2nd cocaine; 3rd heroin, but the majority take the first two and average about ten or twelve grains of morphine a day, and ten to twelve grains of cocaine as well."

The reason for this mixed addiction is shown in a letter written by the magistrate of the men's police court at Calgary, Alberta, who says "Cocaine is probably the drug which is most used and, from evidence that I have had before me, most people who are addicted to morphine find that the doses they require become very large, they have also to take cocaine to meet the requirements."

Speaking of its general use, the magistrate also says, "I have heard it is a common expression amongst people whom you would hardly suspect, to jocularly ask another if they could given them a "bhang" which is a slang expression for a snuff of cocaine. It is increasing to an alarming extent, and, to-day, it is a menace to the country."

It is found, too, upon searching the vendors of illicit drugs that ether, strychnine, and chloroform are secreted upon their persons, showing that mixed-addiction to deadly drugs is much more general than commonly supposed.

Certain powders are also consumed as narcotics, but must be taken in large quantities. Indeed, one of the most troublesome and persistent of addicts in the north tells us that she uses these powders almost exclusively. She has become loveless and unlovely, a poor-hearted and shameless woman, and about as amenable to reason as a bit of dandelion fluff.

It would seem relevant to here say that, in the searching of addicts or illicit vendors, the police must be inquisitive and painstaking rather than courteous. This is no task for an officer who is lumpish or a crackskull.

Sometimes, when arrested, "a snowbird"—that is to say a man who snuffs cocaine, usually designated as "snow"—will draw out his cigarette bow, light the last cigarette, and flip the box into the wastepaper basket, or under the table. This flipping of the empty box is so casual and common in everyday life that one might easily be excused from thinking of the box as a receptacle for drugs. The skilled detective, however, picks it up, and so gets his clear case.

Among women, the dope-takers hide cocaine in their hair, under the soles of their feet, in the seams of their coat, under braid, by rubbing it into white clothing, in the roof of their mouth where it is covered by the plate of their false teeth, or by secreting it on their body.

In their homes, they hide it in a package of empty envelopes, in the feet of the bath-tub, behind sur-bases, in flower pots, in hollow door-knobs, or in some other place that might be overlooked by the hunters. It seems to be quite true in crime, as in life;

"To hunt and to be hunted makes existence;
For we are all chasers or the chased."

Cocaine is obtained from the leaves of the cocoa plant which grows in South America. It was first used in ophthalmic and surgical operations in 1884, but cocoa leaves have been chewed for generations to relieve fatigue. Indeed, in the year 1700, the poet Cowley wrote—

"Our Varicocha first this coca sent,
Endowed with leaves of wondrous nourishment,
Whose juice suck'd in, to the stomach tak'n,
Long hunger and long labor can sustain."

In Germany, extensive tests of its stimulating qualities have been made on soldiers, the drug being administered to them after forced marches. It was found that while small doses had a tonic effect, giving relief from physical and mental pain, a larger dosage had a deleterious effect, resulting in the clouding of the memory, singing in the ears, an inability to control the thoughts, headache, delirium, and a dangerous melancholy. A person addicted to its habitual use is known as a cocanist. When on the verge of suicide for need of the drug, they are said to have "the cocaine leaps."

In this condition, they suffer from hyper-excitability and muscular unrest, thus inducing a mania for rapid motion. A considerable number of the persons who are convicted for drunkenness while driving motor cars, have not taken any alcohol but are crazed with cocaine.

An ungentle young woman who came before us last winter, and who has been convicted for having inhibited narcotics in her possession, called a motor car at two o'clock in the morning. She had hardly entered it, when the driver felt the cold nozzle of a revolver against the back of his neck and heard a peremptory order to drive faster. Presently, the powerful car had reached the top limit of its speed, but still the woman kept ordering the driver to go faster and faster. Fortunately the streets were clear so that a policeman on a motor cycle was able to overhaul the mad riders and take the woman into custody.

Another result of its use, as a snuff, is necrosis of the nasal cartilage, but for that matter cocaine applied to the mucuous membrane anywhere on the body will produce this effect. For this reason it is used freely in throat sprays, cough lozenges and catarrh powders.

Because of this deadening effect, it is possible for a person under the influence of cocaine to refrain from food for a couple of days without suffering from the sensation of hunger. It has, however, no food value, and a young married man tells us, that his bride, aged seventeen, who is suffering from drug-addiction disease, lost a pound a day in weight during ten days she was away from him in hiding.

Cocaine is usually retailed to the victims by illicit vendors in small paper packages of about the size and shape of a postage stamp. These are called "decks," and contain a couple of "sniffs." Ordinarily these cost a dollar apiece, but if the purchaser is distempered for need of it, the vendor may extract two dollars or even more. Indeed, one of our women detectives tells us that in buying from the Chinese in their cafés, she must purchase cigarettes and noodles in addition. Before leaving Ah Sin sees that "the decks" are safely stowed away in her stocking lest those bear-fierce, claw-handed police-fellows find it in her pocket.

In the United States, cocaine is sold to school-children as "coke" or "flake," and the vendors of cakes and candies offer it to be snuffed through a small tube. Mr. Owen C. Dawson, of the Children's Court in Montreal, is quoted in a New York paper as declaring that the scourge of heroin had been there, and that twenty-six druggists were arrested charged with its illicit sale but does not say whether these druggists sold to the children who were brought into the court. We know, however, that drugs are sold to children on the streets of the larger cities of Canada, a fact recently verified by the Federal Health Department according to despatches from Ottawa, in February of this year.

In an address delivered in 1919 before the Annual American Prison Association, one of the speakers said: "It is rare to come in contact with young men between sixteen and twenty-one who are confirmed alcoholics. Compare this with narcotic addicts. The general rule is that addiction is present mainly in youths from sixteen to twenty-one years of age. This is really the development age. Narcotics hinder development, and boys and girls are forever wrecked while still in a development period. Distracted parents come pleading for aid and advice. The complaint is always the same, i.e., 'If we only knew the first signs of this dreadful curse we could have saved the boy.' If parents knew the signs of the beginning of drug-addiction they would have the victim treated immediately, and cured, before the habit becomes fixed. Once drug addiction becomes firmly established a positive cure is difficult, and the only way it can be accomplished is through institutional care and treatment."

Narcotics have also a pre-natal effect on children which is not generally known and which, perhaps, demonstrates Samuel Butler's dictum that life is eight parts cards and two parts play.

The effect we refer to is mentioned by Dr. Ernest Bishop who says of drug-disease that its physical symptomatology are manifested in infants newly-born of addicted mothers, and that many of these infants die unless opiates are administered to them. This, he declares, is a well-known fact among those who have made open-minded study and research into this condition.

Such a case has been described recently by Dr. J. F. Laase, Associate Surgeon of St. Mark's Hospital, New York, in American Medicine. He says this child was born of an opium addict and displayed all the symptoms of addiction. The mother, who was twenty-seven years of age, had used opiates for two years.

The baby was healthy and well-developed but, from the moment of birth, was very restless and had all the symptoms of drug-need, which could only be relieved by a drop of paregoric in water, this being placed in the infant's mouth by means of an eyedropper. It was necessary to give this because the infant was showing signs of collapse and of general convulsions. When lactation was fully established, the necessity for the administration of paregoric ceased, the child obtaining the supply through the mother's milk.

As a narcotic, heroin is three times stronger than morphine and takes effect much more quickly. Its continued use will establish a habit in four or five weeks. It came into favor among physicians and pharmacists as having all the good qualities of a narcotic with none of its bad ones, it being claimed that it was a non-habit forming drug.

Because of this mischievous fiction, it has now become so desperate a menace that the Academy of Medicine and the Psychiatric Society of New York have recommended that the Federal Government take such measures as are feasible to abolish its manufacture altogether.

Heroin is morphine treated with acetic acid. A person who habitually uses it has a yellow face as though from jaundice. It is claimed that heroin-users desire to spread the habit more than any other drug addicts.

Experts say that heroin and morphine are more difficult to withdraw than any of the narcotics, a sudden stoppage leading to a physical collapse and dangerous disorders.

A couple of years ago, a stenographer in my office answered me in a highly insulting manner. Because she had always had exemplary manners, and because something in her eyes made one think of the flicker of crossed wires, I concluded she was ill, and probably had a degree or two of fever.

This was how I came to restrain the hot words that were on the tip of my tongue, and to observe her instead. Presently, it was noticeable that she kept dropping her eraser; that she looked at the type of the machine as though her vision was impaired, and that she worked the keys in a jumpy manner.

Two days later, she was removed to a hospital suffering from a complete nervous collapse, alleged to be the result of heroin addiction. When last heard of, she was in a pitiful condition.

While insanity sometimes results in the advanced stages of drug-addiction, it is not nearly so common as the public suppose.

A statistical study of drug addiction which we have received from Dr. Horatio M. Pollock, Ph.D., the statistician of the New York State Hospital, shows that only a small part of the total number of drug addicts develop insanity; that they are admitted principally during the period of middle life; that alcoholism of the father appears prominent in the history of drug cases, and that approximately forty-three percent. of the patients used alcohol intemperately.

Dr. Pollock also found that the native born were more liable to drug psychoses than the foreign born; that the cases rank high with respect to literacy; that seventy per cent. recover within one year from the time of admission, while five and one half per cent. die within the same period. Approximately nine per cent. of the drug cases discharged are re-admitted.

While insanity within the meaning of the Criminal Code is not so frequent among addicts, it must be borne in mind that through excessive use of narcotics, or by means of sudden withdrawal, the victim undergoes what the French call "a crisis of the nerves" which amounts to insanity but which is only temporary.

When a man is criminally inclined, cocaine and heroin produce delusions which actually make him "insane and dangerous to be at large." These drugs also give him courage without reason; make his vision more acute, and steady his hand so that he may commit murder with ease.

"I have noticed" says Dr. J. B. McConnell of Winnipeg, writing in this connection, "that the majority of petty thieves and hold-up men are usually addicts and they are very dangerous, and if every they ask you to throw up your hands, I would advise you to do so at once, because they have to get the money in order to get the drugs."

When the four murderers of Herman Rosenthal were being tried, it was discovered that three of them were drug addicts who, before committing the deed, had to be "charged up" with cocaine, and it was under the leadership of "Dopey Benny," a slum addict, that a band of twelve dope-fiends hired out their services to "beat-up" or murder any individual, their regular fee for assassination being $200.00.

This winter, two women were brought before me, one of whom was charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm on the other.

The accused, a slip of a girl weighing ninety-eight pounds, had stabbed an older woman with a large sharp-pointed blade. When the blade was raised for the second stroke, the victim grasped it in her naked hand, with the result that her fingers were almost severed as the blade was drawn away.

The police gave evidence that the little girl, when arrested, was plainly under the influence of a narcotic. She apparently had not recovered when brought into court where, with a face like a grey paving-stone, she sat huddled up and wholly inattentive to the proceedings.

Persons suffering from cocaine-insanity have deep-seated delusions concerning electricity. Their nights become a termless hell when, because of their disordered perceptions, electric needles play over their skin or an enemy pours "the juice" into their head. They see moving-pictures on the wall in which a hideous head, toothed and grisly, appears to insult and threaten them. Maybe the words of Shakespeare describe their condition as well as any others, "A fool! a fool! I met a fool in the forest."

During the year 1917, the cases which passed through the Vancouver jail numbered 3,863, and of these according to the Chief-Constable and others, a large proportion were drug addicts, and it is believed that the use of drugs is probably one of the chief contributors to crime in British Columbia, in that it diminishes the responsibility of those who are mentally or nervously subnormal or disordered.

It need scarcely be explained that a mentally abnormal person whose abnormality has been further augmented by the use of noxious drugs, can hardly be kept from committing crime. Indeed, one of the Western police magistrates in writing me on the subject says, "The taking of drugs is undoubtedly the cause of a great deal of crime because people under its influence have no more idea of responsibility of what is right or wrong than an animal."

Another says, "The spread of drug-addiction has been so insidious, and so rapid in its growth, that it is only within the last few years an enlightened public has begun to realize its menacing nature. People in every stratum of society are afflicted with this malady, which is a scourge so dreadful in its effects that it threatens the very foundations of civilization."

Dr. James A. Hamilton, Commissioner of Correction, New York, says in a letter "Drug users may be classified into two groups, the rich or "social" addicts, and the poor or "slum" addicts, the only difference between them being a matter of dollars and cents. The former have the financial means to buy the drug while the latter have not, and when the drug is withheld in either case, you will find them exactly alike."

When we come to speak on the effect of prohibitory laws on drug-addition, we are confronted with a great difference of opinion and an almost entire absence of data.

In a letter received in December, 1919, from Dr. Raymond F. S. Kieb, the Medical Superintendent of Matteawan State Hospital, N.Y., who is an eminent authority on drug-addiction, he says, "I am convinced that the statements the liquor interests include in their propaganda to the effect that drug-addiction increase enormously when dry laws go into a community, are much over-estimated. I have seen no substantiation of this statement and very much doubt its authenticity."

A physician writing recently in the London Saturday Review says, "The class of people who are habitually intemperate are not the sort of people who take drugs. The decrease of crime which undoubtedly goes hand in hand with the decrease of drunkenness is a stronger argument for maintaining the present difficulties in obtaining alcohol."

On the other hand, there are very many persons who declare that when alcohol is taken away, a man naturally turns to noxious drugs for the stimulation formerly received from alcohol.

They contend that because narcotic drugs, as contraband, are more easily conveyed from place to place than alcohol, and because the sale of drugs is much more lucrative, their use must inevitably become more general. They tell us, too, that when a man has become intoxicated on an alcoholic beverage and is unable "the morning after" to obtain a further supply on which to sober up, he resorts to "a shot" of morphine, or "a bhang" of cocaine, thus acquiring an appetite before unknown to him.

While many wise and experienced persons are thinking this way, because these statements are more frequently heard from the mouths of immoral and immoderate persons, we are apt to dissent from them on principle. Yet, while these statements do not rest on well-substantiated data, by reason of their probability and extreme plausibility, they cannot be lightly set aside.

Because of this imminent danger in connection with prohibition, it devolves upon our governments, both Federal and Provincial, to take immediate and drastic steps to protect the public from the illicit vending of narcotics, and to enact such stringent measures as will effectually stamp out the drug traffic.

By far the largest fight which temperance workers have yet undertaken is in front of them, and we are persuaded they will not strike flag.

When one comes to consider the classes who have become inveterate users of soporific drugs their reasons for indulging themselves and how demoralized they become through the habit, one is apt to recall the remark Thackeray made about music, "For people who like that sort of thing, I should think it would be just about the thing they would like."

When, however, you study the addicts more closely, and as individuals, you will find that a large number of these have formed the habit innocently, and that otherwise, they have not been either criminal or degenerate.

Because it enhances their capacity for work, students "cramming" for an examination will take cocaine until, ultimately, cocaine takes them. For the time being the drug enables them to rein their will to the track but, after a while, they break and so lose in the long run.

Having used the parlance of the ring, it might be relevant to say here that, in spite of heavy penalties inflicted on the guilty jockey, a horse is frequently "doped" or "doctored" before a race in order that it may become capable of extra effort. The effect wears off in about half an hour.

Pipe dreams. "Clannishness is one of the most notable features of opium smokers"—Chapter IV, Part I.

For the same reason, prize fighters and bicycle riders allow themselves to be braced by "flake" before entering the rounds or races.

In schools of music, there are students who take cocaine or heroin for the mental effect before doing "their turn" at recitals. They make take this to relieve their nervousness or because they have an idea this lends brilliance to their technique. Indeed, they will tell you quite frankly that it does.

With only a limited space at our disposal, we dare not touch on the writers who take to drug dosage, thinking thereby to find "the magic nib.:

As an actuality, the drug usually makes them queer drivellers who are out-of-key with life generally. These are "the profane persons" described by Old Gill, the commentator, "whose writings are stuffed with lies, lewdness, and all manner of wickedness." By throwing a glamour over their vice, they have wrought much evil among neurotic, uncentred persons of both sexes who have aspired to literary distinction.

People suffering from pulmonary consumption take to smoking opium with the belief that it is a specific. Every Chinaman who uses "the dreamful pipe" will declare this to be a fact. That smoking affords some measure of relief is borne out by Dr. John Gordon Dill in the Lancet, who states that opium, when prepared for smoking in a certain way, eases the cough and acts as an expectorant. On the other hand, physicians tell us that consumption and nephritis are two of the diseases which most frequently kill morphinomaniacs.

Some persons take to narcotics because of curiosity; from a sense of adventure; to relieve insomnia or reduced physical condition. Others take it because they are jaded, neurasthenic, or just naturally sluggish. Added to these, are the great army of men and women who are never happy unless indulging themselves.

If you sit at a window on a main thoroughfare of any city and watch the crowd go by, you will observe that nearly every second person is smoking, chewing gum or munching sweets. As you watch and watch, it seems as if the whole world has become one horrific mouth that can never be satisfied. Maybe it is from this constant habit of tickling the palate or soothing the nerves, that our people are turning to strange and poisonous drugs. Who can say?

Certain classes of society seem to take to certain drugs. We have shown that students, sports and debauchees are the votaries of cocaine or heroin, or of mixed addiction.

It has been pointed out by Mr. Charles B. Towns that reputable doctors, writing on this subject, have alleged that fifteen per cent. of their own profession are addicted to drugs. The particular drugs were not specified, but it is known that pharmacists, druggists, veterinarians, dentists and nurses take more readily to morphine than to other drugs. This fact is difficult of explanation, unless it is by reason of their skill in using the hypodermic needle, or because morphine may be more easily available.

All classes, however, have one peculiarity, and that is their desire to pass on the habit. A single drug user in a community should be considered a menace to the whole of it. Nor does this remark apply solely to urban districts. One is amazed to find how the use of degrading drugs is becoming common in rural communities.

Last summer a father came to my office and related how his daughter, aged fifteen, had become inordinately attached to a woman from the city, who had been boarding at his farm. When the woman left the girl could hardly be restrained from following, declaring she must have some of the white powder the lady used to let her snuff from a handkerchief.

The father—a simple, unschooled man—had heard of a mysterious concoction called a love philtre, and was persuaded that something of this nature had been administered to the child, thus bringing her in thrall to the woman. The story of the girl's "spells," however, were strongly symptomatic of cocaine dosage.

After a while, the girl seemed less nervous, but one night, a letter was taken from her desk showing an arrangement whereby she was to meet this woman, when a young man would take the girl on to the United States. It was to frustrate these nefarious plans, and to obtain protection against the woman's alleged machinations, that the father came to me. In Canada we are altogether too lax concerning subtle crimes on the person, which, utterly destroying the victim, amount almost to a murder. The man or woman who, with evil intent, administers opiates to unsuspecting children, even in small doses, must properly be considered as a kind of super-brute, entirely lacking in any feeling so definite or coherent as sympathy.

Patent medicines which have a wide sale secured this because of the lure of cleverly worded advertisements. How far the public have been misled by these advertisements may be gleaned from the fact that some of the so-called "cures" for the drug-habit were found to be only means of selling other narcotics.

After using certain nerve remedies which produced sleep, people naturally drifted into the use of cocaine, morphine, and other undisguised somnifacients. Under the amendments to the Proprietary and Patent Medicine Act, assented to July 7th, 1919, this will now be difficult, if not impossible.

Clause 7 of this Act provides that "no proprietary or patent medicines shall be manufactured, imported, exposed, or offered for sale, or sold in Canada, (a) if it contains cocaine or any of its salts or preparations ... or (f), if any false, misleading or exaggerated claims be made on the wrapper or label, or in any advertisement of the article."

Clause 6 of the same Act, as amended, also prohibits "the manufacture, importation, or sale of all proprietary or patent medicines containing opium or its derivatives for internal use."

That this enactment reflects great credit on the Federal Government, and that it will be a tremendous factor in suppressing drug-addiction must be frankly and gratefully acknowledged.

Nevertheless, it is quite apparent that the Knowing Ones have little difficulty in securing chloroform, ether, strychnine, chloral-hydrate, opium, cocaine and any of the drugs mentioned in the schedule to the Act, but through what channels these are obtainable we are unable to say.

In a charge preferred before us, against a woman for illegally keeping intoxicating liquor for sale, the liquor turned out to be chloral-hydrate, commonly known as "knock-out drops." From the evidence of the analyst, it would appear that the quantity and strength of these drops were sufficient to drug the whole city. Although as black as the proverbial ace-of-spades, the woman set up a defence that the stuff was used by her as a complexion beautifier.

Another woman, during an investigation into her mental condition, successfully argued that she was not at all insane but only distracted from the use of snuff, she having twelve boxes of it hidden away in her trunk. The boxes were found to contain cocaine, or "happy-dust."

In February of this year, a man brought to Edmonton from the far north charged with murdering two men in the United States, had in his possession, besides a revolver and two hunting blades, a large bottle of strychnine.

The Scandinavians in Western Canada, in order to set up what they call "a quick jag," drink ether mixed with alcohol, or with water. To obviate this, in Alberta, an Order-in-Council was passed in 1918, prohibiting any chemist or druggist from having in his possession, or selling for medicine, household purposes, or for external use, any formula for the combination of alcohol with ether.

It would be difficult, as before intimated, to tell all the sources from which these inhibited drugs are procured. In large centres, in Canada, physicians have learned not to leave their vials containing narcotics lying around loosely. The careless handling of drugs in some hospitals has given opportunity for addicts to steal narcotics. Writing of an improvement in this respect, the Superintendent of a large Canadian hospital, says, "In our hospital, to-day, we have the Drug Control System, by which every tablet is accounted for and no stock can be renewed without an accounting of what has been done with the last."

When we come to consider the purchase of narcotics at drug stores, it is still more difficult to say how addicts secure supplies, for we are persuaded that in spite of the temptation offered in the shape of prodigious profits, the average chemist is conscientious and will not sell these except within the prescribed regulations.

Addicts have told us that, on laying their money on a counter, they have been instructed by the salesman to help themselves from a certain drawer, and that no record was kept of the sale. Perhaps the clerks are most responsible for the sale, and for the leaking of sedative drugs into the illicit lanes of commerce. These clerks steal from their employers either for their own use or to sell it; often for both. It is well-known that prostitutes procure these drugs from clerks and solicit orders from other prostitutes, getting a large profit on the sales.

This surreptitious commerce in narcotics is largely carried on in dance-halls and cafés, where incorrigible or feeble-minded girls think, by indulging in these drugs they are "good Indians" and "playing the game."

In this idea, the girls are encouraged by those parasites of vice, whose nefarious business it is to break down their moral nature in order that they may be held more easily. These men are the limber-tongued, unregenerate rascals who so frequently talk about "the sex" and of "lovely woman," but who beat her upon nearly every opportunity.

Since prohibitory liquor laws have come into force, and pharmacists may only sell intoxicants upon a doctor's prescription, we have learned that there is nothing to prevent the filling of a forged prescription. No obligation is imposed upon the pharmacist to verify the paper.

Where sedative drugs are concerned, the same conditions prevail. A druggist who is careless, or who is not conscientious, may fill scores or even hundreds of prescriptions which are forgeries.

In the year 1919, it was found by the Bureau of Internal Revenue that in New York City, 1,500,000 prescriptions for the illicit procuring of narcotics had been issued and filled. In one drug store the police found a box containing 50,000 of these prescriptions, all filled in the preceding ten months. In most instances, in Canada, when the Police, under Clause 5 of the Opium and Drugs Act, examine the books of the drug stores, they find that only a small portion of the narcotic drugs purchased from the wholesalers can be accounted for. The pharmacist explains that physicians purchased these by the vial, for medicinal purposes, and that no accounting of the sales is kept.

But, apart from self-medication by means of quack nostrums, it seems like elaborating the obvious to explain how the majority of chronic inveterates have acquired the drug-habit by means of prescriptions given by the family physician with the best of intentions.

Neither is it necessary to explain at length that there are legitimate addicts, such as cancer patients, or other acute sufferers, who are dying of incurable maladies and that these sufferers must be made as comfortable as possible by means of narcotics. As a matter of fact, the opiate group of medicines in the Schedule of the Statutes, above quoted, are probably those we could least spare. One eminent authority said "There is no drug which will replace clinically and therapeutically the opiate group. At present, it is indispensable in meeting emergency indications as is the scalpel of the surgeon."

Indeed, we personally know a woman who had suffered horrible agonies for weeks and who was ultimately obliged to undergo a major operation. Having received relief from the derivatives of the poppy-flower, she wrote thus:—"She is the beneficient fairy that has soothed the hurt of the world. She slows the living engine, cools the flaming wheels, and banks up the fires so that the flow of force is only passive. Thus she proves herself a defender of vitality, a repairer of waste, and a balm for hurt minds. Good Princess Poppy!"

Ah, well! it may be wiser to confess here that the woman "we" know was ourself, for someone is sure to find it out and so withstand us to our face.

Nevertheless, the morphine tablet, prescribed or administered by the physician, is often a mere labour-saving device for the time being, and not infrequently proves to have the same effect as sitting on the safety-valve. A drug, too, which relieves pain, if persisted in, ultimately causes pain. Even novices like ourselves know this.

An eminent Canadian physician writing on this says, "Of course some acquire the habit innocently, and physicians may be to blame for it, as when post-operative conditions are accompanied by prolonged pain, or when a patient has what is considered a more or less chronic disease. ... The profession must always be careful to very guardedly prescribe such drugs."

When by an evil chance a doctor has, himself, become an addict he is almost sure to prescribe narcotics loosely and extravagantly, and should, accordingly, be barred from practice. Apart from the errors he may make, such a physician attracts to himself the addicts in the community who want prescriptions or drugs in bulk, and we have found it is practically impossible to render a conviction against him under the provisions of the Opium and Drugs Act.

This enactment allows a doctor to prescribe narcotics for "medicinal purposes," but does not interpret these words. The Act has apparently been framed on the hypothesis that every physician is a reputable man and strictly professional, whereas such is not uniformly the case.

In this connection, we do not hesitate to say that as physicians are granted special privileges, they should receive special punishments for violation of the Act. When an Information is laid against a registered medical practitioner who is believed to be exploiting addicts, if he cannot persuade the magistrate to allow a withdrawal of the charge, he takes refuge under these uninterpreted words, setting up the defence that he was treating the addicts with the object of ultimately effecting a cure by means of "gradual reduction" or "ambulatory method" of treatment.

Reputable physicians would welcome a strict construction on this Clause by the Federal authorities, or some amendment whereby they would be able to prescribe legitimately without coming under suspicion of nefarious practice.

In Manitoba, under the provisions of the Narcotics Act, when a physician prescribes opium or its derivatives for the purpose of curing a patient from the craving for the drug, such physician is required to make a physical examination of the patient, and to report in writing to the specially approved Medical Board, the name and address of such patient, together with a diagnosis of the case, and the amount and nature of the drug prescribed or dispensed in the first treatment. When the patient leaves his care, such physician must report in writing to the Medical Board the result of his treatment.

The Whitney law of New York requires that all prescriptions given by physicians for "gradual reduction" shall be reported to the Commissioner at Albany, and gives this official the discretion to deal with any physician who appears to be abusing the privilege. That some such method should become law in all the Canadian provinces seems evident.

Even with these restriction, it cannot be claimed that the unscrupulous doctor has been prevented from prescribing drugs ad libitum. In April of last year, in New York City, it was found that thirty physicians had formed themselves into a drug ring and were writing separately as many as two hundred prescriptions a day, some of these men doing no other practice. The principal drug dispensed was heroin. This was obtained through the regular channels at $12.00 and $15.00 an ounce, but retailed at from $60.00 to $75.00 an ounce through the prescriptions.

The investigators found that seventy per cent. of the addicts were less than twenty-five years old, and included a remarkably high percentage of discharged sailors and soldiers.

If you say these conditions are peculiar to the United States, and do not concern us in Canada, you speak without advisement.

From records in our possession—these being known to the police—we have the names of Canadian doctors who have, until the present, been prescribing, as high as 100 grains of cocaine in each prescription, or equal to four hundred quarter-grain tablets, or average adult doses.

In three months, this winter, it was found that a certain physician in a Western town, had issued fifty-two prescriptions for sixty grains of morphine and three thousand grains of cocaine. His extravagance is by no means peculiar, several other doctors having records approximately high.

In this same period of three months, one man not any considerable distance from where we write, was able to get from a drug company, by means of a doctor's prescription, nearly seven thousand grains of opium.

The doctors claim these prescriptions were given to cure the victim on the "gradual reduction" or "ambulatory method," and were without charge. Most of us will refuse to credit their claim. Men who are "yellow" enough to supply addicts, however much they suffered, with narcotics in such large bulk, ought for a certainty to be breaking stones in some jail yard.

These facts are now reported to the Federal Health authorities and one is almost safe in saying that, for the future, these physicians may be depended upon to co-operate with the Regulations of the Department or take the direful consequences—that is to say if they have no dealings with those who truckle in contraband.

Having in mind the honorable, self-sacrificing character of the average medical doctor in Canada, one dislikes to show that there are such kittle-kattle in the profession, but, contrariwise, because of the deplorable results arising from this wholesale prescribing of devilish narcotics, one must, perforce, tell some small part of the story.

After the arrest of the New York doctors, and the raid on the drug stores, above referred to, the authorities found it necessary to open a public clinic to supply the addicts with small doses of drugs to relieve their sufferings and prevent an outbreak of crime.

On this occasion Mrs. Sarah Mulhal, the Advisory Administrator of the Narcotics Bureau, was obliged to call fifty nurses to her aid, and five hundred women as volunteer workers.

About this time, Commissioner Copeland of the New York Health Department was asked whether it was possible to cure the craving for drugs by a sliding scale of doses, and replied, "Yes, if we can control the supply."

It is told in the Literary Digest that when this question was propounded to the Commissioner, the case following was submitted to him:— "A member of the Metropolitan Opera Company was under treatment for the habit by what is known as 'the reduction cure.' In answering the question as to what progress had been made, she said that while a year ago she was taking 25 grains a day, she was now using 15 grains. Could such a reduction be legally called a treatment for cure of the habit under the law, or would the physician and druggist be liable?"

"That" replied the Commissioner of the Department, "would be a matter for a jury to decide, but as 15 grains a day is a long way from a cure, I should think the physician would be in danger of conviction. Such a case would certainly make him liable for arrest. The plain intent of the law is that the progress of the treatment must be freedom from use of the drug within a reasonable time. Many of the so-called 'treatments by reduction' are violations of the law."

In a letter received last November from Dr. James A. Hamilton, the Commissioner of the Department of Correction, New York City, he says "Persons charged with crime and who are known to be drug addicts, committed to our institutions by the courts for treatment, to be returned to the court for trial and sentence upon the certification of the Resident Physician of the institution, to the effect that the person has received the prescribed medical treatment, and that his physical condition warrants his appearance in court. This treatment extends over a period of about 100 days." These one hundred days, with the drugs controlled by the physician, seem to be "the reasonable time" referred to by Commissioner Copeland.

It appears difficult, however, to control the drugs even on Blackwell's and Riker Islands where the addicts are isolated, for Dr. Hamilton further writes, "It is absolutely necessary to scrutinize very carefully all the mail that comes to the institutions for the inmates, as attempts have been made to smuggle in drugs in every conceivable manner, such as between the layers of a postcard and inside the flap of an envelope. For many years, it was the privilege of our inmates to receive boxes of delicacies from visiting friends. This privilege had to be abolished as it was found to be a decided menace. In order, however, that the inmates may not be deprived of those extras, commissaries were established at the various institutions at which may be purchased fruit, cakes in sealed packages, cigarettes, tooth-paste and a number of other articles. These articles are sold at exactly the same price as they may be bought for on the outside, the profits from the sales being in the custody of trustees, appointed by the Commissioner of Correction, and are used in their discretion for the welfare of the inmates, to pay for equipment for athletic games and occasionally glass eyes and wooden limbs, or for anything that could not be properly charged against public funds."

Opium pipes, Chinese scales, opium lamps, raw opium—seized by Government of Canada—Chapter V, Part II. Drugs and smoking appliances seized by the Canadian Government in an effort to stamp out the illicit traffic—Chapter V, Part II.

If it were possible in justice to this subject to omit all reference to drug-addiction among our soldiers, we would gladly do so. When we consider the magnificent self-sacrifice and untold sufferings of the hundreds of thousands who fought so nobly on our behalf, our hearts are filled with pity, love, and gratitude for these, our soldier-sons.

But it is not possible, neither would it be wise nor kind to omit the data on the subject, for we cannot afford to waste our human material, nor allow it to destroy other material.

Having said this, the readers naturally conclude that they are being prepared for adverse opinions where the soldiers are concerned. Such is not the case. We will merely lay before you such data as we have, leaving it to you to weigh the evidence individually.

It is in order that the case for the prosecution be heard first, accordingly we quote from the Literary Digest of April 26th, 1919: "The experiences of the war shows that overstimulation and over-excitement resulted in an increase in the use of drugs. In England, it was early necessary to make the controlling regulations stricter, and the war-period showed many addictions to Canada's number of drug victims."

Turning to England, we find two columns in the Daily Chronicle dealing with this matter and the following sub-heading:—

"Startling revelations of the growth of the cocaine habit among Soldiers."
"It is stated that since the outbreak of war, cocaine has been introduced into this country in the form of powder by the Canadian Soldiers."

The names and addresses are then given of eight dealers who sold drugs to soldiers, the same drugs not having been ordered by a regular medical practitioner.

On behalf of the Commissioner of Police, Mr. Herbert Muskett, prosecutor, said that as the case was one of the greatest importance he would make some general remarks as the evil had grown to such enormous dimensions, that it was necessary steps should be taken to check it.

"The habit," said Mr. Muskett, "appears to have been brought here with the Canadian soldiers, and it was to be hoped that in the near future the attention of the House of Commons would be called to the matter so that legislation might be introduced dealing with the sale of drugs ... the powder was sold principally to soldiers and to women of a certain class, and was taken like ordinary snuff, producing temporary exhilaration."

A representative of the Daily Chronicle, who had made inquiries in authoritative quarters, said, "The traffic in cocaine has already reached the dimensions of a big scandal. ... Unhappily, too, the vicious craze has spread among soldiers ... Soldiers have been seen literally to crawl in weakness and agony of reaction into a shop where the deadly 'snow' might be obtained, and to emerge from it re-invigorated for an hour or two like new men."

"The actual distributors are usually women-and women of a certain class. These sell it to other women and to soldiers. The method of distribution is borrowed from the counterfeiters—one woman acts as 'carrier,' and is in possession of a number of boxes of the drug, and another undertakes the actual sale in boxes ... The drug, during the last year, has already been responsible for one murder. It is now known that the unhappy young Canadian, who killed a sergeant at Grayshott, was addicted to the use of this drug. Another victim, who was a soldier, actually tore in two pieces, with his bare hands, a plank in the cell in which he was confined ... The police are hampered by this disadvantage, that, while under the Defence of the Realm Act, they may now arrest, without a warrant, any person caught supplying or conniving to supply cocaine to soldiers; civilians may purchase it, or be in possession of it, and thus indirectly assist the traffic among soldiers without risk of punishment."

In the United States, Dr. Ernest S. Bishop, the expert on addiction-diseases, has also something to say on this matter. "War itself" he writes, "is always productive of narcotic addiction as one of its unfortunate medical concomitants. The Civil War left in its wake opiate addicts, results of necessary emergency and other medication. The Spanish War also contributed to the narcotic addicts. That there are opiate addicts resulting from the present world war is a known fact. Europe has its problems and in this matter we shall not escape ours."

The New York Times of April 15th, 1919, states that in a report made public the previous day by the New York City Parole Commission, it was declared that in the first draft for the National Army, eighty thousand were drug-addicts who needed medical attention. "They were all rejected by camp officers" the report says, "and worse still, young men deliberately acquired the drug habit to escape the draft. He (Congressman Rainey) has a list of twenty-five physicians who were commissioned as Captains and Majors who were drug addicts, and also the name of a physician so commissioned, who started for France with a large amount of narcotics to be dealt out among soldiers."

In Canada, we find that the Editor of The Toronto Saturday Night, in 1919, says "the drug habit has a strange hold on our population, and is growing at an alarming rate. Toronto has now the unenviable reputation of being Ontario's headquarters for the illicit traffic in 'dope,' and people come to the Queen City from all over the country to renew their supplies." He then goes on to state that in examining members for a certain Ontario battalion for Overseas Service, it was discovered that no less than a hundred and fifty were "dope" fiends.

In a letter of December 10th, 1919, a Toronto Editor says: "I have talked with various officers, returned men, in respect to the dope habit in the army, and they state it is more widespread than is generally imagined owing to the fact that such drugs as cocaine and morphine are very largely used in the hospitals, and in most cases, were easily obtainable by the men themselves, so that possibly without knowing it thousands of soldiers, who previous to the war had not known what these drugs were like, have become addicted to them."

The magistrate of one of Canada's large cities writes: "We have had a good many returned men who are addicted to the use of drugs and certainly they will have to be looked after."

The Chief Constable of another large Canadian city writes, "A number of returned boys who have come before our courts for using drugs, place the blame on having been wounded during the war, and having had drugs given them to relieve their sufferings, which in some instances formed a habit. Others I know personally were addicted to the habit before enlisting."

When we come to give the data for the defence we find that this statement by the Chief Constable is amply borne out by the following letter by one whose opinion must be received with very great respect, not only on account of his first-hand knowledge as a military official, but also as an official in the Federal Department of Health:—

"Ottawa, December 17th, 1919.

"Dear Mrs. Murphy,

I have before me your letter of December 5th, addressed to Dr. Amyot and requesting information in reference to the use of habit forming drugs by returned soldiers.

"During the last two years, and since my return from overseas, while acting as Assistant Director of Medical Services, Department of Militia and Defence, I have had much opportunity of observing soldiers, and particularly, in reference to the conditions about which you require information.

"Having regard to this, I may say that no evidence has reached my attention which would tend to show that the use of habit-forming drugs is more prevalent among those who served in the recent war than among the civilian population. I am inclined to think that the contrary is the case. A certain number of undesirables with the habit already formed or in the process of formation, were taken into the Service without the habit being detected until after enlistment. It should also be borne in mind that, in spite of the hardship of service, the vast majority of those on service did not find the use of such drugs necessary. This would largely disprove the claim, usually fraudulently put up by drug addicts, that war service caused their habit. It may be taken for granted that a statement of this kind, made by a drug addict, is usually meant to appeal to public sympathy and is advanced as an excuse, which may mitigate public disproval of his misconduct.

"The most efficient way in which to correct it is to deal as they did in Britain with smugglers and illicit vendors, viz: with the utmost severity, in imposing crushing fines and long sentences. Drug addicts should also have special provision made for their treatment, with special authority given to magistrates to commit them, on a diagnosis of drug addiction, not necessarily as criminals, but as requiring long periods of enforced removal from possibilities of getting the drug.

"Summing up the whole matter, there is no information and no statistics in the Department of Militia and Defence that, in any way, indicate that returned soldiers were, in any respect, more addicted to the use of habit forming drugs than the ordinary man on the street and it has not been found necessary by the Militia Department to make any special provision for the treatment of soldiers who had become addicts.

"My view in this matter may not coincide with your own but I wish frankly to say that they are founded on my own personal actual observations, both in the field and in administrative duties at headquarters, both in England and Canada, and further I have obtained the views of Major-General Fotheringham, the present Director-General of Medical Services in Canada and formerly the Assistant-Director of Medical Services of the Second Division C.E.F. in the field, and am privileged to state that his views and observations coincide almost absolutely, with those I have given above.

"Trusting that this may be of some little service to you, I am,

Sincerely yours,

D. A. Clark.
Assistant Deputy Minister.

One could almost have wished that Dr. Clark had declared drug addiction in Canada to be a temporary evil resulting from the war, and possibly ending therewith. His letter, however, leaves us no illusions. If we agree with him, we must hold that the evil is a general and national one.

And this undoubtedly has a basis in fact for, in 1907, Canadians imported 1,523 ounces of Morphine and this amount rose steadily for the seven years before the war, and with the exception of a year and a half, has continued to rise ever since. The same steady, persistent rise in importations occurred annually in all other narcotics, this rise being altogether out of proportion to the rise in population.

While war conditions may have aggravated the habit, this aggravation was probably not so serious as some of us have supposed. The use of narcotics must of necessity, be more noticeable in the huge assemblage of soldiers kept under strict surveillance than in the private, more guarded lives of civilians.

A full comprehension of the evil as a national rather than a military one, must be productive of the profoundest disquietude. A policy of negation and inactivity should no longer be tolerated in this Dominion, and this not only applies to our Federal and Provincial Governments, Departments of Health, Police Commissions, Welfare Boards and Church Associations, but to every organization formed for the purpose of dealing with human salvage.

Neither should our course be unstable or inconstant. This is a traffic, odious and wicked, which must be very closely watched. Unfortunately, the public memory is short—one need not be a politician to know this—and people forget when even a small measure of relief has been obtained, but the tan-colored, seldom-smiling Oriental does not forget, nor that master-fiend, the unscrupulous white trafficker. Unabashed and undismayed, these are ever ready to resume operations.

People are not so active in suppressing this evil as one might expect, possible because they do not realize its serious nature. Yet, no one, however highly placed, can be free from its effects, so wide-spread has the habit become.

Accidents to trains; collisions between motor-cars; mistakes in compounding prescriptions; and scores of other casualties may occur through the blunders of drug-addicts. Employers may be mulcted for large damages under the Compensation Act, and workmen may be killed or injured because of the debility or nervousness of "a cokie" who blew out a mine pillar or opened the wrong switch.

It is well known among the police that taxi-cab drivers who are desirous of getting young girls in their power, are a fruitful source of the dissemination of demoralizing drugs. Yet, our daughters use these cabs very frequently, and without concern, knowing nothing of the reprobate person under whose control they have placed themselves.

In the anti-drug campaign in New York in 1919, it was found that among the known drug addicts, 21 per cent. were employed in trades that had to do with transportation. Out of the 20,000 addicts in the city, 2,700 were examined by Dr. Copeland, the Health Commissioner. Those examined included lawyers, journalists, clergymen, teachers and directors of large business corporations. Two-thirds of the victims had trades and professions. Nearly all of the victims registered as desirous of being cured.

When the subject of narcotic addiction is further considered, one is appalled by the loss of human material, not only from the economic, but from the intellectual and spiritual standpoints. If this waste may be retrieved, no matter how arduous the task, an incalculable service will have been rendered. No nation can flourish or even endure, where a large quota of its citizens are affected with drug-addiction disease.

That any considerable portion of our people should become only so much gangrenous matter, is especially deplorable in a young country like Canada, where the climatic discipline of the north naturally makes for dominance and for those sturdier characteristics of sobriety and self-control. Assuredly, this is a case where, if our right eye offend, as a practical curative measure, we must pluck it out.

Awhile ago we said that magistrates who had to deal with drug-addicts as criminals, presently found that some were possibly diseased and mere clods of flesh who required to be tended and mended rather than punished. Writing of this, Dr. Malcolm McEachern, the Superintendent of the Vancouver General Hospital says, "Undoubtedly drug addiction is a disease and I do no think it can be called a crime, but of course, may lead to crime. Nevertheless, it is on the same basis as intemperance in anything else, though other things may not be as serious to the human system."

Dr. Ernest S. Bishop, of New York says, "The one great point to be kept in mind is that narcotic addicts are sick; sick of a definite and now demonstrable disease ... Even if it should some day develop that a serum can be produced against the underlying toxins of addiction-disease—and this is not beyond the bounds of possibility—its usefulness and application must remain for the present, matters of academic speculation."

Burning opium and pipes at the State House, California. Cocoanut containing Yen shee medicine Contraband drugs to the value of three-and-a-half million dollars which were destroyed by the police at New York—Chapter VII, Part II.

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