When an addict or "junker" is found in illegal possession of drugs and has purchased these from an unscrupulous physician, the physician says the addict stole the drugs while he was out of the room. He thinks the explanation to be a sound one, and perhaps it is, for every one who is questioned tells the same story.

Just why a physician should have an ounce of cocaine lying around and leave an addict alone with it, is hard to make out. Why he does the same thing the next day, or the next week is still more wonderful and then, mark you, Reader, never discovers his loss until some ungentle kill-joy in "plain-clothes" takes an ounce from the patient and finds out where it came from.

Even then, the physician does not lay a charge against the marauder, although by so doing he would recover his drugs by order of the court. Strange isn't it, this quiescence, and disquieting to even the heart of a policeman. It is easier for the interlocutor of the woman to believe what she asserts—that the drugs were purchased with cash of the realm. It is quite true that some actual thefts have been made from doctors in down-town blocks, but in these cases the thief is rarely discovered, or if discovered the doctor does not claim him as a patient, the thief being usually a janitor, or some easy-minded person with a master-key. As a general thing, physicians and dentists know better than to leave narcotics in their offices at night, if they need these in the morning. This is what the addicts call "gypping" the doctor.

One physician who was gypped this year in Montreal complained to the police, but the police, being indocile persons and ill-equipped with manners, laid a charge against him which resulted in his being awarded a year's imprisonment. His complaint had been that the patient had paid him $750 for twelve ounces of cocaine but had paid him with bad money. Now, twelve ounces of cocaine, with the usual adulterants, will make 4,560 "decks." Yes! Yes! that was a wise one who said, "When we have sufficiently considered humanity it becomes easy to love God."

Still, the police are not always such big fellows as they think themselves, and plenty of people will be glad to know it. A month or so ago, in Montreal they arrested a suspected person who brazenly admitted the ownership of the bottle found in his possession, and that he had offered it for sale. Ultimately the Government analyst declared its contents to be common baking powder. Indeed, something humiliating like this happened to myself once. Having taken "official notice" that the eighteen bottles exhibited contained alcohol, the accused was successful in proving to me that one of these was gasoline. Not having raised the point, however, until after the trial, she failed to score.

It is alleged, too, that in some cities, patients receiving treatment for venereal disease, take hypodermic injections from the physician so that they may not be hurt by the treatment. These patients do not attend the Government Clinics, perhaps because they prefer their own physicians, and perhaps because the free clinics do not administer "shots" of morphine or cocaine. Reputable practitioners are becoming more widely awake to the injury done their practice by this forbidden trafficking, and are seriously considering ways and means whereby it may be stayed.

In some instances, it has been found that druggists arrange with a physician to refer the habituŽs to his office, saying "Doctor Middleman will probably fix you up with a prescription."

The patients go to the physician and get his "script," pay two dollars for it, and take the paper to the Cashan Carry Drug Company.

Out of twenty-nine physicians prosecuted by the Board of Pharmacy of the State of California for this offence, only two escaped conviction. When the Pharmaceutical Boards in Canada begin prosecuting the physicians, the public may hope for much.

In Canada, a number of convictions are being laid under the criminal code for the forging or altering of drug prescriptions. That this is a serious problem is plain to anyone who has attempted to administer justice in cases laid under the prohibitory liquor laws. It is hardly necessary to say that the prescriptions under these statutes have become a by-word and a hissing.

In the United States, according to The Survey, a large number of addict prescriptions call for an ounce of morphine each, and many thousands call for a drachm.

A Report issued from Washington concerning the Harrison Anti-narcotic law, states that the law is framed to assist in locating vicious dope sellers, and to detect the leak from the legitimate drug trade to the illicit dealer.

The Report says, "That the enforcement of this law will not be as simple a matter as one could wish is evidenced by the fact that in New York State, the official blanks required by the Boylan anti-narcotic law have been obtained by persons who are not entitled to them, and who are employing them for illicit purposes. One individual is said to have secured upwards of 112 ounces of heroin from wholesale druggists in New York City between July 12 and September 17."

In the States, prescriptions for narcotics are written on the official triplicate prescription blanks, or the official triplicate dispensing blank. These blanks are officially serially numbered, and are procurable from the State Department of Health.

The person giving the order retains one of such triplicate orders on his file for a period of two years, and sends the other two to the person to whom the order is given, who retains one of the duplicates on file for two years, and forthwith mails the other copy to the Department.

Or an apothecary may dispense upon an unofficial prescription blank, signed and containing the office address of a physician and the name, age and address of the person for whom issued, as well as the date thereof. Each such original prescription, serially numbered, is kept by him in a separate file for a period of two years and cannot be re-filled.

In the 1921 Session of the House of Commons at Ottawa, an acrimonious discussion took place on the refilling of narcotic prescriptions. One Honorable Member claimed that once a man secured a prescription it became his own property, and he had a right to have it re-filled as often as he needed it.

To this, another Honorable Member who was also an honorable physician, pointed out that if a prescription providing opium could be re-filled whenever the patient chose, it would be possible to obtain enough opium to supply a whole colony of drug addicts.

In the United States, it is not permissible for druggists to supply narcotics pursuant to telephone advice of practitioners, whether prescriptions covering such orders are subsequently received or not.

That such an arrangement is necessary in Canada is shown by an incident which occurred recently. In this case, the patient alleged she paid the physician ten dollars in his office and that he telephoned the druggist the woman would call at the store for a stated quantity of a certain drug. The druggist was further instructed to charge this to the physician's account.

It will be seen from this procedure that the only record kept was one which pertained to the debt between the physician and the druggist, and that there was no way of tracing the purchaser. This woman alleges she gave the doctor one hundred dollars for drugs and hypodermic needles in a fortnight, and that she had been directed to the physician's office from a cafŽ.

Under the Opium and Drugs Act of Canada, wholesale and retail druggists are required to keep a record of the quantity of drugs received and distributed but provision is made for exempting physicians, dentists, and veterinary surgeons from the necessity of keeping records of the drugs they receive and use in the practice of their profession.

So long as such exemptions exist, and physicians be trusted ad libitum with narcotics, we are only playing with the traffic, and can never expect to cut out this fat-rooted evil. It is not necessary to persuade the public of this.

But, as we said elsewhere, even with strict Governmental control, there is nothing to prevent the physician securing unlicensed opiates from drug rings, and dispensing these. To be concise his diploma gives him special immunities and no special disabilities.

The same applies to the druggist. Many shops are "fences" for the storing and dispensing of opium and cocaine which have been smuggled into the country.

In the aggregate, these dope-selling professionals largely outnumber the pedlars and are much more difficult to reckon with. In some of the States of America—notably in Pennsylvania—it is amazing to find that the per capita consumption of narcotics in small towns is much larger than in the big cities. This would undoubtedly point to licensed quackery-to a trade with the dispensaries rather than with the pedlars.

In several drug stores which were raided by the police in the State of New York, the raiders literally waded in the prescriptions of the previous twenty-four months. In one instance, it was necessary to secure a truck to carry the prescriptions to headquarters. How many of these were "shot-gun prescriptions fired at a disease in the abstract" it would be hard to say.

"What is found when a doctor's house and office is raided?" you ask.

In reply we would say, these are seldom raided, but in one residence occupied by a degenerate physician in the United States, the police found a large number of watches, diamonds, chains, bracelets, pearls and rings which he had taken from desperate dopers at a sacrifice.

It has been shown that in the Western Provinces of Canada, "fiends" foregather in certain drug stores and purchase decks of cocaine, morphine and heroin as if these were candies, no prescriptions being required. One must, however, be known as a "junker" or addict to make the purchase.

One of these junkers tells me that in selling, the druggists usually handles large packages of drugs, and the Chinaman small ones. If a Chinaman gets a big package, he reduces and adulterates it.

Cocaine, as received by the druggist, is usually in flake but the druggist may grind it up, and adulterate it before selling. In this way-it is clear like the light of the sun-he can sell more than he has to account for to the Government.

Of late, it is observable that drug stores are locating next to dance-halls, hotels, or places of public assemblage; with connecting doors or passageways, free from the eyes of prying policemen it is tolerably easy for alcoholics and dopers to yield to the importunity of this temptation.

In the United States, in answer to a questionnaire sent out from Washington, 52% of the druggists replied, showing that a total of 9,511,938 prescriptions had been filled within one year. On a basis of 100% replies (presuming the same average to be maintained) the number of prescriptions containing narcotic drugs would total 18,299,397.

In Canada, there are 8,300 registered physicians. These are required by law, to report as to the number of addicts they are treating. In reply to the Government's questionnaire, 4,019 physicians reported, giving a total of 777 addicts. On the 100% basis this would give us 1,554 addicts.

The fallacy of this report is apparent when one city of a population of 130,000, publicly acknowledges having 3,000 addicts, apart from the Orientals.

These physicians reported 38 addicts for the Province of Alberta, whereas there are probably physicians who have this number individually. In the City of Edmonton, the police find that some of the pharmacists can only produce records for about one-third of the drugs shown by their invoices from the wholesalers. The pharmacists claim that the physicians purchased the balance by phial, and that the matter should have ended there.

It does end there too, so far as reporting is concerned, this number of 38 addicts being presumed to consume the other two-thirds.

In Lethbridge, apart from any phials that may have been taken away, the records show that one physician, in one drug store, issued in six months 98 prescriptions, the total being 2,110 grains cocaine, and 3,395 grains of morphine. Another physician issued to the same store, 65 prescriptions, the total amount being 1,535 grains of cocaine and 1,130 grains of morphine. These prescriptions alone, should more than account for the 38 addicts reported by all the physicians in the province.

In other words, these reports, so far as containing the real facts are only a piece of fine foolery, and need not be taken seriously.

Although forms are sent out and heavy penalties provided for under the Opium and Drugs Act for those neglecting or refusing to furnish the declaration in question, these are not taken seriously because the penalties are not imposed, and probably not intended to be imposed. The fine is not less than $200, and not more than one year's imprisonment, or both.

In the United States, the fine is $2,000 or imprisonment for five years, or both.

Public sentiment, in these two countries should insist on their prompt and effective application.

At this point, there breaks into the book voices that rage furiously together; "Hoots woman!" they say, "How can Government expect the medical doctors, dentists, and veterinarians to incriminate themselves upon oath? How could a man who prescribes improperly write anything but fine fables? Most of them would prefer to be safe than exact."

Not knowing what to reply, we shall pretend we do not hear the objection.

One cannot, however, leave this subject without drawing attention to the fact that among the apothecaries there is a large and noble army who refuse to blot their escutcheons with illicit traffic in habit-forming drugs.

Such a company was recently reported from Vancouver, these apothecaries having decided to aid in the anti-drug crusade inaugurated in their city and, in some instances, were refusing to fill doctor's prescriptions. May their tribe live and increase!.

Determined to have no share in the spreading of the drug evil, they have decided that in future no prescriptions will be filled by them unless they are absolutely convinced that these prescriptions are purely for medical purposes, or if the amounts are in such quantities as to cause suspicion in the minds of the druggists that the supply may be re-sold by the party getting it. No prescriptions will be filled to addicts.

It has been definitely established that addicts are dealing in drugs on the prescriptions they have been given for their own use. Their method is the one commonly indulged in by bootleggers, and is here set down for the enlightenment of the public, and to demonstrate the difficulties of police authorities in law enforcement.

The peddling addict gets a prescription calling for an amount of morphine, cocaine or heroin to last him for quite a long time, but when he takes it to the druggist, only gets a portion of the drug called for.

The druggist then gives the pedlar a box or bottle bearing the name of the doctor, the prescription number, and other particulars. The box may then be filled time and time again from illicit supplies. Like the widow's cruse of oil, it never becomes quite empty. If the police find the pedlar with drugs in his possession, he has only to refer them to the covering prescription, in the face of which they are powerless to act.

It is stated by the police in one Canadian city that 60% of all narcotics are sold by druggists, 30% by the underworld, and 10% by doctors. Other places, according to their locations have different reckonings, although such computations must be largely problematic seeing that most of the trading is secret and illicit.

Argument based on circumstances leading up to a fact are defined as "antecedent probability" since the method of its use is to show that the event was possible or probable on the ground that there was sufficient cause to produce it. This is what is known professionally as a priori evidence.

A demonstration of this took place recently on the occasion of a physician being summoned to a police station to examine an unconscious prisoner. The prisoner, very muddy and dishevelled, lay on the floor of the cell. The doctor bent over and examined him, and then, rising, said in a loud stern voice: "This man's condition is not due to drink. He has been drugged."

A policeman turned pale and said, in a timid hesitating voice: "I'm afraid ye're right sir. I drugged him all the way—a matter of a block or more."

There are folk—many of them wholly sincere—who tell us that the enormous increase of drug addiction on this continent is based upon the enactment of prohibitory liquor laws—that these laws are kind of antecedent probabilities. "To what else could the increase be attributable?", they ask. "People are bound to turn to the use of narcotics if you deprive them of alcoholic beverages. The use of drugs has increased wherever prohibition of liquor is enforced."

"So ho! my fine fellow, if this be so," replies the prohibitionist, "then why have Vancouver and Montreal more drug addiction than other cities in the Dominion? Intoxicating liquors are more easily obtainable in these cities than in any others."

Being thus hard pressed, these folk have, of late, with a most malignant inconsistency, changed their attack and argue with equal decisiveness that prohibition increases drunkenness, and that drunkenness and drug addiction go hand in hand. "If you don't believe it" they say, "then look at Montreal and Vancouver." Yes! the Arabs were observant when they coined the adage that by travelling, the crescent became a full moon.

A western Canadian editor said a couple of months ago, "Great Britain, France, Germany, Mexico and many other countries, all 'wet' report alarming increases in the number of drug addicts … At least nine out of ten dope-fiends are also habitual drinkers. In nearly every instance, the first use of drugs is made while under the influence of liquor … almost always, liquor is at the bottom of the drug habit."

This editor goes on to say, "Many will deny this, for long ago the liquor traffic put forth a silly and absurd piece of propaganda to the effect that when prohibition came into effect in a given territory, the men who formerly were satisfied by liquor turned to drugs and became drug addicts. It isn't true, of course, in fact it is the very antithesis of truth. The drug and liquor habit go hand in hand, as everyone knows who has ever studies in the concrete, and as present day conditions prove."

When we turn to the evidence of those who hold the opposite view, we find an equal fervency of opinion.

Joseph C. Doane, M.D., the Chief Resident Physician of the Philadelphia General Hospital, states that from the testimony of their drug patients there is no connection whatever between drug-disease and the inability to get liquor.

The New York City Health Department in the year 1919-1920, asked 1,403 drug patients the cause of their addiction. Only 1 per cent. came to it from alcoholic indulgence. The Secretary of the Rhode Island State Board of Health, says "We fail to find a man among the applicants for treatment any one formerly addicted to the free use of alcoholic beverages."

The Health Officer of Richmond, Virginia, declares that drunkenness and drug addiction are not common in the same person.

The City Health Officer of Jacksonville, Florida, reports that from the histories of addicts registered, it appears that there is no relation between the habitual user of alcoholic liquor and the drug addict.

Cora Frances Stoddard, in her "Preliminary Study" on the relation between prohibition and drug addiction, points out that drug addicts are comparatively youthful thus indicating that the habit is not usually built on antecedent alcoholism. She says, "Of 1,169 new patients treated at the New York Narcotic Relief Station in one week (April 10-16, 1919) most of them were mere youths. A large majority of the patients at the New York Health Department Clinic are under twenty-five, and nearly one-third of them are not out of their teens. One boy began at the age of thirteen." In this connection, Cora Stoddard quotes the Health Department Bulletin as attributing the addiction of these youths, not to alcohol, but from a morbid desire to imitate what they think is a practice of the "underworld," "gunmen" and "gangsters."

Miss Stoddard, in the summary of her study has said—and in this we agree with her—that "bad association and the urge of an illicit traffic seeking to profit by the sale of the habit-forming drugs are the most potent causes for the growth of evil."

She says further, and with absolute correctness—a statement borne out by statistics—that "the drug evil spread secretly for years, little noticed, finally manifesting itself with virulence in 'wet' states as well as in 'dry' states. Apparently the exposure of conditions was coincident with the spread of prohibition, not the result of prohibition."

In the event of some hard-baked, prejudiced person urging—albeit improperly—that conditions in the United States are no criterion to those existing in Canada, give us leave to here quote the report of the Medical Committee of the Kiwanis Club, Vancouver:—"Practically all observers state that there seems to be no special connection between the use of alcohol and the use of drugs. There is no evidence to show that the suppression of the use of alcohol increases to any appreciable extent the addiction to drugs, as drug addicts are rarely alcoholics. The growth of drug addiction in various cities and countries has gone on quite irrespective of the varied existing liquor laws."

Not long ago a young girl who was arrested told me she would have escaped the police had she not been foolish enough to drink liquor while under the influence of narcotics. "When you are taking 'coke'," she said, "whiskey affects your heart and makes you 'goofey'."

A. C. Webber has made the following interesting comparison between the users of narcotics and alcohol:—"Strange to say, dope and alcohol class alike in many respects. Both are drugs and both are habit forming. They may be termed poison, and both have narcotic properties. The same may also be said about nicotine, the active principle of tobacco. The effect, however, of these substances is wholly opposite.

"Dope attracts the weak minded—the fellow who gives up the fight and throws up his hands—the down-and-out who succumb to their troubles, who will not make an effort to battle against the current of life.

"The users of alcohol represent the stronger side of human nature. Do they give up? Not very much. Just listen to talk around the street about submission to Government control of alcohol. The user of alcohol (I am not talking about the sot or inebriate) is no weakling, either in talk or action … Alcohol may momentarily kindle the spark of genius. Dope never … It produces thoughts of crime, meanness, baseness, selfishness and degeneracy."

In most places, those deprived of liquor seek substitutes, not in opium, cocaine or other allied drugs, but in raisin jack, home made wines, jamaica ginger, paregoric, essences or moonshine.

Since prohibition came into effect, the drug addicts became more noticeable, and people have learned to distinguish between drug and alcoholic intoxication as never before.

It is strange, however, that temperance associations and social service councils are concerning themselves almost exclusively with the prohibition of alcoholic liquors when drug intoxication has become a national calamity—one that far outdistances that of intemperance. This is probably because of the difficulty of getting into touch with the drug traffic, it being carried on by stealth, by persons we seldom meet and whose language is unknown to us. It is deeply significant, however, that the blank forms which the Dominion Government sent out this year to Juvenile Court officers, requires a statement as to whether or not the child before the court is addicted to drugs.

If the philanthropic organizations, churches, and temperance associations are unacquainted with the extent of the evil, it is quite certain that Government officials are laboring under no delusions whatsoever.

Opium is the substitute for alcohol in the Orient. On this continent it bids fair to oust alcohol, and is gaining ground year by year. By going back a few years, it can be easily seen that this growth was a steady one long before prohibitory liquor laws came into force, and that we must look to causes other than temperance legislation for its persistent increase.

Figures concerning the gradually increasing use of narcotics in Canada have already been given in this volume. For those relating to the United States, we shall turn our attention to a report made by the special committee appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury Department in the year 1919.

This report shows that for the last sixty-five years the use of opium and its alkaloids has constantly increased. In the year 1900, the population of the United States was two-and-a-half times greater than in 1860, but the amount of opium entered for consumption was five times as great.

During the past twenty-two years one might reasonably have expected the use of opium and its alkaloids to have decreased owing to the use of large amounts of synthetic somnifacients, such as chloral hydrate, sulphonal, trional, veronal, etc., but as a matter of fact such is not the case. The growth for legitimate medical purposes grows enormously. How its progress will be stayed, or who will do it are the momentous questions that confront us.

In a volume by Watt entitled the "Common Products of India" writing of the poppy, he says that the Greeks made an extract from its capsules, stems and leaves which they called meconium. This extract was used as an opiate, and for the manufacture of a drink which exactly corresponds to the post of the Panjab today. Later, the Greeks discovered the more powerful qualities of the inspissated sap, the product of which was their famous opion.

The method of obtaining the extract from the poppies was described by Theophrastus in the third century before Christ. "Some use it," he says, "in a posset of mead for epileptics." He also said the juice of the poppy was collected from its head and that it was the only plant so treated. Virgil, in the Georgics, refers to their narcotic principles in the line, "Poppies steeped in Lethe's sleep."

Pliny pays special attention to opion and its medicinal qualities, while the minute details of its manufacture are narrated by Dioscorides.

The next reference we have to the drug is in the thirteenth century, when Simon Januensis, the physician to Pope Nicholas IV, wrote of opium thebaicum.

It is true that in Arabia, certain authors of medical works wrote of opium but these do not seem to have experimented in its use to any marked extent, their account of it being derived largely from Galen and Dioscorides.

In referring to its history, it is interesting to note that the Sanskrit name of opium is ahiphena which, being interpreted, means "snake venom."

The Hindus (especially the Sikhs), are addicted to opium but it is more particularly used by the people of Assam to relieve bowel disorder which is a scourge in their locality.

In China, the users of opium believe it to have aphrodisical qualities, whereas it actually lessens the reproductive powers, the average number of children of opium eaters being 1.11 after eleven years of married life.

In England, and America the noctiluœ or nightwalkers, given to a licentious course of life, hold to the same theory concerning cocaine which they frankly designate as "love powder," the pedlars having told them this to increase its use. The idea is, however, an old one for a female character in a Shakespearean play refers to "medicines to make me love him."

Dr. James A. Hamilton of New York who has dealt with thousands of opium addicts states that while the principal effect of opium is on the nerves, yet the secretions of the body are diminished with the exception of sweat. "The patient," he says, "presents a picture of a poorly developed, poorly nourished individual, with a cold, clammy skin, who is apathetic, does not care to move about, and is particularly loath to bathe. If he is careful in the amount of drug taken, he is able to attend his daily task, does not suffer, but is continually losing ground. His power of resistance is lowered and he becomes an easy prey to current affections, tuberculosis, pneumonia, influenza, or any of the maladies we have to combat in everyday life. If opium is suddenly withdrawn, there is a set of symptoms which are fairly constant and have been termed withdrawal signs. This condition is generally ushered in by yawning, sneezing, tremors, vomiting and sometimes symptoms of collapse."

As a rule opium and morphine addicts are very secretive and consequently are prone to seek for a cure that will not expose their habit. Because of this they fall easy victims to quackery and to charlatans and desire to find out who are opium addicts, they have only to advertise a sure cure for the habit with the promise of secrecy. The mind of the addict somersaults to such an advertisement.

In answer to a questionnaire sent out in the United States to the leading private hospitals and sanitoria, it was reported that the average length of time required for the cure of opium addicts was seven weeks, and for cocaine addicts, six weeks.

Dr. Stuart MacVean, the resident physician at Riker's Island, New York State, who has treated over a thousand opium addicts states that after a hundred days, his patients have been entirely relieved of the physical craving. "The question then," he says, "becomes a sociological one. There is nothing in any cure that will not produce a later antagonism to the taking of opium."

If we could keep drugs away from him at this period of his redemption, the opium, or the morphine addict would probably stay cured but under present conditions this is not possible. It was Confucius who said "The people may be put in the way they should go, though they may not be put in the way of understanding it."

This is particularly true of the addict who is feeble-minded or who has pronounced criminal tendencies. Such a person is hardly out of the institution till he has forgotten all about the tortures of opium abandonment and remembers only its balm and mellow magic.

Coming into the streets again, he is usually in that condition where he a kind of first-cousin to all the world. He does not go far until he falls into the clutches of the harpies who formerly supplied him with the drug and who, again, seek his custom.

In March of this year, a young white man released from Okalla Jail in British Columbia, was given his first "shot" by an emissary of the "dope-ring" within five minutes of his release, in a bush within sight of the jail.

This white man, in spite of his jail experiences, immediately began peddling drugs, himself, and was later arrested by a police operative to whom he sold two packages or "bindles." On being arrested, in rooms which the police allege were being used as his distributing headquarters, the marked money was found upon his person. The man pleaded guilty to the charge of selling inhibited drugs without a license and was sentenced to five years in prison under the indictable section of the Opium and Drugs Act.

In my own continuing city, a man who was released from the hospital in the morning, after several weeks of treatment for drug addiction, was given a hypodermic injection of morphine the same evening by his wife, who was still "on the drug," thus re-enacting the original drama of Adam and Eve.

While these instances of weakened volition succumbing to temptation may be exceptionally aggravated ones, the fact remains that only in exceptional cases does the cure hold. Not without reason has it been said "The physician who undertakes this work will find his path a rugged one without roses bordering it … He must realize that his experiences will be more or less of a martyrdom order, severe trials of his patience, and vexations requiring a strength of will-power and careful judgment beyond the ordinary."

Yes! Yes! the physicians must show themselves to be the gentle, wise ones of the earth, and, speaking generally they are.

It has been remarked somewhere in this volume that it was quite possible for a detective to find smuggled opium and fail to recognize it as such. This thought recurs to me as I turn over a large lump of raw opium that looks like a mass of vegetation, which has been boiled and pressed into a mould the shape of a porridge bowl. On the outside, one can see plainly the tracery of the leaves as though it had been wrapped in them.

The chemist tells me this is raw or crude opium of the highest quality and that it comes from India. Many people use it there, it being said of one province "Out of ten Shen-si people, eleven smokers."

This raw opium has the smell of crushed vegetation, and not the slightest resemblance in odor to prepared opium.

He further tells me that he intends testing it and that, if so disposed, I may cook it in collaboration. Being curious and somewhat unsophisticated I accept the offer only to find that, like sod-breaking, the task is in nowise a light-hearted one.

First, we chopped the opium in bowls, till almost it was a powder. To keep me to my task, the chemist tells me about the poppy family, and stories of their fatal beauty. Poppies, he ways, have a very harmful effect upon flowers placed in the same vase, so that they fade quickly and die away. This, he takes it, is an exemplification of Ovid's declaration that "medicine sometimes snatches away health."

Once, he used morphine himself but gave it up before the habit could gain ascendancy. Under its influence he felt himself freed from the restraint of gravitation, and would cry out when his head seemed as though it would strike the ceiling.

On either side of his study door, there were bronze lights which used to become orangutans with eyes of fire. He decided to forego the drug when he found that to waken himself to normality, it was requisite that he take a "jolt" of cocaine. …The opium in my bowl being desiccated, the chemist mixes it with warm water and agitates it into a thick pasty mass that looks for all the world like jalap and water.

This mass contains impurities which must be strained out to make it suitable for smoking, otherwise the opium would have a rank flavor, similar to that a man would get who tried to smoke with a rag in his tobacco pipe.

Over and over we re-heated the solution straining in through cloths, and gradually adding a little more water, for it is easier to wash the impurities from the thin solution.

The surprising part of this fluid is its remarkable stickiness. If you close your solution-soiled hand for a few minutes, it is difficult to open it.

When all extraneous matter is removed, we place the solution in a brass vessel, after which it is slowly boiled, the water passing off in steam.

The residue is called pen yang and is a thick treacle. It is now ready for smoking.

The mixture is cooked in brass because it does not stain this metal. The odor of the opium during this process of cooking is a most noisome and insinuating one, also it stupefies the amateur cook and gives her a headache that really aches.

In Canada, the legitimate imports of opium for the six months ending September, 1919 totalled 11,125 pounds. For the corresponding period in 1920, the imports dropped to 1,840 pounds. This reflects great credit on our Government, and if it could deal as effectively with the illicit traffic, the end would be in sight.

In a report of the Federal Grand Jury at Spokane in February of this year, a copy of which was conveyed to Governor Hart from the United States Attorney at Spokane, it was stated that the importations of crude opium had increased from 60,000 pounds in 1917 to 730,000 pounds in 1919—an increase of 1,100 per cent.—and that there was manufactured in the United States sufficient narcotics to supply every man, woman and child in the Republic with five one-grain portions a day, a that a large amount of drugs not accounted for were being smuggled into the country.

The recommendations of the grand jury included the following things: (1) that the city authorities be urged to organize and maintain anti-narcotic squads of sufficient number to cope with the local situation; (2) that the Federal Government be urged to increase its corps of special agents; (3) that judges be urged to impose on all violators, the maximum sentences upon conviction of the sale of narcotics or possession with intent to sell; (4) that all agencies and organizations working for the eradication of the narcotic evil use every effort towards arousing the public sentiment to back their efforts.

In Canada, the city of Vancouver which has been horrified and appalled by the revelations of the traffic on the Pacific Coast, they are endeavoring to line-up public opinion as above suggested. We are deeply indebted to sure-seated Vancouver for her efforts to keep straitly the portals to this Dominion, and no second call should be needed by Canadian people. An editor by the sea has described the opium traffic as the greatest menace to its youth which has ever confronted this nation, "a pestilence that not only walks in darkness but destroys in the noonday."

"The opium traffic," adds Duncan M. Smith, "is a disgrace and menace to civilization. The coils which this monster has wound around civilization should be torn away with no gentle hand. The war against this degrading drug should never be called off until the last outpost has been surrendered."

Speaking of the ever-growing company of criminals, John Daley has shown that the records of the City of New York show 85% of the prisoners who are arrested for the violation of the narcotic laws have criminal records.

In the State of Massachusetts, eminent authorities claim that 85% become vicious, while Californians place the number at 95%.

The Medical sub-committee of the Kiwanis Club, Vancouver, stated in a recent report that there were two classes of criminal addicts—criminals before addiction and criminals after addiction. "We have no reliable statistics," they said, "to state what percentage is in each class, but it would appear that a fair proportion was in the incorrigible or criminal class before using drugs, and that drug addiction was only one indication of dissipated or criminal habits. It is stated that a large number of criminals are drug addicts, and that a vast majority of the females who come before the police authorities are prostitutes most of whom are diseased.

"However, it is undoubtedly a fact that large numbers have begun their downfall and their real criminal histories after learning drug habits, and that the desire to procure drugs has been the cause of their criminal acts."

In reply to questionnaires sent out by a Special Committee appointed by the Treasury Department at Washington, replies were received from 338 Chiefs-of-Police. These reported that among the prisoners arrested in 1918, the number of drug addicts totalled 5,443.

Most interesting information on the bearing of the different drugs in relation to crime was discovered in their replies. The most violent of the crimes were perpetrated by the users of heroin and cocaine. These were also the drugs most favored by panderers engaged in the white-slave traffic, and by prostitutes.

Opium and morphine users seldom commit the more brutal crimes. The offences committed by these, in order of their frequency are:—larceny, burglary, vagrancy, forgery, assault, and violation of the drug laws.

Speaking of the effect of addiction on morals, a certain report has declared, however, that "the opium or morphine addict is not always a hopeless liar, a moral wreck, or a creature sunk in vice and lost to all sense of decency, but may often be an upright individual except under circumstances which involve his effection, or the procuring of the drug of addition. He will usually lie as to the dose necessary to sustain a moderately comfortable existence, and he will stoop to any subterfuge, and even to theft to achieve relief from bodily agonies experienced as a result of the withdrawal of the drug."

A prominent Government official in a letter from Winnipeg, Manitoba, said recently, "Many crimes are to our knowledge committed by persons while under the influence of drugs, and we have good grounds for believing that the recent murder in the town of St. Boniface, whereby two Provincial police officers came to their death, was caused by a cocaine fiend."

As it is claimed that drug addiction has increased two hundred per cent. in the last two years in Vancouver, the following letter from that city may prove of interest:—"No doubt every effort is being put forth to stamp out this awful traffic in drugs, but, as you are aware, Vancouver is a very hard place to police both so far as drugs are concerned and other work. We have lots of serious crime here. It might interest you to know that since the 1st of January last (ten months) there have been 105 holdups in the city by armed men, and 217 burglaries. At present, there is a holdup every night. These men are becoming very impudent and audacious. Out of every 50 holdups not more than one man is caught.

"In Vancouver, experience has shown that a large majority of the bandits are drug addicts. Take the case of Tom G——, who is well known to you: he was sentenced here a week ago to seven years and thirty lashes. He held up a Hindoo, and got $28.00 from him at the point of a revolver. He told me that he did it to get money for drugs. He said he did not mind the seven years, but he dreaded the lash. He also told me he had received the lash before, but not here. A sentence such as this should prove a deterrent to others, but not, they are still going on. … Anyone here who 'is in the know' would just confirm what I have above stated."

After passing from the stage of an habituate into that of an addict, the man or woman quickly becomes unemployable.

But even if these had employment and were capable of work, their drugs cost so much they must, perforce, lie off and steal the money.

It has been reckoned that an addict requires from three to thirty dollars a day for drugs, the smaller amount being imperative.

If a raid takes place and any considerable amounts be seized the prices become almost prohibitive.

Limpy Lill, a young half-breed woman tells me that she and her pal, Mildred, sniff between them from thirty to forty "decks" a day. She robs persons at night—or in her own words "frisks them"—and has no ridiculous delicacy in telling of it. As a criminal, Limpy Lill is capable of all that her looks imply.

Often, these girls divide the stolen money with their "steadies" who are without funds—that is to say those black-hearted, iron-heeled fellows who live basely upon these earnings. Surely, that is a notable proverb which says, "From prey to prey we come to the devil."

Limpy Lill would have me understand that Mildred is a person of no common clay in that she can absorb much whiskey even while "lit up" with cocaine. Mildred has used so much cocaine that she is getting "the saddle nose"—a nose that has width at the bridge as though it were broken, and which is not uncommon with "coke" fans.

Limpy Lill keeps to "coke" herself, because it is "love medicine," at least she has been told it is, and further she tells me in expressions both immoderate and unholy, how she hopes all the police officers may die soon, and that they may not go to heaven. Indeed, she knows some insulting songs about them, but she would rather not tell me the words.

Another person suffering from the disease of drug addiction, states he can use over fifty of the decks sold at $1.00 each.

In Manitoba, it is reported that three or four persons with the drug bias frequently club together and order from four to six ounces of cocaine through some Toronto or Montreal firm. This cocaine is forwarded to them either through the express office or post office. Sufficient of the cocaine is mixed with carbonated magnesium, or some other adulteration so that they get their own drugs for little or nothing. The so-called "honor among thieves" is open to question but, among dope crooks, such a matter as honor is unknown. It really doesn't matter much but one may just say in passing that the most distinctive thing about the underworld is the treachery of its denizens.

A little while ago, we said that when a large raid took place, drugs became so scarce that prices were almost prohibitive. A news correspondent writing from Seattle, has this to say about the subject:—

"The poorer addict has but one course left to pursue. He or she must get the price by stealing it and so terrible is the craving that even the fear of a long penitentiary sentence has no terrors. The mind is consumed with but one thought and the body with but one desire, and that is for the deadly drug that for a few hours will give respite, lift the aching soul from the flames of hell, cool the inflamed mind and restore temporary exhilaration to the body."

This statement was strikingly illustrated in Seattle itself in the raids that took place on the 14th and 15th of December, 1921, when large quantities of both morphine and cocaine were seized by the detectives.

On the three days immediately succeeding this "big pinch," a wave of crime swept over the city in which period there were no less than sixty-four burglaries and forty-seven hold-ups. The officials in Seattle state that the penalties for these offences are so severe, and the risks so great, that only those whose minds were unbalanced by their suffering would dare to take the chance.

In order to buy narcotics, the youth in the home will steal his mother's jewelry, his father's books or clothing, or the family silverware. The young girl goes to work as a housemaid for a day or two that she may rob her employer. As she descends lower in the social scale she doesn't work for anyone but the negro who buys her for the price of opium wherewith to "hit the pipe." She wasn't bad to start with—this white addict—but just languishing for entertainment, and perhaps a grafter who was looking for free treats in the way of theatre tickets, joy-rides, candies or suppers.

There are girls in the world—thousands and thousands of them—who like Tamakea of Tahiti, may be described as "comely of countenance, nimble of body, empty of mind."

Because they have earned a pay check or two, they feel the world to be under their feet. Such girls have no fancy for restraint of any kind, being especially loath to that of the parental variety. They refuse to be either advised or admonished. For minnows like these, there are always sharks in the offing. One such shark in my own city claims that he has ruined thirty of these foolish little girls. Each girl went out with white men but, in the morning, when she awoke he was there beside her—this black man.

There is a psychology about the thing which needs explaining. One of the girls told me about it herself. The girls will not complain to their relatives, or to the police, because they have a horror of exposure in a racial matter of this kind. They feel there is nothing for them, but to hide their shame for the time being anyway. She told me, too, of the unmentionable drugs that were used, and how they can be purchased like candies in certain stores, their use being for one specific object. Against their power no girl has any chance.

In all parts of Canada and the United States, girls like these ultimately gravitate to Greek or Assyrian candy shops, Chinese cafés, cabaret-bars, negro opium joints, or to disorderly houses.

The number? Oh yes, we said it awhile ago—hundreds and hundreds of thousands.

One might suppose the average mother would be excited or alarmed concerning these things, and because her daughter was becoming a degenerate and a drug-fiend but, strange and inexplicable as it may appear, such is not generally the case. Many mothers have so large and generous a tolerance towards the derelictions of their children that the woman magistrate is forced to wonder if she is expecting too much of humanity, or whether it is the proper thing that handsome feathers should be trailed in the dust.

A woman police constable in Alberta took a girl seventeen from a chop-suey house to her home in the early morning. The girl's mother called over the balustrade that she would not be disturbed at so unearthly an hour; that the girl could go straight to bed and the officer—well, straight to the barracks.

This officer who is quite a sensible person says she didn't go—not for quite awhile anyway—that the mother did come down, and that what she heard was in nowise consonant with the spirit of delicate dissembling. Yes! that was it, the officer gave the mother "a piece of her mind," and it was not a mind of peace.

The general belief is that all mothers are wise and good, whereas this is far from being the case. Instances are not uncommon of mothers and daughters "working" the hotels or streets together, and of mothers being actual parties to the defilement of their children, but these obscenities cannot be allowed the perpetuity of print. The allusion is made here to show that all the blame must not be placed upon dissolute male persons, but upon white mothers with black hearts or, maybe, mothers whose hearts are only thin and light.

In the United States and Canada, the home is not the impregnable stronghold that we mentally visualize from literature, or which has been handed down in the lore of the Saxons.

We might enumerate the causes and say that the home is dull, or that the routine of the home is one of drudgery. We might argue from the other side that the children rule the home, or that too many liberties are allowed them. All our arguments might be true, but, looking at the matter more clearly, it is readily apparent that the trouble is due to the fact that religious precepts are unknown and unpractised in the majority of our homes. The Bible is unread, while purity and honor are topics of jest. The only deities are money, dress, business, politics, social distinction, delicate foods and strong drinks.

Do you say we exaggerate? Do you waggle your heads and say the picture is too pessimistic?

Then we care not a penny piece for your opinion. These facts are wholly true for we know whereof we speak.

…And when the young girl has been victimized, it is only a little while until she begins to prey upon others. She must be rescued early if rescued at all. The potential criminal should be healed before she becomes a criminal. Once she has crossed from girlhood to womanhood or to motherhood, her case becomes difficult in the extreme. If not rescued, she becomes a propagandist in the spread of narcotics, and a recruiter for vice. Usually, her first recruits are from the girls she knew at school or in the factory and store.

Recently, seven young girls under eighteen years of age were brought into court either as "neglected children" or as witnesses in the enquiry. They had all gone to school together. Two confessed to spending nights in Chinese noodle parlors, and three to using drugs. The others, while they "knew things," wouldn't tell.

Later, the girl victims who are prostitutes become alcoholic or drug addicts, sufferers from venereal disease, thieves, vagrants, forgers and blackmailers.

As one looks upon these wrecks of humanity, one is appalled by the sight and fearful for the future of the race.

There is no question about it, prostitution must be ended, if we are to end the drug traffic for almost every prostitute uses narcotics, and the majority are distributors.

With the taxi-drivers, the prostitutes are the chief pedlars among the white populace.

By their unmentionably corrupt practices—things of which the average decent woman is profoundly ignorant—these prostitutes are corrupting the manhood of the country. It is at the house of the wanton whose feet "take hold on hell" that the already debased frequenters learn the additional vice of drug intoxication. It was Thomas Fuller, a brave old writer, who said, "Heat of passion makes our souls to chap and the devil creeps in at the crannies."

Except in the larger cities and towns, these prostitutes are unmolested although there is a popular dictum that prostitution has always been in the world and must always exist. This dictum is so plainly false that it can hardly be deceptive. The establishment of the equal moral standard; the realization that we are suffering to the death from the terrible ravages of narcotics, and that we are threatened with universal infection from the social disease, must inevitably arouse the people to taking sure and perfect action in the way of personal and national preservation. In the Provincial jail of Alberta one person in every three must be treated for venereal disease by the Government clinician but, generally speaking, the public is unacquainted with these facts.

Until we loose the strangle hold of the prostitute on our populace, we can never hope to make any marked progress in staying these abominable evils, including that of the drug traffic.

To the little red house by the river
   I came when the short night fell,
I broke the web forever
   I broke my heart as well
Michael and the saints deliver
   My soul from the nethermost hell.—M. E. Coleridge.

There are two classes of addicts—the legitimate and the illegitimate.

A medical committee which was appointed by the American Health Association to make a study of the subject divided the addicts into three groups and specified the responsibility for these so far as their care was concerned. This report is, therefore, of unique value. Briefly, the division is as follows:—

1. Group of addicts variously spoken of as criminals, degenerates, and feebleminded who are unwilling and unable to co-operate in the necessary treatment and should be kept under official control. This group is essentially a police problem.
2. The group who suffer from physical conditions necessitating an indefinite continuance of their use. This constitutes a medical problem.
3. The group whom the clinical condition which was the cause of their beginning addiction no longer exists. This is also a medical problem.

The general consensus of opinion seems to be that there is not any very marked connection between certain occupations and addiction.

In the United States, a questionnaire on this matter was sent to 4,568 superintendents of hospitals and sanitoria. Replies were received from 36%, but only 227 of these contained information of value. Most of the superintendents replied that no records had been kept. The occupation in their order of frequency were reported as follows:— housewives, laborers, physicians, salesmen, actors and actresses, unemployed, business men, nurses, farmers, office workers, professional men and women, prostitutes, pharmacists, "dope pedlars," mechanics, merchants, gamblers, newspapermen and printers.

The causes of addiction have been spoken of elsewhere, but it would be in order here to quote those given by Mr. Justice Cornelius F. Collins of the Court of Special Sessions of New York, while testifying before a legislative commission. He attributed drug addiction to protracted medication for bodily ailments and disease, to seeking relief from the effect of alcoholic intoxication, to the persistent consumption of patent medicines containing narcotics, to the circulation in jails of narcotics, to gang influence, foolish curiosity and bad association.

While one-third of all addicts are in their 'teens, the average age is twenty-four years. The figures relating to insanity and the use of narcotics are meagre, although to anyone who has protracted dealings with the victims, the habit itself seems a frenzy or form of insanity. To a drug-wrecked man the Hindu dictum seems always applicable: "The deer of reason has fled from the hill of his heart."

This unbalanced mentality does not always arise from pathological conditions, but because of the hideous and ever-present fear that the source of his supply may be cut off.

Once, a clever woman who fell to the underworld, told me she had never understood the full force of the words "I thirst," as uttered by the dying Nazarene, until she learned the drug-need. And yet, she claims to have never been without the necessary bolus for any length of time. Since then she had committed suicide. Ah well, it was Seneca who said, "There is one reason why we cannot complain of life: it keeps no one against his will."

The lengths to which an addict will go to secure for himself a supply of narcotics has been told with appalling directness by Dr. James A. Hamilton in describing the treatment given criminals who were found to be addicts and who, accordingly, were sent for treatment to the Correction Hospital, Blackwell's Island, New York.

"The greater class of the patients," he says, "are addicts and we have learned to expect that while they are going through the cure we will be confronted with an alarming train of symptoms, and it is only an intimate knowledge of the patient's condition that prevents us from making errors.

"Hysterical attacks simulating epilepsy are frequent. Continuous vomiting, and hemorrhages (self-induced) are used in an effort to mislead the physician into keeping them on the drug, or to work on the sympathies of those in authority to effect their release. Frequently cases have been transferred here in ambulances, supposedly in a dying condition, when they could have walked; and strange as it may seem, have often begged to be operated upon, perfectly willing to undergo an operation at the risk of losing their lives only to obtain the few shots of morphine we give them after an operation."

Dr. Prentice who also understands the drug "junkers" supremely well, has thrown light on how this drug supply is usually secured. "In the parlance of the underworld," he writes, "where the narcotic addicts finds congenial atmosphere, there exists a swift and secret means of communication—a sort of 'free masonry of their kind'—by which the 'script' doctors in a community are well known and accessible to all the addict fraternity… It often appears that the 'doc' himself is addicted to the 'dope'."

When the addict or junker has not the money to obtain his supply from a doctor it happens in the larger cities that a pedlar will supply him with the cash.

This sounds somewhat paradoxical and requires explanation. A pedlar, in his sinister vocation, may not entirely depend upon smuggled goods for his supply but decide it to be safer and surer to finance addicts who purchase at a drug store by means of a doctor's prescription, it being agreed that the addict will divide evenly with the pedlar. The pedlar who is in himself a whole committee of ways and means, adulterates his half and sells it greatly in excess of the price charged by the doctor and druggist, thus making a handsome profit. Yes, Falstaff might almost have meant a drug pedlar when he said, "This is the most omnipotent villain that ever cried, 'Stand!'"

Owing to the enforcement of the Harrison Narcotic Law in the United States, a large number of these addicts and pedlars have crossed the lines into our border cities where they have carried on a similar procedure with almost entire immunity from punishment.

These persons whose social rating is nothing to speak of, are known colloquially as "lush dips"—that is to say they rob drunken men. Some bolder members of the poppy circle operate upon the sober ones as well. These hold-ups have become so common in one of our border cities that the pedestrians are warned to walk on the outer edge of the sidewalks after dark lest they be struck down from doorways or pulled into them. All that and more!

Reciprocally, Canada is sending a like clownish and ignoble company into the United States, without any very active opposition on the part of Uncle Sam.

The necessity of taking hold of the matter with certainty and celerity is one that needs no round-about discussion.

But to return to the fears of the addict, you and I. If he has a supply of drugs with little chance of its becoming seriously depleted, he is then in fear of being arrested and of the police finding his câche. A woman hides a certain amount in her hair, and a man in his socks under the soles of his feet, but this is only for immediate use. A woman traveller who was convicted recently for having opium unlawfully in possession, kept her supply in a lemon-skin which she had hollowed out. On examining it closely, I found she had sewn the parts together with lemon colored thread which was hardly discernible. The lemon was rolled in its original tissue paper.

Wealthy addicts often have runners, or sledders, who bring them new supplies, but, as a general thing, a hiding place must be found outside the house. One family I knew kept their supply in a harmless looking lobster can that lay beneath the back steps with a collection of empty cans.

No one dreamed that a searching squad of "tecs" would be so sour or unsympathetic as to turn over this pile of rusty tins, but they were; they assuredly were.

Another family kept their tin in the back of an old three-wheeled buggy in the lot across the lane, and no one could be arrested for having drugs unlawfully in their possession until a late-lingering spotter hid in the family woodpile and caught a "boarder" carrying the can to the house.

All these things have a rather cankering effect on the soul of an addict and fill his mind with the blackest of misgivings. It is no wonder at all that his nerves become jangled.

But after all, the matter which most nearly concerns the public, or the family that is cursed with an addict member, is just how to cure him. In one family we know of, three young persons have the habit.

"Earth and Heaven! I can't do anything for my wife" said an irate man the other day. "She has become a positive weed and her demands for money are bankrupting me. I have inhibited her at all the drug stores but she still manages to get supplies. Tell me what to do with her. Is she really 'diseased' as our doctor says, or is she plainly bad? Is there any cure for her?"

These are intensely vital questions in, perhaps, a million homes and might well stagger the bravest writer on the subject. All one can do is to quote the latest opinions of the most eminent authorities and leave the matter there.

Mrs. Sarah Mulhal of New York, who has had a wide experience, says the addict cannot cure himself and that he needs institutional care to this end. She points out that short term hospital treatment only results in a loss of time and money, in that the patients are physically and psychologically unprepared for the old temptations and environment.

Then along comes Dr. James F. Rooney who says, "We have used the word 'cure' and we do not know what cure is. We have not arrived anywhere. Is an addict cured after you have taken him off the drug and for how long is he cured?"

H. D. Harper, the Chief of Police, in a letter written from Colorado tells us that "At the end of sixty days the convict is completely cured so there is no necessity for his further use of 'dope,' but many do go back to it after having taken the cure, though they have told me many times it is not through necessity but merely through temptation."

One woman declares in a letter that her husband's cure "lasted as long as a piece of tissue paper thrown upon the coals."

In other words, social amendment seems to be a very large factor in the cure. The addict must not only be made whole, but kept whole. This means the giving a part of our lives to the task, and stands for something more than mere monetary assistance.

Any who are called to the dire intensity of such a task had better read for their daily comfort the story of how John and Peter, having neither silver nor gold, went up to the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, and there gave to the lame a "perfect soundness" of body. If a proper rein is allowed the imagination you will surely desire to test this thing for yourself.

In the meantime, give us leave to quote some experts as to what should be done for the addict before he comes to the stage in his cure where the treatment is psychological or social. One of these experts says, "Drug addiction is now recognized as a pernicious habit and not as a disease. The treatment consists in gradually withdrawing the drug so that functions which have been inhibited so long may resume the normal gradually. The symptoms as they appear, are met by approved measures. Stimulation is sometimes required and hypnotics for a few days. The treatment is simple, any intelligent physician should be able to administer it successfully. Thousands of cases have passed through this department with no fatalities as against a high percentage of poor results in other institutions."

Although the words "gradually withdrawing" are used in the above citation, these refer to the cure known to the profession as "the immediate withdrawal," which cure is becoming generally recognized as the only valid one, and which we have elsewhere described in this volume.

In order to assure the relatives of addicts that the cure is more humane and much more certain than any other, we quote from a political prisoner of mental superiority in one of the American penitentiaries who wrote his first-hand observations of the prisoners undergoing treatment for withdrawal of narcotic drugs. He said, "I have been in the hospital about eight months, and in the prison for a year. During that time, I have observed under treatment between fifty to seventy-five cases of narcotic drug addiction. I had no idea what a terrific affliction drug addiction is, until I saw its victims here. These represent the very lowest level of humanity; often very young men—mere boys from twenty to twenty-two years old—already wrecked! Such men as Victor Hugo speaks of in Les Miserables: 'Men who are old, without ever having been young; possessing all the ignorance of youth, without any of its innocence.'

"All these cases had been treated by immediate withdrawal of the drug, except those whose physical condition (disease) required more gradual methods. Generally speaking, from my own observations and from what the men tell me, they do not suffer. They say they have felt altogether better, when they had gotten off the drug. It seemed to revive and stimulate their will-power, which had been put in abeyance by the drug. I am gratified with the results of the treatment. Never has it failed in a single case to break off the habit, and in no single instance have I seen a bad result from the treatment. The men also express their gratification over the relief it affords them. The craving seems to be due, in part, to uncertainty; as soon as the habitué realizes that there is no chance of his getting any 'dope,' he feels better in his mind, and his will is strengthened to stay off."

The letter here following was written to me by a youth of marked ability who had done excellent work in England as a secret service agent and who, accordingly, was competent to express an opinion on the qualifications of an addict in this capacity.

His letter is of especial interest as showing the mentality of a man who has been using narcotics for three years. Plainly, he has become super-sensitive and suspicious. He thinks persons are saying things about him or, maybe, they are "voices" that he hears. His perspectives have become distorted so that, under certain circumstances, he could have committed murder and justified the act to his conscience. A psychiatrist would probably declare him to be suffering from cocaine paranoia.

And yet, because of the rawness of his agony, we must ask if his words are applicable to ourselves-whether we have been unfair and insulting to the unhappy victims who have fallen under the wheels of the traffic. It is so easy to be both, for no person in the world can be so profoundly irritating as an addict.

To be strong with them-unflinchingly strong-and yet gentle; ah well, this is not as easy as it sounds. Here, then, is the letter:

"If addicts with the following qualifications are employed, a great majority will prove reliable if treated properly:—

"(1) A person who can prove integrity and average ability previous to addiction. One who has held the respect of good people through success, ability and reliability.

"(2) A person who has a powerful incentive to rehabilitate himself before his former friends and to win back his fortune by making good.

"Not one per cent. of narcotic addicts make reliable detective agents because they are not handled in the proper manner. An addict is by the nature of his weakness, cautious, suspicious, and has very little faith in his fellow men. He has been victimized by the lowest type of human animal, namely the drug pedlar. He has been double-crossed, cheated, lied to and sneered at by his masters. He is also ridiculed or shunned like a leper by Christians who are hypocritical. Any experience he has had with the police has not as a rule taught him to love them. They consider him a liar and cheat, and treat him accordingly. An addict is a cornered beast who must fend for himself by any means in his power. It is easy to imagine the result.

"Take the most model church-going Christian and treat him as you do an addict and see the phenomenon of a human being turning into a "rat." Now, on the other hand, there are a few of God's Own Gentlemen on this earth who are so thoroughly imbued with Christ's real Christianity that their heart goes out to an addict and these men often have their hands bit while offering brotherly sympathy to the "cornered rat."

"These good souls by their very broad-minded tolerance often do more harm than good by encouraging an addict in the belief that his weakness is incurable. While sneers and ridicule will never accomplish any good, neither will coddling sympathy. There is, however, a middle course to pursue which will succeed with an addict just as it always succeeds, in other problems where human nature is the chief factor to consider.

"The man who can successfully follow this middle course with an addict must be a big-minded man indeed. The average student of psychology is at sea when studying an addict. The psychologist is using a normal brain on what appears to be a normal problem with the result that his pet theories prove failures. His conceit will not permit him to admit failure, so he classes the addict as some kind of maniac impossible to handle.

"The failure of the psychologist arises from his blind faith in his 'ology and makes him childish and ridiculous in failing to admit that an addict is just a human person with, maybe, more than the average human weakness. I repeat that the man who can successfully handle an addict must be exceptionally broad-minded, sympathetic and optimistic, but he must also be a strict disciplinarian. A man who will keep his promise whether it be reward or punishment.

"An addict looks for treachery all the time and he will misconstrue the most innocent word, or action into a plot against himself. He will accuse his mentor of the most ridiculous and imaginary plots to double-cross him. His abnormal brain is working up fantastic and impossible situations from practically no foundation and it completely blots out the most obvious view-point which any normal man would naturally take. An addict's mental gymnastics are something very hard to comprehend, but I can assure you that while he appears ridiculous in mental exercises, his abnormal brain can find sound logic and correct deductions as a foundation for what you might call insanity, or at least absurdity.

"To revert once more to the man who handles an addict successfully; you can easily see that his job is no sinecure; and if he has the average clean man's characteristics, he has to exercise all his self-control to listen to those preposterous accusations from a "rat" he is trying to help. That is where a man proves his broadness and practical Christianity. To swallow the insults without losing prestige is another side issue.

"The greatest mistake made in handling an addict, as police informer or agent, is cutting him off from his supply of drugs. To do so, no matter how square and upright he wants to be, or has proven, is inviting him to turn back stronger than ever to his old love. Do not ever expect to have an ex-addict work among drugs, and play the game squarely. It is asking more than is humanly possible. To play squarely and to turn his whole effort against the drug traffic, is enough to demand of him apart from sending him forth with a drug craving among his old associates. The wise man will not expect it, but by slow and easy stages he can make the addict regain sufficient self-respect so that the craving for the old life will gradually disappear and a loathing for the whole traffic take its place, thus guaranteeing you an active honest agent who will fight the traffic for sheer love of battle and also for the personal revenge for what he suffered through it.

"How many old police officers of long experience will scoff and ridicule this idea. I would like to ask these same 'old-timers' 'how many square shooting addicts have you found in your experience?' I can hear them roar and say 'There is no such animal.' Their own treatment of addicts would be in itself sufficient reason for addicts becoming 'rats.'

"Never forget that, to begin with, all addicts were ordinary human beings. As a rule, I have found the majority of addicts to have been men above the average in ability. Usually he is a clever man in some particular line but, running with sports and rounders, seeking a new 'kick' or sensation from life, has finally bumped into cocaine.

"His conceit in his ability makes him try a new 'kick' just to prove his superiority over the numskulls who have let cocaine put them in the gutter. He decides to show the world how it can be otherwise.

"His first sensation is a speeding up of his intellect, the sharpening of his faculties and an immortal optimism, which is the expansion of his already large ego and there you have the future 'rat.' The more schooled he was in decency, the more ingenious and devilish become his actions against his fellow men.

"It is quite true that I have never heard of an addict who was forced into addiction. I was twenty-five and fairly well educated; had travelled widely, but I had certainly mixed with coke rats who were so low that it was impossible to believe they were born of woman.

"It is quite true that no one handcuffed me to drugs, and that I thought my eyes were open. As 'Mr. Wiseheimer' I would show them how to get the 'kick' out of coke without getting kicked myself. I firmly believed I could. I had never experienced a taste, habit, or passion in my life that I couldn't control before it became dangerous. I had been sodden for six months on whiskey. I loved it as whiskey, and I loved the effect. I made what I considered an awful ass of myself while drunk one night; and I never drank again. I craved and yearned for it, but my conceit and vanity had been wounded so deeply through whiskey that I would have died rather than fall for it. I was only nineteen then—the time when common sense is only a seed and conceit a full blown flower.

"You will ask me how I account for the fact that at twenty-five with eleven years of travel and a thorough experience with all phases of life, including that of the great war that I should fall ignominiously for cocaine—fall miles lower than I ever fell for whiskey.

"Either I had lost my senses of my morale and had become a degenerate. Neither conclusion would be true. I was in full possession of my senses and I still maintained the same code of ethics that I had learned from my mother's teaching. I maintain that I lived with my own conscience and that public opinion didn't hurt me if I could sleep with my conscience. I would feel keen remorse for hurting an animal or a weaker brother; but if I met a Philistine who doubted my honesty on a hypocritical snap judgment, I could rob that man with the greatest of satisfaction and divide the spoils with unfortunate brothers. I could thereafter sleep easily and with no remorse at all. That was my creed. I believed that to play square with one's conscience was to play square with your fellow men.

"'Why did I fall for cocaine?' you ask.

"Because of all agents of destruction, crime, degeneracy, and self-hypnosis, cocaine is so pre-eminently the most potent, and because ordinary roads to hell do not even show on the same map. Cocaine is the unfairest gamester of all. It is the greatest deceiver any man ever applied to his senses. Whiskey is a true sport in comparison.

"A man drinks whiskey and excites his passions. With most men its effect is purely physical as a stimulant, and while giving Dutch Courage to his body, at the same moment it fogs his intellect. Whiskey shows you plainly that if you enjoy the 'kick' to-day, you must suffer the misery to-morrow. You pay whiskey its due within twenty-four hours of its enjoyment. You know this beforehand, and may take it or leave it. If the 'kick' is worth the sickness, go to it.

"But, cocaine plays no such game. It never shows a fang, not even a pain, until it has you securely enmeshed. It would take more than your former will-power at its height to defeat it, for even if you do manage to abjure the actual drug, the memory and craving are ever present to torture you.

"Cocaine takes all you hold dear in life to-day—love, honor, family, fortune, health-and in two weeks if you try to recall the awful trick it played you, you will find yourself justifying the cocaine. The only memories your mind retains are of those beautiful days of speeded intellect, super-intelligence, controlled passions and of the exquisitely clean mind, when you started using cocaine—those days when it was really bringing out all your better manhood; when its effect was like nothing on earth outside of ancient fairy tales; when your whole concentrated powers could not see any ill effect from its use but, on the other hand, an evident benefit to your whole existence.

"Yes, it 'kidded' you along, and you feel that so far as your case is concerned; it has proven a blessing instead of a curse. Of course, you acknowledge to yourself that it might affect others quite differently but to you it was the real elixir of life.

"Then, Mrs. Murphy, you wake up. There takes place a crisis in your life which, in weak intellects, usually results in an 'overdose' of something, the ambulance and, maybe the Potter's Field. However, if you are made of sterner stuff, or if your conceit dies hardly; you will then start a living death. You have the sense of hearing, but your mind is only conscious of a craving and of some memories. You look like a human being alright, but your fellows do not recognize you. Some sneer, some laugh, and some give you the sympathy that is usually served out to the weak-minded member of the family. In any and all cases you know you are being held in contempt.

"There is something different in the quality of contempt meted out to drug fiends and that which is usually given to other weaklings or criminals. When a man is charged with rape, or with willful murder, he at least earns the hatred and fear of his fellow men. Mixed with these emotions he is usually granted a certain respect which is admitted in the fear of him and, perhaps, for the nerve of him.

"Now, to the addict there comes a form of contempt so insulting and narrow that it is marvellous murders are not more frequent as a method of wiping out the insult. I have been sneered at and ridiculed by men whom I have proven to be my intellectual inferiors time and time again—figureheads living on real men's productions, or filling a job that a machine would do better if it could walk and had eyes. This type is largely represented among male vamps and cornermashers that will voice more abominations about some respectable girl, who turned from their lewd advances than a dope fiend would even think of the lowest prostitute.

"Now, these brainless ninnies will sneer at and ridicule a real man who, in the hunting of something new and exciting, became a slave to his surplus energy via the drug route. There is no need to worry about the ninny falling. He will never have brains enough to earn an income sufficient to buy drugs. He is as much a degenerate of humanity as an addict. He is a leech and a parasite, who without daring to experiment, will ridicule men who had the nerve; gambled, and—well, lost. I'd like to see this type with even one per cent. of an addict's struggle to contend with. He would surrender before it started. He is the village 'cut-up' and 'wise guy' who would slander a girl's fair name, or rob her, to satisfy his vulgar passions, yet feels himself far above the addict who probably never harmed anyone and, though sociability or daring, became an outcast.

"I will tell all Christians (professed, practical or hypocritical) that had Christ met a dope fiend He would not have ridiculed him. He certainly would have respected him more than he would some of the all-knowing Pharisees who mould public opinions.

"Let an addict straighten out, take a cure and start to fight; does the average citizen help him any? The addict is always under suspicion that he is using drugs surreptitiously and that the cure is only a 'bluff.' He cannot be trusted, he might go crazy and murder someone, or he might put dope in the good citizen's food; in fact there is no limit to his capacity for everything evil.

"When he is suffering, and fighting the hardest, Mr. Grundy whispers to Mrs. Gossip, 'Do you notice the expression of his face? I wonder what diabolical plot he is hatching now? He really should be confined to some institution where he can't do any harm. But, I suppose if we find some of our citizens murdered one morning, the officials may take some action, after he has done the damage. It isn't right, you know, to jeopardize our lives for a worthless hulk like that.'

"Now, if you overheard such stuff from the narrow public who govern our opinions about yourself in the same predicament; what would you do? Would you try to climb out and suffer mental, physical and public torture, or would you take the line of least resistance and slip still further? You are no less human than an addict; and just when he is fighting for a foothold is the time when he is the most sensitive to insults. If these superior persons were only able to show where they fought a weakness or temptation and won a victory, it would give them some room for their attitude toward the weakling who loses the fight.

"But they never had a weakness. They do not like whiskey so they do not drink it, but if they do like it they indulge themselves, thus satisfying the corresponding weakness in their own character, to that of the addict. I do not see them doing without anything they crave unless it be too expensive or entirely unobtainable.

"When a practical Christian attitude is adopted towards the addicts, from that day you will see a diminishing of the drug evil instead of alarming increases taking place as at present. There is no way for a normal man to realize a narcotic addict's unenviable position unless he be an addict himself. Of all things I have been up against—tasks, passions, habits or pastimes, drug addiction is the only one I acknowledge my master. Public opinion fails to sting me now because I have survived a crisis which I know would have downed a large percentage of those witless 'Willies' whose idea of humor is to ridicule the crippled, maimed, and outcast."

This drug is not really new but, as yet, is comparatively unknown in the United States and Canada, although three of the American States—California, Missouri and Wyoming—have legislated against its use, the authorities and police officers generally being woefully ignorant of its nature or extraordinary menace.

At the Convention held at The Hague in 1912, Italy suggested a study of this drug, holding that its use would increase as the opium traffic was suppressed.

Marahuana is known by chemists and physicians as cannabis indica, and more commonly as Indian hemp. Sometimes it is called hasheesh or hashish.

In Chapter 31 of The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas gives us an account of a hashish debauch. In this chapter "Sinbad" the host, describes the green preserve as nothing less than the ambrosia which Hebe served at the table of Jupiter. "Sinbad" speaks of this as "the hashish of Alexandria—the hashish of Abour-Gor, the celebrated maker, the only man to whom there should be built a palace, inscribed with these words, 'a grateful world to a dealer in happiness.'"

Eminent medical doctors in India, principally at Calcutta, have made experiments with Cannabis Indica and have discovered that it induces symptoms of catalepsy or even of trance. It is also claimed that the fakers of India who suffer themselves to be buried, and who are later disinterred, do so through the agency of this drug.

Some years ago, Dr. James Braid of Edinburgh wrote a monograph on this subject entitled "Trance and Human Hybernation," which was published by John Church of Princes Street, Soho, London.

Hashish or hasheesh is the Arabic name and means literally "dried herb." It may be smoked, chewed or drunk. Our English word "assassin" comes from this word.

The hemp resin for smoking and chewing comes in three forms—chang, ganja and charas.

This Indian hemp is used chiefly in Asia Minor, India, Persia and Egypt, but is being increasingly used on this continent, particularly by the Mexicans, who smuggle it into the United States. Last year fifty-four persons were convicted for using, or peddling it in Los Angeles, California.

Charles A. Jones, the Chief of Police for the city, said in a recent letter that hashish, or Indian hemp, grows wild in Mexico but to raise this shrub in California constitutes a violation of the State Narcotic law. He says, "Persons using this narcotic, smoke the dried leaves of the plant, which has the effect of driving them completely insane. The addict loses all sense of moral responsibility. Addicts to this drug, while under its influence, are immune to pain, and could be severely injured without having any realization of their condition. While in this condition they become raving maniacs and are liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence to other persons, using the most savage methods of cruelty without, as said before, any sense of moral responsibility.

"When coming from under the influence of this narcotic, these victims present the most horrible condition imaginable. They are dispossessed of their natural and normal will power, and their mentality is that of idiots. If this drug is indulged in to any great extent, it ends in the untimely death of its addict."

Mr. Hamilton Fyfe in The Real Mexico, writing of this drug says of it, "They (the Mexicans) madden themselves with a drug called Marahuana. This has strange and terrible effects. It appears to make those who swallow it do whatever is uppermost in their thoughts. At El Paso, a peon came across the International Bridge firing a rifle at all and sundry. Much talk against the Americans and a dose of Marahuana had decided him to invade the United States by himself. The bridge-keeper quickly put a bullet into the poor wretch."

W. H. B. Stoddart of the Bethlehem Royal Hospital of London, says the drug is used for the purpose of inducing pleasurable motor excitement and hallucinations which are commonly sexual in character among Eastern races. This contention is, however, denied by the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, which says there is no evidence that the drug is an aphrodiside.

Stoddart says further that hasheesh causes epigastric sensations, with anaesthesia of the arms and legs. The acute intoxication is characterized by sleepiness and "a certain impudent, dare-devil demeanor." As in intoxication from alcohol, the gait is staggering. The addict has delusions of persecution or of measureless grandeur. Speaking of the latter delusion, Dr. Palmer writes that in India, under its influence, your servant is apt to make you a grand salaam instead of a sandwich, and offer you an houri when you merely demanded a red herring.

Dr. Warnock in The Journal of Mental Sciences for January, 1903, states that acute mania from hasheesh varies from "a mild, short attack of excitement to a prolonged attack of furious mania, ending in exhaustion or even death."

He describes the hasheesh user in the following words: "They are good-for-nothing lazy fellows who live by begging or stealing, and pester their relations for money to buy the hasheesh, often assaulting them when they refuse the demands. The moral degradation of these cases is their most salient symptom; loss of social position, shamelessness, addiction to lying and theft, and a loose, irregular life makes them a curse to their families."

It appears that in using this poison, the time-sense becomes impaired in such a way that time appears to pass slowly. One addict says that on recovering from a debauch "It was like returning home from an eternity spent in loneliness among the palaces of strangers. Well may I say an eternity," he continues, "for during the whole day I could not rid myself of the feeling that I was separated from the preceding one by an immeasurable lapse of time."

It is also a peculiarity of hasheesh that its fantasia almost invariably takes Oriental form. "It is hasheesh which makes both the Syrian and the Saxon Oriental," quoth one of its habitués.

De Quincey tells the same of opium, but this may only have been because in normal hours his imagination dallied with Eastern themes and scenes. Speaking of these fantasia with their "unimaginable horrors" he writes, "I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins with mummies and sphinxes in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles, and laid confounded with unutterable slimy things amongst reeds and nilotic mud."

It is believed that the Arabian Nights were written under the motor excitement of hasheesh. The romancer under its influence travelled on a magic carpet and saw strange lands and sights.

Blown on some mystic wind conjured up by the drug, the modern habitué, in a phrensy of travel, passes through all latitudes in gigantic tours. Now, with joyous lightness, he is "on the way to Mandalay," or again, in the profoundest dejection, he has come to "say good-bye." He travels through marshy jungles, over mid-earth lakes, across desert plains, over valleys of roses, or in the high air where insane faces howl at him and curse horribly.

Sometime about the middle of the last century, a remarkable volume entitled The Hasheesh Eater was written by Fitz-Hugh Ludlow, an American author of great ability and high culture. He was born in the State of New York in 1836 and died of consumption in Switzerland in 1870. He was special correspondent to the New York dailies; wrote much magazine literature and edited Vanity Fair from 1858 to 1860.

The effects of hasheesh, "this weed of madness," being explained to him by a druggist, he was impelled by curiosity, and by a desire to record these effects scientifically to experiment with this narcotic, not only on himself but on his fellow students.

There are plenty of folk who pretend to themselves that they yield to narcotic enchantment in a desire for research and not for sensual gratification, and that they inure their friends to its effects for the same reason, but, however kindly in judgment, one finds these statements hard to credit, and even if credited, only demonstrates these persons as rascals-manifest.

Ludlow has described the delirium of hasheesh, with its hellish agonies, as no one ever did before, or could wish to again. He told of the jubilance from the drug, and of its reactory results in physical and mental depression; of the nervous waste from hasheesh addiction, and the necessity of again using the drug to supply the waste which it first occasioned.

He also tells the story of his enfranchisement from this fell and deadly habit till that time when he was no longer "an outcast from man's league with God."

It has been pointed out that there are three ways out from the regency of this addiction:

1st—Insanity.
2nd—Death.
3rd—Abandonment.

This is assuredly a direful trinity and one with which the public should be cognizant in order that they may be warned of the sharp danger that lies in even curiously tasting poisons which have been inhibited, or which are habit-forming.

Osborne, of Sing Sing, claims that, being the agents of Society, the police should always have the advantage over the criminal, for the criminal is the enemy of Society—the man whose hand is against every other man.

For some strange reason, however, "the drop" is nearly always given the renegade in his efforts to escape detection, or to balk the law.

Maybe, this is because, in the eyes of society, the criminal becomes the under-dog, and the police his "persecutors," an idea which is persistently fostered, by Counsel for the Defence, and by some rescue workers.

The policeman is called "the harness bull," the detective a "dick" or "'tec." These are always stupid amusing fellows, and the butt of many witticisms, especially at the picture houses. Even the poets cut a quill for them and make merry in their untimely demise. Says one:

Mr. O. Henry, in a sentence witty, but unfair, defines a policeman as a person who "takes kids up, women across and men in."

Getting a warrant to search a place for a suspected câche of poisons is almost as difficult as getting a passport to Russia. Society holds up its hands in horror and talks of "violated rights" if a policeman appears at its door with an order for search, and calls him names, the scope of which can only be measured by their ability to pronounce the English language. It is absolutely astounding what a hullabaloo can be made by an otherwise perfectly gentle lady, who has been asked to open her trunk or pass over her keys.

A most causal consideration shows, however, that if a câche of deleterious drugs be found in a suspected house, the magistrate's order was justified; if not found, the householder has a very high joke on his side and all the satisfaction. He may know, too, that as a citizen he has "the proved pre-eminence of worth," or —well, that the police through some favorable revolution of the stars, walked right over the câche and never noticed it.

If a housewife has the corners of her cupboards clean, and last night's dishes washed, there is no great trouble in the letting police "look through" any more than prospective buyers or inspectors from the gas company.

Of course, it occasionally happens that some headstrong, dry-hearted fellow actually pries off a baseboard, or slashes into the darkness of the coal-bin with the electric bulb he carries, for, like an old huntsman, the trained detective takes every thing into consideration.

Probably, too, the detective has been tipped off as to the exact location of the hidden treasure. I cannot believe that the man on our morality squad who lifted a pail of water and found a can of opium under the floor at this particular spot, was acting on anything but a tip. There is a Hindu proverb which says the more you know, the better luck you have.

Although he is a busy-eyed man at all times, and something of a spoil-sport for drug runners, I have always suspected that the officer who found cocaine in the coal-scuttle had been definitely instructed by some sour sulky addict. It never fortuned that way. How could mortal man discern that there was a false bottom in a harmless looking scuttle that stood by the fireplace? Just riddle me that.

Yes! we may as well tell it here that most of the "tipping off" comes from addicts who have fallen out with the pedlar for refusing them credit and who, in the gall of their hearts, desire to have revenge on him. No pedlar's câche is ever safe and he is always looking for "shadows." To use the colloquialism of the profession "he is on the dodge."

Indeed, an addict has been known to "plant" dope in the pocket or in the hat-band of a pedlar who refuses to supply drugs on demand, and then to inform the detectives. Incidentally, the addict wins the praise he covets, as well as half the fine.

A pedlar will do the same with a rival pedlar. Truly, the ways of the traffic are devious and past finding out, also they are entirely lacking in that quality known as ethics.

In order to keep intact his hidden stores against sudden raids, many devices have been tried by the pedlar, and some have proven satisfactory for awhile.

He may câche his drugs inside a watch case, the works of which have been removed; in the collar of his dog; in the heel of his boot; in the drawer of a safety-deposit vault, or skilfully rolled in rice paper in the form of cigarettes. Women have been known to secrete cocaine inside of a doll, in a cocoanut, or in a pot of cold cream.

Others have hidden their supply under what appeared to be a solid tile flooring, but which actually had a section that lifted up after the manner of a trap-door.

A detective who could cope successfully with these devices must be a veritable Argus with eyes all over his body and a mind filled with the most unhandsome suspicions. Also, he needs to pack "a shooting iron" as a prophylactic against evil influences of a sudden nature.

A large câche of drugs was kept hidden in the basement of a well-known hotel in Edmonton behind doors of heavy timber, which had been reinforced by ponderous bolts and iron bars. When the police would appear with their warrant, no entrance was given until the drugs and all the pipes were consumed on the hot coals of the furnace. The game was put a stop to by the officers forcing the door and carrying it off to the police station as "Exhibit A."

These pedlars are "go betweens" in the employ of the drug-rings, it being their business to distribute the drugs to the unfortunate users. Also, it is their business to create a trade, and to this end, cocaine and morphine are frequently given away to girls and young men in order that they may acquire the appetite—a kind of throwing a sprat to catch a herring.

Many of these propagandists, boosters or recruiters are to be found among the taxi-drivers and waiters in cafés. Indeed, it was shown recently that every employee in a certain western cafŽ was a drug addict and that four of these were pedlars with a keen assiduity to sell.

The waiters often sell on a commission of from 25 to 35 per cent. The commission man is usually a foreigner for whom the whites "work." On the other hand, the taxi-driver usually makes his profit by charging the customer a carrying fee. That is to say, having received a request for "M" or "C," he will drive to "the hand out" and get it, charging the customer a dollar or two for having made the trip.

If the customer asks for morphine or cocaine, he will find the driver to be deeply aggrieved by this wicked insinuation and the serious impeachment of his character. For this reason, the customer must always remember to use the alphabetical letters, "M" or "C."

A Government official in Western Canada tells us of a traveller from the United States who, stepping off the train, was offered and purchased cocaine from one of the taxi-drivers at the railway station. By one of those extreme slips of fortune, they were espied and both arrested. Both were subsequently convicted of a breach of the Opium and Drugs Act, but, before being deported to the United States, the traveller explained to this Government official how the taxi-driver came to sell him cocaine.

"He did not volunteer to sell me the drug as the police alleged at the trial. I gave 'the high sign' to the line of drivers and he was the one who took it up. The others had probably no cocaine to sell."

The sign is so simple it would be full easy to relate.

"Tell it then!" you say. Ah, Sirs and Madams, it was one Festus, a sagacious man of high intent, who said "'Tis not my will that evil be immortal."

But returning to the subject of strong-rooms as hiding places for opiates, it is probable that most of the larger Canadian cities have their quota of these.

In a certain eastern Canadian city, the chief constable, who stipulates with us that his name or city be not mentioned, received information from a member of the underworld that a certain party was selling, cocaine and morphine on a very large scale. The informant furnished the constable with the address of the apartment, which was located in the centre of a large block, and instructed him how to reach it.

Many hallways, stairways, rooms and alleyways had to be passed through in order to ultimately arrive at the hiding-place, where a peculiar knock known only to the initiated, was to be given on the door. The officer was further told that the vendor of the drugs would open a small slat in the door to receive the money and that in a few minutes afterwards, the vendor would extend his hand with the package through the same opening.

The information given the chief constable was taken down in great detail, and the instructions followed out to the letter. It was then arranged for the most powerful detective on the Force to go with the police sergeant to make the purchase, and that when the vendor put the package through the door, the detective would grasp his hand while the sergeant would slip on the handcuffs, thus preventing its withdrawal.

At the appointed time they arrived at the apartment and gave the correct knock, passing their money through. A few minutes later, the seller reached his hand through to deliver the drugs. The detective grabbed his hand but failed to hold it, as it slipped away quite easily, much to the astonishment of the officers. Alas and alas! even clever officers may neglect to figure on the contingency of a vendor greasing his hand.

The officers had been previously told that the door was very heavy and supported by steel bars at the top, centre and bottom. They managed, nevertheless, to batter it in, but found, on entering, that their bird had flown, leaving behind him some money and a very large amount of cocaine and morphine.

After a thorough search of the premises, they found an opening from the cellar under these particular apartments, into the adjoining cellar, and from this cellar to a still further one. They kept up the search with diligence and were eventually rewarded by finding a huddled form behind a pile of boxes in a damp corner of the third cellar. It was not necessary to question him as to the ownership of the drugs, although he did confess to this, his well-greased palm being, well—first-hand evidence of the fact.

But a detective's tribulations do not always come from the powerful criminal, the irate householder, or the unsympathetic public. In searching for contraband drugs, he is forced to observe caution in his every movement. Even in getting warrants, he must be careful as to who types or sees the papers, and in all the procedure to act upon the principle of safety first. It happens, not infrequently, that before the squad leave the station, their destination has become known, and all is quiet when they arrive with the warrant. The police may "spot" the public, but in return they are spotted themselves, the return being a hundred to one.

It seems a pity, too, that public opinion must be excited before the detectives can clean up a city. Because of the flabbiness of opinion, a campaign for law enforcement must be instituted, before effectual work is accomplished.

Let no one think that equality of justice is handed down without discrimination, for such is not the case. High profiteering personages leave nothing undone through bribery, intrigue, intimidation, or through social approach, to break down the moral stamina of those whose duty is to make the law effective.

Mr. Henry Ford spoke to the point when he said recently, "The lawlessness which most needs to be denounced is not that kind of which the police and courts take cognizance, but that which is permeating classes of society which have too long been regarded as respectable. We seems to have forgotten that the word 'respectable' means 'worthy of respect,' not merely well placed socially and financially, and adroitly able to keep out of the hands of the police … Respect for law is a sentiment restricted to people fit to be free; all others fear the law."

Anyone who has much to do with the public knows how easily people may be hypnotised by words. One such, is the word "spotter" as applied to secret service men or to special agents of the police. It has come to mean something almost reprobate, whereas it really stands for safety, success, beneficence and several other things. When a singer on the vaudeville stage stands in the dark, someone hidden in the rear of the theatre turns a circular light on him, and as the singer moves out and about, the light continues to follow and to show his every action. The public applaud and the singer is pleased because he is in the spot-light.

But let the police, for the detection of crime, turn the spotlight on someone who stands in the darkness and just give ear to the outcry. Why society should give "the drop" to the criminal instead of to those officers who represent themselves seems hard to understand.

Perhaps, it arises from the fact that one's sympathies naturally turn toward a person who has been captured, and who therefore suffers. Yet, although punishment be imposed on the wrong-doer it is not imposed revengefully, but solely for the protection of the citizen. To the prisoner himself the punishment itself is often salutary, and some can be found who acknowledge to it at a later period.

The pedlar and bootlegger make outcry when arrested, not because they care anything for public opinion, or public security, but because they fear losing money going to jail.

"What is the world coming to anyway?" ask these pestered, irritated gentry, "there ought to be a law against this spotting."

So long as the "harness bulls" wear their uniforms, it is alright—no one cares—but when a "smooth guy" dressed exactly like themselves comes along and nabs them the thing becomes atrocious, unfair, indecent. Police ought to go hunting for criminals with bells and banners instead of flashlights and those ugly-looking sawed-off guns which they call "gats." Indeed, they should!

In the police court, counsel for the defence, draws attention to the "iniquity" of the system wishing to make his client appear as the victim of depraved and unreliable persecutors. He becomes virulently abusive and even looks as though he might be spoiling for a fight. Reporters pick up his words, and even the Bench has shown signs of enthrallment.

Most of this talk, however, is irresponsible, for the following day, or even on the same day, this same counsel argues quite as vehemently for the prosecution where the spotter's evidence is the only kind adduced.

And then, strange to relate, when some citizen who has been clamourously condemning what he considers to be uncivilized methods, finds that his wife's diamond ring has been stolen by the last hired girl, or that some arch-criminal has purloined a dozen cases of spirituous liquor from his cellar, he hies him to the police station to demand the immediate and constant service of every "spotter" and "stooler" in the city. To him, on this occasion, the only wicked "stool" is the toadstool. In his importunity of the police, it is marvellous how elastic and easeful his methods become.

Yet, unless "stool pigeons" and "spotters" are used extensively, it is not even remotely possible to break the grip of the drug Ring. We must have stoolers and plenty of them. The stooler is paid out of police funds, and large sums of money will have to be laid aside for this purpose.

Why not use informers you ask, instead of stoolers? The answer is easy, the informer being paid for his work through a moiety of the fine, it becomes imperative that a fine be imposed instead of imprisonment which is exactly what the Ring is hoping for. A fine is a sort of amusement and makes as much impression upon the Ring as would the print of a mosquito's heel.

Besides, when it comes to the consideration of a "frame-up" or "plant," there is no reason to suppose that an informer is any more reliable than either a spotter or a stooler. These spotters can horn their way in almost any place and get evidence but, after all, it is the marked money and the purchased drugs that count. These are a corroboration of the stooler's story which it is hard to overlook.

It does not really make much difference whether the spotter knows the Ten Commandments or not. The squad, whether it be a drug or morality squad, takes no chances on his lying to them. The man is searched and relieved of all money. Then he gets marked money from the police. With this he goes into the opium joint and buys opium, morphine, cocaine or other allied poisons.

When he comes out, he hands over his purchase, whereupon the police get a warrant to search, if one has not already been granted them; enter the premises, search the inmates and secure the marked money. Also they usually find the stock of narcotics, which they seize and produce in court as evidence. There may be a more effective way than this but, up to the present, no one has evolved it.

It is true that the squad could make the search without the stooler, but in such an event, they would have no evidence of sale. The case would be one of "having in possession."

If they did not find the drugs, like as not, certain clamorous clouts in sympathy with the evasion of law rather than with its enforcement, would demand that all the squad be disciplined, or even dismissed for the "unwarranted interference" with the rights and liberties of highly respectable ratepayers. You may have noticed that persons who talk a great deal about their liberties, usually mean their liberty to do wrong.

Yes! it is surely a sorry scrape to be a sleuth in spite of the mystery and romance woven around the profession by story writers in lurid magazines.

As a matter of fact, the most vexatious spotting is that to which the police and their agents are, themselves, subjected. The drug and whiskey Rings keep spotters whose sole business is to post them on all plans of the police. They have these spotters in legal offices, and even in the police offices. If a raid is about to take place, the police do not leave the station in a body, but have an appointed rendezvous in another part of the city. The inspector or the sergeant in charge, does not tell his men the place to be raided until they approach it. He takes no chances on the quarry being tipped off—that is he doesn't if he is an experienced officer.

Many drug stores, and other stores, which are "fences" for contraband drugs or spirituous liquors keep a spotter to loiter around their place and watch the police. These spotters are especially disturbed if a closed car stops opposite the store for any length of time. Such a car has been known to contain police the very sight of which affects him like a nicked knife blade.

At any rate, the mass hysteria about stoolers and spotters as appointed by the chief-constable, or by the police commission, is not only unwarranted but positively prevents the effective and speedy detection of crime.

The evidence of the stool pigeon or agent provocateur was referred to in February of this year, in a judgment of the Privy Council, in an appeal from the Supreme Court of Canada, in the matter of the King v Nat Bell Liquor Ltd. Their Lordships said that if Bolsing, who was used in this capacity, impressed the Justice as a witness of truth, no error in law was committed in believing him, even without corroboration, but there was in fact the corroboration of money given him by the constable-detectives.

In the detection of illicit sales, the best "stool" is a pedlar under sentence of imprisonment. He is afraid that others will secure his customers while he is incarcerated, so thinks it excellent policy to assist in having rivals hauled off to jail. This is an exemplification of the old adage "set a thief to catch a thief."

It is argued that it is immoral for a man to buy contraband poisons from a dealer, thus causing the dealer to offend, but this can hardly be considered applicable in cases where the sole business of the trafficker is of a criminal nature. It is only when the drugs are to be consumed that the sale is commonly considered legitimate. A person who buys them as evidence is anathema.

Applied to law-abiding persons who would thereby suffer debasement, the conditions are wholly different and "stooling" should never for a moment be applied. Indeed, it never is, and it is not thinkable that the police will deliberately set out to induce innocent persons to sell narcotics or spirituous liquors, thereby taking upon themselves the risk of dismissal as well as the possibility of a charge of conspiracy, or of perjury.

Sometimes, the stooler is used after a detective has been living for days or even weeks in the drug colony, and has secured first-hand knowledge of the facts, in which event a mistake can hardly be made. A skilled detective seldom comes out of cover. This procedure would destroy his future work.

One detective whom we know, used to pose as an expert in telling fortunes by cards, and in this way—being what is commonly called "a jollier"—gave daring leads to his clients which generally resulted in whispered confidences to the seer. In one instance, he persuaded a woman to forego a journey she had planned that day because her cards showed wretched luck.

The luck, it turned out, occurred to her later in the same day when a special squad raided her room and found a suitcase containing a large quantity of morphine which she had packed to distribute to smaller fry along her railway route.

"A mean trick," you say. Yes! we reply, just as mean as trapping a tiger, red in tooth and claw with the blood of human kind. Persons who waste sympathy on the trapping of a narcotic distributor, do so because they have no knowledge of the havoc wrought, or of the impossibility of restoration once the distributor has finished his deadly work. "The drug pedlar," says an editor of one of our papers, "is a worse menace than a mad dog." This being the case, why trouble over the technicalities in catching the dog. The thing is to catch him and, if possible, to cure his hydrophobia.

Speaking of the hazards and hardships endured by police officers in the safe-guarding of property and human life, Chief Joseph Quigley of Rochester said recently:—"Within the past twenty years, thousands of police officers have given up their lives in the cause of internal order and peace. Have the public adequately recognized such service? I am afraid they have not … The time is not far distant when their sturdy loyalty and heroic deeds will be recognized, and regarded in a manner in keeping with that bestowed for patriotism and valor."

In no branch of police service are these words more applicable than in dealing with the drug fiend. It should not be necessary, therefore, to make any special plea to the public for an endorsement of their work, nor unreasonable to expect a solid and persistent backing of the same.

Back to Table of Contents   Go to Part II, Chapters 26 to 31